Four Empires Unity Tournament

The Four Empires Unity Tournament (四帝国統一大会) is a swordsmanship tournament hosted by the Axiom Church in Underworld. The winner of this tournament is invited to the Central Cathedral to become an Integrity Knight. The tournament is held annually, starting with 363 HWC, in the first third of the 4th Month , with 2 representatives from each empire, the winners of the respective Empire Swordsmanship Tournament within each of the 4 empires, participating. The Four Empires Tournament, like the Empire Swordsmanship Tournament, likely uses the rule of «first strike» wins.

Background
The tournament was initiated by Quinella, after she began building up a more proactive system to ensure that mighty warriors would become Integrity Knights. The true purpose of the tournament was to find the strongest swordsmen of the land to use for the Synthesis Ritual to produce new strong and absolutely loyal warriors to defend herself against Cardinal, hold back the forces from the Dark Territory and to ensure her all-encompassing rule in the Human World.

The winners of the tournament have their memories sealed by Quinella, with fake memories of having descended from the Celestial World planted in to ensure absolute loyalty towards Quinella. The victors would be separated from their families and usually sent to overlook a region far from their homeland to ensure that nothing would trigger their sealed memories.

The families of the victors were rewarded with great monetary rewards, lavish enough to dazzle their eyes, and granted the status of higher upper-class aristocrats, thus causing the unanimous opinion among the parents of nobles and wealthy merchants to have their children study the sword to participate in the tournament. Even those swordsmen who do not manage to win the tournament, but at least reach a high ranking are inducted into as an aristocrat for life or upgrade their nobility class. With a good enough standing, the contestant may be granted 4th class nobility or higher, thus granting them immunity from being the target of judgement from the upper-class nobles.

Trivia

 * About half of the 30 Integrity Knights are past winners of the Four Empires Unity Tournament. The other half being those who had broken the Taboo Index.
 * The only known winner of the Four Empires Unity Tournament is Eldrie Woolsburg.