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The current Reinhardt was a place where the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Reinhardt’s main street, where the colosseum was located, was full of merchants selling jaw-dropping luxury goods. However, just like there were two sides to a coin, there was a dark side of the city that made people frown.
A man and woman wearing robes showed up just now in an area near Reinhardt’s west castle gate that people called a “slum.”
“…The Flame Emperor is really in a place like this?” the man asked.
The woman nodded. "The information is accurate.”
“But Lilith…” The man seemed to be skeptical of the information’s credibility.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Lilith said. "He used to be the king of a country, so it seems highly unlikely that he would waste his time in this slum… That is what you’re thinking, right?” Lilith slightly lifted her hood after she finished speaking, revealing her jaw-droppingly beautiful face.
“I can’t deny that.” The man shrugged.
“Your prejudice is affecting you, Sir Christian.”
“Think about it: do you really think a man who was that powerful and influential can give up everything and live in a place like this? Because I seriously—”
“It’s actually possible because it’s the Flame Emperor,” Lilith said with a little smile.
“What do you mean…?”
Just then, Lilith found something that made her eyes sparkle.
“Look there,” she said.
“Huh…?” Christian tilted his head, confused because Lillith was pointing at a group of children. He asked, “Are they…?”
To be accurate, there was one adult and over a dozen children. The adult was carving an ordinary tree branch, rapidly transforming it.
“Woah!” A child who had been quietly watching marveled. "It’s a sword!”
The boy who received the completed sword smiled brightly. The other children gave him envious looks and swiftly glued themselves to the man.
“It’s so cool!”
“Mister! Can you ma-make a spear?”
The man only used a very short dagger to carve the tree branches yet produced such elegant sculptures that it was hard to believe they were all made from ordinary tree branches. He was good with his hands.
“I’m going to be the one who uses a spear!”
“No! I’m going to use a spear!”
“I told you I’ll be the Hero King!”
Christian observed the man behind the squabbling children. His beard was shaggy, and his clothes were practically rags. The dead skin all over his face made it hard to tell how old the man was.
The beggar man must have felt Christian’s eyes because he suddenly stood up.
“…That’s it for today,” he informed the children.
The children were shocked and immediately stopped bickering and made long faces.
“Mi-mister.”
“We’re sorry! We won’t fight anymore.”
“Please make us just one more.”
It looked like the children misunderstood why the man had suddenly stopped, but the man had no intention of going back on his words despite the children’s desperate pleas.
“It looks like they’re finished.” Christian quietly smacked his lips. "It’s been a while since I saw something that good. He’s unbelievably good for an ordinary beggar.”
Lilith shook her head. "He’s not a beggar.”
“What?” Christian turned to look at her.
“He’s the one who we’re looking for.”
Christian’s eyes popped open.
“N-no way…?”
Lilith walked toward the man without hesitation—no, she quickly blocked the man’s way before he could leave.
“Lil-Lilith!” Christian shouted, bewildered, but it was difficult to stop her once she had made a decision.
“Excuse me,” Lilith said to the man.
The children froze in surprise when two adults suddenly showed up. They must have been starving for such a long time because they were nothing but skin and bones.
Lilith looked them in the eye one by one.
“Children,” she said, “I have to talk to this mister, so I’ll have to take him away.”
“Uh…” The children fidgeted with their fingers.
Lilith smiled. "Why don’t you take this and grab something delicious in the meantime?”
“…Woah!” The children opened their eyes wide when they saw a shining cold coin on Lilith’s palm. "Wow!”
They survived day by day by begging, so there was no way that they didn’t know the value of the gold coin. The boy in the very front quickly grabbed it.
“Hey, you’re cheating!”
“Me too! Me too!”
“Wait for me!”
The children vanished in a flash, and the beggar man tried to get out using the chaos.
“Wait,” Lilith called.
The man didn’t answer.
Lilith cut to the chase. “I’m here because I have a business to take care of with you.”
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“Wa-wait!” Christian stuttered, baffled by her abruptness.
“You don’t have to stay on your guard. I don’t mean any harm.” Lilith completely took off her hood, revealing her beautiful face. The beggar man, however, wasn’t fazed, despite setting eyes on a face that made men’s jaws hit the floor even without knowing her identity…
“…You do know who I am, right? Please help us,” she pleaded with shining eyes.
“…I don’t know who you are, and you’ve got the wrong person.” The beggar man swiftly turned away, underlining his refusal to deal with Lilith.
However, the air around them abruptly changed when Lilith quietly said, “King of Thran.”
The man stopped moving.
“Or do you want me to call you by your other titles since Thran doesn’t exist anymore? Which one do you want, the Flame Emperor or the Knight of the Red Flame?”
“Ulabis is fine,” the man curtly replied.
“I’ll say it again, please help us,” Lilith repeated with sincerity.
The beggar man, Ulabis, slowly turned.
“You…”
* * *
Just like he had done in the past, Joshua lightly landed in the center of the colosseum and took a look around the surroundings. He wore an ox-like mask that he had stolen God-knew-when.
“Who is that?”
“Is he part of a new event?”
“Seriously? He looks too weak for him to be part of an event…”
“If he’s wearing an ox mask, isn’t he one of the best slaves?”
People murmured among themselves, confused. The noise grew by the moment. Tens of thousands of eyes were focused on one person: Joshua.
“…This mask means that?” Joshua sighed lightly as he adjusted his mask. When he turned his head, the Wilhelm Knight whose mask he had stolen was looking at Joshua from within the prison, baffled.
“There is one more in Sector A.”
“Oh! He’s moving!”
“What? Why is he killing beasts, not children?”
When Joshua focused more, he could hear the audience’s conversation through the incomprehensible murmuring. It sounded like Kingaitu had begun to move.
“Well, he’s been enduring everything for a long time…” Joshua murmured.
“Hey, host!” A spectator loudly yelled. "Is this an event you guys prepared?”
“…Ah!” That was when the host, Dorby, finally pulled himself together. The Hubalt Empire had delegated all powers regarding this gambling operation to him, but Dorby was from Reinhardt, not the Hubalt Empire…
‘Fuck, why is this happening to me…!’ Dorby cursed in his thoughts.
There was no way that the higher-ups wouldn’t tell him about an event that they had prepared, so it was clearly an accident. Dorby panicked. No matter what the reason was, he knew how people from the Hubalt Empire would react if he couldn’t do his job.
“I can just bet if this is an event, right?”
“It seems fun. Besides, I was getting bored…”
A remarkable idea flashed in Dorby’s head.
"Ahahahaha! Yes, that’s right!” he loudly declared to the audience using mana. “Isn’t it too boring to just beat those who are tied up?”
“Well, he has a point…”
“Yeah, I don’t know about Sector A, but the people in Sector B are going up against the knights of the Grand Hubalt Empire. So is there really a need to tie them up and beat them?”
“Yeah, dirty fights are the most interesting ones.”
“They’re bloody and quite thrilling.”
Dorby silently screamed delightedly at the positive response from the crowd.
“I’ll bet ten gold that the ox-head man will survive for thirty minutes.”
“Thirty minutes?”
“His clothes, appearance… He looks feeble but it seems like he’s prepared himself really well. A mysterious slave gladiator that appeared at the most dramatic moment!”
There was always the one who stood out, no matter where they were. When that one person talked sophistry, most spectators clicked their tongues.
“Bullshit.”
“Real bullshit.”
“He’s unarmed, so that’s obviously not the case.”
“Huh? Wait…”
The spectators marveled one by one when they noticed Joshua’s appearance.
“I’ll bet five gold that he’ll survive for ten minutes.”
“Since it’s an event, three gold for five minutes.”
“Four gold for one minute.”
The spectators put together a plausible hypothesis while they piled up shining gold on the big table at the corner of the colosseum. The gambling hosts got busy as they scrambled to record who bet how much on their ledgers.
“Hehe… Luck is definitely on my side.” Dorby giggled.
The more ledgers the other hosts had to bring, the deeper Dorby’s smile became. In fact, he was the one who suggested the idea of an arena to the Hubalt Empire as soon as the Empire had taken over Reinhardt again.
He had told the higher-ups that there was a way where they would not only be able to improve their soldiers’ morale and earn money, but also to release their dark desires. That was why the Empire’s higher-ups had left the arena-related matters totally in the hands of Dorby, so it was obvious what would happen if an accident took place in the arena.
“Yes, yes! Bet, bet! This is a one-time-only event! The odds will be revealed soon!” Dorby confidently shouted.
The Hubalt Empire’s knights calmed down.
“Oh, it was all an event?”
“Hey, boy. You look young. Where are you from?”
“Is he not a mercenary?”
“A mercenary?”
“Yeah, only mercenaries or wizards wear that kind of robe.” A knight pointed at Joshua’s brown robe.
The nearby knight chuckled. "Those inkies don’t wear that kind of dull-colored robe to show how noble they’re. There is no way that they’d color their robes.”
“Keke… you’re right.”
One knight swaggered through a crowd of over twenty knights, approaching Joshua.
“Hey, are you mute?” the knight asked.
Joshua didn’t answer.
“You know, I’m bored, so I hope you at least make a frantic last ditch effort before I slit your throat…” The knight grabbed his sheath and threw it at Joshua’s feet.
“Toma, if you’re going to give him something why don’t you give him your sword?” the knight’s colleague asked.
“Well, just in case.” Toma shrugged.
“Why? Are you scared?” His colleague smirked.
“What do you mean, scared?!” Toma snapped. "I don’t want to get hurt while he blindly swings around a sword.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The colleague continued to smirk, and the other knights burst into laughter.
“Bwahahaha!”
“Those sons of bitches…” Toma angrily walked toward Joshua, who remained still. “Are you ignoring me, you ox-head?”
Joshua still did not respond.
“So you’re not going to answer until the end, huh?” Toma gritted his teeth.
His colleagues sneered loudly enough for Toma to hear as if they had been waiting for this moment.
"It seems like Toma is very angry. He’s taking out his anger on somebody else.”
His other colleague shrugged.
“Leave him alone. I heard his wife is nagging him a lot nowadays. He has to vent somehow.”
It looked like killing the fresh meat standing in front of Toma wasn’t going to be enough to blow off his steam.
‘I’m going to kill him with one strike and then I’m going after them!’ Toma concluded.
Unable to hold back his anger, Toma pulled out his razor-sharp sword.
"I have no time to waste on you,” he shouted. “Die!”
It looked like he had killed a significant number of people because he swung without hesitation. Toma’s sword made its way swiftly toward Joshua’s face with a clear intent to kill him
Joshua responded by… blocking Toma’s sword attack with one finger.
“Un-unbelievable…” Toma staggered backward, bewildered.
Joshua finally broke his silence.
“You’re all going to die here today.”