Chapter 409: The Boss

The next challenge did not appear. Kael waited for several moments, but the only thing hovering in front of him was a system window explaining the delay.

[WAITING FOR REMAINING GLADIATORS]

He stared at the message, then shrugged and walked toward the edge of his section of the arena. His resources had already been restored after killing Skull Crusher. Internal energy was full again, his stamina felt untouched, and even the faint heat lingering in his gauntlets from the Fire Rune had disappeared. With nothing else to do, he sat against the wall and waited.

Fighting continued beyond the enormous stone partitions. He could not see any of it, but steel rang against steel, and shouted warnings occasionally reached him through the crowd. A magical explosion shook dust loose from the upper edge of one wall. The spectators roared as another impact followed, then someone began screaming.

Kael rested his arms over his knees and listened to the commotion.

"So much for the plan."

Darin had been confident, and Roth had seemed equally certain about their chances. They had clan reports, prepared formations, emergency consumables, information about the Floor, and four people who already knew how to work together. Kael had been the disposable outsider, excluded from their preparations despite being invited to follow their orders. Apparently, the Gladiatorium had other ideas.

Another scream came from somewhere to his right before ending abruptly. The crowd reacted, but the sounds of combat stopped. Thousands of spectators still talked, shouted, laughed, and argued above him, making the sudden absence of fighting strangely noticeable. Kael looked up as the notification changed.

[SECOND ROUND CONCLUDED]

[GROUP STATUS]

Original Participants: 5

Surviving Participants: 1

Kael’s expression shifted as he read the numbers. He glanced toward the partition separating him from where Darin had fought, though the stone still concealed everything beyond it.

"So they both died."

[You are the sole surviving member of your original group.]

[All remaining Gladiatorium Trials will be undertaken individually.]

He had not known either man well enough to mourn them, and he certainly had not trusted them. Still, five people had entered the arena together. Three had survived the ogre, and now only one remained. The Gladiatorium did not seem particularly interested in maintaining parties for very long.

A deep grinding sound rolled through the arena as the walls began retracting. Kael stood while the stone descended into the ground section by section, gradually revealing the rest of the battlefield. He saw Darin first, or at least enough of him to confirm the notification. A section of blood-soaked armor lay near one of the former dividing walls, while something several meters farther away discouraged closer inspection.

Roth’s section looked worse. His body had been thrown against the outer wall hard enough to stain the stone behind him dark red. Whatever opponents they had faced were already gone, leaving no bodies, weapons, or anything else Kael could identify. The arena had apparently removed the victors, assuming they had been living opponents at all.

He looked across the exposed battlefield and found nobody else standing. Before he could examine anything further, the commentator’s magically amplified voice boomed overhead.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! ONE REMAINS!"

The spectators erupted, their cheering growing deafening as people rose from their seats. Kael sighed and looked toward the stands. Apparently, surviving the round meant enduring another introduction.

"HE SURVIVED THE TWIN-HEADED DEVOURER! HE CRUSHED THE SKULL CRUSHER WITH NEITHER FEAR NOR HESITATION!"

Kael glanced toward the gladiator’s corpse. The broken pieces of his morningstar still lay scattered nearby, though the announcer’s enthusiasm made the fight sound considerably more impressive than Kael remembered.

"That one lasted about five seconds."

Nobody heard him over the cheering. The commentator waited just long enough to let the audience respond before continuing, his voice growing louder with every declaration.

"HE HAS SHOWN CUNNING! STRENGTH! FEROCITY! AN UNBREAKABLE WILL!"

Kael slowly looked upward and narrowed his eyes. The man was laying it on far too thick for someone merely announcing the result of a match.

"This is starting to feel suspicious."

He had spent enough time around people trying to manipulate crowds to recognize what excessive praise usually meant. The audience needed expectations, and expectations created excitement. Once everyone thought Kael was some unstoppable monster, the arena could throw something ridiculous at him and call it entertainment.

The announcer practically confirmed his suspicions a moment later.

"BUT A GLADIATOR IS NOT ALWAYS THE CHALLENGER!"

"Oh?"

"Sometimes, a gladiator becomes the challenge!"

The crowd erupted again while Kael looked toward the arena floor. Nothing had emerged from the gates yet, but a system notification appeared before him.

[THIRD ROUND]

[TRIAL OF THE CHAMPION]

You have demonstrated superiority over your previous opponents.

For this Round, you will no longer assume the role of challenger.

You will assume the role of the Arena Boss.

Kael stared at the final sentence and read it again. He had expected a stronger opponent, perhaps even several of them, but the wording suggested the Tower had found a more irritating way to arrange it.

"The what?"

[ARENA BOSS]

A group of aspiring gladiators will attempt to defeat you.

Survive their assault and subdue all challengers.

Victory may be achieved through lethal or non-lethal means.

[NUMBER OF CHALLENGERS: 12]

"Twelve."

"TWELVE YOUNG GLADIATORS WILL ENTER!"

The announcer’s confirmation sent another wave of excitement through the stands. Kael rubbed his forehead as he finally understood what the Floor was doing. First, it placed Climbers together and forced them through a survival match that thinned their numbers. Then it separated whoever remained and made them fight individual opponents. Now that Kael had survived both, it was reversing the arrangement entirely. He was the monster, and everyone else was here to kill him.

"This Floor is bullshit."

Four gates opened at different points around the arena, allowing young men to enter from several directions. Kael counted twelve, though none looked particularly experienced. The oldest might have been twenty-two, while most appeared somewhere between their late teens and very early twenties.

Several wore cheap leather armor. A few had little protection beyond helmets and bracers, and their weapons were just as inconsistent. Kael spotted short swords, spears, a hammer, two cutlasses, a bow, and a pair of axes. Whatever organization had selected these people had apparently decided enthusiasm mattered more than standardized equipment.

Their faces bothered him more than their equipment. None looked particularly eager or bloodthirsty. One young man kept adjusting his grip on a spear because his hands would not stop shaking, while another glanced toward the gate behind him as though wondering whether he could still run back through it. They were scared, and the crowd did not care.

The spectators had already begun chanting. Kael understood the setup immediately. Either twelve young gladiators would surround the larger veteran and eventually bring him down through numbers, or he would slaughter them one after another. Both outcomes produced the blood the audience wanted.

He checked the system condition again. It required him to subdue all challengers and explicitly allowed non-lethal methods. After discovering on the previous Floor that his actions could carry consequences forward, Kael had become more interested in whether people actually needed to die before deciding to kill them. More importantly, none of these twelve had done anything to him yet.

The oldest-looking gladiator stepped forward with a small cutlass in his hand. A battered leather helmet covered most of his hair, and he tried to look confident as he pointed his weapon toward Kael. Whatever he shouted was incomprehensible, but the others understood well enough to respond.

Three rushed forward while eight remained with their apparent leader. Kael counted them again as the attackers approached. Three coming toward him and nine staying back, apparently willing to let their companions discover how difficult this would be.

The first young man charged with his sword raised overhead. He was far too slow, and Kael did not bother activating a Rune. As the blade descended, he reached up and caught the steel in his gauntleted hand.

The young gladiator froze, then tried pulling his weapon free. Nothing happened. He pulled harder, putting enough effort into it that Kael only needed to twist his wrist to take the sword from him. Kael tossed it aside, and the young man made the mistake of following it with his eyes.

The kick caught him in the stomach before he looked back. Kael kept the force restrained, though that still lifted the attacker from the ground and sent him rolling across the red dirt. He stopped several meters away, curled around his stomach and groaning.

The second attacker reached Kael immediately afterward, swinging a hammer with a short handle and a heavy head. It was a better choice against armor, but the horizontal swing left plenty of room for Kael to step inside its arc. One hand caught the young man’s wrist while the other closed around his forearm.

Kael twisted until the hammer dropped from his grip. The gladiator yelped, then lost his footing as Kael swept a leg beneath his ankles. He landed flat on his back and received a controlled kick to the side before he could recover. The impact sent him tumbling across the dirt until he collided with his first companion, leaving both men groaning together.

The third attacker stopped with his spear held in front of him. His gaze moved between Kael and his two friends, and for a moment, it looked as though he might reconsider. Kael gestured toward him with one hand.

"Don’t."

The young man either failed to understand or decided pride mattered more than common sense. He shouted and thrust the spear toward Kael, who caught its head between his gauntleted fingers. The gladiator’s eyes widened as Kael turned his wrist and snapped the spearhead away from the shaft.

Both looked down at the broken weapon. Kael dropped the blade, grabbed the remaining shaft, and pulled the young man forward before taking it from his hands. There was a brief pause while the gladiator stared at him. Then Kael struck him across his ass with the shaft.

The young man jumped and tried to turn away. Kael hit him again, drawing a yelp that carried surprisingly well across the arena.

"What are you doing? Why are you trying to get yourself killed?"

The gladiator backed away, but Kael followed and delivered another pair of strikes. Whatever response the young man attempted disappeared beneath his startled cries. He finally turned around, apparently deciding that facing Kael offered no useful advantage.

"Go. Get out of here."

Kael struck him again as he began running, then followed closely enough to land another blow. The young man abandoned any attempt to retreat with dignity and started sprinting toward his companions.

"Fuck off, kid."

One final strike landed across his ass before he escaped, fleeing with both hands protecting himself. Kael stopped and rested the broken spear shaft over one shoulder. The arena had gone strangely quiet, though laughter soon began spreading through sections of the stands.

The young gladiator reached his group with tears forming at the corners of his eyes. Kael pointed the shaft toward them, allowing everyone a moment to appreciate that all three attackers remained alive.

"See? That could have gone significantly worse."

None of them understood him, but the result should have been clear enough. Their companions were bruised and humiliated, and one would probably have difficulty sitting tomorrow. Considering what they had attempted, Kael thought they had received a remarkably generous outcome.

The remaining nine stared at him with expressions quite different from those they had worn upon entering. Before, they had been afraid because he was large, because the crowd had presented him as a monster, and because they had been told to fight someone who had survived everything the Gladiatorium had thrown at him. Now they had seen what he could actually do.

He had caught a sword in one hand, disarmed another fighter without effort, snapped a spearhead, and somehow turned attempted murder into a public spanking. They did not seem to know what to do with that, and much of the audience appeared equally uncertain. Kael dropped the spear shaft onto the dirt.

"Anyone else?"

The oldest gladiator still held his cutlass up, though the gesture no longer looked convincing. Behind him, the archer had not even drawn an arrow. One of the axe users quietly lowered his weapons, demonstrating enough sense that Kael almost felt like congratulating him.

Kael crossed his arms and waited. The system had said to subdue them, but it had never specified how. If these twelve had expected an enormous bloodthirsty monster at the center of the arena, they had instead found a martial artist strong enough to kill them and perfectly willing to humiliate them until they stopped trying to fight him.

He looked across the remaining nine and smiled beneath his helmet. Then he uncrossed his arms and opened them in invitation.

"Come on. I can do this all day."

None of them moved. Kael glanced toward the spectators and found that the entire arena seemed to be waiting, whether for another attack or another public embarrassment. He returned his attention to the young gladiators.

"So which one of you is up for a spanking?"