3 (9)

‘Still the same.’

Louis was looking at Kaiser’s Respect stat. It was still at max, the number gone. He would need experiments to be sure, but judged by the stat alone, Kaiser had to be considered the subordinate Louis could trust most.

It was ironic. Kaiser’s background was poor; he was a gambler and a murderer. The idea that he was the one Louis could trust most was almost laughable.

Perhaps it was not only Kaiser. So before seeing Kaiser, Louis checked the other gladiators. None of them had Respect as high as Kaiser’s.

Kalbang sat at +4, the separately trained hundred soldiers at +3; the gladiators were usually around 2–3. Far from max—normally they should be lower than regular soldiers.

‘Can I trust him completely?’

Louis received reports from a soldier about Kaiser’s daily conduct. Kaiser was very violent.

Just yesterday, Kaiser had beaten a fellow gladiator nearly to death for no reason.

Kaiser sometimes failed to control himself. Not that he was the only one—gladiators were clearly facing moments too harsh for ordinary humans. Kaiser simply overreacted a little more than the rest.

So even seeing the stat with his own eyes, he hesitated to believe.

Kaiser stood utterly motionless, like a terminator. Scanning his information, something caught Louis’s eye.

‘As expected… Swordsmanship Talent 7.’

Kaiser’s swordsmanship level had already passed 3. It was truly remarkable. Those who had never held a sword did not even have a “Swordsmanship” entry in their abilities.

It took a long time for that entry to appear. Yet how long had it been? Not only had the entry appeared, his swordsmanship level was already 3.

Kalbang’s swordsmanship level was 5—Kaiser had already come halfway.

‘Monstrous talent.’

It had been only a fortnight. Kaiser’s growth in just two weeks was undeniably abnormal. The situation was extreme, and Kaiser’s earnest desire to learn was producing staggering results.

Why? Because of his Respect for Louis. To Kaiser, Louis was already more important than himself. He lacked learning and knowledge, but believed Louis was surely a savior sent by the gods.

Veneration—that was the feeling Kaiser held for Louis.

News of Louis’s feats kept coming, and even the gladiators heard it: the corrupt officials who siphoned grain; the consul who cornered them. Others might have reconsidered the power-holder named Louis after hearing that, but to Kaiser it was simply the natural order of things.

What Kaiser feared most was… becoming someone useless to Louis. Thus, aside from a few instinctive acts, he devoted all his time to the swordsmanship knowledge Kalbang taught him.

He learned, practiced, memorized, and repeated. When he had no sword, he trained in his head. That was all Kaiser did.

Regrettably, Louis did not know this far.

He merely… sowed small seeds to match this peculiar situation. How much they would grow, even he did not know.

But he sowed them carefully. If they failed to grow properly or were cut down, so be it.

Louis did not place excessive hopes on Kaiser.

This was why he visited Kaiser again—to check his condition and decide whether to invest further.

It might sound ruthless to others, but to Louis it was only natural. This was no time to be sentimental.

To Louis, the present was practically a perpetual state of emergency.

Even tonight, he had to worry about assassination threats.

Max was completely unhinged, and no one could predict sudden incidents….

In any case, Kaiser’s weakness—despite his tremendous talent—was that age still blocked his mana.

A swordsman was not defined by swordsmanship alone. He had to accept mana.

No matter how good the swordwork, a swordsman with even a little mana could easily subdue one who had none.

Even so, Louis’s conclusion was… to reinvest.

‘I should deem him worth the investment. He might become my true weapon.’

Inside the prison, administrators lay strewn about, not knowing how things were turning.

Most had only simple shackles.

What they remembered last was Dekal’s soldiers raiding them.

Perhaps because of that, a few were making a sort of commotion—cursing nonstop, rattling and pounding the bars in a frenzy.

“You bastards! Do you know who we are? Release us at once! Just wait till we’re out—we’ll repay you measure for measure!”

They talked like this, but they roughly knew why they had been seized. It was not as if their illegal acts numbered only one or two. Yet they firmly believed Max would get them out.

They were administrators who had gone through thick and thin with Max.

Some had even spent their childhood with him. Even nobles, when young, sometimes mingled with commoners; it was not so rare.

“I still have to finish a letter to my hometown.”

“You mean that young lady? Will you marry her when you get back?”

“Man, I want a drink.”

“Anyone want to bet on when we get out?”

A jumble of ordinary desires spilled from their mouths. None of them grasped that they were going to die.

They looked perfectly ordinary. But beneath that was horror. Even counting only those they had starved to death in Proia directly or indirectly, the numbers were enough to fill four or five prisons like this—and more.

How many had they killed?

Of course, they had not devised such atrocities; they were merely hands and feet. Had they won, their misdeeds would have been buried and prettily excused… but the problem was, they had lost.

A soldier unlocked the iron door and entered. One administrator pressed up to the bars and barked:

“Let us out right now!!”

“When are we getting food?”

“I’ll remember your face.”

A stream of abuse rained on the soldiers, and the soldier silently began opening the barred door.

The administrators chatted, thinking they were finally being let out, but the first thing the soldier did upon opening the cell was to smash his fist into the face of the one who had threatened him.

Thud!

Teeth broke at once, and the man crumpled pathetically to the floor. A few administrators realized something was wrong, but most cursed first.

The man, struck square in the face, writhed on the ground without coming to, and when someone hauled him up and snapped at the soldier, asking what he was doing, the soldier dusted off his hand and said something outrageous:

“Death-row convicts. All of you, on your feet. You are now being transferred to the Colosseum.”

“…Death-row convicts?”

The moment someone echoed his words, the administrators’ first reaction was denial.

The prison grew loud at a level completely different from earlier, and as they tried to invoke Max’s name and protest, more soldiers filed in.

They carried gags and face coverings. At this point, the administrators realized it was no ordinary affair, and their second reaction was rampage.

Their hands were free, so they hurled themselves at the soldiers with all their strength—but shackled, their barehanded attacks were clearly limited.

They were bound one by one and dragged outside.

A third reaction… was impossible. On the way to transfer, not one of them was in their right mind.

The transfer was public. Soldiers read out the charges as they marched, and the route the convicts took was packed with citizens.

The citizens were enraged. Some threw stones. The administrators were struck repeatedly in an instant. The jeers of the crowd sounded like songs rising from hell.