60. The Arena (4)

A slave of the arena.

That wretched existence could be summed up in a few words: victory and defeat. No, if you dug down to the truth underneath, it came to death and survival.

To go on living today, you had to kill someone else’s yesterday. Only by trampling your opponent’s today and rising up off it could tomorrow’s me finally draw breath. So you stood on sand soaked through with someone’s fresh blood and waited to see who the next sacrifice would be.

That was the life of a slave thrown into the arena.

But I was no slave, because I knew the rules of this arena, and I knew how to stop a tragedy that looped round and round like a Möbius strip.

Something’s off, though.

Cerberus was supposed to reign as the mid-boss of the second gate, so why had a thing like that been reduced to a slave of the arena?

He wasn’t the type to take fright or run just because one of his heads had rolled across the floor spurting blood. He had one obsession, that he had to kill me, and on the strength of it he was flinging attacks everywhere in a mad, scattershot frenzy. The center head kept spewing poison fog to snare me, but the left head wouldn’t stop belching chill breath, and thanks to that the arena had frozen over like an ice rink.

So I slid the sword back into my belt and skated leisurely around the makeshift rink, keeping the tedious stalemate going. My position was overwhelmingly favorable, yet I hadn’t landed so much as a single blow on Cerberus.

As long as it’s uncertain who Elli’s next opponent is, I can’t let this fight end.

That was why I kept dragging out this inefficient war of attrition.

Beginner’s luck never holds. Things had looked good back when Seraphina overwhelmingly smashed the shield-soldier to pieces, but the instant my turn came, as the second batter up, the bracket got tangled in a way that made no sense at all.

And if I cut Cerberus’s throat here and now? Then Elli, next in line, would be stuck facing a beyond-spec monster even worse than him, with no way out, and under this arena’s rule of one-on-one duels, her odds of surviving an enemy like that were close to zero.

And I can’t very well let her just lie down and die because the fight’s unwinnable.

There was only one way: make my fight with Cerberus null and void. That was why I was buying time.

About time for him to show up.

For whatever reason the stands were empty at the moment, but an arena is by its nature an amusement house for the crowd. And an arena crowd is the kind of humans who want lurid ruin, the victor caving in the loser’s skull, tearing out his heart and biting into it.

So what did the battlefield look like right now? Cerberus flailing through empty air, swinging at nothing, and me putting on a very shabby little figure-skating show as I dodged the whiffs. If a crowd had been watching, a shower of jeers and filth would’ve rained down already, and a space like an arena is invariably designed to shun this kind of no-fun situation above all else.

How much time had passed with the standoff dragging on like this?

I wasn’t the only one running low. Cerberus’s mana had bottomed out too, so he could no longer belch out that frostbitten chill or that wicked poison breath. Now he just heaved ragged breaths and lunged at me on guts alone.

But this was the ice rink he’d made for himself.

“Krrr, woof!”

The center head opened its maw wide as if to swallow me whole and charged, but the instant its forepaw touched the ice, a grotesque grinding sound ripped out and the huge bulk lurched.

— THUD!

He couldn’t master his own weight, so all four legs splayed in every direction and he crashed flat to the ground. He thrashed to get back up, but the claws scraping the floor only spun uselessly on the ice. Then, just as he barely caught his balance and made to lunge again, the left head and the right head whipped off in opposite directions and he landed flat on his rear all over again.

It’s not like he’s a puppy stepping onto ice for the first time.

The chill he’d loosed to catch me had come right back around to bite his own foot.

It was right then, when calling this farce a contest had become almost too embarrassing, that the air of the arena stilled in an instant and the robed man appeared in its very center.

Bingo.

Cerberus, who’d been flailing so desperately only moments ago, whimpered, tucked his tail, curled in on himself and started trembling all over.

“I will end the match.”

At those words I slid forward as if skating and came to a stop in front of the man. Then I pointed at the trembling Cerberus and answered.

“What are you talking about? My fight with that mutt isn’t over yet.”
“The victor has been decided.”

The robed man’s eyes fixed coldly on me. He likely meant to declare me the winner and force this fight to a close, but before he could open his mouth, I rattled off my objection like a barrage.

“As you can see, I haven’t really beaten that mutt. It took everything I had just to take down one head. But he’s still raring to go, coming at me like he wants me dead, isn’t he?”

In combat sports, when there’s no KO, the judges’ decision determines the winner and the loser, and what the robed man was about to do was much like a decision win awarded by the referee. But a decision win wasn’t the outcome I wanted.

“Let’s call it a draw.”

At my shameless demand, the man’s brow twitched faintly. A draw? His expression said no such childish outcome existed in this arena of blood. But I wasn’t cowed, and I pressed on with my logic.

“If the arena’s crowd were here, you think they’d be happy hearing I won this match? No, they’re not that merciful. They’d want the loser’s heart torn out and his blood drunk down. But unfortunately, I don’t have the strength left to rip out that thing’s heart. And of course there’s no way I’m letting that mutt get his claws on me, either.”

I forced a sour little smile to my lips and laced it with as much regret as I could.

“If neither of us can kill the other, what’s there to win or lose? Let’s just call it a draw. In exchange, when I come back and challenge again, I’ll tear out that mutt’s heart and drink his blood, no question. In front of a packed house, too. Sounds like a pretty decent deal, don’t you think?”

The man had been silent at my proposal, but finally he opened his mouth.

“…Your every word has been conveyed, through my ears, to the master of the arena.”

He slowly raised his hand. At that, Cerberus, gasping for breath in the corner, gave a high keening whine as though seized by instinctive terror and crawled along the ground.

“However.”

The robed man lightly closed his upraised hand. In that instant the empty air split, and a colossal sword fell like a shooting star and plunged deep into the left side of Cerberus’s neck.

— SHUNK—!

Cerberus’s eyes rolled back and his limbs convulsed, but the robed man went on flatly, indifferent to it.

“The master says to declare your victory.”

He raised his hand once more, and a second sword was summoned out of the empty air and began to plummet toward Cerberus’s one remaining head.

— KANG—!

Without a moment’s hesitation I kicked off the ground, leapt into the air and forced the falling sword’s trajectory aside with my own blade. This was the sword that had sliced through Cerberus’s neck like cutting tofu, and the moment I crossed blades with it, sparks flew and a heavy shock surged up through my wrist.

“Hrraaaagh!”

With that battle cry I finally knocked away the blade as it dropped toward Cerberus’s last head.

“…What is the meaning of this?”

The man’s eyes settled into something chillingly cold. It was a look of incomprehension: why refuse a victory being spoon-fed to you?

I spat out a gob of blood-mixed spit, ptui, and said, “I told you already, didn’t I? We’re calling it a draw.”

“The master has granted you victory, and yet a mere combatant means to defy him?”
“Don’t get the wrong idea. If this were a fight between slaves, the only choices would be live or die. But I’m a challenger of the arena, not a slave.”

To put it bluntly, it was like the son of a high-ranking noble who enjoys watching the arena stepping onto the battlefield himself, declaring he’d do the hunting in person. Would a proud noble’s son accept a victory won not by his own skill but by another’s intervention?

Never.

And the organizers, for their part, can’t carelessly kill or enslave such a precious guest.

“If I don’t win it on my own skill, this match means nothing. Force a fixed win like this on me… and I’ll forfeit my challenge here and now.”

To forfeit the challenge meant being unable to set foot in the Abyss again for a full month.

It was, just as Eve said, a bone-deep risk for me as well. But without staking everything on a last stand like this, there was no way to draw out that master lurking in the mist.

A silence settled. The robed man’s pupils trembled with a strange light, and then he relayed the master’s answer in his place.

“…And what is it you want from having this ruled a draw?”

I pointed at Cerberus and said, “My opponent was never supposed to be Cerberus in the first place, and you know that better than anyone.”

The man didn’t answer. It was an affirming silence.

“I only want one thing. Stop swapping out minions to suit your own tastes. So at the very least, you prepare the original opponent for Elli, the last batter up.”

The man stared into empty air for a while. After a brief stillness, as though he were communing with someone, he slowly nodded.

“…Understood. As you say, the final challenger’s opponent will be prepared in the original order — a ‘mage.’”

It went down more obligingly than I’d expected.

“Good. Then let me make one more proposal. Since the match has been voided, how about I take on both of the remaining minions myself? I’m saying I’ll go out in Elli’s place.”

I didn’t know why, but the master of the arena seemed reluctant to let me forfeit the challenge, so for Elli’s safety I’d thrown out a drastic proposal. But this time the man shook his head firmly.

“That cannot be permitted.”
“If the match is void, doesn’t that mean I get one more chance?”

At my retort, the man’s pupils settled into cold.

“You dressed it up as a draw, but you know better than anyone that the true victor of this match was you.”

The master was quoting my own words right back at me, mocking me with them.

“Your duels end here. And I will permit no further proposals.”

So although I’d succeeded in setting Elli’s bracket back to normal, in the end the last door was one she had to open by her own strength.

“Stingy. And you lot were the ones who broke the rules and made a mess of things first.”

The man ignored my jab, and once more his form began to scatter hazily like smoke.

“What about this mutt? You’re not planning to haul him away and chop off his last head too, are you?”

He’d been a monster bent on taking my life only moments ago, and I’d kept calling him a mutt to his face.

Even so, this is a bit much.

The state he was in now would stir pity even in someone with no interest in dogs at all. Seeing him whimpering on the floor with two heads gone, it was impossible not to feel sorry for him.

“He says do as you like. By your own logic, the moment this became a draw, he ceased to be a slave of the arena.”

Leaving that notice as his last word, the man vanished completely without a trace, and in the center of the now-silent arena only I and the bleeding Cerberus remained.

But he didn’t run. Instead, he lowered his one remaining center head and let out a beastly growl.

“…Krrrrr.”

He seemed to have decided that with the robed man gone, the arena’s match had resumed. He braced his trembling legs against the ground and wrung out the last of his strength, watching for a chance to pounce on me. Blood was gushing in gouts from the brutally torn cross-section of his neck, yet the survival instinct burning in his eyes refused to break.

I sheathed my sword and looked the growling beast straight in the eyes.

“I never once in my life meant to keep a dog or a cat, you know.”