Chapter 2
“Waaah!”
An underground arena packed with countless spectators.
The roaring cheers from the crowd make the arena’s sandy floor tremble ever so slightly.
Thanks to their heated cheers and fervor, it’s stuffy rather than cool, even underground.
At the center of that madness-filled stage are me and five goblins.
“Kill him, kill him!”
“Don’t kill him, just hurry up and die, you idiot! I staked my entire fortune on you dying!”
The spectators who’ve wagered on my life and death spit as they hurl abuse.
These crazy betting bastards.
I force their jeers out of my ears and keep my eyes on the goblins in front of me.
Goblins in fiction are usually precious cash cows that keep rookie adventurers in business.
Unless it’s that one slayer setting where people rush at goblins like lunatics, of course.
At least, that’s how I knew it.
But I was wrong.
“Ugh! Ack…!”
The goblins surround a man and beat the hell out of him with clubs.
He’s the gladiator slave who came in with me. He boasted he could handle a sword and rushed in bravely, only to learn the hard way that there’s no answer to a mob beating.
I met the blood-soaked man’s gaze.
His eyes were filled with fear and despair. He desperately reached out a hand toward me.
“P-please, save me…….”
-Crack!
A goblin’s crude club slammed into the top of the man’s head. With a sound like a watermelon bursting, his skull was crushed.
That was it; the man no longer moved. Around him, the sand turned crimson with blood.
“Waaah!”
“You idiot! That’s why you died fighting like that!”
The crowd erupts in excitement once again at the grisly spectacle.
-Thwack! Thud-thud!
The goblins keep swinging their clubs even though he’s already dead.
Only after the man had been reduced to a lump of meat and stopped twitching altogether did their hands finally stop.
Then they slowly turn their gazes toward me.
“Kieek. Kihik.”
They bare their yellow teeth at me and sneer.
They think I won’t be any trouble since they handled the last guy so easily.
Compared to that man, I’m much smaller in build, and I’m even holding a pickaxe instead of a sword. To them, I’m nothing but a punching bag.
How dare goblins of all things look at me like a punching bag.
You’ve got great judgment.
Did they notice how tense I am? My palms are already soaked with sweat.
If I slip while swinging, it’ll be a disaster. I tightened my grip on the pickaxe handle.
Don’t panic. Absolutely, do not panic.
One wrong move and I’ll be ground into mince. I’ll end up as pig feed, right alongside that guy.
I take a deep breath.
I point the pickaxe at them.
-Nod.
I jerk my chin at them, as if daring them to come at me.
“Kieeek!”
One goblin falls for the simple provocation and leaps out with a hideous shriek.
The distance slowly closes.
The moment he rushed at me and raised his club, I brought the pickaxe down.
The pickaxe traced a semicircle above my head, as if mining ore.
-Bam!
A dull yet crisp cracking sound. The pickaxe blade pierced the goblin’s thin skull as easily as paper.
The blade, buried deep, doesn’t come out easily. Normally I’d panic, but this is familiar work to me.
A pickaxe isn’t a stabbing weapon; it’s a tool for driving in and tearing out.
I twist my wrist.
Like prying open the cracks in solid rock.
-Crack! Split!
The goblin collapsed as its skull split open. I pulled the pickaxe back, avoiding the spray of blood.
One.
For a moment they were startled by their comrade’s instant death, but then the remaining goblins surged forward in anger.
Do not panic.
I move while repeating those words like a mantra.
I harshly scraped up the floor with the pickaxe. A handful of sand struck the face of the goblin in front.
“Kieeek!”
The goblin, already ugly to begin with, screwed up its face and rubbed at its eyes.
Not missing the opening, I raised the pickaxe once more.
A single pinpoint strike aimed at its collarbone.
-Crack!
“Kieeek!”
Sure enough, the blade dug into the goblin’s collarbone. The sensation of crushed bone traveled to my fingertips.
Keeping it lodged there, I swung the pickaxe sideways.
The goblin stuck on the blade was flung off, crashing into the others.
Taking advantage of their momentary confusion, I mercilessly brought the pickaxe down on them.
-Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!
After I kept smashing down with the pickaxe over and over, all that was left on the floor was chunks of meat that used to be goblins.
Three.
And that leaves two.
At this point, the outcome was already decided.
See for yourself.
The smirks have vanished from the faces of the last two, who were so arrogant because of their numerical advantage.
In fact, they backed away in fear as they looked at the pickaxe in my hand.
They know their own heads will end up like that next.
But there’s nothing they can do.
Because this is a colosseum where there are only two ways out: kill or be killed.
-Thwack! Thwack!
After that, I disposed of the remaining goblins without much effort.
Before long, I was the only one standing on the stage. I stared straight toward the commentator’s booth.
With his face twisted in a scowl, he spoke into a magic tool with voice amplification.
“……The winner of this life-and-death battle is the slave gladiator Leon. He still stubbornly clings to life.”
At the same time, I raised my pickaxe high into the air.
“Boooo!”
“Get lost, you unlucky bastard!”
Instead of cheers, trash and jeers rained down on me.
======
Failed to carry out the master’s order 『Fight desperately and die miserably』.
No reward will be given.
======
After the match, I returned to the gladiators’ waiting room.
As soon as I went in, I grabbed the wooden bucket in the corner and upended it over my head.
-Splash!
Sweat and dirt washed away with the cold water, along with the dark green blood of the goblins.
Monster blood stings quite a bit when it touches your skin. If you don’t wash it off right away, you can kiss that night’s sleep goodbye.
I really suffered at first because I didn’t know that.
Still, after crawling around in this hellhole for two months, I’d developed my own survival know-how.
“Ha, you cockroach bastard. You actually came back alive after all that.”
“Tell me about it. What about the people who bet their entire fortunes on you dying? Are they supposed to starve to death?”
Two burly men approached, snickering.
They were Alex and Hugh.
Unlike a disposable gladiator slave like me, they were full-fledged gladiators who were properly equipped and treated well.
They disliked me.
The reason was obvious.
“It pisses them off that some slave is brandishing a pickaxe and making a scene.”
Compared to fighting monsters with your life on the line, what’s a little workplace bullying even worth?
I shook out my wet hair and ignored them for the most part.
Then heavy footsteps echoed through the underground corridor. Bardik, the owner of the arena and my master, came striding over.
He’s a man whose charm point is the whole mass of flab that sloshes like waves every time he walks.
“Leon! You won again!”
That wasn’t praise like, “Wow! Our cute little Leon won again!”
“I told you over and over to at least go easy and die!”
It meant, “This disgusting bastard won again after all!”
Bardik is one of the many people who want me turned into minced meat, and one of the more desperate ones at that.
For the arena to draw crowds, it needs exciting matches. That’s what gets the spectators fired up.
In that regard, a helpless boy getting torn to pieces is exciting in plenty of ways. That’s why he wants me dead.
Is the sight of a pickaxe killing a monster really not that much of a spectacle?
I think it looks fucking cool.
The crowd’s tastes are impossible to understand.
Anyway, I was supposed to die, but I came back after smashing goblin heads, so the script must be all messed up and he’s furious.
“Just when are you going to die!”
“I don’t really feel like dying. I’ll put on an entertaining match, so why don’t you support me instead? Maybe give me some equipment too.”
“Invest in a mere slave? Do you think money grows on trees? Even the pieces of bread going down your throat are all my money!”
“If it’s that precious to you, why not just free me?”
“Hmph! Why would I free you, as if I were insane? Keeping you alive costs feed; killing you wastes everything I’ve fed you so far…. Tch! Next time I’ll prepare someone stronger, so you’d better brace yourself!”
Bardik waddled off and disappeared.
Feeding me is a waste of money, freeing me is a waste of money, and killing me is a waste of money.
What the hell am I supposed to do then?
He probably wants me to die fighting monsters, but sorry to say, I have absolutely no intention of dying.
I’ll just live here forever out of spite.
***
Dinner time.
I went to the dining hall to get my meal ration.
Maybe because I’d been fighting with my life on the line, I was hungrier than when I was mining. My stomach felt like it was stuck to my back.
Holding my bowl, I stood at the very back of the ration line and blankly stared at the back of the person in front of me.
After waiting a little, my turn came. The rations were plopped onto my bowl.
A ladle of watery barley porridge, and two chunks of black bread hard as stone.
It’s less porridge and more like muddy water with a few beans in it.
“That’s all?”
“If you don’t want it, starve. Though I doubt you’ll have the strength to fight tomorrow.”
“Could you give me a little more solid stuff? I’m lacking protein.”
“There’s no meat for a brat like you. If you really want some, take this instead.”
Snickering, the rations clerk tossed a single bone into my bowl.
It was a white bone with no meat left on it, as if the broth had already been boiled out of it several times.
Even a passing mutt would stand up on its hind legs and bark, “You eat it yourself, you damn fool!”
“Hey, can’t you see there’s a line behind you? If you got it, move along.”
Under the prickly glares coming from behind me, I eventually shut my mouth and went back to a seat in the corner.
I looked at the barley porridge with a deadpan expression.
It’s my growth period, when I should be eating a lot and growing, but this diet is so poor.
I’m seriously worried I’ll end up a shortie when I grow up. After all, height is life for a man.
No, this isn’t the time to worry about that.
I should be worrying about whether my head will still be attached tomorrow.
I survived today somehow, but tomorrow’s opponent will definitely be stronger.
And the one after that.
And the one after that.
And the one after that.
It would keep going until the moment I died.
That was the common refrain of the slave gladiators dragged into this arena.
Even I, with my status window, wasn’t exactly in a favorable situation.
======
Name : Leon
Status : Gladiator Slave
Master : Bardik
•Owned Skill
【Spartacus】
The colosseum is a gladiator’s battlefield. Your physical abilities are greatly enhanced when fighting in the arena.
•Owned Proficiencies
【Basic Endurance Lv.5】
【Indomitable Lv.1】
======
The changes in the status window were obvious at a glance.
[Mining] and [Pinpoint Strike] were gone. Fortunately, they hadn’t been reset.
They’d simply been pushed out of sight as unnecessary skills when I changed jobs from miner to gladiator.
Likewise, [Basic Endurance] had also disappeared, but it showed up again once I moved around a bit.
Miners and gladiators both need stamina all the same.
If it had been reset, I’d have thrown myself on the ground and told them to balance the game properly.
An otherworldly slave life starting from zero. Just imagining it is horrifying.
But that’s all. I’m not making any meaningful growth like I did as a miner. And it’s already been two months since I became a gladiator slave.
It’s all because of that master bastard.
Because every order Bardik gives me is just, “Go die.”
Since I can’t carry out the orders, I can’t get any rewards either.
If only I’d gotten a better master.
The masters I’ve seen elsewhere even prepared lavish feasts for slaves, let them sleep somewhere warm, read them fairy tales, and even risk their lives to free them.
But our so-called master bastard only wants me dead.
Life.
I chewed on the hard bread and swallowed my bitterness.
Isn’t there some lovely master out there who’ll feed me, house me, and clothe me?
If someone would just get me out of here, I’m confident I could swear loyalty like a cat.
One day, while I was surviving day by day with that impossible lifelong wish.
“Welcome, Lady Edelheid, daughter of the Duke. We sincerely welcome your visit to our arena.”
“Hmm.”
The savior I had longed for had appeared.
Except she was the infamous villainess known for being a psychopath.
Why are you here?