Slaves of the Colosseum (1)
"Dried figs! Olives over here!"
"Fresh fish, brought in this morning!"
So there are actually people walking around now.
Following the old man into the city proper, the scenery around us shifted completely.
The air itself, the stone-paved roads.
Street stalls bustled with merchants and customers haggling over goods.
This really is ancient Rome, isn't it.
It wasn't just a vague guess — there was more than enough evidence.
The ancient Roman garments, bodies wrapped in flowing cloth.
And there, visible in the distance, an aqueduct.
The massive waterway system overlapped perfectly with the image of ancient Rome.
Tall columns, arched architecture too….
"This way."
The old man threaded his way between the stalls and turned into a sparsely populated side alley.
The deeper we walked, the colder the stares around us became.
No — cold wasn't quite the word. It was more that their rough gazes seemed less curious or wary than openly appraising.
"First time in my life anyone's thrown me such a steamy look."
Go Gyumin, clearly uncomfortable too, whispered just loud enough for me alone to hear.
"Where do you think we're going?"
"Hard to say. Either way, the atmosphere isn't exactly pleasant."
A man shouldered past Go Gyumin, pushed open a building's door, and went inside.
Watching people keep filing through doors one after another, Go Gyumin's hand drifted toward a door handle.
"WHAT kind of shop has this many doors, huh?"
"Well… ah, Mr. Go—"
Without even knowing what the building was, Go Gyumin yanked the handle wide open.
Worried some incident was about to break out, I moved to stop him, but he'd already pulled the door half open.
"Oh, good grief."
Having seen what was inside, Go Gyumin shuddered and slammed the door shut again.
But I had seen it too — the interior scene laid out in perfect, unflinching detail.
Men sitting hip to hip in a public latrine.
"Do we really have to reenact even THIS?"
"Right there with you. Ugh—"
Where else would you ever get the chance to see an ancient Roman public toilet?
Not that it was a chance anyone had asked for.
No partitions, just a row of bench seats pierced with holes.
To the people of this era it was probably a perfectly ordinary bathroom, but for us the sight, and the stench along with it, was genuinely agonizing.
"Need the toilet?"
"No! No, we're fine. We don't need it."
"Then why are you both green? That delicate a stomach?"
As Go Gyumin and I hurried past with our noses pinched and eyes squeezed shut, the old man clicked his tongue at us.
Fair enough, I suppose — from the perspective of someone who belonged to this era, we probably looked absurd.
Even if the tower recreated the surroundings this vividly to drop us hints…. did it really have to use a toilet for the shock value.
There truly seemed to be no limit to the ways this tower could torment its visitors.
"Here we are. We just need to get through this alley."
The old man glanced back at us with a smile that was unnatural to the point of being eerie.
But since most of the people around us were blinking at us with equally suspicious eyes, I couldn't quite bring myself to suspect the old man in particular.
Two East Asians in modern clothes standing in ancient Rome — of course people are going to stare.
The moment we passed through the narrow alley, the atmosphere turned gloomy in an instant.
Perhaps because the structures above blotted out the sky, letting almost no light through.
A damp, musty smell — different in kind from the latrine stench — pricked at my nose.
Thud. Thud.
Then, from far down the darkness, footsteps came toward us.
The old man, apparently knowing exactly who it was, stretched both arms out toward the source of the sound in a welcoming gesture.
"You're alive and well, old friend?"
"I've been waiting ages!"
A middle-aged man, nearly as plump as the old man himself, emerged from the darkness.
Breathing hard through his nose, he looked back and forth between me and Go Gyumin.
"Sorry, sorry. I couldn't find anything worth picking up. But I did bring you two foreigners."
The old man introduced us with an embarrassed grin.
Worth picking up…?
The moment those words registered in my ears, I felt certain something had gone off script.
"What am I supposed to do with these scrawny things?"
"What they lack in muscle, they make up for in sheer tenacity!!"
Tenacity, he says.
I reflexively turned my head and locked eyes with Go Gyumin.
The man who had spent the entire journey agonizing over his lack of passion was standing right beside me — and at this exact moment, that particular word.
It seemed the old man was running a con, hyping us up to sell us for the best price he could manage.
"Tenacity doesn't feed anyone. They're both nothing but skin and bone."
"These Eastern minority folk never put on muscle to begin with. In exchange, they're remarkably agile, and their grip strength is nothing to sneeze at!"
Casually racist while selling us off. Wonderful.
The absurd sales pitch made disgust rise all the way up my throat.
But I kept my feelings off my face and quietly eavesdropped on their conversation.
"True enough. For Eastern youths to make it this far couldn't have been easy."
"Yes, yes. That's exactly it."
It was clear the two were close.
And it was now equally clear that they intended to sell us off like merchandise being appraised.
If someone was being traded for money in ancient Rome, then that meant—
"You 'picked us up'? Jisan, this conversation isn't sitting right, is it?"
"Not at all. It could all be part of the tower's script, but somehow I think we're…."
Either attendants — or slaves.
"I'll give you 1,400 sestertius for the pair."
The potbellied middle-aged man eyed us with a dissatisfied scowl.
Then, clicking his tongue, he handed coins over to the old man.
Judging by the old man's expression, we'd been sold for pocket change.
"How's this?"
"Hmph. A little short, but fine, fine."
The old man didn't seem inclined to haggle our value up any further, and cleanly concluded the transaction.
"Get over here, you slaves!!"
As suspected… just as I'd feared, Go Gyumin and I had become slaves.
"Slaves?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!"
Go Gyumin, who had been biting his tongue and spectating until now, finally exploded.
No matter how staged this whole process was, being sweet-talked into slavery by lies was not something anyone could take with a smile.
"You were directionless foreigners anyway. Tell me, do you have anything worth selling from the East?"
The old man dropped his forced smile at once and glared at us.
He'd never exactly looked kind before, but now he seemed a whole degree more sinister.
Neither Go Gyumin nor I could offer a single word of protest.
The only materials in our Leaflets were the clothes we'd worn back in the Three Kingdoms era.
Another Three Kingdoms quest could happen later. So I can't trade away clothes for our bodies.
It looked like we simply had to go with the flow and accept becoming slaves.
Judging by everything so far, this was probably just the setup before the actual quest began anyway.
"This is too far! Slaves?! You went on and on about passion and whatnot, you rotten old con man!"
"What? Con man? The fact that anyone would buy two dried-up sticks like you at all is a miracle!"
Go Gyumin and the old man went at each other tooth and nail.
All I could do was press a hand to my forehead and sigh.
That old man with his gut poking straight out. Suspicious from the very first look.
Sorry to say it, but there was not an ounce of trustworthiness in his appearance.
He looked exactly like a textbook villain out of a con story.
Neither Go Gyumin nor I had trusted him much, and yet here we were, having walked this whole road with him.
"Jisan. This slave route — it's part of the quest, right?"
"It does seem like it. Given the Roman era and all that talk of muscled gladiators, I'd say…."
"I get it. I get it, but don't say it — I want one last escape from reality."
Go Gyumin thrust both hands out at me and waved them in fierce refusal.
As if he couldn't bear to accept the truth, he was dodging the future that was about to arrive.
The uneasy topic Go Gyumin and I were both circling seemed all too likely to be the right answer.
"Hey. Old man."
"Such manners from a slave, honestly."
Even at Go Gyumin's utterly disrespectful behavior, the old man merely clicked his tongue and didn't fly into a rage.
If the tower had reflected the life of a Roman slave realistically, Go Gyumin would already be six feet under.
Go Gyumin pinched the corner of his own mouth with his index finger, stretching it wide to bare his teeth.
Then he bowed his head and proudly showed off his pearly whites to the old man.
"No diseases, and a full set of healthy teeth. If you're going to sell random travelers off as slaves, shouldn't you at least compensate us properly?"
"Compensate you, my ass! Would you rather be an attendant, then?"
"You cursed old fossil! Attendant or slave, if you're selling us, we're owed fair payment!!"
"Looking at your bodies, attendant might suit you better, true."
The old man snickered, mocking Go Gyumin and me.
We were both fairly average in build, admittedly… but compared to the slaves of ancient Rome, the difference would naturally be stark.
"Don't. Mr. Go, he's an NPC."
"So he's an NPC and that means I can't hit him a little?"
As I grabbed Go Gyumin and calmed him down, another grumbling retort popped out of his mouth.
Even in the middle of all this, carrying on exactly as usual — that was Go Gyumin for you.
And oddly enough, that familiarity was precisely what kept me steady.
"So we're supposed to give up on becoming attendants polishing nobles' boots, and be slaves instead? And not just that—"
Just as Go Gyumin was about to continue.
Two men who looked to be shadow merchants like the old man came walking toward us.
They swept their eyes over Go Gyumin and me, then spoke in voices loud enough for everyone to hear.
"Look at those two. Soon to be lion feed for the Colosseum."
"Ha. You spend long enough climbing this museum and all you develop is sharp eyes and a sharper gut."
Go Gyumin pressed a hand to his forehead and let out a sigh, mirroring me exactly.
Slaves of ancient Rome. And gladiators, at that — it didn't take long to connect the dots.
Just as we'd suspected, we were going to become gladiators of the Colosseum.
"Attendant, then?"
The middle-aged man who'd bought us asked the question one more time, pointlessly.
It seemed we were being offered the choice between slave and attendant.
The attendant route is far too safe.
The judgment came swiftly in my head.
This tower had always rewarded those who chose danger.
A tower that had done nothing but herd us down treacherous paths with no safe options was suddenly handing us a choice?
Suspicious. Of course, choosing attendant doesn't necessarily mean instant annihilation.
Still, the previous floor's quest had been set in the Eastern, battle-scarred world of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms — so logically, a Western combat quest this time felt right.
And I suspected the rewards would be better than the attendant route, too.
"Jisan. Don't just plan to headbutt everything head-on this time either — think it through a little more."
"What?"
"Colosseum combat is always one-on-one duels. Individual matches."
"No, it isn't. Not always individual matches."
"Huh?"
"There were group fights too, sometimes."
"Individual or group, either way we're the ones who have to fight other slaves, mercenaries, and wild beasts!"
The amphitheaters of ancient Rome — the Colosseum.
A circular arena where gladiators killed one another to seize victory.
Perspectives and ethics differed by era, sure. But those Roman nobles? Their culture was pure trash.
Now reduced to noble property, a short curse slipped out at the thought of what was to come.
"They're in good shape, eh? Could throw them into the arena tomorrow."
"They've already had a fair bit of training, I told you."
Apparently this really was a back-alley slave market — another merchant's voice drifted over.
The slave he had in tow was a hulking mass of muscle, built like a bull.
That man's body IS his weapon.
Less a human being than a tool forged for combat.
No one was born a gladiator — could training really accomplish that much?
"Jisan. This is not okay."
"…."
Gazing at the hulking slave, Go Gyumin shook his head firmly, his face drained white.
His eyes, meeting mine, were uncharacteristically serious.
"What if we only get matched against slaves like him? If we're lucky, maybe—"
"A bear and a tiger, you mean? No — throw in a rhinoceros too, perfect for the rookie gladiators. Heheheh!!"
The merchants' idle chatter trampled my last thread of hope to pieces.
At the prospect of an all-you-can-see menagerie of savage beasts, Go Gyumin's eyes turned even more murderous.
"Jisan. Say one more optimistic word here and I will not be responsible for what happens."