Jungle, Chimera, Floor (1)
"You bastards... were in on it too. Of course you were. That's exactly the kind of shit people who know better pull. The gambling hall staff tossing their money right back into the foundry like it was molten slag..."
The frog hopping around in front of him croaked in agreement. Nathan let out a ruined laugh. Even you playing along is some kind of comfort, I guess.
It was strange. A frog leaping through the air three kilometers up, mudflats and swamps everywhere. Had he somehow returned to the surface? Hey, Mr. Arena Master. You dropped me way too far down on the map. I live much farther north, you know.
The absurd joke was his attempt to steady himself, but in the end Nathan could only exhale a sigh thick with resentment.
"Have they lost their minds? Building a goddamn tropical rainforest in the sky?"
And not just any jungle—plausible trees had been planted everywhere. All of them with their branches brutally hacked away, of course. The audience was probably responsible for that. If the jungle foliage blocked their view, they wouldn't be able to enjoy the deaths happening underneath.
Through the chaotic mess of severed branches, he could see the stands packed with pointy-eared spectators. Above the arena stretched an open night sky. The stars and moon felt unnervingly close. When he'd fought the orcs there had been a roof, so this was clearly a different space.
A flying building in the sky with at least two circular arenas. And they even have lodging for all these pointy-ears? Nathan was impressed. Impressed by the sheer amount of resources they could afford to waste.
"If you've got this much money and technology, donate some to the Federation military. Maybe they could upgrade the combat rations to something that doesn't taste like shit."
BOOM.
"I make one joke and they jump straight to the main event. Bunch of motherless bastards."
It was coming from behind him. The weight of those footsteps could only belong to a chimera. Nathan tensed his whole body. Then, using limbs as stiff as wooden logs, he crawled with desperate effort to turn himself one hundred and eighty degrees.
The creature would come to rip him apart and devour him while he lay helpless. Just like yesterday.
But Nathan had one last hidden card.
"Come on then. You monster fuck. I'm not going to roll over like I did yester—"
It wasn't.
What had arrived wasn't the "creature."
A few minutes later Nathan found himself completely stunned. It was a sight he had never even imagined. The ranking of the most shocking things about this arena had just changed. In a direction he never wanted.
Just how far into the pit can thinking creatures fall?
"...You sons of bitches. You fucking sons of bitches."
Nathan shook his head violently. This wasn't right. This couldn't be allowed.
From behind the stands, a flock of wyverns was flying upward. Their claws had been removed and their jaws were locked shut with restraints—preventing any unfortunate incidents with the guests, no doubt. The creatures were carrying large, elongated crates together. Unable to even cry out, the wyverns were eerily silent. The sound of them dropping their cargo, however, was anything but.
Steel crates slammed into the ground from just a short height, each impact roaring like thunder. Mixed among those crashes were faint, childish screams.
What Nathan had heard wasn't the chimera's footsteps. It was the sound of those crates hitting the dirt.
And the cargo that emerged when the container doors were carefully opened...
"These... insane bastards..."
They were children. Boys and girls of various races and ages—humans, lizardians, satyrs. There were even elf children with the same long ears as their captors. The moment those small feet touched the ground, the previously quiet stands began to grow noisy. Cheers. Jeers. Mockery. Curses. A cacophony so vile it made you hope the children would cover their ears.
But the hardest thing to stomach in that garbage heap of noise was the hypocritical sighs of pity from a few spectators.
They actually find this entertaining?
This was no time to keep any trump cards hidden. Nathan clasped his hands together. A faint green light leaked from within the gauntlets on both hands. The paralyzing agent's chill that had spread through him melted away like ice. The rune engraved on the back of his hand was doing its detoxifying work—one of the reasons he'd boasted he would make it back alive.
Even if they threw Knight Nathan into hell bare-handed, he still had plenty of options.
"Ptui."
The rune was imperfect magic. Useful, but it didn't give a damn about the user's health. Nathan immediately spat out the blood that surged up his throat. Then, as if he'd never been groaning in pain, he sprang to his feet and sprinted down the slope at full speed. Toward the low ground where the containers had fallen.
Even running with everything he had, he could sense others moving ahead of him. Nathan's eyes hollowed with despair.
"Tzube, don't get up! It might be broken! Rick, comfort Tzube! Sombai! Don't walk ahead! We don't know what's out here!"
"Don't open the door! No—!"
"Hey? Over there! Please help us! Our friends are hurt!"
The children who spotted him waved frantically from a distance. Nathan answered with a scream that felt like it was tearing his throat apart.
"Stay inside! I said don't open the door!"
The shadows of the artificial jungle swayed wildly under the lights. Was the wind blowing down from above—wind that had never known a real forest—curiously stroking the unfamiliar rainforest's twigs? No. That wasn't the only reason.
Something was moving in the mud and shadows.
"Get back inside! Close the doors and hold on! Whatever you do, don't come out of the crates!"
Even if he shouted until his voice gave out, it would probably only reach them as a faint murmur, drowned in the spectators' roar. But it worked. The children who had been wandering onto the mud without understanding froze at Nathan's desperate cries and gestures. The moment they saw the dirt writhing at their feet, they grasped the situation and fled back into the cargo containers.
Nathan ran as if a landslide were chasing him. His joints, stiff until moments ago, screamed for mercy, but he had no strength to spare for his own body. No matter what he did, he was already too late.
The nightmare had already begun.
In front of the container marked with a 1.
The children who hadn't made it back inside had collapsed halfway there. They must have injured their legs when the crate crashed. The ones still holding the door open were screaming for them to hurry while trying to support and drag their friends.
Just a little longer. Their tiny hands were locked together with all their strength. A few minutes. If they could just have a few minutes, they could pull them up safely...
But the creatures didn't wait politely.
Ghouls burst from the mud and grass roots. Pale monsters the size of grown adults sliced through the air with sickle-like forelimbs.
Krrriiiik.
A grotesque roar like metal scraping bone. The children froze like rabbits before a predator. The claw was a heartbeat away from crushing one of their skulls.
The monster's head, anticipating its feast, split open down the middle. The spectators let out a collective gasp of anticipation.
"Like hell you will."
A machete came flying out of nowhere, piercing both halves of the split head simultaneously. The man who had kicked open the door of container 2 and burst out swelled his scaled neck to its limit and roared.
"Come at me! There's plenty more meat with flesh on its bones right here! Leave the ones who can't even shed their eggshells alone and fight a real warrior like a man!"
Nathan felt like applauding. He didn't know who this crazy bastard was, but he certainly knew how to go insane with style.
Unfortunately, the man's hands were now empty. He'd lost his only weapon—the machete. He would have to face the ghouls crawling up from the ground with his bare hands...
Thankfully, Nathan's worry proved unnecessary.
The warrior shoved both scaled hands into his own mouth. After gagging for a moment and retching something up, he pulled no fewer than three machetes out from between his fingers. An absurd feat only a snake-headed lizardian could perform.
"Come on!"
The lizardian took full advantage of the surprise attack. The ghouls that had charged in thinking he was unarmed became prey to the machetes in rapid succession—three of them. But the psychological shock wouldn't last. Ghouls never challenged a strong opponent alone. They understood how to use numbers.
More monsters were rising from the earth. Judging by the scale of the writhing ground, there were at least ten. The lizardian ducked under one charging ghoul and drove a machete into its belly. It was the last blade he had left after throwing the others.
Without pause, another ghoul leaped at him. The lizardian knew how to fight, but he couldn't overcome sheer numbers. The snake-head desperately blocked the next creature's jaws with his arm. His intended follow-up was to yank the machete free and smash the thing biting him.
But the dead ghoul's body refused to release the blade. When the thick dagger head caught in muscle and ribs, the lizardian panicked. In that opening, another ghoul flew at his back.
Nathan bent at the waist while still running. His fingers snatched something from the ground.
CRACK.
The sound was like a brick shattering a clay pot. The lizardian flinched at the sudden wind, then flinched again as blood sprayed across his back scales. By the time he spun around, the ghoul was already dead and falling, its skull brutally crushed.
The stone that had spent its force cleanly dropped to the ground with a soft clack. Every ghoul turned to look at once. Nathan, the one who had thrown it, immediately became the new target. Several ghouls broke off and charged up the slope toward him.
But Nathan didn't slow down. Not even when a thick branch blocked his path. Instead of stopping or dodging, he smashed it with his fist. The moment the branch flew into the air, the lead ghoul leaped.
Nathan grabbed the tree. He swung it like a two-handed sword, using centrifugal force. The posture when the bone-claw scythe met the wood was a textbook high block. The ghoul scraped desperately at the bark before sliding down helplessly.
Nathan shed the powerless foreclaw and used that momentum to swing the trunk backward. Using the weight of the wood, the monster's own mass, and the full power of his shoulders.
The first ghoul was lucky. All that happened to it was being hurled backward like a rag doll by the rotation. The real victim was the one following right behind it.
CRUNCH.
The ghoul whose neck bones were cleanly ripped apart tumbled in the opposite direction it had been running. The others tangled their feet and screamed as they slid down the slope.
The weight distribution feels just right.
Nathan tucked the branch under his arm and roared.
"Heyyyyyy!"
He needed to pull every ghoul's attention onto himself. Even one more.
"I'm right heeeere!"
Oddly enough, the ghouls seemed to understand him better than the pointy-ears. The corpse-eating demons bared their teeth and glared at Nathan. They had clearly realized they couldn't take him with just three or four. So this time, twice that number came running from farther away. A logical decision.
Nathan raised the tree trunk high.
"Huuuumaaaan—!"
The lizardian's shout. Nathan glanced back at him. The snake-head was wrestling against the wall with a ghoul trying to bite his neck. With a massive push that sent the pale monster staggering, he freed his bleeding arm and pointed sideways.
"Number four! The number four container!"
Nathan looked where he was told. One. Two. Three. Four...
Fuck.
"Ah, damn it all!"
Nathan accelerated desperately.
"M-mom!"
A human girl with a sprained leg who had rolled outside, her foot now sunk in the swamp. And the satyr boy who had probably run out to save her. But his hooves were also trapped in the mud. Both of them were shouting for help toward the tightly sealed number four container. A ghoul was charging straight at them. The machete thrown in haste was embedded in its back but had failed to stop it.
The sticky swamp bought them a little time. The sickle claws that had been useful for digging out of the ground kept sinking when the creature tried to walk on top. The monster growled in frustration but advanced with stubborn determination.
The distance between the rage-driven monster and the children shrank. When the hideous head finally came right up to them, the satyr boy screamed and kicked. The hoof on the side not stuck in mud managed to stomp on its crown. But the monster wasn't about to be pushed back by a child's weight. It yanked its head free, trying to bite the boy's ankle.
Perhaps hearing his friend's scream, a muffled sob leaked from inside the number four container. Sorry, I'm sorry. Nathan couldn't blame them. Dealing with crises like this was supposed to be the adults' job.
"Where the hell are you looking, you son of a bitch!"
Nathan grabbed the machete buried in the creature's back and heaved it upward with all the momentum of his sprint. He didn't even have time to catch his breath.
"Now that's one ugly fucking head!"
As its body soared into the air, the monster panicked and flailed its sickle claws in every direction. Before his hand could be severed, Nathan seized the clawed arm first. Then he ripped the machete free and slammed the monster down.
The impact was tremendous even though it landed in the swamp. The creature twisted silently in agony. The pain didn't last long—Nathan crushed its head under his iron boot. The skull burst instantly. The ghoul, its brains now part of the mud, slowly sank beneath the surface.
Nathan immediately strode over and yanked the trapped children free. The sobbing satyr boy's mouth kept opening and closing. Nathan ignored it and shouted. There was no time to wait for him to speak.
"Stay right behind my back."
"No! Tell them to come here! Kids! It's open over here! Come this way!"
The door of container 3 scraped open. A skinny silver-haired girl stood at the entrance, gesturing urgently. She was the same child who had called out to Nathan earlier about her injured friends. In her hand she held a long piece of fallen metal like a weapon. Judging by the smaller children clustered behind her, she seemed to be the oldest one in container three.
But up close, Nathan realized she wasn't human. The long, pointed ears made him flinch.
Before he could say anything, the satyr boy picked up his friend and ran toward container three. The elf girl pulled them in and shoved them inside, then quickly closed the door.
Damn. After what an elf did to me, I can't help getting suspicious first.
Nathan suddenly looked around. Beyond the bulkheads that had no place in a jungle, countless eyes stared down. The glow of the electronic boards reflected in their gazes. What are they betting on this time?
Nathan's teeth ground together so hard he decided not to look. You pointy-eared little girl, I don't know how old you are, but you're already better than every single one of those adults combined. Those bastards are placing bets while children are dying in front of them.
Maybe it was because they were so high up. The depth of the floor they looked down on was impossible to measure.