I Still Don't Want to Die (1)
Twelve hours earlier. The secret underground ward of Galarhorn.
It wasn't only the Consul and Kadon who had held a strategy meeting. Nathan Maia and Aspen Peres, summoned to Benny's office, were greeted with staggering news the moment they opened the door.
Nathan turned away, covering his mouth to hide a grin. Aspen asked in disbelief, "Orgithes actually accepted those ridiculous conditions? The insane ones Nathan told him to write down?"
"To be precise, it wasn't Orgithes who accepted them."
The decision-maker of the Wingkero family wasn't limited to the head, Orgithes Wingkero. His wife held authority equal to his. That was Orgithes's misfortune.
Nestra Wingkero. An Eleim consumed by vanity, willing to soak the artisan district of Sorgheim in blood if it meant claiming it, strangling the displaced Dwarves through her husband. Unfortunately, when the Conclave's official document arrived at the Wingkero estate, Nestra failed to display wisdom matching her vanity. Enraged that the ownership of Sorgheim she had so desperately coveted was now the stake in a Gladiator Fight, she had only lashed out at her husband's negligence. Thus, even as she stamped the family seal on the contract that formalized the fight, Nestra never bothered to check what her husband would lose if he were defeated.
"Orgithes must feel wronged. He never even saw the completed document. But isn't this his own doing? He was the one who demanded we send the terms to his house in the first place."
The operation had to be rushed, yet fortune favored them. Kadon's sudden escape from Orgithes's carriage bought them precious time.
"The head's return was delayed, so we had enough time. We quickly drafted the terms, submitted them to the Scales of Justice, and the moment they were deemed fair, sent them to Orgithes's estate—before he even arrived home."
The swift strike targeting Nestra had succeeded spectacularly. When family voting rights were shared, such disasters often followed. Even as the architect of the scheme, Benny felt a twinge of pity.
"That madwoman. Orgithes Wingkero acts like he'll divorce her any day for being insufferable, yet he's probably the only person in the world who treats that brainless lump of vanity as an equal."
"Quite the layered family man."
"A Gladiator Fight is a battlefield. You can lose as much as your greed allows. If you handle things sloppily on the battlefield, there's no excuse even if you lose your life."
"We, as war experts, know that well."
Nathan's smile widened. "I can't wait to see the look on his face when he learns the truth. But why do you look so grim, Benny?"
Benny stared at Nathan, lips pressed tight, as if swallowing words she had meant to say.
"Why? What is it?"
"...The biotech company Morphosis has intervened in this match. They've joined forces with the Consul and set a horrific trap. They're trying to eliminate you."
She had clearly chosen to voice something else instead of what she truly wanted to say. Nathan brushed the suspicion aside for now. The intelligence Benny provided next was worth hearing.
"They're going to strap an Abyssal explosive vest on Kadon and detonate it?"
As Benny manipulated the panel, an unidentified chamber appeared on the office screen.
"Footage obtained by our agents. Reporters from 'Voice of the Celestial God' secretly investigated Morphosis, and Hedonic spies copied and leaked the records."
"Interesting. Like a jungle where the food chain keeps turning on itself."
"You won't find it amusing if you watch to the end."
Eleim in purple hazmat suits muttered unclear instructions. Then someone rose sobbing from beneath the platform—a human wearing a living vest. The subject's eyes had turned pitch black. With every cough, black vapor spewed forth.
Aspen muttered, "You can tell what the symptoms are, can't you, Nathan?"
"If I couldn't recognize that, I'd have to quit being a Lion Wing Knight. They forced the Abyss into his body. Those lunatics."
The staggering human approached the steel-bound minotaurs. Asterion's kin tried to hold their heads high with dignity, but snorts of fear kept escaping—they already knew what was coming. The moment the trembling human, standing before them, yanked the cord on the writhing vest—
"Damn it."
Darkness like the void between stars spread outward, as if paint had been spilled into a lake. The steel binding the minotaurs rusted and disintegrated. Their hides blackened and peeled away as if rotting. The screams of the Lower World test subjects swallowed by the ravenous shadow went unheard—the pitch-black explosion devoured even sound. All that could be heard was the thunderous collapse of the laboratory's bulkheads. Everything alive within range turned to ash and scattered into the air. Even a few Eleim researchers who had underestimated the blast radius were not spared. The lucky ones who survived by mere steps fled the lab screaming.
The moment the black corruption, sated after devouring life, shrank back into a single point, Benny paused the footage.
"Rules of the Gladiator Fight prohibit such... horrific sorcery. If discovered, it would bring enormous political repercussions. The only things allowed in a Gladiator Fight are weapons forged of steel, innate mana, and one's own body. Orgithes will suffer massive losses, but it seems only Kadon and the Consul know of the plot."
Benny intended for them to put their heads together and devise countermeasures quickly. But Nathan took a different meaning entirely.
"How delightful. The Consul cares enough about me to go this far—I don't know how to contain myself."
"...What's so good about it? You could end up as dust."
"I'm grateful they struck first. It proves they're wary of us. Resorting to extreme measures is the same as revealing weakness. It's a clear declaration that they don't want to face me in the Gladiator Fight."
A blatant crisis. One wrong move and he would turn to dust before everyone's eyes. Yet Nathan looked positively thrilled. Benny hated it. Utterly.
"The Consul and that biotech company both hold stakes in the Great Arena, don't they? They're opponents we'll have to face eventually. Since they picked a fight, let's return the favor. No matter how many times we clash, I'll make them spit everything back out—their arena shares, the debt they owe humanity, all of it."
"A debt to humanity?"
Aspen shrugged. "I showed him Father Andau Peres's journal."
The head's journal. The problematic message Andau Peres had left behind. There had been a reason Andau told his youngest daughter to read it 'slowly'—most of the contents were encrypted so only family members could decipher them.
"True to his secretive nature, he was thorough. We're still decoding the rest. That's why Nathan had to visit the Penal Arena without knowing anything."
"You have no idea how wronged I felt. Later I found out there was a reason he hid it, but we'll deal with that when we have time. For now, that damned cipher contained—"
"He was my father, Nathan."
"—not what you think. His records detailed everything. They listed all the human assets the Heavens are suspected of plundering over the years."
Andau's suspicions had hardened into certainty through Keres's revelation, and were confirmed upon arriving in the Heavens. The Heavens were a limited space—an island of barren sky where even farming was impossible. The abundant gold and goods enjoyed by the high-ranking Eleim and corporations could only have come from periodic raids on the Lower World or the establishment of colonies.
"It was the Consul's family that long led the plundering of the Lower World. Even after much of the eastern power shifted to corporations, they still hold several extremely important assets that once belonged to humanity."
"Nathan, I understand you're angry, but at least for now, can we focus only on the Abyssal explosives? We need to come up with a plan—"
"Don't worry too much. There are solid solutions for both problems."
"A plan?"
"Tomorrow's operation is as follows. First, neutralize the Abyssal bomb. Second, seize one of the assets they stole—one I already know well."
"...How?"
Nathan smiled radiantly. "By beating it out of them. If I pound them gently enough, they'll spit something out, won't they?"
-------------
And now, the present.
'...It really does look like his guts are coming out.'
In the platinum-adorned VIP seats reserved for high-ranking families and corporate heads—luxurious chairs designed with centuries of consideration for the users' spines—Benny could not sit comfortably. Wearing Somnus's mask, she wore a grim expression despite the one-sided match.
'What good is that supposed to do?!'
Could she really trust this? That simply beating someone senseless like a muscle-bound idiot would solve everything? Would the philosophy that machines break when struck apply to Abyssal sorcery as well?
At least so far, it seemed to. Amid the jeers, the Death Knight's groans as he was beaten half to death. He showed no sign of attempting to self-destruct—he barely had room to breathe. Kicked, thrown, and even slapped across the face in a duel of greatswords, his humiliation bordered on farce.
High-ranking nobles seated far from Benny whispered in disgusted tones.
"He could end it anytime, yet he's deliberately dragging it out. Why go to such lengths?"
"A display of strength, perhaps. Like a new stallion kicking an old mare to show off."
At the highest seat, Consul Ampitrion ground his teeth. The words rang too true. Benny's startled flinch at the sound fortunately went unnoticed by the Consul. He, too, was certain it was a display of power. He had ordered his own gladiators to do similar things many times. Perhaps it was even a message to the Consul himself: Was this the best you could send to kill me?
The small murmurs of lament and mockery only stoked the Consul's fury further.
"I heard he was invincible as long as the opponent wasn't from the Sword Star Sect. The rumors were just inflated bubbles."
"Undefeated only means he hasn't lost yet. But this is tarnishing both the Consul's honor and the Wingkero family's."
"There's a saying that a gladiator's spirit follows his owner's fortune. Perhaps he can't replicate the skill he showed under the Consul outside that protection."
"Perhaps the Consul's luck has run out."
Ampitrion trembled. Were they speaking because they thought he couldn't hear, or because they knew he could and were being deliberately insolent?
'If we were still the royal family, if we still had vassals serving us on all sides, would they dare utter such disrespectful words?'
Thebae. The name of the ancient kingdom that once ruled East Heaven, and the surname of Ampitrion's family. Yet as the legitimate heir, Ampitrion could not use that surname publicly. Among the four kingdoms of the Heavens in the cardinal directions, Thebae was the only one that had fallen to rebellion. After the old uprising, East Heaven became the sole kingdom among the four Eleim realms without a king. As a result, its rulers were divided into three: the nobles of the Consular Council, the priests of the Conclave, and dozens of corporations founded by the arrogant merchant class that supplied goods across the Heavens.
Thus, the Consul's position, won through election, was merely a partial recovery of his lost inheritance. But even that had become precarious lately. A single Sapiens had ruined everything. The war with the North, sparked by that wretch, had proven fatal. To soothe the diseased public sentiment, the boil had to be cut out first. Yet the Sapiens refused to die. The masses were fools who could be silenced with bread, but they were also beasts that would tear apart any master who failed to provide even that.
The Consul tried to hide his impatience behind a composed expression. To Ampitrion, who had invested centuries in restoring his family's glory, the wretch was nothing more than a minor obstacle.
'I cannot be held back by a single Sapiens. It doesn't matter how strong you are.'
Kadon might not be the strongest, but he was the Consul's gladiator—a fighter who had secured overwhelming victories in most of his sixty-seven matches. Even if the opponents were easy, such a streak would be impossible without real skill. And now that same man was being beaten like a dog by the Sapiens Nathan.
Even Ampitrion had not expected such a vast gap. The implication was clear: the vast majority of gladiators listed in the Gladiator Fight registry would not even be a single mouthful.
'If Kadon had seen through this... I can understand why he tried to avoid the fight. But there's no need to worry. We have a sure countermeasure in place.'
Ampitrion waited with bloodshot eyes. For Kadon to finally activate that damned detonator. For the moment when the foolish Sapiens, relying only on his fighting prowess, would turn to dust under the inescapable hunger of the Abyss.
'Detonate it, Kadon.'
But Kadon did not pull the cord on the detonator. He merely stood up again and charged.
'I said detonate it!'
Kadon did not. With a broken arm reset, leaning on shattered bones to rise, staggering even as he was repeatedly kicked and crushed within his mangled heavy armor, he caught his breath and charged at Nathan Maia once more.
"What is he thinking?"
The Consul trembled at such foolishness. Stubbornness only worked when it was effective. Was it the last shred of a warrior's pride? Or hope that he might be spared instead of discarded?
'Damn wretch. But he'll realize soon enough.'
He would reach his limit. Once he confirmed that skill alone would not suffice, he would remember that horrific basement and activate the detonator...
---------------
"I don't want to."
Spitting bloody foam, Lawrence rose again.
"I still don't want to die."