The long-awaited monster arena revealed its true form.
A circular arena reminiscent of ancient Rome’s Colosseum.
Though it was smaller in scale due to being built underground, the spectators’ eyes were filled with excitement.
Among them were even those who could not contain themselves, shouting and stamping their feet.
Unlike the blazing heat in the stands, however, the waiting room was cold as ice.
Inside were the participants awaiting their match, and not one of them wore a pleasant expression.
The sight of all twenty participants with their heads lowered called to mind prisoners in a jail.
Fear was deeply etched into their faces, and their eyes, as they sized one another up, were filled with suspicion and wariness.
Then, with the clang of metal, a small door opened.
Armed guards entered.
“Choose your weapons!”
With a rough command, the guards dropped weapons onto the floor.
Bent swords, rusted spears, even cracked bows—none of them were of good quality.
“Pick whatever you want. Of course, if you want to die, not choosing one is an option too.”
The guard’s sneer cut through the air.
But even after being told to choose weapons, no one moved easily.
The same was true for Cale.
He had entered the arena for now because they had promised to cancel his debt, but he had no knowledge of what weapon he should choose.
Until now, he had only done odd jobs to earn his little sister’s treatment fees; he was far removed from this world.
“……”
Everyone merely watched one another, and no one stepped forward.
A stretch of silence passed.
The more time went by, the closer the fear crept.
It was the same for Cale.
‘What if I die here?’
If he died, who would take care of his sick younger sister?
Negative thoughts surfaced.
Even so, Cale stubbornly shook his head.
‘No, don’t think weak thoughts. I’m going to survive, no matter what!’
As Cale steeled himself, one man was the first to choose a weapon.
The weapon he picked up was a sword. Then he spoke.
“Why do you all look like you’re already dead? Did we come here to die? We have to survive and make a fresh start!”
The man raised his sword and introduced himself.
“My name is Bayden. I was once an adventurer who carried a silver badge. Though as you can see, I’m here now because I couldn’t pay off my debt.”
At Bayden’s introduction, the people lifted their heads.
A glimmer of hope passed through them at the word “adventurer.”
Cale, too, felt a small expectation take root.
It felt as though a possibility of survival had appeared.
Bayden looked around and continued.
“If all of you follow what I say, I’ll make sure everyone here lives.”
A silver-rank adventurer.
In truth, silver rank was not a particularly high rank. That did not mean it was low, either.
But most of the participants here had never even held a sword, let alone been adventurers, so they looked up to Bayden.
“First, gather around. We’ll come up with a strategy to survive.”
Bayden naturally became the leader of the group.
Only then did the people begin to gather around him.
As if trying to drive away their fear, they gripped one another’s shoulders.
Cale also moved his feet.
“Listen carefully, everyone. First, surviving the monsters comes before anything else. It’s exactly fifteen minutes. To survive during that time, we need to stick together. Got it?”
Bayden spoke as he stepped among the participants.
His voice overflowed with confidence, and thanks to that, the participants began to trust him.
In any case, their opponents were not other people but monsters.
“Has anyone here properly handled a bow or sword before?”
Silence followed Bayden’s question.
Naturally, no one raised a hand.
“Then we’ll go with spears and shields. The people in front block with shields, and the people behind stab with spears. We just have to hold out like that for fifteen minutes. Easy, right?”
Everyone nodded.
They had absolute faith that, as a former adventurer, he knew better than they did.
Following his instructions, each person picked up a weapon.
And just as Cale was about to pick up a shield as well—
“Hey, you there, kid.”
Bayden shouted at Cale.
Cale flinched at his words and raised his head.
“You’re out. You don’t look like you’ll be of any use.”
At Bayden’s words, Cale’s heart sank.
“I-I’ll work hard too! Please give me a chance!”
“No. If your side gets broken through, all of us could end up in danger.”
Bayden’s refusal was firm.
He was a boy who was not yet an adult.
Cale’s small frame had caught his eye.
A boy like that holding a shield?
He would obviously be broken through in an instant.
Bayden had calculated that if the line was going to break because of him, it was better not to have him there from the start.
Bayden made his judgment coldly.
But Cale was desperate.
“Then let me hold a spear, at least! Please, I’m begging you!”
Cale knew very well that if he could not join Bayden’s group, he would die.
That was why he had to cling to them no matter what.
But Bayden’s gaze was only cold.
“It’ll be the same even if you hold a spear. So stop bothering me and get lost.”
Bayden had already made his decision.
More than anything, the other participants agreed with him.
As if trying to curry favor with Bayden, all of them turned their backs on Cale.
“Yeah, Sir Bayden is right! I don’t want to die because of you!”
“Get lost, you damned bastard!”
Abuse poured down on him.
Cale clenched his teeth and lowered his head.
Was it all right for fellow human beings to do this?
A cold sense of betrayal wrapped around him.
But there was nothing he could do.
“……”
Cale withdrew into a corner, clutching only a single shield.
As if to hide his trembling hands, he gripped the shield tightly.
This thin piece of metal was his only hope.
“Please, let a miracle happen…”
An earnest prayer slipped between his lips.
All Cale could do was pray to the heavens.
While Cale was praying—
“Everyone, get ready! You’re going in soon!”
The guards burst into the waiting room again.
This time, they entered the waiting room and headed for the large iron gate on the opposite side.
The guards began to open the iron gate.
Before long, the heavy iron gate opened.
At that moment, thunderous cheers shook the waiting room.
“Kill them! Kill every last one of them!”
“Bayden! I put everything on you today! If you die first, then I’m really finished! Show us the power of an adventurer!”
Roaring cheers and shouts poured down over their heads to greet them.
Gulp.
The participants walked toward the arena on trembling legs.
What lay before them now was a stage of death.
Cale, too, slowly passed through the iron gate at the very back.
Even if he was afraid, there was nothing he could do.
For the sake of his sick younger sister, he had to endure those fifteen minutes no matter what.
“I’ll survive. I have to!”
Strength entered the hand gripping the shield.
* * *
—Now then, you’ve waited long enough! Let the match you’ve all been waiting for begin!
At the announcer’s words, the spectators grew even more frenzied.
They shouted the names of the participants they had bet on.
—The rules are simple. Guess which participant will survive until the very end while enduring fifteen minutes! Simple, isn’t it?
Before the match began in earnest, the announcer emphasized the rules once more.
The spectators in the stands had already placed their bets on the participants.
The arena had distributed pamphlets containing the participants’ information, and based on those, each person had bet on a participant.
Then they stared intently at the arena, hoping the participant they had bet on would survive until the end.
That was the only way they could earn money according to the odds.
And in this match, the most money had gathered on Bayden, the former adventurer.
Conversely, only one person had bet on the young-looking boy, Cale.
It was Necros.
“Hehehe, the show is finally starting!”
Malcolm laughed from a place where he could look down over the arena at a glance.
This location was better than either the general seats or the VIP seats, and Malcolm and Necros were seated there together.
They, too, had already finished placing their bets.
Malcolm had bet on Bayden, the former adventurer, while Necros had bet on the boy named Cale.
And a moment later, with the announcer’s cry, the first match began.
The first match was a fight between twenty participants and goblins.
As soon as the participants entered the arena, they began to gather in one place.
Naturally, they centered themselves around Bayden, the former adventurer, and raised the shields and spears with which they had armed themselves.
Except for Cale alone, that was.
Cale stood apart by himself, holding his shield.
At the sight of Cale trembling in fear, Malcolm grinned.
“Oh my, looks like you’re about to lose all your money. What a shame. Kha-hahaha!”
No matter who looked at it, Cale would die first. Malcolm was absolutely confident.
“You think that little brat can survive? Keke, it seems you’re hopeless at anything besides business!”
In truth, Necros’s business acumen was remarkable.
He had secured monsters for the business, and since most of the arena’s rules had come from Necros’s head, Malcolm had been impressed.
But seeing him now, he seemed to have no talent at all for this sort of thing.
To think he would bet on the boy who looked most likely to die first just because the odds were high.
‘Dumb bastard. Keke.’
In fact, the other participants had also regarded Cale as dead weight, hadn’t they? They had abandoned him and gathered without him.
Malcolm sneered inwardly and focused on the match.
The participants moved with practiced order.
Following Bayden’s instructions, those holding shields took positions in the front row, and those holding spears stood right behind them.
At that sight, Malcolm was certain that Bayden, the one he had bet on, would survive until the end.
But then—
“Huh?”
The situation was strange.
“No! Why the hell aren’t they touching that bastard! He’s all alone!”
The horde of goblins stayed in place and did not charge at the participants.
They did not even touch Cale, who was standing all by himself, as if they had no interest in him.
They merely held their ground and circled around.
In that meaningless fashion, five minutes passed.
There were now ten minutes remaining.
And as if by prior agreement, only then did the goblins begin to move.
Their destination was Bayden’s group.
Even the announcer seemed surprised by the goblins’ strange behavior.
—What is this?! It seems that gathering together has instead stimulated the goblins’ attack instincts!
Unfortunately, the participants holding shields and spears had gripped weapons for the first time today.
That was why they could not help but panic at the goblins’ unusual behavior.
And that panic soon led to a mistake.
Before long, one of the participants dropped his shield.
One person’s mistake immediately brought about the collapse of the entire formation.
Bayden quickly tried to regain control of the situation, but the goblins were strangely powerful.
They were on an entirely different level from the goblins he had faced when he had worked as an adventurer.
One goblin in the back even loosed arrows.
But not a single goblin approached Cale, who held his shield with trembling hands.
They did not shoot arrows at him either.
The goblins acted as though nothing existed in that spot at all.
“……”
As the match began to unfold strangely, Malcolm’s lips trembled.
If the situation continued like this, there was a high chance that Cale would ultimately survive.
Was such a thing possible?
‘No, there’s no way.’
Malcolm was no fool.
Who had brought the monsters when this arena was planned?
It was Necros, sitting right before his eyes.
‘Don’t tell me that bastard really can control monsters?’
Malcolm’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Necros.
He suddenly became curious about the expression hidden behind that white mask.
‘If that’s the case, it makes sense that he bet on Cale!’
Malcolm’s expression turned serious.
There was no need to watch the rest of the match. The result was obvious.
And indeed, right at the fifteen-minute mark, the goblin horde killed every participant except Cale.
Among the dead participants was Bayden, who had received the most bets.
—Ah! As expected, the behavior of monsters is impossible to predict! Isn’t this exactly what makes it fun?
When the first match ended, the announcer spoke in an excited voice.
Soon after, the armed guards who had been prepared began to drive the horde of goblins to one side.
In any case, fifteen minutes had passed, so the winner of this match was Cale.
The spectators cheered at the unexpected result of the match.
They felt a thrill from the fact that the winner could change at any moment depending on the monsters’ sudden actions.
Cale was able to return to the waiting room amid the cheers of the crowd.
“Damn it. Let’s start the next match right away!”
Malcolm waited for the next match with a deeply furrowed expression.
The waiting rooms were not all in one place.
Iron doors lined every corner of the circular arena.
And those iron doors all connected to waiting rooms. Even now, participants preparing for their matches were waiting in each one.
“So this time too, you picked the participant with the highest odds?”
Malcolm’s tone grew serious.
Because for the second match as well, the participant Necros had chosen was the one with the highest odds.
The highest odds meant nothing more than that the participant had the lowest probability of surviving to the end.
‘If the one that bastard picked wins again this time, there’s something going on. There absolutely is!’
Malcolm grew more and more certain.
He intended to confront him if the participant Necros selected won this match too.
No, he intended to show just how fearsome he could be right then and there.
But.
“Huh…?”
Whether it was a trick of fate, Necros’s choice had spectacularly missed the mark.
The participant Necros had bet on was swiftly devoured by a horde of zombies from the start, meeting a miserable end.
‘What? Was it just a coincidence?’
And the participant Malcolm had chosen died as well.
The one who survived until the end of the second match was the participant with the second-highest odds.
Necros tilted his head at the match’s result, and Malcolm watched that sight.
‘Looks like he just got lucky in the first match.’
When Necros failed his bet, Malcolm reeled his suspicions back in.
Well, how could anyone control monsters anyway?
He dismissed this matter as mere coincidence.
But this was Malcolm’s misjudgment.
* * *
Celia, who had been watching the match from the VIP seats, nodded.
“This is the will of the great one.”
Celia had won quite a lot of money by correctly guessing the winner of the second match.
If Necros was the guardian of the 1st Layer, Celia was the dungeon’s general manager.
Her rank was higher as well, and Celia was also the one closer to the great one.
Naturally, from the monsters’ perspective, they had no choice but to be more mindful of Celia than Necros.
“Who should I bet on next?”
Celia hummed as she picked the participant for the next match.
Of course, she didn’t trouble herself over who to bet her money on.
Because Celia’s choice would soon become the match’s result.
That day, Necros did not bet for the remaining matches and simply watched.
And Malcolm could only wail at the fact that there was a spectator successfully hitting high odds match after match.
* * *
Serinu, executive of the Demon Realm Merchant Guild.
His appearance as a demon was darkness itself.
His neatly groomed black hair paired well with his black suit.
He wore black glasses on his face and black leather shoes on his feet, exuding a cold image.
But Serinu, who had always seemed cold-blooded, had grown troubled lately.
It was because of the auction accident that had occurred at the social gathering he had hosted.
He had needlessly provoked an unidentified entity and was attacked in return, losing all the auction items.
Thanks to that, Serinu had suffered enormous losses.
“Kuh. So you mean to tell me you haven’t uncovered anything about that bastard yet!”
Serinu’s voice, filled with rage, pierced his subordinate, but what returned was nothing but a disappointing answer.
“I apologize, Lord Serinu. We have continued searching, but we haven’t found any notable traces.”
How much time had he given them, yet they still couldn’t find anything?
Serinu, who had thought it would be resolved quickly, was frustrated beyond measure.
The entity who had taken all the auction items.
He had tried to find that entity’s information and whereabouts, but there were no clues at all, which was truly strange.
As if it had never existed from the start.
But this was a natural result.
Because that entity was currently on Earth, not the continent of Eldorad.
Not knowing this fact, Serinu had no choice but to be frustrated.
At the very least, perhaps the Arch Lich who had been with that entity knew something?
Harboring such hope, just as he tried to approach the Arch Lich, another incident broke out.
The appearance of a Calamity.
Who would have thought a star would fall in a human kingdom, not the Demon Realm?
It was unprecedented.
Thanks to that, the Demon Realm Merchant Guild had fallen into a cauldron of chaos.
A 7-Star Calamity had been born, yet the Demon Realm Merchant Guild had known nothing about it.
The Demon Realm Merchant Guild utilized all its connections and information.
They contacted humans as well, scraping together every bit of information they could.
From the information obtained this way, they found out that the Queen of the Seil Kingdom had annihilated the 7-Star Calamity.
But Serinu knew well that such words were absurd.
“Ha… That’s not the kind of existence a Calamity is.”
The Calamity Serinu knew was not an existence that could be annihilated so easily.
A Calamity annihilated by mere human hands?
Then the story was one of two things.
Either it wasn’t a 7-Star Calamity upon closer inspection, or it had hidden its body for some reason.
But he couldn’t be certain of either one.
He was simply busy cleaning up as incidents broke out.
“Find the Calamity quickly! We absolutely must bring it in first. If we miss it this time, I’ll really have all your heads!”
At Serinu’s shout, the subordinate demons headed outside.
Having given orders to his subordinates, Serinu sighed and sat in his chair.
“Hoo, it feels as if someone is controlling the information.”
A demon’s pride was no small matter.
Had the Demon Realm Merchant Guild ever been this powerless?
No. The Demon Realm Merchant Guild had always been the strongest organization.
But the recent events gave a strong feeling that the guild couldn’t control them.
“The beginning was the Succubus Dungeon.”
Serinu reviewed the situation from the beginning.
The beginning was the Succubus Dungeon.
That dungeon was a newborn dungeon that hadn’t been created long ago.
But it had a lot of money for a newborn dungeon, so he had been intrigued.
“But it turned out the dungeon’s master was an Arch Lich.”
It was unlikely a succubus was the dungeon’s master.
Serinu’s thoughts were valid.
Currently, among succubi, there was none higher than the Queen of the Succubi.
Therefore, it was more correct to think that the dungeon’s master was a 5-Star Arch Lich rather than a mere succubus.
“But the entity that was with that Arch Lich is missing…”
What on earth was going on….
Serinu’s head began to ache.
“And on top of that, a 7-Star Calamity was born.”
Could all of this be mere coincidence?
Serinu’s eyebrows twisted subtly.
“The end times. Truly the end times.”
Perhaps the entity that had taken all the auction items was connected to the 7-Star Calamity?
Having reached such a ridiculous thought, Serinu shook his head.
If that were true, the world would undoubtedly be going mad.
But Serinu was not one to sit still because of that.
No matter what anyone said, he was an executive of the Demon Realm Merchant Guild.
Aiming for a position higher than his current one, he had to produce some kind of achievement.
To do so, he could not tolerate any further mistakes.
“Still, I suppose I should be satisfied with having seized that vampire wench’s dungeon this time.”
The 5-Star vampire, Baalcherite.
She had rapidly lost power due to the ruthless attacks of the White Order.
The funds she had borrowed from the guild to stop the Order were enormous, but as she lost power, she became unable to pay back that money.
But the guild was a ruthless place.
No matter how high-ranked a monster was, debts had to be collected.
Serinu threatened Baalcherite and forcibly transferred the dungeon’s management rights.
Of course, since the funds Baalcherite had borrowed were substantial, merely transferring the dungeon’s management rights was not enough to repay all the debt.
In short, Baalcherite had no choice but to be tied to the Demon Realm Merchant Guild along with her dungeon.
And Serinu intended to use such a Baalcherite to launch additional business ventures.
As a 5-Star existence, she had many uses.
“Shall I turn humans into vampires this time?”
Couldn’t they attack humans using Baalcherite as their vanguard?
Or rather, Baalcherite had the blood of the vampire royal family flowing in her.
Using her to place all vampires under the guild also seemed like a fine method.
‘Truly many options.’
That was what it meant to have a high rank.
That was why Serinu was also very interested in the 7-Star Calamity.
Of course, he planned to focus on Baalcherite for the moment.
“Yes, if only this matter goes well, I’ll be able to make up for my mistakes until now.”
If it turned out that way, he would be able to look upward again.
Just as he was thinking happy thoughts.
A subordinate demon came rushing urgently toward Serinu.
“L-Lord Serinu!”
“What is it?”
Surely another incident hadn’t broken out, right?
Though he hoped that would be the case, the words flowing from his subordinate’s mouth were shocking.
“We’re in big trouble! Baalcherite… has escaped!”
“Shit.”
Nothing was going right.