NOVEL NEXT Chapter 7: The Growing Colosseum
Days have passed.
In cities and villages across the nation, rumors spread rapidly about the dead soldiers and adventurers who had been resurrected by the mysterious dungeon-core. Its existence has captured the attention and concern of many, especially nobles and politicians. The news of the dungeon's danger and its claimed ability to resurrect the dead has caused an uproar among the higher-ups. In lavish manors and austere council rooms alike, debates ensue about how to address this new threat while also considering the potential benefits of harnessing its power.
As word continues to spread, differing opinions emerge within society. Some fear that delving into the secrets of the dungeon-core may lead to unforeseen consequences, while others are captivated by its seemingly miraculous abilities. The latter group imaginatively envisions a world where death does not have the final say, imagining countless possibilities for their loved ones and fallen heroes who could be brought back to life. Dungeons have been claimed and made subservient to humankind before, at the threat of their destruction should they not comply, and this was done for purely economic reasons.
However, the gift of true resurrection is something even the greatest heroes and saints have never been able to harness.
This is world changing.
In response to these swirling rumors, various factions form and take action. Military leaders consider launching expeditions meant to explore and possibly neutralize the dungeon-core for the safety of their people. On the flip side, scholars and researchers aim to study this phenomenon in hopes of unlocking its potential for resurrection in a controlled manner.
During the heated debates and the creation of countless factions, tension builds between those who support exploring the dungeon-core further and those who deem it too dangerous to be kept around, arguing such things as that it could also possibly bring back a slain monster, a demon-king, a great evil of the distant past. Why should its gift be limited to things like humans and elves? If it were to do such a thing, the world would be in untold danger. Heated discussions occur in town halls, taverns, and marketplaces, with no consensus in sight. The nation finds itself teetering on a precarious edge as it grapples with this newfound knowledge, unsure whether it heralds salvation or damnation.
Reports of skeleton messengers traveling across the countryside have begun to circulate among the horrified populace. These ghastly figures, sent by the dungeon-core, have been seen traversing roads and pathways, bearing handwritten letters for the families of those thought to be dead. Families are left aghast by the words written by their once-deceased loved ones, whom they had already mourned or been mourning for. Emotions run high as disbelief, joy, and trepidation all intertwine in a complex mess that leaves recipients reeling in confusion. Mothers cry for the returned lives of their sons and then weep for their imprisonment in what sounds like hell itself — the prison from which they must fight themselves free from.
News of these macabre visits spreads rapidly through local communities, prompting a myriad of reactions. Some individuals argue that this development could provide an opportunity for closure with departed friends and family members or offer a second chance at life. Others fear that meddling with forces beyond human comprehension may come at a terrible price. As more families receive correspondence from their resurrected loved ones via these skeleton messengers, the nation grapples with uncertainty about what this could mean for their world. The concerns surrounding the dungeon-core's ability to resurrect the dead are amplified by this unsettling development, further driving a wedge between those who seek to embrace its potential and those who would rather renounce its existence entirely. Society is splitting. Schemes of power are beginning to seed in the backrooms of the nation.
This is a very new problem.
“Please accept him!” plead the two people who have come to the dungeon, pulling a wooden cart behind them. A rotted arm hangs out of the side, out from beneath the sheet covering the dead body.
“Can he fight?” asks Munera’s representative, standing at the dungeon-gate. The monster is a large, muscle-bound cyclops, towering over the heads of men significantly in size. It blocks the entrance to the dungeon with crossed arms, looking down at the humans. After the letters went out and the skeleton came back with some trouble, it needed to… make some changes. The humans have certainly taken an interest, to put it mildly. “Is he strong?”
Now, it isn’t unusual for adventurers and the like to find dungeons, so they can find their way through them. Oftentimes, this involves people dying, as the work is dangerous, grim, and dirty. However, what is very unusual is for them to be pulling a cart behind them on which the long, dead corpse of an old man is laid out. Munera looks at the bones. Honestly, it looks like he’s been dead for months on end now. Most of him is gone, decayed, and eaten away by the forces of natural desiccation.
They have begun bringing their dead here in the hopes that Munera will return them to life. However, they haven’t exactly been bringing their best…
“He was a powerful warlock!” says one of the men. “One of the greatest in the entire region!”
The cyclops looks at him and then peels off the cloth covering the body, looking at the dried corpse. “Then why is he dead?”
“Age,” replies the other one. “He made it to ninety-seven.”
The cyclops turns to look at him, staring for a while with its one eye.
Munera shakes its head. No good. Sure, it can resurrect the dead. But it can’t de-age them. A man this old, even a powerful caster, won’t have what it takes to really compete in his prime. It’s almost a shame. How many contestants are filtered from joining because the time windows of their prime years simply don’t overlap with the arena’s existence?
Maybe it is something that can be solved, but for now, it’s a dead end.
Munera speaks to the cyclops. “Tell them we’ll take his body, but that it’s his choice if he wants to be resurrected,” it explains.
This is a lie, of course. If it wanted to resurrect the man, he would be. But this way, it can shift the blame when the humans get angry about not getting what they want. It can just say it tried and the man said no, and that’ll be that. How exactly are they going to prove the inverse?
The concept here isn’t to bring back everyone’s dead grandmother, at least not if she isn’t some hardcore witch or something. The last thing it needs is a senior league for the geriatrics to compete in.
Munera stops, thinking about it for a moment.
No, no. That’s dumb. It shakes what amounts to its head before returning its focus back to the arena. Today’s competition is already underway!
It’s actually very exciting.
Munera looks down at the arena as the next contestant lines up on his side of the dueling space. The seating area is full of excited spectators — some of them are even real people!
It has made some accommodations to allow the other participants in the games to access the seating area from their quarters. So now they can watch the events when they aren’t actively participating in them.
A small fairy steps into the left side of the arena, one of the original members, the ice fairy Frejvald, who currently has one of the highest scores of any member. He’s unusually tricky, and with this new game, he’s made a bit of a killing. A good thirty points just in the last two days. He’s already broken close to a total of fifty, which makes him very unpopular with some of the more poorly scoring champions of the arena, who are still ranging anywhere from zero to ten points, depending on their spending habits.
But that’s because of the outsiders. They haven’t studied him like the other contestants have, so he keeps fleecing them.
A surprising number of people are interested in this bargain. It seems enticing from the outside. Points are earned regularly, with the games beneficially running non-stop now in some form or another. If one does well and wins now and then, the exchange of points for things like currency that they can use on the outside, tools for their trades and dreams, or high-level gear that adventurers of a lower level can’t earn by themselves just yet, is very generous.
Seeing the tiny fairy boasting and show-boating in the middle of the arena, an orcish knight, a soldier from the nearby human city who had come because of the ‘advertising’ and then decided to stay, jumps down into the arena. Dust kicks and flies around his legs as he lands, his heavy weight and significant size making themselves both very visible as he towers over the tiny fairy.
He cracks his knuckles. “This is gonna pay for my new armor,” he says, smiling a grim smile as he looks down at his opponent.
The exchange rate for champion points to the national currency, Obols, is one point to ten coins.
An average, low-level adventurer earns around one-hundred obols a week in the easiest dungeons of the world by hunting goblins, giant rats and things of such natures. One single fight here in the colosseum, if won, can be a significant sum for anyone. Outsiders get a smaller payout, but this is to make the bribe given to join as a champion more enticing. A few of them have already taken it, actually. Perhaps this was naive, but after their victory and the consequent victory-rush they were in, fueled by the screams and cheers of the full stands of onlookers, it was easy to sell them the idea of just joining as a real contestant, and they went for it. They just won once, so why wouldn’t they win again and again? It’s easy, right?
A few days in the colosseum, and they’ll come out a good few steps ahead.
“In your size, you might need a little extra, big guy,” replies the fairy, crossing his arms and maintaining a smug smile.
— Of course, this is folly. Winning once doesn’t mean you’ll win twice, and once you’ve signed up to become a champion, that’s it. There’s no out anymore until you have your hundred points, no matter how long it takes.
Munera looks around the space. There is so much energy and vitality in here.
It hovers past the cages hung from the ceiling, in which frightened human children may or may not have been imprisoned above the gladiators, as they were given the best view of the fights in the house.
They did not appreciate it.
It seems that children are very spoiled these days.
But ignoring that, there is so much force of soul present within the dungeon now from living beings, from all of the fighting, the life energy, and the adrenaline, that this directly pushes spiritual power into the dungeon-core. They’re making it stronger and more powerful by fighting, by cheering, and by, uh, doing all of those other things they do in the quarters and the bath.
It tries not to watch them back there most of the time.
Suffice to say that there is a lot of ‘energy’ down here in the underground, sort of like a rabbit’s burrow. It must be the adrenaline.
The arena shakes, rumbling beneath the combatants who are heading to their respective sides of the arena to begin the duel.
People scream in confusion as the room shifts and changes. The full seating area is full of humans and elves who clutch onto rumbling stonework as their seats move, as the walls shift, and as the arena grows. The oval, egg-like arena expands outward into a full circle, expanding both the fighting space as well as the seating area, which was getting very cramped.
The people scream, cheering loudly as the inside of the arena quakes, the sand shaking as if in a tremor, as all around the arena rise stone walls and obstacles between the two duelists. Other pieces of it sink into the ground, creating pits and holes.
The ceiling above the generated walls is blocked off with a magical barrier, like a glass lid being set over the arena, to prevent the fairy from cheating and flying over the walls and out of reach of his opponent.
A sharp whistle fills the air as the fight begins. The arena moves, not only as the combatants run toward their opponents sides but also as the stonework itself begins to shift.
“Snacks!” wheezes a raspy voice, as the spectators go wild for the start of the games. “Get your…” it exhales slowly, its voice stopping for a moment. “…delicious snacks…” says the skeleton in a voice that is most certainly not incredibly suspicious. The monster stands there amongst the spectators, a box of food and bottled drinks is strapped to its chest with a few leather belts. It turns its head, looking at a woman clad in layers of dark robes there.
“Dear madam,” says the skeleton, opening the box for her to see. “Would you care for some…” it leans in, its hollow eyes looking at her face from up close. “…delicious treats?” asks the undead monstrosity, the impossible airflow of its words blowing over her face with the stench of undeath.
She gasps, looking at it, and then lifts a hand. Her finger rests on her lips, her other hand reaching out and touching the side of the skeleton’s face, caressing its bony cheek. “Are you the snack?” she asks in a playful tone. “Handsome.”
The skeleton stares blankly at her for a time, lowering its gaze to look at the many small bones and animal skull ornaments that she’s wearing over her black robes.
She’s a necromancer.
“— Excuse me,” says the skeleton, standing back upright and then walking away.
It is a short while later, down below the seating area. The skeleton sits there on an old crate with its hands folded together on the box of snacks resting on its lap.
“Hey!” barks Munera’s voice. “Get back out there and sell those snacks!” it orders. “We need the money for the point exchange.”
It lifts its gaze, looking at the presence of the dungeon-core. “Am I…” it wheezes. “- delectable?”
“…What?” asks Munera dryly.
The skeleton looks at its bony hands. “Would you eat me?”
Munera stares blankly. “…What the hell? Get back to work, or I’ll throw you into the arena!”
Skeletons as monsters aren’t really the most stable of constructs. They’re not really intelligent, but they’re also not unintelligent. They’re just kind of stuck in a weird space off from the middle and to the side. Usually they exist in packs, which helps mitigate this issue, as they work off their group senses to compensate. Skeletons, like fish, show emergent behavior as their numbers increase. Alone, they’re pretty stupid. However, a whole group of them can certainly achieve something incredible.
It rises to its feet. “Will I be eaten?”
“You will be if you don’t sell those sausages!” snaps Munera as the skeleton looks down at the box it’s holding.
“I understand,” says the skeleton, returning to its task.
The arena explodes into an eruption of cheers as the battle down below becomes particularly heated.
“Ma’am,” says the skeleton, returning to the stands, as it walks over to the necromancer it left before. She looks its way. “Would you care for…” it wheezes, opening the lid on the box. “- my sausages?” rasps the skeleton in its harrowing voice, a shrill whistle coming from the base of its neck as wind cuts over its old bones. “They are…” it begins, gesturing to the container as it looks at her. The woman is twirling a finger through her black hair, looking at it with a softly curious expression. “- Substantial.”
She gestures with a finger for it to lean over and then whispers into its ear, as it does with a smile.
“— Excuse me,” says the skeleton immediately after listening to her, standing back upright and then walking away.
It is a short while later, down below the seating area.
“SAU- SA- GES!” yells Munera at the skeleton that is once again sitting down below the seating area instead of doing its job.
Shrouded in the shadows of the underworld and the glow of bleak lanterns, the skeleton turns its head, looking at the presence of the dungeon-core.
“I believe that I am…” it wheezes. “- unsuited for this task,” it explains.
Munera sighs, considering if it should just summon a better monster to handle this job instead. “What? What’s the problem here?”
It shakes its bony head. “I do not know,” it replies, lifting the lid on the box and looking inside. “The customer requested a cold piece of meat,” explains the undead creature. “But…” Steam wafts from the container. “- We only have scorching delicacies.”
Munera sighs. “Just… forget it. Forget the snacks,” it orders. “Go out and find some more spectators or something.”
The skeleton shrieks in excitement, slowly rising to its feet.
“May I offer them… delicious, free candies?” it asks. “When I invite them?”
“Sure. Whatever,” replies the dungeon-core, Munera, busy summoning a new monster to handle concessions. “Go wild.”
The arena outside erupts into a frenzy as a victor is made clear.