“Brothers and sisters! Welcome back... to the Krumbledome!”

A booming voice echoes loudly across the entire arena, followed by the raucous cheers and applause of the thousands of excited onlookers in the audience.

Peeking through the gaps in the gate, I can see how absolutely packed to the brim the arena is. Members of the audience are practically spilling out of the stands, pushed up against the barrier and almost toppling down into the fighting pit below.

“I’m your host, the veteran adventurer and master of the arena, Grapple Krumble! It’s been a while, so I know you’ve all been waiting for this!” The booming voice echoes out again, followed by more cheers.

“Fwah! Whose voice is that? It’s loud!”

“Ah, that’s just the announcer. He’s using the loudspeaker to, uh... speak louder. Look.”

Mash joins me at the gate and points through the gap towards an area near the stands. Straining my eye muscles, I can see a man with a thick moustache looking down into the arena, his mouth pressed up against some kind of tube.

“He speaks into that end, and if you look all around the arena...” Mash points out all the metal rods with cone-shaped heads sticking out of the ground across the stadium. “That’s where the voice comes out. There’s a bunch of pipes built underneath the arena that carry the sound around. It’s some kind of dwarf technology.”

“Fwah! More dwarf magic!”

Right now, me and Mash are waiting in some gated tunnel next to the arena pit. Once all the introductions are done, the gate’s supposed to open and then we’re supposed to fight a bunch of people or something! I can’t wait!

“This time we’ve got something special for you, brothers and sisters!” the booming voice continues. “That’s right, it’s a Slave Tournament! Slavers and slave owners will pit the slaves they’ve trained and raised against one another in hand-to-hand combat! The last trainer standing will be crowned the new champion! The true slave master! It’s a tournament brought to you specially by the one and only... Queen Kokoro la Peppyseed herself!”

At the mention of Queen Kokoro’s name, the crowd goes absolutely wild. Members of the audience shout and chant her name, confessions of love towards their queen are screamed out across the stadium, and some are even driven into inconsolable sobs. I can see a lot of people are even wearing shirts with her face printed on the front, or waving around banners saying some variation of ‘I ♥ Kokoro’ on them.

“Does our esteemed and beloved Queen have any words for all of her adoring fans?”

Hm? At the words of the announcer, I scan the stands of the arena. Inconspicuously punching a hole through the metal gate to get a clearer look... Fwah!

At the top of the stands, I can see a fancy-looking booth overlooking the entire stadium, a row of silver knights standing guard below it. Inside the booth, a tall golden knight stands with a mighty trident held at their side. And beside the knight—sitting on her oversized throne—is Queen Kokoro la Peppyseed herself. With one leg crossed over the other and her chin resting against her hand—she gives a smug smirk.

Leaning over the armrest of her throne, she brings her mouth up to a small tube at her side. “Ahem...”

The sound of her clearing her throat echoes across the arena. Immediately, the thousands in the audience go deathly silent, awaiting the Queen’s words with bated breath.

“I like tournaments,” she says, her words rumbling through the air. “Thanks for coming, everyone.”

—And then she leans back in her throne.

Silence fills the stadium once again for a moment, before—

“I love you, Lady Kokoro!”

“She thanked me! Did you hear that?! I can’t believe she thanked me!”

“L-O-V-E KO-KO-RO! L-O-V-E KO-KO-RO!”

The crowd suddenly erupts into wild cheers, chants, and excited screams. Many of them are crying, and some have even fainted on their feet after having heard their beloved queen’s words.

“Well, brothers and sisters! Let’s... Let’s make this tournament a damn good one, shall we?” Taking over the loudspeaker once again, even the announcer is sniffling a little, clearly overwhelmed with emotion himself. “It’s time to finally introduce the contestants!... Open the gates!”

And with those words, the metal gate in front of us begins to rise.

"Fwah! Let's go, let's go, let's go!" I skip excitedly out into the sun, dragging the sweaty grease sponge along behind me.

“H-here we go, I guess...” Mash responds, clearly not as excited as I am about the whole situation.

Skipping out onto the hardened dirt of the arena floor, I find myself standing on the edge of the wide, circular battlefield. Dotted around the field at even intervals, nine other groups of people exit out of their own tunnels and stand by their gates. Each group is made up of one trainer and six of their slaves.

The announcer’s booming voice echoes across the arena once again.

“Alright, brothers and sisters! Slave Royale is the name of today’s game! Ten trainers enter the arena! Only one will move on to the next round! The rules are simple. Each trainer has six slaves they can bring into the arena. If a slave touches the trainer of another team, that team is out! The goal of the game is to manage your slaves so that they can protect you, while also knocking out the opposition!”

Right! All I have to do is tag the other trainers and make sure Mash doesn't get tagged himself. Simple!

“It seems we’ve got an interesting bunch out here today and... Oh? It looks like we’ve got a fan favourite out on the field! The A-Rank adventurer, Thradish Three-Tails!”

The crowd erupts in cheers as they point across at one of the groups in the distance. Mounted on the back of an unhappy-looking centaur man on the opposite side of the arena, a lizardman pumps his fist in the air to the applause of the audience. It looks like all six of the slaves he has with him are centaurs. Neat!

“Hm? And what’s this?” the announcer continues. “It looks like one of our contestants has only brought one slave with him! Could this be the grave mistake of a rookie? Or are we looking at the birth of a new meta? I’m excited to find out!”

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As I feel all eyes of the arena fall on me, I give a wide grin and wave across to all the people in the stands, making sure to blow a kiss to any cute girls I see in the audience.

“Alright, enough talking! Let’s get ready to Krumble! Let the Slave Royale... begin!”

On the announcer’s final word, an explosion of red smoke bursts loudly into the sky, signalling the start of the match.

“Okay, Pepper. I think our best bet is to avoid fighting for now and let the other teams wear themselves out. After that we can— Hm? Pepper?”

“Fwehehe... Who should we beat up first? I can’t decide...”

“P-Pepper?”

It seems Mash has some kind of plan in mind but it sounds boring so I’m choosing to veto it. In the distance, I can see some groups are already moving in on each other to attack.

“Alright! No point thinking about it! Let’s just go with that!”

“P-Pepper?!”

Ignoring the protests of Mash, I rush in on the group nearest to me. Taking a page from Mash’s ‘book of boring’, it seems they’ve decided to go for the sit-and-watch strategy too.

Well, they can sit and watch all they want from the sidelines once I beat them out of the tournament!

Following the wall, I sprint around the edge of the arena towards the group. Seeing my approach, the crack of a whip rings out and the slaves immediately form a defensive wall in front of their whip-happy master with a pained wince, taking up a fighting stance.

“Fwahaha!” I laugh, thrusting a finger directly ahead of me without slowing down one bit. “I’ve decided! It’s a suplex! I want to do a suplex! It’s been so long since I’ve done one!”

I can see the slaves start to sweat nervously as I close in on them. As the first one, a heavyset lizardman, steps out to intercept me— I jump.

Using the man’s scaly head as a stepping stone, I leap over the wall of slaves, landing directly behind their owner himself.

“Wha—!?” Before he can turn around in surprise, I wrap my muscular arms around his body and lean in close to his ear.

“Suplex,” I whisper.

“W-what does that mean? You’ve already tagged me so there’s no point in—!”

—And then I suplex him.

Bending my back into a perfect arch, I lift the man up off the ground and slam him into the dirt behind me, head first.

Fwah~! That felt great!

Picking myself up and dusting myself off, I look over at the slave trainer with his head buried in the dirt. Gripping him by the collar, I go to lift him up.

“Fwahaha! That was great! Hey, are you al—”

As I lift his face out of the dirt, I quickly decide that that was probably a bad idea, and carefully put it back into the ground again.

“Ah...” I turn back to his slaves as they glare at me in stunned silence. “I think he died somehow. Sorry.”

“I-is it true? Is he really dead?”

“Uh...” Avoiding eye contact with the shocked slave, I look over the man whose head and neck I had just turned into a wet pink pancake hanging from a floppy noodle. “Probably. B-but it wasn’t me though! He was already dead before I suplexed him! He must’ve had, like... cancer or something, I think.”

Hopefully they’ll buy that. Fwah... I’m not going to get in trouble for this, right?

Suddenly, the arena bursts into wild cheers and applause.

“Wow! It seems our solo-slave contestant has already wiped out one of the other teams!” The announcer’s voice rumbles across the stadium once again. “And would you look at that! Our first elimination of the tournament is already a fatality! There’s a lesson for all you other contestants out there, don’t let your guard down just because you’re not the one fighting! If you signed up for blood, be prepared to bleed!”

Fweh? So... It’s cool? I’m fine? I’m not gonna get in trouble for clearly killing that guy?

“Thanks for that,” one of the slaves, the large lizardman, says. Walking up to me, he takes my hand in one of his scaly claws and shakes it in gratitude. “That guy had it coming. I’m sure wherever we end up next, it’s bound to be better than with that scum.”

And then, with a sigh, he and the rest of his group go to leave the arena the way they came in, making sure to spit on the dead body on their way out.

“P-Pepper...” Finally waddling his way over, a wheezing and spluttering Mash collapses at my feet in exhaustion. “Why did you... run off like that?”

“Mash, look!” I point over at the body I had just killed. “He didn’t have cancer!”

“O-okay...?”

It seems I’m allowed to go all out in this tournament without worrying about accidentally killing somebody. I mean, I was planning on doing that from the start, but now I don’t have to lie about it!

“Oh! It looks like another team has been—! No, two more teams have been eliminated!”

Hm? Two?

Following the excitement of the crowd, I notice the commotion on the other side of the arena. While two groups were engaged in a stand-off where they each sent three slaves to attack while holding the rest to defend, the whole lot of them were quickly trampled into the dirt by a stampede of centaurs.

“The fan favourite, Thradish Three-Tails has just taken out two teams in one fell swoop!”

Mounted on the back of a centaur, the lizardman known as Thradish Three-Tails expertly commands his group of centaurs as he races across the battlefield. Behind him, his three reptilian tails crack the air like whips. Each tail is tipped with barbed metal and every crack instantly changes the formation of the charging centaurs at his complete and total command.

Like a spear, they break through the formation of another group of slaves and then—with a crack of one of his tails—they instantly form a moving wall around him in defense. In response, the other team is forced to call back all of its attackers and focus solely on defending themselves from this onslaught of expertly orchestrated attacks.

The announcer’s voice booms out over the cheers of the crowd.

“Thradish Three-Tails! You all know him! You all love him! Known for the expert use of his Cursed tails to slay his opponents or whip them into submission, this A-Rank, and fellow veteran adventurer is surely the one to keep an eye on this round!”

Hmm... Who should I go for next? That guy looks strong... Ah, but that one is closer. I really want to fight that guy too, but Mash is definitely gonna get tagged by that group if I head over there...

As I ponder my next move with uncertainty, I quickly wave the difficult thoughts from my mind and give a decisive nod.

“Fwah! I’ll just go with that then!”

No point in thinking about it too hard! If I can’t close the distance between any of the teams, then let’s just keep it open!

“Oh! It looks like Three-Tails is about to take his third elimination! Six steeds beneath a one-man cavalry! Are we looking at a complete blowout today? Could Thradish Three-Tails take the whole tournament and become the next slave master? It's looking like that could be the—!"

As Thradish Three-Tails shifts the formation of his charging centaurs from a defensive wall into a stampeding spear to finish off another group—

The lizardman’s head suddenly explodes in a shower of pink paste and red mist, leaving the rest of his body to slide wetly off the centaur’s back and fall to the floor in a bloody heap.

...

“... Huh?”

Letting out an audible expression of confusion, the announcer—along with the entire arena audience—goes silent at the sudden state of the fan favourite to win.

“... Huh?” The other contestants have also stopped their back-and-forth battles to glare over at the headless, three-tailed body lying on the floor.

“... Huh?” Even the centaur slave that was being used as a mount just moments ago is looking down in confusion at the sad heap now sprawled across the dirt, oozing a thick puddle of blood beneath his hoofed feet.

The only one who knows what just happened is...

“Fwahahaha!” A hearty laugh echoes across the arena, drawing the attention of every single person in the stadium as it punches cleanly through the confused silence.

—It’s me.

“Bullseye!”