“What are you doing?!” Mash complains, struggling in vain to pull me from my chair. “You have to stop doing this! Please!”

“Fweh? I’m juft eatin’. Obfioufly,” I reply, crunching down a whole cooked chicken between my teeth, bones and all. “You know, fo’ protein ‘n’ ftuff.”

“That’s not what I—! C-can you not talk and chew at the same time? It’s kind of gross and you’re spraying chicken all over me every time you—”

“I’m no’ groff!” I swallow. “You’re gross! You’re always flicking your greasy sweat all over the place and getting it all over me! This is just chicken! It’s food! It’s not weird to share food with your friends!”

“W-well, I can’t help it! And you’re not sharing it, you're just—! Wait... Y-you think of me as a friend...?”

“Sure! You don’t wanna be?”

“N-no, I do! I just always thought you didn’t like me very much...”

As Mash bashfully fidgets with his greasy sweat rag, I continue to shovel whole chickens into my mouth, washing them down with the nearby pot full of hot gravy.

“A-anyway!” Mash continues, attempting to tug me from my chair once again. “You have to stop doing this! They’ve started fining me every time you break or steal something now! It’s only been one day and it’s already getting really expensive!”

“Fwah? I haffen’ b’oken o’ ftolen anyfin’!”

"You've broken into the staff kitchen and are currently stealing their breakfast!”

Last night, after wandering around beneath the stadium for a while, I managed to find some kind of cafeteria or something with a bunch of knights and slavers eating in it. I pulled up at one of the tables and helped myself to the food being brought out but, after a while, they stopped bringing out food. And so, taking my chair with me, I decided to head directly into the kitchen and plopped myself right down in there.

Right now, a bunch of cooks are frantically running around the kitchen, whipping up platefuls of food for me. I was gonna leave when they did, but they’ve just been continuing to cook for me the whole night, so I ended up sticking around until the early hours of the morning. I don’t know why, but most of them are in tears for some reason.

“Why aren’t the knights doing anything?!” one of them sobs.

“They can’t!” another whines. “That’s the Man Eater, you know! The one from Bredkrum! I heard she escaped from the ninety-ninth floor of Surstrom Spire!”

“I just want to go home...”

“Quiet! If we keep feeding her, maybe she won’t eat us!”

In the corner of the room, some guy in a suit scribbles something down into a notebook every time I chug down another chicken. He’s been stalking me around the stadium for a while now, mumbling something about ‘fines’ while writing in his notebook every time I go somewhere or eat something I’m apparently not supposed to.

“Look,” Mash says, shaking my shoulder. “It’s already morning! It’s time to meet up with your fiancee now. She's probably waiting for us behind the stadium. In the rejected section."

“Fweh? Who?”

“Th-the dwarf? The pink-haired one? The one you said—”

“Fwah! Right! Mei-Mei!”

Jumping out of my chair and pushing past Mash, I race out of the kitchen and back through the cafeteria. I notice a heavy sigh of relief breathe out at my back from all the kitchen staff as I make my quick exit.

Skipping through the stadium and past several door-knights who seem more than happy to let me pass without any trouble—instead choosing to exchange a few short words with the suited man hurrying along after me who promptly scribbles something into his notebook again—I eventually find myself in the outside walled-off section behind the building.

Various cages of different sizes are clumped together across the dirt, with grouped-up tents set up around the edges, close to the walls. Each of them packed with ragged and unhappy-looking people wearing metal collars. Slaves. It’s a lot like the camp we were staying at before coming to the city, except smaller, and a lot more cramped.

Wandering between the cages and peeking through the bars, I notice that these particular slaves are a lot less... healthier-looking than the ones inside the stadium. Not really fit for the arena at all. Are these the ones Mei-Mei wanted us to pick from...?

“Oh? Looks like the gorilla made it.” On that thought, a familiar voice calls out to me and the dead dwarf herself wanders over to my side. “Where’s the sweaty guy?”

“Slow loris,” I correct her. “Gorillas aren’t cute. And I dunno where Mash is. Last I saw he was in the kitchen complaining about sharing my chicken with him or something.”

“Okay, seriously, what even is a—?”

“Fwah! There he is!”

Stumbling his way over to us, an especially sweaty Mash finally makes his way out into the walled-off area behind the stadium, muttering to himself under each laboured breath about ‘fines’ and ‘getting in trouble’ or something.

With the three of us now together, Mei-Mei gestures for us to follow, leading the way through the cluster of cages packed full of slaves. I can’t help but notice the heavy stink of body odour and rotting bowels wafting off my two companions as we walk along. Mash is a lost cause, but when I asked Mei-Mei about her stink before, she insisted it was because she was ‘working on something fun’. Whatever that means.

“This is the rejected section,” she explains. “Slaves without masters are dumped here. Usually those too sick, old, or injured to be of any use to anyone. They’re technically the property of the city now, but they’re all available for a small fee. These are the ones you’ll be picking from.”

“Eh? There’s a reason they call it the ‘rejected’ section though...” Mash comments. “Is there any point in taking one? Isn’t Pepper enough?”

“Well, it can’t hurt,” she replies. “The gorilla’s strong, but she’s an idiot. I’m sure the Analyst has figured that out by now and is setting up some kind of anti-idiot countermeasure. I can’t say if it’ll work or not, but we should have a backup just in case.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“I-I guess so...” Mash seems a little less-than-confident as he browses over all the sickly and decrepit people stuffed into each cage.

“Keh-heh. Don’t worry,” Mei-Mei assures him, cackling to herself. “I’ve already got one in mind.”

Leading us through the labyrinth of cages, Mei-Mei eventually stops at an especially large one that towers high above all the others. Heavy chains bind and shackle the single bound creature inside the cage. A troll. And not just any troll...

“Fwah! It’s that one! The one at the camp!”

The captured troll in front of us is unmistakably the same one that was kicking cages and rampaging around Cinnamon's slaver camp back then. The one that got a faceful of confetti and slapped me out of the air. Usually I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between one troll and another, but I can tell that this is the same one because—

“I-it’s dead,” Mash comments. “Even if I wanted to keep a troll, this one is clearly dead...”

A giant, gaping hole sits in the centre of the troll’s body. It’s the wound the golden knight, Lemon, dealt after she threw something at it and left it to bleed out across the dirt. The troll’s natural complexion has somehow become an even sicklier shade of greenish-grey and flies have started to buzz around it, crawling in and out of the festering wound.

“It’s fine,” Mei-Mei assures. “It’s just sleeping.”

“I-it’s not moving through.”

“It’s sleeping.”

“It’s not breathing either.”

“W-well...”

"It stinks," I comment. "And one of its eyes is drooping out."

The troll is dead. Totally dead. As an expert on dead trolls with over twenty years of first-hand experience, there is no doubt in my mind that this troll is nothing but a semi-rotting corpse at this point.

Silencing us with a wave of her hand, Mei-Mei clicks her fingers at a nearby slaver to get their attention. “This troll, it’s still for sale, right?” she asks him.

“Huh? Ah, yeah, it is,” he replies. “Not sure why you’d wanna buy it though. It doesn’t really do much, and if I hadn’t seen it move with my own eyes, I woulda thought it was dead.”

“Fweh? This thing was moving?”

“Sure was. Just a couple hours ago it was waving its arms around like a newborn babe or something. Lotta weird squelching noises coming out of it every night too. Don’t know what’s up with that.”

Waving the slaver away, Mei-Mei turns her attention back to Mash. “See? It’s fine. Buy it.”

“O-okay, if you say so...”

Fetching somebody who looks like they’re in charge, Mash hands them a few coins in exchange for ownership over the apparently-still-alive troll. I guess we’ll come back to pick it up later? It’s not like we can really take it with us now...

“Huh? Wait, are monsters even allowed in the arena?” I ask in realization. “I’ve not seen any.”

“Technically, they are,” Mash replies. “But nobody uses them because they’re impossible to control...”

Ah, that makes sense. I can imagine a lot of slavers attempting to wrangle a kobold or something into the arena to fight for them, only to promptly get torn to shreds by their own slave as soon as the match begins.

“Anyway,” Mei-Mei claps her hands together eagerly. “Shall we buy one more then? It can’t hurt to have a third.”

And so, the three of us continue to browse through the selection of slaves. Most slave battles in the arena seem to be a three versus three match, so with me and the troll, we could potentially pick up one more slave, just in case. I don’t think we really need one, but buying a slave sounds fun! I wonder if there are any cute girls in here...

Licking my lips as I skip through the rows of cages, I try to find one that looks like it has a cute girl inside, however—

“Ah...” Me and Mei-Mei stop in our tracks as we pass by one of the captive slaves, a familiar voice spouting out an unending torrent of complaints from inside as the familiar feeble figure wearing his familiar purple tracksuit rattles noisily at the confines of his cage.

“... definitely harassment, right?! Why am I by myself when everybody else is crammed into cages with other people?! I mean, I don’t mind not being jammed in with a bunch of sweaty old guys, but isn’t it weird that I’m by myself in the first place?! It’s like people are avoiding me for some reason! Isn’t that weird?! It’s weird, right?!”

Leaning in close, Mei-Mei whispers up to me. "He hasn't noticed us yet. We could just leave him here if you want?"

“I wasn't let out during the rebellion either!” the man continues to complain. “Why?! I’m a slave too! Why aren’t I allowed to rebel?! Not that I would have rebelled in the first place... But at least give me the choice!”

Well, he’s not exactly a ‘cute girl’. But I can’t just leave him here. He’s a friend, after all!

“And what’s with the food in this place?! I haven’t eaten anything decent in weeks! I’m really grateful to whoever keeps leaving cups of pudding in my cage, but please leave me something normal as well! I can’t live off of—!”

“Fwahaha!” I skip over to the cage and push my face up against the bars, shooting the man inside a huge grin. “Bran! What’s up?”

It’s Bran.

Somebody who complains that much could only be the whiny, pants-pooping human I made friends with back in the Curse Ward of Surstrom Spire. I haven’t seen him since the Spire collapsed and we all got washed away across the lake.

“P-Pepper... Mei-Mei...” Seeing the two of us approach, Bran’s eyes start to well up with tears. “You guys really came for me...”

“Fweh? Ah, uh... Sure." Me and Mei-Mei exchange a quick look before both shrugging in unison. "We came here for you. Yeah."

“Finally! You guys wouldn’t believe what I’ve had to—!”

“Yeah, yeah. We get it. Save it for later.” With a sigh, Mei-Mei waves over another nearby slaver and nods towards Bran. “How much for this one?” she asks him.

“That guy?” the slaver responds. “Just take him. You’ll be doing us a favour.”

Taking out a key, the slaver unlocks Bran’s cage and promptly walks away again, whistling a happy little tune as he does.

“Why?!” Bran complains, stepping out of his unlocked cage. “If I didn’t cost anything this whole time, why was I even in there in the first place?! What’s the point?! This is just plain harassment, right? And why was that guy so happy to be rid of me?! Why was he whistling?! I’ve never seen him that happy in all the time I’ve been forced to spend in here!”

“Fwah~! I missed this!” I give Bran a friendly ruffle of his flaky purple head before turning back to Mei-Mei. “Didn’t you miss this?”

“No!”

Mei-Mei might pretend not to, but I know she missed Bran’s incessant complaining just the same... Maybe.

“Huh? Who’s the sweaty old guy?” Bran asks, seemingly finished with his stream of complaints, and gives a nod towards Mash

“He’s you, except a little stinker, and a little less complainy.”

At my answer, Mash and Bran exchange a conflicted glance.

“A-anyway.” Mash speaks up. “Now that I’ve got three slaves, we should be fine to fight the Analyst in the arena now, right?”

“Fwahaha! Right!”

“Keh-heh! Don’t worry. That troll will be well worth it, I promise.”

“... Eh? Fight the Analyst? What does that—? Wait, the arena? You guys didn’t come here just to get me out?”

As the four of us make our way out of the rejected area and back into the stadium, one final string of complaints echoes out into the morning sky.

“What do you mean I have to fight in the arena?! Why?! Put me back in the damn cage in that case! Put me back in the cage, or put me in a romantic-comedy already because I’m sick of this action genre! Sick of it! I wanted to be in a rom-com, dammit!”