“We already got one of the stones, an octagon ruby. We’re only left with the cleanup.”

“Great! But… What happened to you, Guinelle?”

“Don’t talk to me and test my morals, Ellen! I’m inevitably irked right now.”

“I hope the author didn’t do something dirty.”

After growling for seconds, Guinelle turned off her transmission. Ellen, who's currently with Kingsley, looked at him with narrowed eyes, questioning themselves on what happened on Guinelle’s end.

The rustling of leaves in the breeze, the distant call of birds, and the soft murmur of wind through hollow arches crafted the ambiance of profound stillness as Ellen and Kingsley stood before an ancient ruin a few meters away from the kingdom’s borders. The weather-worn stone pillars accompanied the half-crumbled buildings that are made of mossy bricks.

The chalky dust, scented of aged stone, mildew, and moistened earth, got mixed with the earthy accent of dead leaves as it entered their lungs. The stones were weathered and uneven, cool to the touch, and rough with centuries of erosion, while some of them presented intricate carvings.

Ellen, currently wearing heavy armor mixed with touches of silver and gray and a helmet with a portion of its face cut away, picked up her dug silver greatsword from the ground. Kingsley wore a navy blue cloak over his tank top and a black-and-white mask that was divided in the middle. His mask only had a hole in its eyes for his vision.

Quimora already provided their mission hours after she was kidnapped. As Guinelle and Xenos did, they initiated the mission with their disguises as Noir and Silence. Their mission was to track the red dot in their digital map showing Mary’s location.

“Old, abandoned, with no people lying around, this would be the best place to fuck. What are your plans, Silence?” Ellen asked.

Silence’s necklace was left intentionally on. However, the voice of a crying boy from the speaker resonated instead. “Mama… I wanna go home…”

“Was your persona a scared kid now? At least I’m expecting you to do anything but cause trouble.”

Silence’s gaze was fixated on a piece of cloth lying on the ground. It had a tiny distinct marking of a serpent wrapping a crow on its lower-left edge. Silence intended to avoid any attention as he closed his eyes in an attempt to stay calm, but his necklace… “I’m scared… Mama… MAMA! DON’T LEAVE ME, MAMA!”

Noir’s lips pressed together, flattening, as her face tightened. She crossed her arms, unable to discern Silence’s expression behind his mask. “I’ll try to bear with it and not get irritated. Just don’t try to speak when we’re saving the kids. It diminishes my morale.”

For every ruined building that existed, each had a trapdoor that led to the underground tunnels. They ventured into the Church-looking building and walked the slanted slope down the mysterious path. At the end of the road, a thick metallic gate welcomed them. A pedestal stood beside it, containing a flat plate with a thumb-sized hole in the middle.

“What’s this? An ancient fingerprint security system? That's the most mysterious and threatening of all the things I’ve fingered,” Noir commented.

“Mama, let’s go back… I’m scared!”

“Don’t call me Mama! It’s a nightmare if I discover that I have a forgotten abandoned son. Why are you becoming so out of character? Please be grateful that even if you’re mute, the author can fill out those missing word count quotas. Go on, say something different. Show don’t tell does apply.”

Their earpieces emitted a second of static sound before they got connected to Quimora. “Noir, where are you now?”

“We’re currently before a giant metallic door blocking the path below. It seems to need some body fluids.”

“Don’t make it sound dirty! Kids are accompanying me here. Do you encounter a pedestal with a thumb-sized hole?”

“Woah!” Noir exclaimed with a slow, disbelieving shake of her head. “You’re amazing, Nebula-sama! How did you know that?”

“Faggot! The mechanism seems to need the blood of royalty, probably the king’s blood, for it to be opened. I suppose you try to brute force your way in or find an alternate route.”

“Got it!” Noir distanced herself from the gate, dropped her sword, and glowed bright blue while accumulating the mana from her body and focusing it on her arm. As soon as she reached the maximum limit of her power, she charged towards the gate with the speed of an overclocked processor.

Ding!

She successfully slammed the door, but it didn’t dent a crack. Accompanied by a short quake, specks of dust showered them from the ceiling. The gates stood still, leaving unfazed due to their compressed composition.

“Whoever invented this was a jackass, though I would personally install this kind of door to avoid interruptions when making love in bed.” Noir soon gazed at Silence who stood before the pedestal. She asked, “What in the miracle world are you trying to do?”

Silence summoned a straight needle-like root from the ground and spiked his thumb with it. As a small droplet of blood bailed out its skin, he inserted his finger into the hole. A few seconds passed and Noir corded her neck since nothing happened still.

“Told ya, it will open only with royal’s blood. As she said earlier, Nebula-sama meant King Ar’s blood, not your blood, Kingsley. You haven’t been injected with anti-tetanus yet–”

Amidst Noir’s hushed anticipation, the earth trembled profoundly as the imposing metallic gates, thick and unyielding, crept open with an echoing groan. The colossal entrance revealed a tunnel continued with stairs and torches.

Until the gate fully opened, Noir’s hands flew over her wide-open mouth while sucking huge amounts of air, creating a squeezed squeal. How did he open the door? Does he have Kollaria’s bloodline? These unusual thoughts bombarded Noir’s mind, leaving her in awe and confusion. Unsure of what happened, Silence tilted his head and stared at her in awkward silence.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“Y… Your majesty… What the heck are you!?”

“Mama… I wanna go home…”

***

The Arena was practically a battle royale of kidnapped children with no abilities, mostly orphans. The whole place looked like a labyrinthine ant nest. At the very edge of every dead-end, which they call sacs, is where they place the children for days of hunger before the round initiates. Most of its participants were untrained and unskilled fighters who were roughly aged below 16. To survive, they needed to kill each other until the remaining participants were reduced to ten.

Mostly, the rules were never changed. I’m just shocked that every full moon, meaning every month, this experimentation commences without the full knowledge of the public. I’m wondering if this brutal refreshment had audiences watching in real time.

As per my underground sources, the winner will become the mayor’s underling and will be given that unattractive metallic getup. Like us, some here were forced to participate, while others volunteered in exchange for essential requests. Those who are at the lowest of the societal hierarchy would choose the latter.

For the announcements before and after the game, there’s only one person who can do it, the person they declared the Mayor. We already confirmed Gaul Illiadarne’s ability to command through mental communication made him suitable for the knight captain in the past. I suppose Undra Grivuke would be the same as well. Both of them share the same past, same traits, same roles, and maybe the same future as well. Now, since I’m involved in this grisly bloodbath, I can’t be as violent as I wish.

After all, we are all victims.

Gavin, who was currently lying and sleeping on the ground, groaned while unconsciously shaking his shoulders, trying to free himself from something. His tendons stood out his neck, showing his pulse visibly. As he was unaware he was currently wandering around an enigmatic nightmare, he cried, “Helena… Sister… Don’t leave me…”

Soon, he grasped reality by opening his eyes and running away from a recollection of an abhorrent trauma. Together with the ragged and uneven stalactites that hang like icicles on the ceiling, I, who was currently sitting over his abdomen, greeted him with a smile. “Good morning, sunshine! Missing something, aren’t we?”

“W–What are you doing!? Get off me!” With a flushed face, he exclaimed.

“Why?” With a rising tone, I asked.

“Why not? You’re too heavy!”

“You’re such a boring boy. No wonder no other girls are interested in you.”

“Just get out!”

Leaving over his body, I kneeled beside him. He stood up, scratching his head and trying to grasp the current situation. As he regained clarity of his vision, he wandered his pupils towards the walls that were textured with layers of sediment and rock formations, their colors ranging from deep, earthy reds and browns to cool, mineral blues and grays. The stalagmites arose from the floor, sometimes merging with their counterparts above to form massive, intricate columns.

We only have a single flickering magic-fueled lantern within this cave’s dark interior. We’re enveloped with a profound and almost eerie silence, broken only by the occasional drip of water from stalactites, each drop echoing softly in the cavernous space. Their room may be spherical, but their only way out was obstructed with spikes. At a certain edge lies a stash full of metallic equipment.

“I thought you had a plan? What the heck is this?”

“FYI, this is my plan. The moment I told you to get caught, I know already that you’ll accompany me in this ant nest. Your appearance was essential for this plan to work. Also, as a franchise owner, it’s nice to see someone with the shirt I’m currently selling.”

Gavin looked down at the logo on his shirt and hissed. He replied to me with a monotone irony of appreciation, “This is the worst kind of bad luck I’ve got from you. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome!”

“Quimora, w–who is he?” Melani, whose royal-grand dress was painted with scratches of dirt and coal, asked. When Gavin met her gaze, he jerked his head back, partnered with a short yelp. Her wrinkling brows made his face appear beet-red like it was slowly turning into a tomato.

“P–P–PRINCESS!?” Suddenly, he bowed facing her, with his hands on the floor. Not knowing how to act in front of a royal, he uttered every nonsense of apology. “I–I–I’m sorry! I didn’t know y–you’re here! P–Please forgive me!”

“I–It’s alright!” Melani, whose chin and lips were currently trembling, also stuttered. It was her first time talking to a boy. “D–Don’t sweat it. Y–You did nothing wrong. R–Right?”

“R–Right. I’m G–Gavin.”

“I’m… Melani. Y–You can call me Melani. It’s a–a pleasure to meet you, G–Gavin.”

“I–It’s also my pleasure! T–Talking to you face-to-face, it seems like I b–became someone p–privileged.”

Pivoting my narrowed eyes toward their faces simultaneously, it seemed like I was shaking my head. “What the heck? Can you nice guys halt the deflowering ceremony and act normal? You talk like braindead mechs lagging over a high ping.”

I noticed that they also had a bracelet, with a fragile and bright yellow crystal on its center, wrapping their wrists. This may be an important thing to keep related to the upcoming bloodbath.

““Sorry, Quimora.”” They scratched their heads and laughed slightly. Their synchronic response somehow irritated me. It’s the universal feeling of being a third wheel, a crow residing inside a lovebird’s cage. Do they know their place?

“Quimora, why is the princess here? Did she get kidnapped too?”

I pouted and shifted my head away from his gaze. “Don’t know, don’t care. Ask her. You two seemed to get along. Hmph!”

“I always don’t get you, Quimora. You’re too difficult to read,” he asked with drawn eyebrows while scratching his scalp.

Unfortunately, a voice interrupted our conversation. This deep, thick, and monotone voice, it should be Undra who was currently announcing the mechanics of this game in disguise.

Test, test. Ahem. You’re currently wondering why my voice reached through your head. You may also be asking yourselves where you are right now. To make matters short, you’re currently within the arena, and for you to survive, you need to defend yourself from your enemies. You can’t trust anyone. Every person you see will be your enemy and will try to kill you.

With the existing weapons in the nearby stash, you can choose how you can defend yourselves. However, unlike the previous rules, it will be a race, and those who fall behind will lose their lives. The crystals on your wrists will lose color over time. It will reset once you kill a person. Your goal is to escape this place by opening the exit doors using a royal’s blood as the key.

How can you get a royal’s blood? There’s currently someone among the participants who is a member of the royal family. Once you see her, you know what to do. That person’s your only way out of this labyrinth. Let’s start the game.

Clever move, before the game started, they already tagged the one to be hunted. If they have a grudge against us, especially the princess, then why didn’t they kill us in the first place? They all do the trouble and we’ll all meet our deaths in the end. There’s something unusual about how they move, specifically Undra.

After the telepathic transmission, the spikes obstructing our way out crumbled. I widened my eyes when Melani faced me with her wet eyes surrounded with tears. Hyperventilating, she asked, “What does that mean? Do they want… to kill me?”

I turned away and pressed the button on my earpiece. The static sound connected the transmission to Rox. Covering my mouth, I whispered, “Rox, I hope you’re currently not playing shit while we’re all in trouble. Stab the heart of my clone hiding behind the cabinet in my room. Do it now, quick!”

I already summoned three clones, including the body I’m in. I always left one clone in my room in random locations, while I left the second body in an important location where I'll return soon. This is my third clone, and to create another clone, I need to kill one of my clones. Since Rox can possess multiple bodies across distances, she would be the best for the job.

“Why so sudden? It seems that Mary’s signal was near to you too. Were you aware?”

“I’m always aware. Damn that anti-social telepathizer, turning the tables towards the unexpected future. I need the body. It’s inevitable to get away without dying.”

In this game of hide-and-seek against a pack of hungry wolves, we’re forced to be their prey.