"How are the Colosseum preparations going?"
I couldn't answer Min-seo's question when I ran into her by chance in the market.
"Why didn't you tell me the shop's items show up in duplicate?"
"You know now."
The shop's items had come out like garbage, so much that the month of preparation felt short.
"Good timing, then. The Colosseum schedule is out."
When I took the sheet Min-seo held out, it was packed with Colosseum dates. She hadn't contacted me once the whole month, as if her business with me were done, and only now did she hand me the schedule. A schedule that had me taking part as soon as tomorrow, no less.
When I looked at Min-seo, dumbfounded, she caught my meaning and still just smiled, covering it with a laugh. I really couldn't tell what she was thinking. The only certain thing was that Min-seo wasn't on my side yet. She was helping me only as long as I was of use.
"I'd like to push the schedule back a little."
"Is there a good reason?"
She did ask, at least, but she seemed to have no intention of changing it.
"By my calculations, B difficulty is likely to come up this time, and I don't have enough items."
"Don't worry. This time it's D."
As expected, I got nowhere. Brushing me off lightly, Min-seo even set the time we would meet tomorrow.
"How can you be sure it'll be D?"
It was the first time I had pushed back on what Min-seo said. And with reason: difficulty mattered when taking part in the Colosseum. Her attitude, dismissing the conclusion I had reached by analyzing the order and pattern of the games so far, put me a little on edge.
"Two or more games in a row have ended without a winner. There'll be a difficulty adjustment."
"Win rates affect the pattern too?"
I had been absorbed only in analyzing the order the games came out in, like a computer, but if that was the case, the calculation got far more complicated.
"Would anyone like it if the bets fell through and the round went bust?"
As far as I knew, not everyone had died in the very last match. There had been investors who walked away with points, too.
"What matters is the fun."
"Understood. I'll see you tomorrow."
It didn't make sense to me. Even if it made no difference to the ghosts whether a few survived or all of them died, the outcome would still be decided, and there was the side effect of emotions like terror, fear, and despair coming out of it, so I couldn't accept that they adjusted the difficulty for fun.
'Still, Min-seo is sure of it, so let's just let it go.'
If B difficulty wasn't coming up right away, it was better to build experience while the difficulty was even a little lower.
***
The day of the Colosseum.
A man I met in the participants' waiting room came over to me warmly.
"Nice to meet you. You're Experienced, I take it."
I hesitated over whether to take his outstretched hand and shook it half-heartedly. I didn't particularly want to get friendly with people I met in the market, but if he knew I was Experienced, he could be my equal or an Expert other than Min-seo, so I forced an expression.
"Are you Experienced yourself?"
"Ah, yes. I only just came back from abroad, so it's been a while since I've been in the Korean market."
I was curious. I wondered whether the Ghost Story Markets abroad had saner people than Korea's.
The man made a fresh impression, just like Min-seo had the first time I saw her.
"I take it your home base is abroad."
"It is, but I'm on the run, so I'll probably be in Korea for a while."
On the run....
That meant he had caused an incident that even a C-Grade wish couldn't cover.
I didn't want to hear the details, so I hurriedly wrapped up the pleasantries.
"By the way, are you acquainted with the Expert over there, by any chance?"
He pointed straight at Min-seo as he asked, and I stalled, not wanting to answer. If he had struck up a friendly conversation because of Min-seo, all the more reason I couldn't tell him anything about her.
"I heard she's one of the five in Korea. Could you introduce me?"
"I've only seen her face a few times myself. We're not close."
"That's great, then. So you do know her by sight."
I was growing more and more uncomfortable with the man, who kept talking to me despite my refusal, when the waiting room door burst open and a familiar voice rang out.
"Ugh, damn! I was almost late!"
At Ocheonsa's unexpected appearance, I made a dumbfounded face and frowned slightly.
"What a cute kid."
In that instant, the face of the man I had taken for a normal person turned lecherous. On top of that, the way his eyes crawled over Ocheonsa from her toes to the top of her head was grotesquely slimy.
"I wonder how old she is?"
"...It's about to start, so I'll excuse myself."
The man put on the same expression as at first, as if none of it had happened, and with a kindly face waved his hand and said, 'See you later.'
***
[Hello, everyone. The Colosseum's Manager of Wailing! It's Falsehood!]
The announcer's patter echoed through the center of the Colosseum. The ghosts' thunderous roars poured down, announcing the start of the game.
[Right! What will today's game be?! Spin~ spin~ the wheel!]
The eyeball of the wheel that shot up in the center spun fast, making a grotesque creaking sound.
DING-A-LING—
[Today's game is Human Hammering!]
I hadn't really expected a D-difficulty game, but just as Min-seo had predicted, D came up, though the content of a game called Human Hammering was a bit hard to make sense of.
[Right! Everyone, the game has been decided! Participants, please come to the center!]
When I went out into the Colosseum mixed in with the participants, I could also see the man and Ocheonsa some way off.
'What were the rules of Human Hammering?'
It was a game that hadn't been in the notebook, but I had bought the list of Colosseum games with a wish ticket and gone over it carefully. Still, with so many games, plus new ones being added, I couldn't remember.
[Since this is the first game with this group of participants, today only, I'll specially explain the rules.]
As I thought, this game hadn't been on the list. No wonder I couldn't remember it.
When Falsehood stretched out a hand, a spotlight shone down and revealed people buried in the ground. Matched to the number of participants, there were six rows, ten people to a row, their faces poking neatly out of the earth.
The sight of humans on the verge of being buried alive wasn't pleasant to look at.
[The rules are simple! Be the first to bury those people in the ground, all the way to the top of their heads!]
However you dressed it up, it meant kill them. It was the biggest crisis of my life. The market might be beyond the reach of any law, but now I was supposed to kill someone with my own hands.
[The time limit is 5 minutes. Those who finish first may invade other people's rows! You'll get 1 point for every two!]
He said it simply, but with a time limit attached, it was fairly grueling work. But there was the advantage of the Colosseum clause that allowed weapons and items. As it happened, the [Grim Reaper's Left Hand] I had bought from the shop had a 5-minute limit too. It was a chance to try it out.
'I don't know how to use it. Will it be all right?'
I hadn't even made up my mind to kill anyone, yet with the game imminent, here I was worrying about how to use an item, and the irony of the moment drew a snort of laughter out of me. By now I accepted whatever the market threw at me as a matter of course.
"Hey~ Mister Manager, how do we know when they're dead?"
Ocheonsa, who had come into the arena still sucking on a candy, fearlessly called Falsehood 'mister' as she asked her question. I sucked in a sharp breath, but it was a question that needed asking, so I held my breath and waited for Falsehood's answer.
'Is it fine as long as they're buried even if they're still breathing, or do you have to finish them off completely....'
Not that the result would be any different.
The arena floor today was sticky mud, so whatever happened to the last ones, the first person buried could suffocate, unable to breathe.
[The consumables in the ground are scrap that didn't even sell at auction, so when they die, their souls float up and go into this! The number of souls is then displayed!]
"Ah! Okay."
Ocheonsa turned her eyes to the reader behind her and nodded.
Consumables for soul collection.
A game whose rules made the Colosseum's participants do the scrap collection for them while they enjoyed the show. I understood it perfectly.
[Spectators, please write down your rankings from 1st to 6th and cast your votes!]
Under Falsehood's direction, the ghosts in the stands started writing down numbers, heating up over the betting. It seemed that in this game, even though it was a D-difficulty game, the safety of those who placed was guaranteed. That meant you could avoid the penalty as long as you weren't dead last.
[Voting is complete. Right! Everyone, take your place in front of your row! 3. 2. 1. Start!!!]
BEEP—!
The match began with the blast of a whistle.
[Grim Reaper's Left Hand] activated.
When I opened my item box and released the lock, a monstrous black hand settled over my left hand.
Instead of striking the person stuck in the ground right away, I looked around to get a sense of the mood.
Min-seo had also taken out a huge hammer the size of a refrigerator, and the man I had met in the waiting room spun some kind of roulette, then pulled out a giant foot and equipped it.
The people without items also gripped the weapons they had brought into the arena. But meanwhile, Ocheonsa took out nothing and crunched the candy in her mouth.
BANG! BANG!
Min-seo and the man began smashing down on the people. Heads were crushed under the huge hammer and the giant foot, and blood began to spray in every direction.
"S... save me!"
The people who were conscious began begging the participants to save them. The man in front of me also seemed to have come to, and he was howling at me, begging for his life.
'No. Don't waver. There's no time to hesitate now. I have to do it.'
This was no time to dither. Where I stood now was the middle of the Ghost Story Market's Colosseum. To avoid coming last, I squeezed both eyes shut, barely raised my left hand, which didn't want to rise, and brought it down on the man's head.
RUMBLE!! KABOOM—!
The man was driven into the ground, then sank right in with a whoosh. When I looked down into the hole, his head was crushed so flat it couldn't be told apart from his neck. Like a dullahan.
I was dumbfounded.
And the moment I saw the crushed man, my churning heart went cold and calm, like a fuse blowing with a fzzt—. In the end, I had killed a person with my own hands. Only the first time is hard; now that I had started, I had to place.
But... I had thought it would work about as well as the items the other two were using, but its power was far more tremendous than I had thought.
'Ahem! Well, shall I keep playing....'
I cleared my throat once and struck a little more carefully this time, and the man's head went into the ground until only his black hair showed. The first time seemed to have been a problem of controlling my strength; after that, the game went smoothly.
[No. 2011, through in 1st place!]
[No. 2666, through in 2nd place!]
The two using items placed in that order, seconds apart.
To get in the rankings myself, I hurried and struck the seventh person's head with my hand and aimed for the next person's head without hesitation.
I was so calm and indifferent that I could hardly believe I was crushing people's heads right now. It was as if I were playing whack-a-mole.
[No. 3029, through in 3rd place!]
When I mashed the last person's head like a potato, a voice rang out saying I had placed.
Now that I had some breathing room, I thought of Ocheonsa, who had had no items or weapons, and when I turned my head that way, Ocheonsa was mercilessly stomping on the head of a person stuck in the ground.
'Is that even possible?'
A girl's leg strength shouldn't drive a person in like that in just a few stomps, but Ocheonsa had already driven four people into the ground.
When I glanced at the other participants, they were at four and five. The moment I thought Ocheonsa wasn't going to escape last place, the man from earlier came running toward her. Then he started driving her moles in for her, starting from the end of her row.
'Ah. Come to think of it, invading other rows is allowed.'
What the man was doing looked like nothing but helping, not invading, but it wasn't against the rules.
[No. 5004, through in 4th place!]
In the end, it turned into a fight between the two participants using weapons to avoid last place.