Right after the closing was declared.
The first thing Riyan did upon waking from unconsciousness was check his whereabouts and his physical condition.
The surroundings had a fairly cozy atmosphere. He was satisfied, first of all, that it wasn't the sort of place prisoners were thrown into. It meant the plan hadn't gone entirely wrong.
Second, his physical condition wasn't bad either.
His broken ribs seemed to have been treated; a twinge remained, but there was no pain as if his lungs were being wrung. The burns he had suffered from Yabrik's aura also seemed to have healed without aftereffects.
‘Looks like the Empire took care of me.’
It could be called good news, of sorts.
As Riyan was examining his body step by step, it grew noisy outside the door, as though someone had come after hearing he was awake.
The cause was Haral.
“I'm an instructor. Haral, an instructor at the Rhodus Gladiator School, I said! I'm the one who manages that gladiator! Don't you see my identification tag? I can't even see my own gladiator?”
“It's a bit difficult right now.”
“It'll only take a moment! We need to know his condition so we can prepare treatment or whatever, don't we?”
“The arena has already handled all the treatment, though.”
“No, his heart could be hurt, too!”
“H-his heart?”
“Anyway, let me in! Let me in!”
“......One minute only.”
When permission came, Haral all but shoved the guard aside and squeezed into the waiting room.
And the first thing he did was rush over in a single bound and squeeze Riyan's cheeks with both hands.
“You bastard, you pretty bastard, you goddamn bastard!”
“Pick one.”
“Well done! Well done!”
Then he hugged Riyan tightly.
Setting aside the scratchy stubble scraping his cheek, Riyan was about to push him away because of the twinge in his chest when a low whisper reached his ear.
“Someone's going to come.”
“.......”
“Handle yourself carefully. You're in danger right now.”
Then, pulling Riyan out of his embrace, Haral smiled broadly again and patted his shoulder.
“Wow, you fought well, huh? This time, you kept to the three I'm always talking about. Usually, you're damn bad at that.”
“Is that so?”
“I'm telling you. Didn't I say you just have to fight the way you usually are? That your honesty and simplicity could be your strengths. You bastard, well done.”
When Haral finished, a guard approached.
“You need to leave now.”
“Already? Geez, that's short. Well then, Riyan, see you later.”
Haral, practically seized and dragged away by the guard, disappeared.
Riyan watched his back and tilted his head.
‘There's a bone in his words.’
First, the three he claimed he always talked about.
That was an unspoken rule spread throughout the Rhodus Gladiator School. And it was true that Riyan usually failed to keep it.
But it didn't refer to a concept in gladiatorial combat. It meant what it actually pointed to was something else.
Never talk back to an instructor more than three times.
He seemed to have expressed that metaphorically. Since he had said someone was coming, it must have been advice about how to behave toward them.
‘Then the second.......’
Honesty and simplicity.
Riyan wasn't the type to dress himself up, but even so, he thought he was quite different from what Haral had just described.
In fact, didn't Haral usually say he was like an old man in a boy's body, and find him unsettling?
‘Is he telling me not to act too clever?’
Then the last one remaining was relatively clear.
‘Should I trust him?’
The answer was yes.
It wasn't the kind of human trust or faith born from the exchanges they had built up. It was from an entirely realistic standpoint. In a way, Haral and he were in the same boat, bound by a shared fate. Hadn't he placed a bet?
The Empire's net would be tightly woven.
If it were concluded that Riyan harbored impure intentions toward the Empire, Haral could also end up looking like he had colluded with that subversive.
As for whether the Empire would be lenient even in that respect, it was hard to be optimistic.
‘That's partly why he made such a fuss.’
Judging by his usual character, he wasn't the kind of man to squeeze Riyan's cheeks and pat his shoulder. As Riyan had thought before, Haral was someone who saw him as a black-hearted old man in a young body.
But his actions were the complete opposite. It was as though he could hear Haral's true thoughts.
‘You're not the only one who'll croak, you fucking mutt!’
Riyan let out a faint laugh.
Just then.
A clanking metallic sound came. It was a familiar sound. The sound someone in armor deliberately makes for formality's sake when saluting.
“Is he inside?”
“Yes, sir!”
It was a voice he remembered. A tone that seemed indifferent, yet was tinged with a distinct crankiness. It had to be the Supervisor.
Riyan lowered his legs off the bed. Then he straightened his back and slowly closed and opened his eyes once.
“You look well.”
Seeing Riyan, the Supervisor smiled.
“Greetings, Supervisor.”
“Sit comfortably. That would be better in many ways. You must be tired.”
Scrape.
The Supervisor dragged a chair over and placed it in front of the bed where Riyan had been half lying. Then he sat on it, crossed his legs, and spread out the bundle of papers he had brought.
Next, taking a single-lensed monocle from inside his coat, the Supervisor fitted it to his right eye and casually scanned the papers in his hand. The gentle smile remained the whole time.
“Thank you for your consideration.”
“Consideration? It's only the reward a victorious gladiator deserves. That aside, I have a few questions. They aren't difficult, so I'd appreciate it if you answered sincerely.”
Keeping his gaze fixed on the unfolded papers, the Supervisor paused, then spoke again.
“First, how did you beat Yabrik?”
“I wounded him, cut off his wrist, then slashed his ankles.”
“.......”
Not that it was wrong.
But it wasn't the answer he had wanted, so the Supervisor cleared his throat.
“I mean, how did you do that? Yabrik has a Masterpiece.”
“Director Berka of the Rhodus Gladiator School told me about the Masterpiece in detail. Instructor Haral also took full charge of me and helped me thoroughly prepare countermeasures.”
It wasn't a lie. They really had told him and passed on to him everything they knew.
“Not everything in the world works out just through teaching and learning, does it?”
“I was also lucky. Yabrik let his guard down, so I was able to start with an advantage.”
The Supervisor scratched the tip of his nose.
“That doesn't seem to fall within the ordinary, either.”
“There are always exceptions, aren't there?”
“......That's true.”
Put that way, it actually seemed to make some sense to the Supervisor.
He had knocked around the arena for decades. Had he never once seen a genius in all that time?
Besides, a gladiator's life was, after all, a life on a knife's edge, where a single moment's carelessness could bring everything down.
“Good. Then let's move on to the next question. Why didn't you kill Yabrik right away? You could have won cleanly.”
Composing his expression again, the Supervisor asked.
Had he eaten? Had he slept well last night? The atmosphere was as ordinary as if he were asking such things, but Riyan wasn't blind to the intent hidden behind that casual attitude.
“I didn't want to die.”
“No, that's not it. I asked why you didn't kill Yabrik.”
“It's exactly as I said. Because I didn't want to die.”
The Supervisor's eyes left the papers.
Then his gaze turned to Riyan. Because of the flickering candlelight, what lay beyond the blurred monocle couldn't be seen.
“You didn't want to die? Is that a reason to keep him alive?”
“It was a Victory Streak Match. I heard that for the next gladiator to come out, only one person must remain in the Arena. That's why I kept Yabrik alive.”
“Go on.”
“After taking Yabrik down, I was at my limit. As you know, Supervisor.”
Riyan glanced at his chest, wrapped tightly in bandages. The parts that couldn't be covered were bruised beyond blue, nearly black.
“......I wasn't confident I could face the gladiators coming after, so I kept Yabrik breathing.”
“Did you sense that was the way to keep your own head attached?”
“Yes.”
The Supervisor crossed his arms.
Then he jerked his chin as if to say go on.
“The mood was good. Most of the crowd wanted Yabrik to lose, didn't they? They even mistook it for mercy when I left Yabrik alone because I didn't want to die. I had a feeling things might work out.”
“Is that so.......”
Shifting his gaze back to the papers, the Supervisor trailed off.
Then, a moment later, he continued in a low voice.
“But that alone isn't a sufficient explanation.”
“.......”
“That answer contradicts your choosing the first slot. If you were so worried about the structure of the Victory Streak Match, you should have chosen a later one. Whether it was possible or not, you should at least have tried. But you chose the first slot without the slightest hesitation. It doesn't add up.”
“I believe it was a fate I couldn't defy.”
“Couldn't defy?”
“Because of the monster I killed.”
The Supervisor's eyebrow twitched.
“What about it?”
“I had a task to prove that it wasn't a coincidence, so I chose the first slot. I was also confident I could win them all. The problem was that I made a mistake and let a blow through.”
The Supervisor ended up laughing.
What a slippery old serpent.
It was a clever answer. He had taken words that could practically be an accusation against Marquis Noveil—‘You killed the Treasurer's beloved monster, so it's not as if they'd give you a later slot, right?’—turned them into a matter of proof, and taken it upon himself.
‘Does he truly mean it?’
When he had first interviewed him, the Supervisor had asked if he hated His Majesty the Emperor. And when he answered yes, the Supervisor had praised it as a fine attitude.
But the emperor was merely the being who literally symbolized the Empire itself. Rather than an individual, he was closer to a personality given to the collective called the Empire, a mass of tangible and intangible things bound together.
So if one hated the Empire, one had to hate the emperor.
But the case of the Treasurer, Marquis Fenric Noveil, was different.
If there were a religion called gladiatorial combat, Marquis Fenric Noveil would be the god that religion worshipped. And since gladiators were bound to the temple called the Colosseum, they could be called its believers.
Blasphemy.
Riyan had sidestepped an irreversible sin of sacrilege that no reason could ever excuse.
‘Or was it calculated?’
Either way was fine.
Sincere or not.
If the former, it was the birth of a fine zealot, at any rate.
If the latter, he would just have to keep a closer eye on him.
‘In any case, the vetting's already done.......’
In just two matches, he had defeated a monster and Yabrik.
It was no exaggeration to call it the most unprecedented winning streak since the Imperial Colosseum came into being, and there was no way the Empire wouldn't suspect the young gladiator who had worked such a miracle.
After putting him into a deep sleep through some treatment, a summoned imperial mage examined the kid's body thoroughly, then spoke.
‘Nothing.’
He said he couldn't feel even a single hair's worth of mana.
They brought in several more mages afterward for cross-verification, but the result was the same.
That meant, at the very least, that he wasn't an artificially raised being who had infiltrated the Imperial Capital under a false identity with some sinister scheme.
Still, just in case, they had even brought in a certified apothecary second to none in the Imperial Capital, but they found no clear evidence.
‘The balance of his humors is twisted. He seems to have taken something.’
‘Could what he took perhaps be something that hides the aura of mana.......’
‘Hardly. There are no signs of that. He seems to have taken a decoction of the kind the barbarian tribes on the frontier might brew.’
‘A decoction, you say?’
‘I can't pin down exactly what its effect is, but it's far from what you're worried about, Supervisor. Didn't I say it was a barbarian thing? It's probably just for show, for performing some ritual before a battle or the like. At most, it's something like a tonic.’
In fact, the kid had said he was born in the Belance region, where barbarians still ran rampant. And just as the apothecary said, it was true that barbarian slave gladiators performed such rituals all the time.
Still, there was always the one-in-ten-thousand chance, so they had even called a priest to check whether he might have been born with unholy blood.
The answer, of course, was an ordinary person.
Still, still, just in case, they had even disguised a torturer from the Imperial Capital's underground prison as a guard to watch him.
But at a glance, the torturer showed no reaction.
Nothing odd, even to the eyes of a man who had countless times witnessed the nature and inner self that emerge as people are torn apart and broken.
‘.......’
Was this enough?
He felt he had done all he could.
Besides, that ice-cold Treasurer had shown himself excited for once in a long while; it would be wrong to keep suspecting.
In any case, a report would go up. If further measures were needed, that was now outside his authority.
In the end, the Supervisor nodded.
“Understood, for now. Rest. I'll see to it that you can have dinner at the school tonight.”
Rising from his chair, the Supervisor paused before leaving the room and looked back at Riyan.
“Congratulations on your victory once again, Gladiator Riyan.”