In the morning of Jinkai City, the air was filled with great anticipation and excitement as the opening day of the Kolosseum was finally here.
A massive crowd of people had gathered as they spread out through the stadium, where they were waiting eagerly for the first match to begin. The sounds of people talking were quite loud, but they were mostly drowned out by the ambient music that was playing through the speakers Kars had created with a simple magic spell.
Amidst the excitement in the center of the arena, Kobeni, who was dressed in a black bunny girl costume with fishnet stockings and high heels, was visibly trembling from stage fright as she was surrounded from all sides by the gazes of many people.
"Uuuuuuh..." She whined pathetically while holding a black wireless microphone tight against her chest as she felt very naked despite still wearing clothes, even if it didn't help much with how revealing it was.
"H-How did it come to this...?!" Kobeni wanted to cry and complain to herself, but her words were actually being transmitted by the microphone in real-time, so her voice was echoed through the speakers for all the people to hear.
"Hiii—?!" She flinched at the unexpected loud volume of her own voice and nearly dropped the microphone as she nervously looked up at the towering tiers of people around her. She saw the sea of blurred faces and movements, some even laughing openly at her blunder.
"Ughhhh..." Kobeni shifted her stance in embarrassment as the high heels of her shoes crushed the sandy ground, which felt quite awkward for her shaking legs. She really wanted to disappear from here and buried herself in her bed under her blanket, pretending to be just a rock.
As for how she was finding herself in this situation, we have to go back to a week ago...
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In the kitchen of the canteen of Kars' indentured workers, Kobeni was just minding her business, mopping the floor as usual. The air in the kitchen smelled of old fry oil and lemon soap, a scent that usually comforted her by reminding her that she was just a small, invisible part of indentured workers in this place.
She liked being invisible like this, without any expectations from someone else. It was so relaxing, unlike the crushing weight of obligations she had when she was working desperately to support her family.
"Mmhhn~ hhnnn~ hhhnnnn~." She was scrubbing a particularly stubborn stain near the dishwasher while humming a song when the door of the kitchen suddenly swung open with a force that rattled the pots hanging from the ceiling.
"Kya...?!" Kobeni almost jumped as the mop in her hand dropped to the ground before she turned to where the noise had come from.
"Kobeni! There you are!" A loud, heavily accented voice echoing in the kitchen. It belonged to the head chef, a man whose mouth is moving faster than his brain and never seems to watch what he says.
"I wasted a lot of time finding your cute ass all over, you know?" He marched toward her with his face all smiles for some reason. Kobeni wanted to remind him that was sexual harassment...
"Girl, we meet again." However, the head chef wasn't alone, as behind him stood a familiar, spectacled old woman in an old-school teacher outfit whom Kobeni remembered as one of the people who sorted her a job when she just arrived in Kars' domain.
"..." Kobeni felt a sudden surge of dread, a familiar drop in her stomach. She didn't know what she had done wrong, but in her experience, the mere act of being noticed by someone higher up was usually a prelude to a headache.
"Let's see here..." The woman held a clipboard as she wrote something on it with a quill before she handed the paper to the head chef, who laughed in delight before he folded the paper and pocketed it carefully. He basically got bribed with the credit, which was the exclusive currency system of Kars' domain, to let go of Kobeni from her job.
Then the old woman and the head chef turned their eyes toward Kobeni with the look of a supportive elder, but somehow it really reminded Kobeni of her parents' gazes when they just sold her off, which is actually not far off from the truth.
"Congratulations, girl, you just got chosen to be the new battle arena announcer. It's quite a step up in your career, wouldn't you say?" The old woman said while she stepped forward and patted Kobeni on the shoulder, though the gesture felt more patronizing than comforting.
"Eh...?" Kobeni was understandably confused as the old woman explained that the Kolosseum needed a pretty face for an announcer, but unfortunately there were not many pretty and young enough faces in Kars' indentured workers pool, so the job fell on Kobeni, who was the prettiest currently.
"I remember you and recommended you to Mistress Sophia for the position. No need to thank me, and just do your best... do you understand?" The old woman asked, her smile not quite reaching her eyes. If Kobeni rejected this, the old woman would miss a lot of reward credits after all.
"I-I am not..." Kobeni tried to speak, to explain that she was barely capable of ordering a drink without stuttering, but the old woman shoved a paper into her hands. She looked down and saw the paper was filled with scripts and technical cues for her to study for the job.
"Make sure to DO this job well, for YOUR own sake..." The old woman told her with a cold gaze that hinted at possible consequences if she did not comply with the arrangement.
The subtle threat was very effective when even the head chef was also giving her a look of "encouragement" that made it hard for her to refuse.
"Y-Yes..." Kobeni could only comply reluctantly since she doesn't really have any choice. She was just a normal girl without anyone to help her out.
She was definitely going to remember this...
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Back to the present, Kobeni stole a glance back at the topmost balcony. She could see Mistress Sophia was sitting there behind the guardrails in a high-backed velvet chair alongside Kars, who had his arm draped over his concubine's shoulders.
They looked down at her as Kobeni felt their gazes like a physical weight pressing down on her shoulders. Fortunately, the two of them seemed to not be mad at her because of her blunder, and with a deep breath, Kobeni tried to recall the first line of the script.
She looked down at the paper in her hand, which she had read over and over to memorize the speech for today's event, and then she lifted her face up nervously at the crowd in the stands.
"Fucking start already!!" The roar of the crowd greeted her, now shifted from a low rumble to a scream of anticipation.
"Make them bounce, bunny girl!" Someone in the front row even shouted vulgarly at her.
"Yeah! Shake that ass this way!!" Another vulgar shout that followed with shameless catcalls from some of the male audiences.
Kobeni felt embarrassed and resentful as she gripped the microphone so hard her knuckles turned white. She really wanted to throw what she had in hand at those filthy men running their mouths.
"HE—HELLO, PEOPLE OF JINKAI AND TRAVELERS FROM AFAR! W-Welcome to the opening day of the Kolosseum of Jinkai!" Kobeni began, but the words coming out from her were sounding less like an announcement and more like a plea for mercy than she would have liked. The speakers even amplified the crack in her voice, sending her stuttering speech through the Kolosseum for all to hear.
"..." Kobeni squeezed her eyes shut for a second, praying for the ground to open up and swallow her whole. She felt her face turn red as the crowd responded with a wave of laughter, a collective sound that felt like a hammer smashed her fragile ego.
"T-The boss, Kars, has seen your plight of the lack of entertainment and decided to... to grant us a spectacle of blood and iron, the bitter struggle, and the rightfully earned victory to celebrate the more superior warrior!!" she continued her speech in desperation, but fortunately her voice no longer cracked this time as she shouted into the microphone.
"Enough! I come to see a fight, not some rambling! Just fucking start, damn it!!" A random man in the crowd stood up, shouting for her to just get on with it, and the sentiment was echoed by a growing chorus of boos.
"Show us your tits, girl!!" Some even continued with those vulgar words.
"..." Kobeni really, really wanted to throw her microphone at them...
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"Is this the only person we have?" Kars chuckled beside Sophia, his eyes narrowed in amusement as he looked at the bunny girl trying her best, but it's not doing very well.
"That's because you said you wanted a pretty girl in a bunny girl costume to be the announcer..." Sophia gave him a side-eye, blaming him for this outcome.
"Eh, it's tradition for such sports to have some eye candies standing around..." Kars shrugged his shoulders while his concubine gave him a displeased huff.
"Then go calm the audiences down so they don't cause a riot or something." Sophia pursed her pink lips as Kars smirked before he got up and walked to the guardrails and looked down at the people below.
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"Ahem!" With the sound of a fake cough echoing through the Kolosseum, the audience immediately turned their attention toward the topmost balcony, their boos momentarily transforming into a silence as the infamous boss made his appearance. No one was brave enough to test the man's patience.
Kobeni felt the sudden shift in the atmosphere as the absence of people's noises was making the silence weirdly oppressive, but she secretly sighed with relief as they finally shut up.
"You want a fight?! You want blood?! Hahaha, say no more, as I'll give it to you all!!" Kars roared with his eyes glowing eerie with green energy before the gates suddenly opened up by his telekinesis magic for the two fighters to walk out onto the sandpit stage.
First of the two fighters stepped out with a slow, heavy step. His leather boots sinking deep into the coarse sand. He was a mountain of a man, his chest scarred by countless battles and his arms thick as tree trunks.
He didn't look at the crowd, nor did he acknowledge the trembling girl with the microphone. His focus was entirely on the opposite gate, where a lean, agile warrior emerged with a smirk that suggested he found the entire spectacle amusing.
The contrast between the two was a classic clash of brute force against speed, and the audience began to buzz with a new kind of energy as they anticipated the fight.
"Do your job, girl!" With Kars' voice echoing, Kobeni felt something slap her on her ass as he just used his telekinesis magic to remind her that she shouldn't be standing around like an idiot.
"Kya...?!" She let out a startled, high-pitched yelp and nearly jumped out of her high heels. Her cheeks burned as the crowd laughed at her reaction, but the laughter was quickly swallowed by the roar of the spectators as the two fighters finally met in the center of the arena.
The mountain of a man let out a grunt, his voice sounding like a boar, while the agile warrior simply spun his blade in a casual but skillful manner.
"Ahem, from the west side we have the Unbroken Wall, Grodan!" Kobeni shouted into the microphone, her voice now more steady as she desperately tried to read the fighter's profile from the script. "And from the east side, the Silent Gale, Zephyr!"
Kobeni barely finished the sentence before Zephyr suddenly lunged forward in a blur of motion.
The crowd exploded into a deafening roar as they finally got to see the fight, the sheer volume of the noise vibrating through the ground underneath Kobeni's shoes as she quickly evacuated the area like a startled rabbit.
Grodan did not move until the very last second as his opponent approached, then his arm coated with a blue aura swung out like a falling pillar to intercept the blade.
The sound of steel clashing against a heavy steel gauntlet rang out, a sharp, metallic clank that silenced the audience for a second before they resumed with a roar of excitement.
Zephyr bounced back with a graceful flip, his feet barely touching the sand as he circled his opponent, his eyes locked on the gap in Grodan's armor. The tension in the arena was high as the two fighters continued their duel. The price money was fueling their fighting spirit.
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Inside the topmost balcony, Sophia was staring a hole at the back of Kars' head as she noticed what he did to Kobeni. She had to complain to him about it later so he doesn't bring that girl home or something...
"Oh, it has begun." While the concubine was plotting her obstruction of Kars' harem plan, Kruri skipped inside their box as she headed to the guardrails beside Kars.
"Don't just run off by yourself, geez!" Juri arrived later as she also walked up to the two at the guardrails.
"Hm? Where's your mommy?" Kars noticed the absence of his assassin and curiously asked his self-proclaimed daughter.
"Have fun murdering people, she does." Kruri nodded with an innocent expression while Juri made a sick expression as if she saw something disturbing.
"Oh, alright..." Kars just hummed like it was normal, not caring too much since his minions were all over the city anyway so they could help her out any time... if she ever needed it to begin with...
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"Hahahaha!" Meanwhile, inside the alley somewhere in the outer district of Jinkai City, Elsa was laughing like a maniac as she swung her kukri knives skillfully and disarmed her opponent as his arm went flying from his shoulder.
"Arghhh—ghk!" The man's scream was cut short as a knife sliced his throat open with blood gushing out as he collapsed on the ground with his remaining hand holding his throat.
When she was going to the Kolosseum with Kruri and Juri, a group of bounty hunters suddenly appeared and picked a fight with her, so she sent the girls away first and stayed behind to deal with them. It also can't be helped that she traumatized Juri with a shocking scene of a man's head flying off from his neck in the process...
"Oh my, oh my, this time you brought too few people, don't you think so?" Elsa, in a revealing black dress and thigh-high boots, said mockingly as she giggled over a dying man drowning in his own blood.
"Damn it all!" The rest of the men charged at her, but they didn't manage to last more than three minutes after Elsa danced through them with her blades.
"How dull." The assassin sighed in disappointment as she swiped the blood off her knives and looked around with her face splashed with blood.
"Hm? Oh, it's you guys." Then she saw the group of men in black cloaks with glowing green eyes emerging from the darkness of the alley and began searching for anything of value from the corpses. The Dark Hand was just here to scavenge like vultures, it seemed.
"Guess that it..." Elsa muttered and sheathed her knives while ignoring Kars' homunculi doing questionable things. She now has to wash up before she can join her daughter at the Kolosseum. She can't go around in public covered in blood after all...