Enslaved

Well-rested and well-fed, with a solid eleven hours of sleep and a simple bowl of cereal for breakfast, I was as ready as I could ever be to take on my third Contract.

"Librarian. I'm ready."

"Certainly! You would still prefer the selected Contract from before, correct?"

"Yeah, the arena fighter one. I think a 1v1 should be easier to handle than the, uh... "Tamer"."

'Even if it's supposedly the same Difficulty, to be honest, I just don't want to deal with facing multiple opponents. At least not yet.'

Just before, I remembered to check out the Villainous Blade since I was curious just how much it would grow for each Protagonist Dispatched, as well as what that supposed growth even meant in the first place.

The result was better than I expected.

From a little old knife, it had grown into a splendid dagger-like blade, roughly the length of a thirty centimetre ruler, and with the elegant thickness to accompany it.

I thought it rather peculiar that the blade was slightly curved, but Librarian mentioned it being modelled after something called a 'tanto', which was apparently a Japanese weapon, and basically a dagger.

It was still almost entirely black, but there were now some sort of thin, purple lines flowing through the blade, bearing the appearance of veins that subtly shuffled around within the surface, as if alive, and emitting a faint glow.

'Uh, I'm pretty sure those didn't exist before, but now I'm doubting my own memory... Maybe I just didn't notice them...?'

Rather than coming raw like previously, it also seemed to have acquired its own sheath somewhere with matching tones. Honestly, it was pretty sick.

I'm glad I listened to Librarian's persuasion.

Imagining how it might evolve in the future made me even more excited, and I couldn't wait to see how it would turn out at three, five or even ten Protagonists Dispatched.

Would it eventually grow to become many metres in length like the final boss of a certain RPG I once played? I doubted it, but it was a funny thought.

In any case, now was the time to focus. For this Contract, I likely wouldn't be using the Villainous Blade at all, even if it had become more useful.

Because, after all.

I have a gun.

I was temporarily concerned if I would even be able to hit any of my shots with it, but upon re-reading the description for Professionalism, those worries quickly dissipated.

(All aspects considered related to your profession are enormously enhanced)

If you were to ask me, 'sharpshooting' was most definitely an aspect related to the profession of assassination. If it wasn't, well, call it a scam and move on.

Observing absent-mindedly as the Librarian pulled out a scroll, the Contract Details I already knew from my previous look appeared once again before me.

Contract Details

[Rise From Nothingness]

Television Series

Protagonist: Skar Nessa | Avenger

Tags: #Action #Drama #Tragedy #FemaleProtagonist #HardworkingProtagonist #SlaveProtagonist #Revenge #MonstersAndDemons #Colosseum

Difficulty: ★☆☆☆☆

Even though I had never watched or even heard of the series this Illusory World was based on, it was fairly easy to infer the plot from the tags. Maybe it was foreign.

Presumably, a girl was captured and turned into a slave, whereupon she was forced to fight in a coliseum―not The Colosseum, but something similar―for whatever reason.

It's a relatively simple but enjoyable concept, I guess. And, I would hope that it also makes for a Contract that is just as simple.

'There's no reason to waste time. I already thought plenty about potential plans since I saw it.'

No one else would be fighting on the side of a slave, I could go ahead and assume that much for starters. This would be a nice, pure one versus one fight.

I don't have to worry about her having friends of glue or anything, imagine that. 

Hell, maybe I could even just blast her from the crowd.

How perfect that would be. 

Mwah. Bliss.

Anyway――

[Transporting to the Illusory World of 'Rise From Nothingness'!]

[The target is 'Skar Nessa, the Avenger'!]

For the third time in a row, I appeared inside a "bedroom". Would it always be like this, I ever-so-briefly wondered. Of course, the thought didn't last long.

Since, this time, it seemed less like a bedroom and more like the grotto of a fiendish goblin.

It wasn't the kind of goblin's cave a human degenerate like me could relate to, though. Rather, a literal monster, the type of foe you would encounter at Level 1 in the open-world fantasyland.

Damp, dark and dingy. That icky sort―of a plainly awful cave.

[Your identity is a human slave brought in from the Outside to fight in the Emperor's Arena!]

The Librarian swiftly informed me as to why that was the case.

"Ah, there we go."

'That makes far more sense.'

The floor―was rough, damp rock.

The walls―were rough, damp rock.

The ceiling―wouldn't you know it―also happened to be rough, damp rock.

Drip.

So damp in fact, that a rogue water droplet fell down and hit me square in the eye.

"Ah, egh, fuck. I think that might've given me cancer..."

Just as I moved my arm to wipe the blighted grace off my body before it could infect me, I paused.

"Huh, damn it... How'd I forget about that..."

What I was wearing was not in fact the comfortable hoodie of thick cotton that I was used to, but instead, torn, squalid fabric that barely covered the important areas and some parts of my chest.

Perhaps I was so belated to realise only because I had just recently woken up, but what a pain it was. In this cold, wet, muggy cave...

In the end I had no choice but to settle by rubbing my eye clean with a bare hand.

'...Ah. Wait, I could've just pulled something from Storage. Tsk, whatever.'

Pushing aside the annoying, unrelated matter and forgetting about blunders I wasn't so thrilled to think about, I moved on by scanning the environment surrounding me again.

'Wet rock here, wet rock there, wet rock, wet rock... Oh look, a wet rock, and even a wet rock! And over on that side... iron bars? Ah, and even a metal chain. Now that's something different.'

There was no window, but one side did have vertical iron bars from rock (top) to rock (bottom), through which dim light faintly escaped into this hellhole. As the sole source of illumination, it was hardly sufficient to see properly, but I could barely make do by squinting my eyes hard enough.

Like that, though it was a close call, I also managed to spot a rock-coloured, or taupe if I were being serious, dirt rag on the floor and some wall-bound chains near it.

I didn't know if it was supposed to be this place's sorry excuse for a bed, or if it was something I was expected to relieve myself with in other ways, but I certainly didn't plan on doing either.

"All in all, this place is pretty rough, huh... Kinda like a rock, I guess."

I wet my lips. Like that, they also became just like the ro--

'Alright, that's enough. Shut up.'

Honestly, calling it a cell would be flattery; an embellishment of rather high degree.

I didn't know a whole lot about history, but if this is how they were treated back in the day, I felt newfound sympathy for all the people affected by the rampant slave trade.

'...Well, hopefully I'll get called to fight soon--'

"Oi! You sleepin' good in there?! Wakey wakey, lil human!"

Bangbangbangbangbang--!!!

As if answering my prayers, a quite rotund individual abruptly appeared, yelling without a care and violently banging on the metal bars, causing a stampede of tinnitus-inducing raw sound to obliterate my eardrums.

His appearance, though bearing majority resemblance to a human, struck me deeply.

Bright red skin that only reminded me of the colour of fresh blood that I had seen all-too-many times recently; beady blackened eyes like opal gemstones staring deep into my soul; two sets of equally chubby arms jutting out from his portly torso; and, perhaps as was natural for an individual of such uniqueness, a number of extensive, black protrusions on his perfectly bald head that was three-too-many to claim humanity.

'What kind of freak is that?'―was certainly not what flashed through my mind at that moment.