Chapter 101: Planning
"Supervisor, the archival materials your office requested have cleared the tracking lanes."
"Bring them in."
A young clerk stepped through the doorway, carefully placing a slim leather folder onto the desk before Old Hart. He paused near the frame, speaking with a slight touch of hesitation. "Given the tight chronological limits formatting our watch, there manifest a handful of blank nodes regarding the background registries of these two new blades. Our networks have yet to fully verify their ancestral lines."
Old Hart desisted from answering immediately, un-clamping the brass buckle of the folder to scrutinize the parchment line by line. "House crest unknown... geographic origin un-mapped... yet the border dispatches confirm their steel operated as common mercenary blades across the wilds of Caelid, matching Lucifer's own track. They cleared the capital gates only this winter to chase institutional advancement inside the lower ring. Hm... the contract logs and their documented combat forms align cleanly enough with the boy's ledger."
He snapped the folder shut, letting out a long, chest-clearing breath as his spectacles slipped down his nose. "The data suffices; a layout of this specific density carries a high degree of credibility. If your spies had hand-delivered a report detailing the exact color of the linen wrapping their loins in such a brief watch, my heart would suspect this entire sequence was an absolute trap deliberately engineered by a rival ministry."
The clerk nodded respectfully, lowering his face. "Should our outriders continue to press the inquiry into their private movements?"
"Drop the tracking," Old Hart muttered, tossing the folder carelessly across the mahogany boards before sinking his spine deep into the leather cushions of his chair. "In the final accounting, they represent nothing more than three pieces of meat for the pits—our solitary obligation is to guarantee that the stable provides a handful of high-yield commodities to the high boxes each winter. As for whether those weapons are comfortable for the hand to wield, let the grand gentlemen administering the court worry about the friction."
"As you command, sir." The clerk executed a low, disciplined bow, pulling his boots back to clear the sanctuary of the office.
"Lucifer... Tarn... Chris..." Old Hart closed his eyelids, his gnarled fingers rubbing the deep, weathered wrinkles of his brow. "By what cosmic anomaly did that godforsaken, rot-choked wilderness of Caelid suddenly produce an entire vanguard of such terrifyingly powerful mercenary blades?"
Despite the persistent doubts scratching at his mind, the old manager registered a minor wave of internal relief. The reality that these three young, hyper-capable warriors were un-vouched outsiders from the provinces implied they remained entirely ignorant regarding the hidden, treacherous clockwork driving the gladitorial circuit of Leyndell.
In truth, even if the Serante Amphitheater—operating as one of the seven monolithic gladitorial backbones of the imperial seat—occasionally drifted into a temporary talent drought, the house balance sheet shouldn't have scored so terribly bankrupted that its stables lacked the capacity to field a pair of standard Mithril-tier gladiators to represent the crest at the Battle Festival.
However, the exact watch the four veteran Mithril warriors originally locked to the Serante roster had scanned the verified participant list for this winter's brackets, every single one of them had immediately signed a non-negotiable waiver to withdraw their steel from the competition. The absolute source code behind their panic emerged from two names written onto the final slots of the registry—names that had given Old Hart a massive, persistent headache since the dawning of the moon: Carlyle and Rolo.
Carlyle represented the solitary legitimate heir born to Duke Caven Duolis—the absolute sovereign controller anchoring the financial basements of Old Hart's own arena network. It remained completely translucent what specific calculation the Duke was turning over within his thoughts, that he would willingly throw his primary bloodline into the jaws of this exceptionally high-fatality, razor-sharp tournament.
Although the palace rumors claimed this young knight had mastered a world-class proficiency in heavy martial disciplines since his cradle, the boy commanded absolute zero experience inside the public pits; he lacked even the baseline administrative registry of a certified gladiator. His name had been forcefully squeezed into the sixty-slot grid strictly by leveraging the immense diplomatic weight of his father's ministerial seals.
If His Grace the Duke harbored the ambition to blood his heir across a true arena of attrition, then for any gladiator fighting under the Serante banner, Carlyle's presence on the sand constituted an permanent disaster.
Across the early single-elimination rounds, managing the choreography to ensure the young master advanced without logging a fatal wound was an entry-level annoyance. But the moment the brackets fractured to initiate the hyper-violent hunt within the sewer subterranean warrens—where an operator was conformed to fight to the death against savage monsters while concurrently acting as a high-stakes bodyguard to protect a pampered aristocratic scion—the enterprise transformed into an entirely thankless, exhausting nightmare.
More critically, any intelligence commanding even a surface-level comprehension of the intricate, high-stakes aristocratic struggles driving the Leyndell Colosseums would aggressively avoid lunging into this specific mess. Rolo, who had cleared his entry scroll to represent the parallel grand arena lines, was anything but a common fighter who had earned his gold through the standard competitive ranks; he was a master Court Perfumer whose raw martial lethality out-scaled the capabilities of ordinary imperial heroes. The palace pages whispered that Marquis Osarion himself had been forced to deploy three separate diplomatic invitations before the veteran agreed to cross his steel across this winter's mud.
Three winters past, the supreme administrative seat governing the Guardian of the North had fallen vacant. Marquis Osarion, tracing his lineage back to the influential Ofnir Family, stood across the ministries as the absolute, undisputed candidate favored to claim the promotion to garrison commander and supreme lord of the Northern Legion lines. However, Duke Duolis—parachuted into the command structure via an extraordinary executive decree signed in the capital—had suddenly materialized from the shadows. The Duke had not only systematically seized the grand appointment Osarion had long evaluated as his own private property, but had steadily, thoroughly locked his fingers around the administrative reins of the entire Northern Legion across the subsequent three cycles.
Although both lords registered their loyalty as members of the ascendant New Faction ministries, the Duolis Family—tracing its lineage back to the veteran commanders of the Western Expeditionary Army and standing as a direct ideological descendant of the Lord Consort Radagon—was clearly favored by the throne over the Ofnir Family, who had merely joined the Warlord's coalition further down the historical timeline. Across the past seasons, the diplomatic friction and localized border skirmishes dividing the two houses had been frequent and bloody. Consequently, evaluated from any perspective across the court, these two giants functioned as entirely irreconcilable political enemies.
Across the previous winters, the Battle Festival had operated as a small, low-stakes pond where common fish and minor shrimp tore at each other for small purses of gold runes. This winter, however, two massive whales—Carlyle and Rolo—had violently dropped their masses straight into the center of the water. It required zero complex calculations to deduce that behind their entry scrolls lay a brutal, un-compromised round of shadow warfare dividing the Duke and the Marquis. Under those conditions, it was small wonder that Serante's private gladiators were unwilling to participate.
"Forget the variables... the exact watch this winter's Battle Festival hits zero, these three mercenaries are free to drift to whichever horizon pleases their boots," Old Hart muttered to himself, his thin legs remaining crossed over his desk as his spectacles caught the dim candle flame. "Whether an operator registers as a common fighter or a sovereign duke, my personal balance sheet is settled. Let them tear their lines to pieces on the sand; the fallout contains zero relevance to my house!"
"The air inside this box is completely suffocating!"
Deep within the cabin of the dilapidated wooden carriage the trio had temporarily rented from the lower stables, Radahn violently ripped the poorly ventilated mercenary helm from his skull, tossing the rusted iron heavily onto the leather bench beside his boots.
He raised his right hand, weaving his fingers to manifest a low-frequency magical barrier across the windowpanes to isolate their voices from the street, before venting a long, exhausted sigh. "Lucia, do the files suggest there actually manifest any genuine masters across the roster of this Battle Festival who command the capability to hold their guard against our steel? If the entire sixty-four entries score on an identical baseline to those pathetic wretches we broke this afternoon, this enterprise will yield absolute zero interest—even with our hands legally forbidden from deploying our magic!"
"The public archives assert that the winter Battle Festival aggregates the single most lethal, top-tier fighters harvested across the capital rings throughout the annual cycle, so the brackets should reasonably enclose a handful of decent blades, correct?" Kristoff mused from the parallel cushion.
Lucia nodded his silver head, his eyes steady. "So long as our vanguard desists from laying all of our hidden cards face-up across the sand, our steel will undeniably intersect a few opponents commanding a comparable physical output. But in the final accounting, tracking a challenging bout does not constitute my primary purpose for registering our names with Old Hart."
"Then what specific target is your strategy chasing?" Radahn asked, his brow furrowing in genuine, childhood puzzlement. "My intellect refuses to validate the simulation stating that the Dragon Prince is risking his public mask strictly to harvest a miserable thirty thousand sponsorship runes."
"Out of the way!" Lucia shot an amused, irritated kick toward Radahn's heavy boots. "My mind was turning over a vastly grander variable: what is the true, un-veiled attitude their Majesties preserve regarding the continuous existence of these gladitorial networks?"
"Furthermore... evaluate the position of those Icefield Trolls who have been illegally escorted through the inner gates, conformed to serve as common livestock prey for the final hunt. Does Duke Duolis's domestic deployment of those giant-blooded beasts not constitute a flagrant, absolute violation of the imperial codices?"
"An absolute certainty!" Kristoff interjected, his tone dropping into a decisive, un-chipped knightly gravity.
"If the legal parameters were aligned with his house, the Duke would have recorded zero requirement to secretly smuggle those Mountain Trolls through the outer ports and isolate their mass deep within the old sewers. The dynastic law explicitly dictates that for these rebel border tribes captured across the northern battlefields, strictly the chieftains who instigated the treason are conformed to face execution; the remaining common stock must be deployed on-site to execute manual infrastructure labor. Systematically slaughtering and playing with their lives for the base amusement of a spectator box is permanently forbidden under the modern decrees."
"It is precisely because these colossal colosseum networks are controlled by high-ranking founding nobles who hand-delivered massive military contributions during the Unification Wars that Her Majesty Queen Marika and the Lord Consort Radagon have historically chosen to turn a blind eye to the corruption," Lucia continued, his silver eyes cold. "However... my outriders have harvested whispers from the inner chambers stating that the throne's patience has nearly exhausted its margin—particularly the Lord Consort Radagon. The analytical files estimate that the total, executive abolition of the gladitorial arenas across the capital ring will clear the ministries within the coming one or two winters."
"The layout is precisely text-perfect!" Radahn spat, his features mapping a deep, un-courtly disgust.
"Even within the high ancestral court of the Carian Royalty, our laws have long recognized the sovereign titles of the Mountain Trolls, the Misbegotten, and even the demi-human lineages. Liquidating the life-readouts of these 'other races' triggers the identical criminal judgment across the high courts as slaying a baseline human citizen. The people of Leyndell pride their name on their superior civilization and noble enlightenment, yet within the dark basements of their ministries, their actions score vastly more savage and cruel than the beasts of the field!"
He paused, his dark eyes flaring as he connected the threads. "Consequently... your strategy is designed to isolate a tactical opportunity to expose this northern smuggling ring, safeguard the lives of those trapped Trolls, and incidentally force these bloody arenas to clear their gates ahead of the calendar?"
"Negative." Lucia shook his silver head, his expression completely flat and indifferent. "If the tides grant my vanguard the proper opening down the timeline... my hand intends to help their Majesties solve an infinitely larger problem."
Before Radahn's intellect could fully parse the massive weight of that statement, Lucia had already slammed the rusted iron mercenary helm back over his features. He reached out to thrust the wooden carriage door open, sliding his frame across the driver's bench to settle beside the old drayman. He tossed two gleaming copper runes into the man's weathered palm, his voice dropping into a sharp executive order.
"Master... adjust the trajectory of your wheels. Direct the horses to clear the commercial avenues; chart a course straight into the flea markets anchoring the Pedri District."
"Consider the path aligned, young master!" The old coachman beamed with an un-courtly joy as his fingers secured the copper coins. His leather whip cracked sharply through the winter air, spurring the horses to guide the heavy wooden carriage straight toward the most dilapidated, forgotten neighborhood of the capital's lower ring.
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