Getting some easy matches in the middle of the card would be good enough for the quest. I just needed to win 3 fights in a row. It did not need to be something hard. The booker shrugged his shoulders. "Eh, it's novel. There is something new here and people might like it." he said. He was not totally for it. I did not care. It was time to go down to the pit to see which slaves I would be able to team up with. There were a set of twin bandits that had been caught by guards outside the city gates. NPCs did not have a choice. They had to win 10 times to earn their freedom back. They had just been sent here. The amount of slaves were held stable at 10. Each week churned through a lot of bodies. There were slave markets and criminal penalties. It was easy for the people running the fights to simply buy new slaves to replace the ones that died. The twins were fresh in the pits. I pointed at them and got their names from the booker. I had my choices already. He went to the slave-keeper there. They had their names in the ledgers. The twins were named Cassius and Caelus. My 2 new partners.
Cassius
Caelus
Having them on my team caused quite a buzz. I was in the opening fight. Neither Cassius not Caelus had any armor. They only had rusty iron daggers. It was no better than what the other gladiator slaves had. I was able to get in close and knock them out. The 3 slaves were then on the chopping block. The crowd clamored for death. In this way, the fate of the losers were sealed. Cassius and Caelus joined me in the execution of their peers. The next week we had another face off. This time, it was the 3 of us against an armored harpy. This was pretty difficult to deal with. It would fly in and out of reach. When we were able to hit, he absorbed the blows and kept going. It took so long that the people were beginning to get bored. The crowd being entertained did not matter to me. Winning was. I did manage to cut a wing off. The twins finished him. The third week saw us against 5 slaves. I was not scared. That was 7 of the 10 gladiators available. The other 3 gladiators got to fight against creatures. It was a very rare day where 8 gladiators died off. The crowd was totally totally ecstatic.
