As the cheers rained down, so did the money. They had never seen so much blood and gore in one sitting before. The staff would have to procure a whole new roster of slaves. Getting 8 slaves would not be cheap. It was fine though. They were absolutely swimming in cash. Me competing was a massive pull factor. Cassius and Caelus were now the most senior slaves. They had largely been untouched. That was my third win in a row since I had the quest. That put my total record at 12-0. Being over a record of 10-0 made me seen as a master gladiator. I went to the bookers and told them to set the 3 of us up against a pack of wolves. I had confidence that we could do it. I had a great fight against a pack when I was by myself. When I was on the way to the inn I was staying in, I was approached by Tertius Uulius Aper and his stoic, pale bodyguard. "You have done well." he said. I nodded my head and thanked him for the compliment. "I have spoken to your commander. You left the army on your own. He is not going to sign off on your citizenship decree. That is unless you..." he trailed off.
I had to ask what I needed to do. He smiled and said "I don't think it will be too much for you. The war effort continues against those rebels. He's willing to sign off on it if you procure a humble 10000 lin to donate to the war effort. I guess he needs some more supplies." I looked at him. "Aren't you supposed to handle the expenses as my sponsor and patron?" I asked. He lost his smile. "I am. The original price he requested was 20000 lin. I am paying half of the money. You could stand to fix your mistakes at least somewhat." he said pointedly. That was true enough. I did leave all on my own. If I had known that this was going to be a problem, I would have simply followed along until the army was dismissed. No matter how tenacious and dogmatic he was, Lucius was a young noble. He was not going to go around fighting until he died. He would get tired of it and have to wait before he went in again. Losing would also end the army right away. He would be captured along with some men and they all would then be ransomed or imprisoned. I had the money to pay right away. I gave it up now.
Just getting it over with would make things better. I said "Thank you so much for taking care of me." Being conciliatory was the best bet when dealing with a rich man like patrician Tertius Uulius Aper. He clearly looked down at me. I looked at him and asked if that was all he wanted from me. "I think that is all for now. I've been making a ton of money from your fights." he said. He then began walking off. The bodyguard gave me a very stern look. He did not say anything though. I took a couple of days to wait for the hype to build for the fight. When the day of the fight came, they were pretty confident. "We've had to kill wolves on the roads before." Caelus said. Cassius put his hands behind his head and said "This should be easy." I warned them to keep their head on a swivel. "These guys make things really hard. The wolves are much more vicious and aggressive than most. They said they were making us fight a pack, but they will send dozens at us." I said. That made them look aggrieved. They were still a pair of slaves. Death was always one loss away. We had 32 big feral wolves to fight.
Killing them took a giant effort. The twins almost died on several occasions. I had to bail them out. The next week, I shook things up. I did a 4 on 1 fight in the main event to great applause. The twins had to do a 2 on 2 fight. As the slaves with the most experience, they were able to beat up their opponents quickly. Their match was right before mine. When the crowd called for their deaths, Cassius and Caelus killed the losers. I had to stand alone for this week's fight. People were starting to think I could not stand on my own any more. The variety brought in more money from my haters that wanted to see me lose. I was 14-0. The twins were both 5-0. I went to set up another fight with them on my team. The booker shut that down. "You know that you're a great fighter here, but I can't do that. Vel Leon said that he wants to fight. There is nothing that I can do." he said. Vel only fought to crush uppity slaves. The only slaves with a positive record were the twins and a new slave that took down a lion. The huge veteran gladiator was going to face off against Cassius. I had to do something.
