I climbed up the uneven slope, away from the underground stream. Together with the others, I wanted to see who had decided to grace us with their presence this time.

  I expected the worst. Maybe something meant to kill us. Or test us before those games Jo'Xa'Jaru told me about. Supposedly, every dozen days or so, someone was taken to the arena — and not everyone came back.

  The lizardmen chief had already gone out there fifteen times. He always came back. Sometimes barely alive, but he came back.

  Now he stood next to me. And that alone made me feel a little safer.

  Against the backdrop of the green slope, I saw a minotaur. Not a small one. Thick, chestnut fur covered his body, and his horns spread wide to the sides, partially disappearing into it. He was different from the beasts I had seen before in the underground. His eyes were… normal. Aware.

  He was different. More dangerous.

  I regretted that after the fight by the river, I had lost part of my ability to assess opponents. Now I could only see level and threat.

  Though that was still a hell of a lot.

  [Level: 47]

  [Threat: VERY HIGH]

  He wasn’t an unbeatable monster. But he also wasn’t someone you could take lightly.

  He would kill me on his own. I had no doubt about that.

  But I wasn’t alone.

  "Who are you?! What do you want?!" he roared, covered in grass, furious and tense like a drawn bowstring. "May the Sword God stab you all to fucking death!"

  His aura almost choked the air. If not for those damned crystals the Black City was built on, I would probably feel it even more clearly.

  The lizardmen had already told me about it. That mineral suppressed aura. Suppressed magic. Suppressed everything. Thanks to it, strong Wild Dungeons didn’t form in this massive metropolis, and slaves had no way to escape. An earth mage could at most lift a rock, not dig through walls.

  "Speak, you bastards!" he added, though a note of uncertainty crept into his voice.

  Jo'Xa'Jaru stepped forward and stood over him with a stone face.

  That was enough.

  The minotaur immediately quieted down.

  "You're fucked, buddy," he said calmly. "Better save your strength. You'll need it. Introduce yourself and behave… or we’ll really start treating you like bastards, and it’ll get unpleasant."

  The bull-man swallowed. He got up on his hooves and straightened, trying to regain some dignity.

  Maybe he was a pile of meat, but next to Jo'Xa'Jaru he looked… normal. Like a tall, well-built human. Just covered in fur and with a bull’s head.

  "I am Banyak!" he growled. "I come from the proud White Horn tribe! The strongest of all minotaur tribes in the Great Northern Forest! My father is the chief. You will regret it if you do not show me respect!"

  Silence fell.

  And then everyone burst out laughing.

  San'Xa'Hu grabbed his sides and nearly choked.

  "Don’t shit yourself, kid," he managed between laughs. "You’re not in your forest."

  "The fact that you ended up here says a lot about your ‘strongest tribe,’" another lizardman added.

  Banyak stomped his hoof and ground his teeth.

  "How dare you… you… you—"

  "What, us?" I asked calmly.

  "You… fools!"

  "The only fool here is you," San'Xa'Hu muttered. "Sit here a few weeks and that talk about bovine power will pass."

  It didn’t take fifteen minutes before Jo'Xa'Jaru lost patience.

  One quick clash was enough.

  He knocked him to the ground and beat him like a misbehaving child when he started insulting everyone again. The whole thing lasted maybe a few seconds.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  Then silence fell.

  Our furry friend, now beaten to a pulp, sat on the other side of the cell behind the rocks. Quiet. Angry. Humiliated. And he had no intention of coming closer.

  "That Banyak’s got something wrong with his head," I said to the ones sitting nearby. The stream murmured quietly beside us. "What’s that tribe he keeps talking about?"

  A few lizardmen exchanged restrained glances before Jo'Xa'Jaru spoke first, without any excitement in his voice:

  "It’s a famous tribe from the northern forest, descended from a damn powerful minotaur who supposedly had one white horn and silver-white fur. He almost became one of the demon lords, but he went out onto the steppes with a great army and got beaten to death by those filthy centaurs who teamed up with the dwarves…" Jo'Xa'Jaru glanced toward the bull’s descendant and added, "It’s been over two hundred years, but I can see his descendants are still strong as hell. If a spoiled, stupid brat like him has that much strength, it’s scary to think about the best warriors of that tribe."

  I slowly began to understand how the balance of power looked in the east of this continent, and honestly, the more I knew, the less faith I had in my cause. I didn’t want to look shaken, so I just nodded and laughed with the others when San'Xu'Hu joked about centaurs, saying their ancestor probably got fucked by some horse in a stable…

  Eventually, we went to sleep, and we only woke up to banging on the massive doors and several orcs entering with troglodytes carrying food again. One of them, throwing the corpse of a giant stabbed bat, laughed like a drunk uncle at a wedding, giving me chills with what he said.

  "Better eat up, lizardmen. Yesterday you were lucky, but today your games begin! You’ll celebrate the second day of the black dragoness’s birthday with your own blood!"

  Laughter and taunts echoed from the group, dying down when they saw the chestnut-furred minotaur approaching.

  "You cursed cow, why didn’t these lizards eat you!? We threw you in here on purpose, and you dare to live!? After killing five of ours!? Pff!?" one of the bulky orcs cursed and moved to strike him. "I’ll—"

  He didn’t finish.

  One of the older, graying orcs pulled him back. "Let it go, fool. His time will come, oh it will come…"

  The group dispersed, the young hot-headed orc managing to kick over the pot of so-called soup, spilling it between the stones onto the cold ground.

  It pissed me off, but overwhelmed by what I had heard, I didn’t have time to think about food. In front of me I saw fights to the death, and with my level 29, I didn’t expect to make it out alive.

  I was screwed.

  Sitting there, the cold started to bite, others focused, some lizardmen prayed to their god, another argued over scraps of what passed for meat.

  I looked at Banyak, who hadn’t touched the food at all, still keeping his distance and clearly not planning to come closer. I decided I’d ask him about what that filthy orc said. Maybe I’d learn something useful.

  "Hey you. Wipe those tears already, kid. What did you do that those orcs are so pissed at you?" I asked, and he got up, furious. "Don’t get all worked up, or I’ll sit you down with the others. Lizardmen aren’t pushovers to kick around."

  "Go away, trash! Why do you care!?"

  "You little shit, you fucked-up brat!" I snapped, scolding him like a child. We were knee-deep in shit, and he was still acting like he was two years old. "We might end up fighting on the same side. Maybe you should start cooperating, oh great son of a chief, rotting here with us in one cell…"

  He just bristled, saw the lizardmen staring at him, and sat back down, going silent for good.

  Mentally I was well over forty-two, but as a hydra I wasn’t even six months old… Most of that time spent in wastelands, the southern plains, and the Dungeon I was born in… After all that, I couldn’t understand how someone like him could survive so long in this sick world. A spoiled brat.

  "He’s traumatized or something. Maybe the orcs raped him or something…"

  One of the lizardmen said in a serious tone. San'Xu'Hu just summed it up simply: "He’s just an idiot." And that was that.

  We didn’t bother him anymore.

  Maybe an hour passed before something that looked like an oversized mushroom with two legs and a blue-purple color burst into our cell. We didn’t even manage to exchange two words before a huge cloud of pink smoke covered our eyes and drained what little strength we had left. My eyes watered, every breath hurt. Moments later dozens of troglodytes with clubs, sticks, and ropes rushed through the gate and took us somewhere unknown.

  Rags were thrown over my heads and tied tight. I could only hear murmurs, laughter of others who took us over from the eyeless, mouthless servants of the underworld queen — minotaurs, orcs, ogres and others…

  I felt like we were riding something like an elevator, then taking turns, rushing down stairs, sharp stones digging in, while the stench of sweat and foul smells of blood and excrement hit just as hard as the shoves and blows to the body.

  Suddenly it got insanely loud — I heard crowds talking, horns sounding, and noises as if hundreds of thousands of feet were stomping above us. They took the sacks off my heads and I saw hundreds of beings of all kinds crammed into something like a massive dungeon.

  Everywhere there were huge bars, some kind of water trenches, and chains rattling on prisoners’ hands, and hanging on hooks for the next ones.

  I saw they threw me into some kind of pit together with other lizardmen. I didn’t see the bull, but the terrible sounds of horns and thunder-like crashes kept making my heart beat faster.

  "Oh, how nice, they even gave us water," San'Xu'Hu joked, then took two gulps from the trough and spat. "Still tastes like a puddle someone pissed in…"

  I looked around and didn’t see much beyond what I could glimpse through the bars built above the pit, from which you could climb out using stairs. Somewhere there moved actual humans — usually in chains. Levels varied wildly, just like the creatures I saw. Ratmen, oversized bats, mole-men, snakefolk, some abominations, mushroom-covered humanoids…

  A real zoo.

  Was I going to fight them? What would happen? I didn’t know yet. For now, I looked at the lizardmen leader, who didn’t seem worried at all, as if he had accepted that in the end he would die here anyway.

  "Calm down. Breathe. After all, we have birthday games ahead of us. A fine entertainment awaits us, my friend. We’ll show them what lizardmen are capable of."

  He spoke to his people, trying to raise their spirits and calm them, but I knew Valeria wouldn’t save me this time. This time I had to rely on myself and not get killed. I wouldn’t die at some madwoman’s birthday.

  To hell with her bloody birthday. Thousands of years of this world’s history, and they’re still below the Middle Ages… Pathetic.

  I moved closer to the wall and scratched an expanded statement with my claw.

  Fuck ugly Dalaris. May the Sword God fuck her with a sword.

  I left such writing on the wall, a signature of mine:

  Artax was here — a mark of my not-so-kind opinion.