Promotion and Prayer

As the first rays of morning sunlight fell on the ivy climbing the apartment balconies, the city of Rome opened her eyes.

More and more people emerged from their homes, especially the slaves and commoners of relatively low social status. They woke earliest and began another day of hard work to make a living.

The clanging of hammering came from the workshops. Coppersmiths were pounding the bottoms of frying pans, and the noisy racket woke the neighbors next door. But everyone had long since grown accustomed to it, climbing out of bed while grumbling and cursing.

A young slave girl came down from the apartment building carrying a clay jar. She walked to a huge vessel by the wall and poured her master's urine from the clay jar into the larger container. Before long, someone would take the collected urine to the laundry and pour it into vats full of dirty clothes.

The laundry slaves, who had been waiting there for some time, would jump into the vats and repeatedly tread on the dirty clothes soaking in urine with their bare feet. The laundry business was so good that the emperor had even begun levying a tax specifically on urine.

After pouring out the urine, the slave girl rubbed her eyes and turned to head back upstairs. But the next moment, she bumped into a boy who had been squatting by the wall, which was why she had not noticed him earlier. She hurriedly apologized.

But the boy did not answer her. He was intently drawing something on the wall: two little figures. Judging from their weapons and armor, one was a Fish-Helmet Gladiator and the other a Protector. Their names were written beneath them: Bach and Rufus.

With only a few strokes, the figures of Bach and Rufus sprang