Escape Plan

Caesar walked up to the cave's blast door.

The others taking part in the scouting operation gathered around as well.

Some of the Gladiators inside the cave had been awakened by the commotion. Seeing the group assembled before the door, they realized Caesar was about to boost the ratings of a show called "Gladiator Arena Interlude," just like before.

Only this time, it was not just Caesar. There were others too.

"Hey, listen." Caesar motioned for them to pay attention. "I've been out before. Once we get outside, there's a corridor. About a hundred steps down is a crossroads. Two of the paths there are dead ends. We have to take the far-left one."

"Words of experience." Oeno nodded in satisfaction.

Angron asked, "And then?"

"And then?" Caesar spread his hands. "The Security Automata come over and beat the hell out of us, assuming you're as slow as I am."

Caesar's experience extended only as far as the left-hand path beyond the crossroads.

"Is there anything else we need to watch out for?" Qin Xa asked.

"No." Caesar shook his head with complete certainty. "It's just a corridor. There's nothing there. It looks like it's made of some kind of metal."

"Maybe lasers will cover the entire place from every angle and cut people into pieces." Qin Xa voiced a guess. "That's a classic trope."

Caesar raised a hand, his expression turning wary. "Wait... now that you mention it, you've reminded me... I was wondering why I saw a pile of body parts at the end of that corridor."

"There really were?" Qin Xa smiled.

Caesar shook his head, clearing his thoughts, then looked over Qin Xa, Angron, Oeno, and the female Gladiator.

"Any other questions?" Caesar asked before the operation began.

The female Gladiator raised her hand.

"Yes?" Caesar nodded.

"Why is a man like you so pretty?" The female Gladiator lowered her hand. "You look just like a sissy who never shuts up."

Dissatisfaction seemed written across Caesar's handsome face, but out of courtesy, he answered anyway.

"Don't underestimate my looks, lowborn."

"It was because of my looks that I rose from the slums into high society. But then the people who loved me grew tired of me and sold me here..."

After recounting that painful memory, Caesar turned and walked toward the door.

He had clearly worn the collar for so long that he had forgotten he still had one suppressing his psychic abilities.

But after Caesar turned away, Qin Xa tore off his collar as easily as tearing paper.

Only then did Caesar notice. He glanced at Qin Xa. "Now I know why those people didn't put a collar on you."

The moment he finished speaking, frost began spreading through the room.

It was a supernatural phenomenon caused by the use of psychic power.

Caesar focused completely as he drew upon his psychic abilities.

The Warp.

The Sea of Souls.

The Immaterium.

The boundless, majestic power contained within that other dimension composed of pure spirit seeped into reality through the breach created by a Psyker in the material realm.

"In ten seconds, all of us will become intangible, like ghosts." Caesar took a moment to turn back and warn the four of them.

"Can you stop talking, you wimp?" the female Gladiator said impatiently.

"I have to warn you, or you'll waste time being too shocked." Caesar turned back around. "We can pass through any solid object, but don't go through the walls. This cave is several thousand meters underground, surrounded by rock. You can't keep my ability on yourselves for long. You'll overlap with the rock layers."

"I'll go out with you."

Caesar was still rambling on.

Qin Xa thought it might be a habit Caesar had when using psychic power. Some Psykers had odd quirks like that.

"When they catch us and bring us back later, you two big ones help shield me a little. I contributed to all this for everyone's sake too, right?"

Caesar extended his hand, and his body gradually began to turn translucent.

But the transformation did not last long.

"Damn... what's going on?" Caesar frowned. "Sorry, let me focus, then we'll—"

Bang—

After a dull sound like a watermelon bursting...

Qin Xa's vision instantly turned crimson, while a sticky, hot sensation traveled from the nerves in his face to his brain.

He blinked.

His vision was no longer a blurry red haze. He saw what was before him.

Caesar was still standing with one arm outstretched, but his head had vanished somewhere. The exposed arteries and neck formed a fountain spraying crimson liquid.

The disturbance inside the cave seemed to have alerted those outside.

The cave instantly fell into darkness, followed by flashing crimson lights.

A piercing alarm blared through the Arena, followed by heavy footsteps. The Security Automata had arrived.

"Huff—huff—"

Qin Xa breathed rapidly in stunned terror. He raised a hand, touched the warmth on his face, and held it before his eyes.

Amid the flashing red lights and shrieking alarm, Qin Xa saw that his hand was covered in blood.

A piece of something unknown slid down from the ceiling and landed on Qin Xa's shoulder with a wet, disgusting splat.

Qin Xa blankly and stiffly turned to look at Angron, then Oeno, then the female Gladiator who had decided to come with them.

They wore the same expressions and were in the same state.

Qin Xa noticed they were covered in crimson and splattered with fragments. When he lowered his head to look at his own body, he realized he was the same.

It was not just his face that had been stained with blood.

Thud—

Caesar's headless body dropped to its knees, then collapsed.

"This... this..." Angron breathed rapidly and crouched down in disbelief, staring at Caesar's corpse. "What happened? What happened!"

Oeno was already frozen in place.

The female Gladiator reacted the same way as Oeno.

Both had seen too much, leaving them numb.

"His psychic power went out of control." Qin Xa looked utterly lost as he stared at the corpse. "His psychic power went out of control, and then his head exploded."

As soon as he finished speaking, the blast door opened.

The Security Automata marched neatly into the cave. Upon discovering everyone in a state of shock and confusion, they stood rigidly along both sides of the outer corridor.

A spherical Drone called Maggot Eye flew down the corridor and into the cave, circling Caesar's corpse once.

"So..." the Host's voice came from Maggot Eye. "This escape attempt ended with a wizard blowing up his own head?"

"That was a little abrupt."

"As the only wizard here, he was entrusted with a great responsibility, but his end came too abruptly."

Maggot Eye began filming everyone's reactions.

The Host, somewhere else, seemed to be speaking with his colleagues.

"Yes, rewind the observation devices to two minutes ago, record it, and broadcast it on the Arena channel."

"Focus on that Gladiator called Caesar. Film how the central figure of this escape attempt brought it to such a dramatic end."

"Then issue an announcement explaining the situation. Tell those who bet on Caesar and thought he could escape... sorry to disappoint them."

Maggot Eye recorded everyone's reactions after the escape plan failed, then flew away.

The alarm stopped.

The lights stopped flashing.

The blast door slammed shut.

Only Caesar's headless corpse remained where it was, like a warning.

And at this very moment, that warning held an additional meaning for Qin Xa.

Update note: During this novel's new-release period, I'll update three times a day because I need to make the most of the recommendations. My previous novel updated five or even six times a day, yet I still didn't finish using up the recommendations before it went premium. I added two extra chapters today to explain this.