The Unluckiest Primarch

The boy stood with roughly a hundred slaves.

Their terrified, panicked behavior showed that they were all "new arrivals." They simply had not been as lucky as Qin Xa.

After being drugged and sent into the Arena, they had not awakened in the gladiators' quarters—the vast cave Qin Xa was currently in—but directly in the fighting grounds at the very center of the Arena.

No one would have considered Qin Xa lucky. The kinder gladiators, people like Oeno, would only have thought that the Arena had made special arrangements for Qin Xa.

"I'm a citizen, not a slave! Let me out!"

"They're going to make us... make us kill each other here!"

"Gods, why have you sent me into this hell?"

"..."

Under the spectators' gaze, the people in the fighting grounds fell into panic. Some wailed and sobbed, some complained, while others demanded answers from the gods of Nuceria.

The boy stood among them.

He was panicked and afraid, but he did not wail.

Because what troubled him even more than this unfamiliar place were the countless, overwhelming negative feelings he sensed within himself.

Fear, anger, grief... These emotions were like a surging river, flooding into his mind by some means the boy could not see.

Yet besides those negative emotions, there were other feelings he could sense.

Revelry, delight, excitement, bloodlust...

The boy did not know why he was experiencing such contradictory emotions, much less where they came from. He could only feel their existence and the way they invaded his senses.

In such torment, the boy even began to miss and long for the place he had been before coming to the Arena.

It had been a freezing mountain range.

There, he had suffered the two worst memories of his life so far.

The boy's first painful memory of those mountains was running wildly through them.

Strangely shaped people had chased after him, firing dart-like attacks from peculiar devices.

Whenever the sound of a "dart" splitting the air reached his ears, excruciating pain would shoot through his body.

The darts had made the boy cry as he ran.

But he had still taken revenge on those strange enemies. While running, he had casually picked up stones, then turned and hurled them back through his tears.

When the pursuers had dwindled, he had turned around and gone back to kill them.

After smashing one person's Helmet with a stone, he had examined the face beneath it. It belonged to someone with pointed ears, someone who did not look human.

For some reason, a word had surfaced in the boy's mind then: "Aeldari."

That was the first bad memory of those mountains.

The second was being found by another group, drugged unconscious by them with something, and sent to this awful place.

All those memories had been painful. Even when he had lived in those mountains without enemies threatening him, their barrenness and terrifying beasts had not afforded him the slightest peace.

But compared to this awful place, those mountains had been heaven.

At least that desolate place had not contained such a sensory storm of pain, terror, wild joy, excitement, and countless other emotions gathered together.

"Everyone awake?"

"Excellent!"

A sphere suddenly descended from above, circling and darting among the slaves in the Arena's fighting grounds who were about to face cruel gladiatorial combat.

At the same time, the strange thing broadcast words brimming with excitement and anticipation, like a Host addressing his own program.

"Spectators."

"These fools surely think we're going to make them kill one another in the Arena, but actually... well, actually, we are."

"However, the form this slaughter takes will be different from usual."

"Everyone on Nuceria, welcome to this unique spectacle on this unique day. The format of this gladiatorial match is..."

The Host speaking through the sphere drew out the final words.

"Te-Te-Te-Te-Te—Tears of the Demon! Yeehaw! Yeehaw! Yeehaw!"

The moment the words fell, the ground in the Arena's fighting grounds suddenly shuddered.

Then, a tall tower rose in the distance. At the same time, things seemed to open all around them, followed by liquid surging toward the very center of the Arena.

As the liquid swept across the crimson sand, even the blood that had accumulated on it over countless years was vaporized.

The boy realized the liquid was corrosive and immediately turned to look at the tower that had just risen nearby.

Not only the boy—everyone else looked at the tower as well, then all of them sprinted toward it together.

People climbed the tower.

At first, they helped each other. The young supported the old, two people pulled up one, mothers sent their children up first...

But the liquid soon swept in. It appeared to be controlled by some strange technology, accumulating despite having no container before creeping upward around the base of the tower.

The higher one went on the tower, the fewer people it could hold.

As people began climbing higher, their relationships grew increasingly cruel.

They went from helping one another, to shouting and cursing at one another, to shoving each other, and finally to deliberately pushing others into the liquid below, smiling viciously as some unlucky soul was instantly vaporized.

The boy wanted to live too, so he climbed upward as well.

His body was like a powerful engine that never stopped. He effortlessly climbed heights that made everyone else pause to catch their breath.

Until the liquid and the others all reached the very top, where there was room for only one person to stand.

Someone tried to push the boy down, but used too much force. He failed to move the boy in the slightest and instead fell himself.

Whenever someone died, or felt despair in the face of certain death, the boy felt it as though it were his own. But he wanted to survive, and his desire to live forced him to fight back.

The boy began fighting the others.

He did not want anyone to fall into that liquid and be painfully corroded, so he chose a simpler, more direct way to end their suffering.

Smashing heads with a punch, snapping necks...

Until, in the end, only the boy remained atop the tower.

The liquid stopped rising, and the spectators' cheers reached their peak.

Everyone celebrated and cheered for this victor.

The boy felt their excitement, reverence, praise, and countless other emotions. Though they came from cruel people, they diluted the pain he had felt before. His sadness gradually faded, leaving him only staring at the stands in confusion, unable to understand why those people felt happy at the sight of others dying.

"Oh, look, the final victor has emerged!"

The sphere floated over to the boy.

"This is the Prince of the Mountains! This is the Slave considered most likely to win this match!"

"To those who wisely bet on him beforehand, and to those who bet on others and missed out on the prize money, my apologies—I do not have time to congratulate or console you right now, because I want to hear the victor's declaration!"

The sphere flew directly in front of the boy.

Lights descended from above and converged upon him.

"Tell me, tell us, shout it loud—what is your name, Prince of the Mountains?!"

The boy remained silent.

"Well, he has no name."

"A mountain savage captured and drugged by Slave Catchers, a freak—how could he possibly have a name of his own?"

"Let me name this Slave."

The sphere flew in circles around Angron.

"Since you were captured by the Tark Family... and considering your performance..."

At that moment, fireworks rose and exploded within the Arena.

The Host by the sphere roared out a name.

"An-An-An-An-An-An-An—Angron!"

"Angron Tark!"