“As of the moment, there are 1,592 gladiators in the arena. At the end of the day, only 100 of you will be standing.”

After the clash at his mansion that ended up in a pool of blood, Legatus Caius acted efficiently and without any second thoughts. In just days, Jean found herself standing on the same elevated stage she could just observe a few days ago as a gladiator. The men who were her enemies were standing guard around her. The man who condemned her to slavery was asking for her opinions.

Fate works in funny ways.

In the field below, thousands of gladiators stood tall, all armed with their weapons of choice. Jean wanted the best warriors, not the ones who happened to be lucky enough to have a blade next to them. Still, none of the gladiators had anything more than clothes to cover themselves.

At the end of the day, 95% of the gladiators would be dead. Even the most experienced fighter couldn’t say with confidence that he would live through the slaughter. Who was to say that these men wouldn’t try to break out.

All around the arena, archers have taken up positions on the highgrounds. Their armor-piercing rounds were ready to be unloaded upon the bare skin of the gladiators if they were to get out of control. Several legionnaire cohorts waited behind the walls of the arena.

But the people weren’t aware of the danger. Countless men flocked into the observation decks of the arena. Some of them have emptied their life savings just so they could see this unprecedented slaughter unfold with their own eyes.

Caius used the chance and made these tickets ten times more expensive than the normal ones. The profit made his wounded heart feel a little better. After this, it would be at least a few more weeks before the games could continue, and even then the quality of the games would take a blow.

Jean sat down in the main seat. Her hand casually resting on the hilt of her sword. Her eyes glanced through the gladiators.

Caius thought Decimus was just enjoying the feeling of having thousands beneath him, about to give their lives at a single command, but Jean was actually observing the cloud of battered souls. The presence of this many fighters and the fierceness of their weapons have excited them. These invisible beings have lost their individualities. The only thing remaining in their mingled presence was the feeling of blood and death.

She waved her hand.

“Begin.”

The tens of thousands of audience were still constantly exploding into waves and waves of conversation. Obviously, someone as noble as Decimus wouldn’t be screaming against the crowd at the top of his lung himself. Hearing the command, Caius turned to a lieutenant, who took a deep breath and blew into a horn.

Wooooooo.

The crowd slowly quieted down. Caius stood up and started stirring up the emotions of the people. Gladiator games were so much more than two men fighting to the death. It was about making the audience feel like they had a private steak in this. It was about tying the honor of the people to certain gladiators. When he was finally done, the people were already blinded by excitement.

“Kill those Thracian scum!”

“Those deserters don’t deserve the name of Romans! Let them die a thousand deaths!”

“Let those barbarians die screaming!”

“Lucius, kill them all!”

Distinctly, Jean saw some familiar faces among the gladiators. They were her “comrades”, the group of deserters who fled from certain death at the hand of her Worldship. They have survived the initial game. They should have a chance to rest and recover, right? Well, that was what most of them thought. The other nine gladiators aside from Jean that Decimus met up with were still deep in their dreams of wealth and glory when they received the terrible news.

Caius didn't give a damn about a few gladiators. They, along with everyone else, were pushed into the arena. Neither their injuries nor Decimus’s promises helped.

And now, it was time for blood.

The gladiators glanced at each other before suddenly letting out a loose scream. Swords and axes were hacked against each other with the full strength of their handlers. Some of the war cries barely left the mouths before being turned into screams. Within the first contact, dozens were on the ground, dead or dying.

Jean saw a gladiator chopping a man into two, just before being impaled by an attacker from behind with a spear. His bloodthirsty cheer of the initial blood was cut short by a chilling scream. He went from the predator to the prey in half a second.

On such a messy field where it was every man for himself, strength was far from the only thing needed to survive. Awareness of the surrounding was equally crucial, if not more.

But what really caught Jean’s eyes was a gladiator nearly 2m tall. He marched to a fully armed gladiator, grabbed onto his arms and literally ripped him in two. The unfortunate soul was hacking at him the entire time, yet that didn't make a single difference. His sword uselessly bounced off of the giant’s bronze skin.

This was enough to make Jean raise her eyebrows. The natives of this world had superior muscular strength and endurance. Ripping them apart was much more difficult than tearing up an armored vehicle from the original Terran Dominion. What he did wasn’t that shocking for a Voyager, but as a native with such capabilities, he had reasons to be proud.

She watched as the gladiator proceeded to handle two more fellow competitors in the same fashion. They resisted, but the end result was the same.

Jean pointed at the man.

“Who is he?”

Legatus Caius had no response. He, a high ranking Roman general, had no knowledge of someone as low as a gladiator. Sure, the man was a good one, but Caius was a proud Roman. He could have the man killed as easily as he could squish an ant.

Fortunately, he had help. One of his lieutenants stepped forward.

“My lord, he goes by the name of Lucus. He came from the land of Germania. Since he entered the arenas, he has faced over fifty games, yet he hasn’t suffered a single defeat. In the last game, he tore a tiger into two in the first minute. The people adore him.”

“Hmmm.” Jean nodded.

Despite the conversation, the game continued as countless elite, experienced warriors fight for a chance to live in this cruel, merciless world for another day. In the arena, a moment of hesitance meant death. Man after man fell. Even Lucus was injured. A dozen gladiators who refused to be picked off by him one by one grouped together, formed a formation, and surrounded him. Lucus killed them all, but he took a hit to the side.

Slowly, as the cries and screams and yelps in the arena continued, an invisible mist started to condense above the arena. Jean slowly stood up. Her eyes turned pitch black as she started utilizing the Power of Death. The observers in the air were working overtime to ensure that if there was an Aggressor or someone else that might notice her uniqueness, she would be warned.

The mist was sucked into Jean’s body, or more specifically, Legatus Decimus’s body. Ok. It was actually Jean’s soul. The Power of Death resides in her soul and not her body. This was how she was able to get her facade to work.

When the mist entered her, Jean blacked out for a second. Her eyes lost its focus. The next moment, her mind was filled with thousands of fragments of distinct memories. She was a thousand gladiators all at once. One moment, she was a man being stabbed in the chest. The next moment, she was the man doing the stabbing.

Jean was unfazed. She knew these hallucinations were just a byproduct of the mist. The mist was the result of the psychic energy of thousands of gladiators when they died. It was powerful, yet if anyone else tried to suck it in like she did, their minds would be washed over, and their souls would be no more than another addition to the mist.

But she wasn’t anyone else. She was Jean Turner, and she was a Reapress.

The lack of focus in her eyes were quickly washed by a sea of black. The next second, the Power of Death swept through the mist and erased every piece of unneeded memory involved. Enough memories to turn a man mad crumbled under one of the ultimate powers in the Infinite Realms. When the process was done, the mist was ready.

Jean wrapped the Power of Death around that energy. Instead of unleashing its destructive potentials, she reached into the mist. This time, she was overwhelmed by a wave of understandings of death.

In a sense, they were similar to the understandings she reached in the Dream Realms, but this time, instead of a one-sided slaughter, it was a glorious death that came as a result of a duel between multiple worthy opponents.

Death takes many forms. Being torn apart by a wraith was death, but so was being beheaded during a gladiatorial game. To be a fully qualified Reapress, Jean had to master all of the forms.

By the time Jean was done, she felt her powers amplified. The deeper comprehension of the concept of death has directly reflected upon the Power of Death she controlled.

The mist was gone, but it was well worth it.

But when she turned her attention back to the outside world, Jean felt a little off. As an usurper in this body, Jean knew her soul wasn’t compatible with Decimus’s body. Despite her efforts to slow the process down, the body was corroding every moment she was inside. That was hardly a pleasant feeling.

But right now, while Jean could still feel her body rotting away, the pain felt odd. It was as if the feeling was muted. The corroding was still happening, but she just had trouble experiencing it.

How could that be? Jean’s brain, her soul, more specifically, was modified so she wouldn’t feel emotions, but her pain reception was left normal. It took Jean a few moments to get to the answer.

Reapresses were embodiments of the very concept of death. A personification, if you will. One thing for sure. They are more dead than alive.

When Jean first received the Power of Death and became a Reapress, the power has already infiltrated her soul and was sweeping into her body, modifying it into something completely different. Her zerg parts disappeared. Her hair changed color. She was a different life form than most people. But that was just the beginning.

As she enhanced her Power of Death, the power in return made more drastic changes on her soul. Previously, she could still feel pain or hunger or pleasure, but as she gets stronger and stronger, that would start to disappear.

In the end, all of those things would be gone.

The dead could feel neither pain nor hunger. Those were limited to only the living.

One interesting thing was just like the instincts, emotions should start to disappear at this point too. If Jean had any to begin with, that is.

This was the primary reason why the Grand Protector ceased the Reaper and Reapress upgrades inside the Protector Corps. At one point, the Corps no longer needed to sacrifice the life in its members in exchange for power.

Opening her eyes, back on that platform, Jean was neither surprised nor fazed. Both the Assistant and Death has warned her about this before she underwent the Reapress transformation. She has chosen to come down this path, and she wasn’t going to turn back now.

Hesitance and self-doubt would only lead to failure.

A single scan inside the arena suggested there were only 140 gladiators left. That was less than one tenth of what the game started with. Everyone left were the best of the best. Most of them had an injury or two, but none of them was willing to let that drag them down.

They were so close. Kill another 40 men, and the rest would seize salvation.

The audience cheered even louder. The ending would be better than the rest of the game combined.

That was when Jean stood up and raised her hand. The lieutenant saw it.

Wooooo.

As they heard the penetrating voice of the instrument, the crowd started to quiet down and listened to what Jean had to say. It took the gladiators a little longer, but after three more casualties, they gave Jean their attention as well.

“You have fought bravely,” Jean announced loudly. “And for that, I am willing to show mercy! You...all of you, are victors of this game!”

The gladiators couldn’t believe their luck. None of them could say for sure that they wouldn’t be one of the dozens of casualties. By showing mercy, Jean practically saved all of them from death. They rose their weapons and cheered alongside the men they were about to kill ten seconds ago.

The audience, on the other hand, wasn’t so satisfied. Jean stepping in and putting a halt to the game like this was like pulling a starving man away from a feast after the first minute. It was simply cruel. The majority of the people kept their mouths shut, but some decided to shout a few angry words at Jean.

They were quickly silenced by Roman legionnaires standing guard.

“Decimus…” Legatus Caius was about to say something, but Jean didn't wait for it. She stood up and left the platform.

She had 100 veils of serums, capable of upgrading 100 warriors. Yet every single one of those gladiators were literally the best of a dozen men, who themselves were the best of the best to be standing here. She had better usage for them then to be wasted here.

As for Legatus Caius, Jean had assurance he would be loyal in the short-term. Sure, he would be disgruntled, but if he would betray her before she betrays him was a legitimate question.