Midday stood hunched over at the well, steadily cranking the lever that controlled the rope it was attached to lower the pot deeper and then deeper still. It was not a difficult process but, seeing as the well in question was more than a hundred feet deep, it always took a while to get it done.

And so he sat there silently listening to the faraway sounds of the execution taking place in the plaza that night. He was surprised that he could hear the shrill screams of the spectators who had gone to watch the ordeal all the way from where he lived, which was a fairly long walk away from the plaza, but when he thought about it, it really wasn’t all that bizarre: as members of the Weekly Fight Club, a group of elites handpicked by Jenjo, all of the people getting killed that day were among the most well-known slaves in the Neighborhood, with most of them hovering around level 15. It was only natural that many people would care about their deaths.

The empty pot finally made it to the bottom of the well, filling up with fresh groundwater as soon as it arrived. Now for the hard part. Midday frowned as he strained himself to pull up the pot which was now several times heavier. He cranked the lever with all his might, breaking out into a sweat from all the effort. He had no idea why the well had to be so deep—or why he had to use a metal pot instead of a bucket—but none of that mattered. Midday spent the next several minutes hoisting the pot up out of the well, thinking about the execution and all the oddities relating to it as he worked.

He wondered why Romulo hadn’t mentioned it during their previous conversation. As one of the top-ranked members of the Weekly Fight Club, the giant almost certainly knew all the people that were dying that night and, in all likelihood, he had probably even beaten a few of them in fights. Were they just strangers to him? Midday sighed. Romulo never talked about the Fight Club unless specifically asked. Ah, who cares? Probably best to stay ignorant about these things. Either way, he reckoned he would be hearing most of the all-too-gory details from Glauster on the following morning.

After unhooking the pot from the well and carrying it back to the cabin, Midday entered to the sight of Romulo holding Tomulo in his palm. The giant had started the fireplace while Midday had been out getting water, and the flames were already burning strong.

“Thanks,” said Midday as placed the pot into the red-hot furnace. “Saved me a few minutes there.” He then reached up to the nook above the fireplace and grabbed a brown sack of oats from which he took the small portion that would soon become his oatmeal dinner. Midday knew better than to take more than what could comfortably fit it on a single hand, as the cabin only received two small bags of food per week—one of oats and the other of lentils—and so they had to ration carefully to stretch their limited supply to last a full 7 days. “Are you eating tonight?”

“Nope.” Romulo looked up at the ceiling. “Ended up eating a few dozen of those leeches you killed yesterday.”

“Raw?”

“Damn right.”

“Geez.” Midday sighed. “Well, whatever. More food for the rest of us that way.”

Even after accounting for the fact that he weighed almost ten times more than the next biggest resident of the cabin—which was Gork—Romulo still managed to have an appetite of unreasonable magnitude. He could eat an entire deer in one sitting and still have room for more, which was a feat Midday had once had the misfortune of witnessing firsthand. Romulo himself considered his atrociously high dietary needs as a curse caused by his mongrel blood—though it was really just one of the prices he had to pay in exchange for the slew of benefits his anatomy provided: accelerated regeneration, enhanced durability, augmented strength and endurance, and—most recently—the ability to turn his appendages into claws were just a few of the many perks that he had to pay for, at least partially, with calories.

It went without saying that the rations allotted to him were nowhere near enough to keep his body healthy and so he got most of his food during his XP grinding sessions in the forest, in which he had a rule of eating everything he killed. He also received an enormous feast every Sunday as one of the rewards for his participation in the Weekly Fight Club—which was the only time he ate cooked meat. In any case, Midday appreciated the fact that Romulo usually donated his portion of the weekly rations to the others.

Midday dumped his oats into the pot and let them start cooking. “So we are skipping the ‘training’ thing tonight, right? The soup will be ready like 10 minutes. That’s hardly enough time to do anything.”

“Yeah, well, seeing as you are fairly injured right now, I guess it’s fine if you rest tonight.” Romulo shrugged. “But Mister Potatoes could use a workout, don’t you think? How about he and Tomulo have a match while we wait for the soup to cook?”

“Not really sure what you’re trying to accomplish here, but sure. I guess that’s fine.” Midday looked up the ceiling, where Mister Potatoes, his mighty beetle, was resting idly. “You wanna have a match, Mister Potatoes?”

Mister Potatoes, while still only an insect, was an unusually astute creature, and he had somehow managed to learn his name such that he would look down at Midday whenever the human called out to him. The beetle—whose sharp mandibles were longer than its actual body—stood still for a moment as if thinking before finally crawling along the ceiling until it was positioned directly above the table. Mister Potatoes then jumped down from the ceiling, landing gracefully on the table below.

“That beetle of yours is something else,” said Romulo. “Which I guess makes sense, seeing as it’s a member of the Emperor Rockjaw species, which, in its fully matured form, is the largest and mightiest member of the Rockjaw genus of beetles.” He set Tomulo down on the table beside Mister Potatoes—who was easily a dozen, if not several dozen, times larger than the smaller beetle. “And if Mister Potatoes ever becomes a fully-fledged Emperor, which would happen during mating season if he won the tournament of sovereignty—a feat that would require him to be the victor in a free-for-all tournament against 999 other male beetles of the same species—he could become large enough to split several men in half with a single chomp of those huge jaws, and he would be able to breed with the empress resulting from the other half of that same tournament, thereby sparking the birth of a new royal family. It’s really fascinating, honestly. I’m amazed you found such a unique creature.”

“You sure do know a lot about nature. I just picked him up because I thought he looked cool.” Midday looked at Mister Potatoes with renewed interest. Romulo had told him what species his beetle belonged to before, but this was the first time there had been any mention of the fact that his beetle might one day become even larger than Romulo. “So how much of a chance does he have of winning that tournament thingy?”

“None. A full-grown non-royalty member of his species can weigh as much as ten pounds and would also have several years of experience surviving out in the wild. As a young individual weighing less than 2 pounds, he would get beaten to a pulp.”

“Damn.” Midday sighed. “Not that it matters, but what do you think would happen if we started sprinkling Devil Peppercorn onto the bugs he eats?”

“That would be a massive waste of a precious resource and, if I had to guess, he would probably starve to death after refusing to eat.”

“Hmm… What if… As a way to test the safety of this whole ‘Tongue Jelly’ thing… We had Netari do her procedure on him? And then I could wait maybe a few weeks to see what kind of side effects there are. Maybe I could also experiment with adding Devil Peppercorn to his food and then if he still chose to eat it afterward, that would prove the procedure to be effective—at least for its main intended purpose.”

“That would… be interesting, I’ll give you that much.”

“Maybe I’ll bring Mister Potatoes with me to the meeting tomorrow then. That way, I can watch her perform the procedure just to make sure she can’t hide any methods.

“Well… Mister Potatoes is small enough to where the procedure wouldn’t be necessary, but Netari might be willing to humor you regardless, just for fun. She sort of has that energy about her, I think.”

“Then I’ll give it a shot. Anyways, let’s get this match underway.”

Midday picked up Mister Potatoes, who had an incredibly shiny, black exoskeleton that always looked pristine, as though it had been freshly waxed. The bulky creature was heavy in his palm, with its natural armor probably being denser than most metals, but the most defining feature of all were its mandibles: they were sharper than any knife Midday had ever come across, and just as large too. The beetle was quite gentle though, and it never used its deadly weapon against other beetles—which Mister Potatoes could easily cleave in half if he ever felt like it. Midday set Mister Potatoes down on the wooden plate that served as the arena.

Romulo set Tomulo down on the plate a few seconds later. “Ready?”

“Of course.”

“Alright. Then… 1… 2… 3… Begin!”