The Insider System

Chapter 278: Coliseum

"So our world had six gods at the beginning and that included the God of Fire. The only reason why this is important for the story of the Coliseum is because all the gods other than the God of Fire have the same origin world and knew each other before they ascended." Hearing how deep the Temple Head was about to go, Lake got ready to finally understand what was going on in this world a bit more.

"They originally had another god of fire that was meant for this position but something happened and they had to find another." Hearing she was being vague all of a sudden He asked. "What does something mean?"

"I don't know, the God of Light didn't say what happened. I'm sure whatever you're guessing is pretty close to what happened though." Lake had guessed that the other God of Fire had been killed or something just based off of what went on in this world's history. Tragedy seemed to be ingrained in almost every story he had heard. "Please continue."

Lake had accidentally made the Temple Head stop talking by asking a question so he told her to keep going to snap her out of whatever she had started to think about. "Well after some searching they eventually found our God of Fire who was alone and looking to join a group of gods to ascend with and they decided they could work together."

Lake could tell by the way the Temple Head had said the last part that this was going to be some type of mistake. "Everything was fine between the six original gods until it came time to actually start moving people to this world. The god of fire wanted to bring some of the people from their world which the other gods eventually agreed to and those people brought the Coliseum."

The last sentence kind of made it seem like the Temple Head had skipped a lot of stuff that had happened and he was about to ask her if she was done when she started to talk again. "It was an old custom from the world of the God of Fire so the other gods allowed it to happen even though it didn't really line up with the original vision of their world and that brings us to where the demons came from."

Lake wanted to ask for a bit more information about what the Coliseum did but he had learned that if he asked a question in the middle of her talking it would kind of derail what she was trying to say so he stayed silent. "As I'm sure you know every god has their own race that represents their element or at least they eventually do."

Lake hadn't known this exactly but he had known there were other races that seemed to specialize a bit in a certain element. "The demons were supposed to be the race of the God of Fire and they were for a long time but. Actually I'm telling this part out of order. The Coliseum was how the God of Fire and his people made all the decisions in the Fire Domain and while this was considered a brutal way to make decisions by the other gods it was fine until the God of Fire made the Demons who are a lot stronger than a normal person in a fight. This meant that soon after the demons were introduced they took control of the Fire Domain by winning all their fights in the Coliseum."

The last sentence made Lake think of the metal Temple which seemed to entirely be made up of dwarves at least at the higher levels and wanted to know if this was the norm but the Temple Head was still talking so he just saved the question for a moment when she had paused.

"Once again the other gods felt like they had to step in because the normal people of the Fire Domain were being oppressed and something that I don't know the details of happened that caused the God of Fire to get mad and get rid of the demons and Coliseum from his domain. He didn't destroy them though just banished them so these days if you see a demon there's about a 99% chance that you're seeing a member of the Coliseum."

Seeing the Temple Head pause for a moment, Lake was about to ask the questions he had prepared but he actually started with one that came from the last thing she said. "You said 99% is the other 1% something to do with the Demon Lord?"

"Yes there was a small group of demons that spit from the others and that's the group the Demon Lord was born from. We don't know too much about it though because it was a long time ago and none of the gods like to spread knowledge about what happened around."

Lake wanted to ask his other questions before they moved on too much so he went ahead and asked about the Metal Temples makeup for its important members. "Earlier you said the gods didn't like the fact that one race was ruling a domain but when I was in the Metal Domain every member of the temple that I saw seemed to be dwarves. Is this allowed because it's not like this through violence like it was in the Coliseum."

"That's a good guess but it's actually like that because the God of Metal has just started turning people into his version of Dwarves a few years ago. Anyone who wants to be a metal dwarf can go to the Temple and if the God of Metal thinks you're worthy you can go through the transformation."

"So not everyone in the temple was a dwarf to begin with but it would seem that way to someone who just got there." Lake had his answer and was about to ask his next question when he saw that they were about to pass a group of people that were sitting next to the road with a fire built.

This wasn't important to them and the people would most likely barely even notice them at the speed they were moving but he didn't want to talk as they passed them in case they were somehow related to the coliseum. Once they had passed the group Lake asked. "Are we still in free territory?"

"I think so, why?" Lake had been being paranoid so he just told the temple Head what he was thinking. "I just wanted to know because of the group we just passed. I figured if we were there was a good chance those people would have attacked us if they had noticed us."

"There are normal people out here as well and those people looked like they were probably here to stop any bandits that might have been using that road. The way they had the fire set made it look like they were trying to act like clueless travelers while their gear made it look like they were probably here for a fight."

Lake memorized this method of drawing in bandits for the future since they were still one of the best sources of Exp he had found and switched the conversation back to the Coliseum by asking. "So if we hadn't saved Tiffany what would have happened to her in the hands of the Coliseum."

"They would have probably made her fight but they might have also had a deal to give her to another group in exchange for something. There's really no way to know just yet until I send people to investigate." Lake had a few other things he wanted to ask about why it had been Tiffany again but decided to just directly ask about the fighting thing.

"So is that what they do? They kidnap people and make them fight in the Coliseum." It made sense for a group with that name but he didn't see the point. "They say there's more to what they do but essentially yes they just make prisoners fight and sell tickets."

"Do non-prisoners fight as well?" Lake was guessing the answer would be yes since they tried to make it sound like they had actual reasons to keep the Coliseum going but he wanted to know if maybe they were just putting on a bloodshow to make money. "I've heard there are private shows for members of the Coliseum sometimes where members settle feuds but I don't know if they're to death like the ones between prisoners."

With this all there was left for him to ask about was what he had originally shown up at the temple for. "The group that's going to the Metal Domain, have they left yet?"

"I don't know, they hadn't when we left but it's been a few hours already so there's a good chance they went to meet up with the other groups and headed for the Metal Domain." Lake was happy to know he had gotten Helian there in time and hadn't just left her in a place where she wouldn't be helpful.

He could already picture the Metal Temple Head's confused face once he learned that he had somehow failed to get her to the people that would be bringing down the barrier. It would kind of make him look like he had a good chance of failing any task you gave him and that wasn't really the type of person that you paid a lot.