What came first, the colosseum or the egg?

“Congratulations,” John said to Thana as they sat in their corner of the arena the following day, “you split the fanbase.” He was talking about the reddit response that yesterday’s fight brought about. Generally, the group was trying their hardest not to look at the forum too much.

Lydia found it a waste of time, John did not like the hate threads he got, Rave did not want to stumble over another fanfic about her and her mother boning it out (the theories about what their dispute was about were numerous indeed), Momo stayed away from the meme as far as humanly (or, well, robotically) possible.

Thana, on the other hand, simply didn’t have a device to access the thing yet. Perpetual complaints about this fact had pushed Lydia to arrange for a phone to be brought, it was scheduled to arrive while they were here. One of the knights of Teuton would receive it and hand it to Thana once this whole thing was over.

Thana hurried over to look on the screen, “The fuck do you mean ‘split’? These one-hand surfers should love me!” “It’s because ya are uncomfortably brutal,” Rave pointed out. “Please, I only played with the arrogant prick for like 5 minutes,” Thana retorted; “You, of all people, should know that I can do much worse.”

“Ja, please don’t remind me,” Rave said and twirled a strand of her pink hair, remembering the torturous glimpses of the days of almost no sleep and constant combat. “…Sorry…” Thana’s voice was a tiny whisper. “I wonder about something,” John broke the awkward silence that followed, “why exactly are we limiting ourselves to one fight a day? I mean, we could probably finish all of the single fights in a day, then go home, rest and then have the group fight. This tournament could be over in like 6 days.”

“Like with most things regarding this,” Lydia’s answer had an annoyed vibe underneath her usual strict tone, “the reasons are fairly stupid. Officially, it is to allow the Fateweavers and other security personal to rest; economically, it is because they can get more money out of it this way; truly, it is because it has always been like this and people don’t like acting against traditions, no matter how devoid of reason they may be.”

“Should have expected that,” John wryly stated. “The reason for that tradition,” Momo said, turning a page of her current book, “is that in older times people needed to travel a large distance by foot or carriage to get to Rome. In order to give everyone a chance to enter the colosseum once and make the trip a bit more worthwhile, the tournament was stretched out.”

“Huh…” John didn’t even need to ask where she knew that from, seeing that she spent literally all of her day reading something; “You know, I find it weird that you seem to know more about the Abyss than I do,” he said. “If you used all of the hours you spend fucking with reading instead, you would know pretty much everything by now,” Momo pointed out.

“Ya are right,” Rave answered for John, “but that would be boring. Besides, he already knows more than I do.” “Yes, and you are uneducated,” Momo sighed, “but we already had this.” “Speaking of the colosseum,” John changed the topic rather forcibly, “seeing as you are such a wealth of trivia, can you explain to me why it is smaller than a real one from the outside but bigger on the inside?”

The real colosseum had been estimated to be able to hold around 50’000 people, which had been John’s initial guess for this one as well. After asking Lydia on the matter, she had informed him that he was off by about ten to twenty thousand. It really depended how everything was arranged as, apparently, the size of areas could be readjusted however needed. Magical engineering was a hard thing to wrap one’s head around.

“What I mean,” John clarified, “is that I expected someone like Romulus, who builds a giant, islands-floating obelisk, to have something much grander than the real-life copy.” “The answer to that is quite easy,” Momo said; “The real one was built after this one.”

John found that idea quite baffling. “So…wait,” he said; “Am I to assume that this city was founded before the actual Rome as well?” “No, they were founded on exactly the same day,” Lydia told him; “However, one performed much better thanks to the existence of magic.”

While that did make a high degree of sense, it didn’t sit quite right with John to find these things out in random conversations. “Okay, so while we are at it,” John said, “here is another thing that I have been wondering for a while: Just how many people are here, in Abyssal Rome, and in the Abyss in general?”

He felt like almost every person he met nowadays was part of this secret society, but that was likely a mixture of confirmation bias and the circles he walked in. It’s not like he expected someone inside an Illusion Barrier to be non-Abyss affiliated, but the sheer size of Abyssal Rome made him wonder how many of the people had a daily life in reality.

“Abyssal Rome has a population of roughly 225 thousand people,” Lydia answered; “This is counting the majority human population in addition to the various fantastical races that roam this city. Its population exceeds that of Paris, the second biggest abyssal city, by about 20 thousand.”

The princess sipped the tea that a servant had brought her. “For the second part of your question, that is impossible to answer. Not only because the individual organizations keep their total numbers secret from each other but also because of the many places that are essentially lawless. The best I can provide you with is the information that the highest density of Abyssal individuals in a nation can be found in Korea, where there is roughly one Abyssal human per one hundred people. In Germany we are talking about one in 150. Italy is slightly lower. I lack numbers for the rest of Europe, but they shouldn’t deviate too much. You can expect this number to be much lower in the Americas.”

“…The Abyss is a pretty wide-spread secret society, but still a secret society,” John finally stated. “Calling it a secret society sounds like the Abyss is some sort of club,” Lydia shook her head; “A more apt description would be to call it a mist-hidden mirror of reality.”

Rave yawned, “That doesn’t roll of the tongue quite as well, Lyly.” “That is of no concern to me,” the princess took another sip of tea. “It should be,” the techno-lover pointed out; “Things that ya can’t say easily won’t stick.” “Mhm,” the princess hummed, “I suggest the description of a shadow civilization then. Although that isn’t entirely accu-“

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!” the voice of Jeff interrupted their talk and echoed over the arena; “And whatever moniker your species uses. Welcome back to the 17th tournament.” “After yesterday’s win through the hand of Thana Newman, team Secundus is now tied with team Primus,” Dra said in a sober tone, contrasting his hyperactive co-host.

“Not through her hand, her leg, Dra!” Jeff reminded everyone; “After all, the insane beatdown Thana delivered had her keep her promise to not use her hands in the later half of the fight!” “Yes, it must have been maddening for Mario to still lose after she announced that and allowed him to use his favourite sword,” the lizardman agreed and took a sip of ginger ale.

“It was quite the sight to see someone bite through a mithril alloy,” Jeff announced. “Yes, although I need to correct the notion that mithril is the hardest metal in the abyss,” Dra said and turned to the camera; “That title belongs to the exceedingly rare Astrotium, a metal only found inside meteorites that crashed into an Illusion Barrier.”

“Which also can only be worked by Enki and Hephaistos,” Jeff informed the audience; “How can a meteorite crash into an Illusion Barrier? Well, we aren’t sure. There are two popular theories.” “Either the Astrotium is created when a meteorite crashes into a barrier, in which case we are absolutely clueless,” Dra picked up, “or it is already in there and allows the meteorite to penetrate the border between the dimensions.”

“But enough of this trivia stuff!” Jeff shouted; “ARE YOU READY FOR YOU NEXT FIGHT?!” “YES!” the audience shouted. “I cannot hear you!” the hyped announcer put a hand to his ear as the desk made its way over to Maximillian. “YES!” the audience shouted. “One more time, all that you have!” “YEEEES!!” the audience roared, and Jeff threw the microphone over to Maximillian, who caught it without a problem.

“It makes me happy to see all of you this fired up!” the king of Vienna continued to entertain the crowd; “Truly, no ruler could ask for anything but happy people. Furthermore, no person could ask for more than to be able to fight before such a wonderful crowd!” A round of applause.

“He is loving this,” John noted as they watched him continue his showmanship. “Maximillian always loved standing out,” Lydia answered, her eyes closed as she emptied her cup of tea. “To think that ya dated the guy is funny to me,” Rave pointed out; “Just can’t imagine it.” “Ironic, coming from the girl that decided to get together with the shut-in nerd,” Momo retorted.

“Yes,” Lydia agreed to the cynical support’s statement, “the difference between me and Maximillian and you two is that it didn’t work out in the end.” “…Remind me why the fuck I am here again, actually,” Thana said out of the blue; “I could be watching this shit-show from a comfortable couch.” “You are here in case they decide to play another game,” Lydia told her; “I’d much rather have you present if they decide to make the teams lift weights or something.” “Fair enough.”

“And so, dear audience at home and in the arena today,” Maximillian finally came to an end of his long-winded speech, “today’s fighter will be the fearsome, the murderific, the green skin, Ankleshanker!”

The crowd cheered, but at this point they would have cheered if he had decided to send in a turkey. “Okay, so the size changing goblin,” John muttered and looked over to Lydia, who had stopped in her motion of refilling her cup and put the kettle back down.

“It seems that it is my turn already,” the princess said as she rose from her seat. “One moment,” John said and reached into his inventory. Lydia stopped next to his seat and waited as he pulled out the Soulpotion. He had put the thing away as it wouldn’t be useful in a fight. It was filled only the slightest bit with the golden tincture that was liquid experience, but it was still something. “One for the road,” John said.

Lydia nodded and gulped down the flask’s content. She gave it back without showing whether that had had any impact at all. The desk hovered in front of their platform, but Lydia just waved off when they presented her with a microphone. Stepping onto the platform, she descended into the arena below as did the goblin on the other side. John threw her one last Observe.

Sadly, no clutch level up.

“Why did ya have some of that?” Rave wondered; “I swear I drunk that up before going to bed.” “Because, despite Momo’s insistence that I only screw around, I actually spent a lot of time this morning grinding,” John explained; “Unlike you guys, I don’t get tired from physically exhausting myself. I only get tired from being awake for an extended period or from low HP. The latter of which can be mended with, you know, healing up.”

“That is such bullshit,” Rave complained; “So ya have been grinding while everyone else was busy being at peak condition for the tournament, only to then still be at peak condition.” “What can I say?” John shrugged; “Gamer’s Body is nice.” Rave went onto a small list of complaints she had with that while John shifted his attention to elsewhere.

Jack was watching the enemy platform. Initially, John had hoped to eavesdrop on them, but Alexej had prepared something that prevented John from getting a clear grasp on what was being said over there. To be exact, the sparrow couldn’t even look at them correctly: the whole enemy team seemed to shift through several levels of height and broadness, their words an **** of syllables that he couldn’t make the slightest bit of sense of.

John, now sure that he wasn’t going to fight today, would have used Reveal, if he could have. The only spell he could use through Jack (or Possession in general), without Spellcarrier, was Observe. He had Jack return to his platform so he could actually use Spellcarrier on it, but until the mechanical sparrow would have crossed that distance twice, it would take a while.