20 Chapter 19

"What a meaningless day." - Disappointed sighed minus, sitting on the first chair that came across. - Skukaten.

- Excuse for troubling. Do you need something? - politely asked the nameless one, peering out from the front door.

- Yes. - Nodded Hichigo. A brilliant thought suddenly struck his head. "Call your captain here."

- Captain? - Not fully understanding about whom we are talking about, asked the military man. - Unnamed obey you. So who are you talking about?

"The man I talked to recently." - Explained the minus, being interested. It seems that communicating without names has its drawbacks. "Isn't he your captain?"

"You can appoint him our captain if you wish."

- In any case, bring him!

The soldier quickly disappeared, closing the door.

***

- You wanted to see me?

The man went into the office, sitting in a chair opposite his master, who had moved here from the reception room.

- Yes. - The owner agreed, indifferently looking at people wandering through the streets through a huge window. This was an extremely inconvenient task, as he had to turn his neck to the left, which caused her to go numb, but it was interesting enough to tolerate. Indeed, from such a great height, people seemed even smaller and insignificant. What stutter about their strength? Yes. They have the very place there, below, right at his feet, on the sole. "From now on, I will call you Van."

The soldier stared blankly at the minus, looking down in disgust. Surprisedly raising an eyebrow and swallowing, he tensed, completely lost in numerous conjectures.

- Sorry, but I do not understand. - He said.

- What? Dumb or what? - the owner of the name grinned, looking at the man with a sneer. "What is not clear to you?" Hichigo turned to face him, looking him directly in the eye.

- All. - The soldier ignored the caustic comments, not really knowing and not even imagining what to expect from his new owner. "I don't understand why you look ... like that ..." he allowed himself the audacity to point to Hichigo with his hand, alluding to ragged rags - clothes, and hair smeared in some black shit. "You are rich now." And not from the weak, so humiliating. I do not understand what you are achieving by giving me a nickname.

- And how do I contact the animal? - "Minus" shrugged indifferently. "If your names now belong to me, then I will give you nicknames." This will simplify communication between us. By the way, you are now the captain of all the nameless that belong to me. - He finally stunned his slave.

Van desperately sighed, covering his eyes. If their past lord was an arrogant bastard selling people, then their new lord seemed to be completely unfamiliar with the established laws of the Tower.

- Get used to it. "Without refusing," ordered Hichigo. "I don't give a damn about what you're used to in your Tower or what some trash taught you." If I want to call you Wang, then I will do it. If I decide to kill someone, I will kill without listening to the others.

Van swallowed loudly, feeling pressure on his tire. Now he recognized the completely different side of his master.

- As you wish. - Van dutifully measured.

- That's great. - The owner of the names grinned rather terribly. - Now explain to me the essence of "Racing newcomers."

- Good. I will tell everything that I know. - The military nodded in understanding. - In the so-called "race" an indefinite number of people can participate, and as the name implies, this is a race. The winner is the one who comes to the finish line first. Beginners will start from the first test zone, after they pass the seventh, third and, finally, thirteenth. All you need to go through four zones.

- And what about the sequence?

- Zone numbers are changing. - Wang explained. "It has never happened before that the order of passable test zones is repeated." I named the zones that were used last year. The race director personally monitors the race, and he oversees it. Administrators do the usual test. In the race it is allowed to cripple your opponents, but it is forbidden to kill. Although direct killing is prohibited, indirect killing is not. A participant can be killed by accidentally pushing him into a lava in the third zone or by feeding eels in the seventh. The first test area is considered quite safe. The thirteenth and last zone is the arena.

- Arena?

- Exactly. The thirteenth zone is a ring where the remaining newcomers fight until there is only one winner left on their feet. The truth is that all participants injured and injured during the test cannot leave the arena, and more often than not they simply die there.

- How cruel it is. - Predatory empty grinning predatoryly, remembering unkindly that the Director of the Floor intervened a couple of hours earlier, although he himself arranges this.

"Do you really think so?" - The soldier asked skeptically. - It is unlikely that ordinary death is cruelty. I consider her mercy. After all, if the weak begin to rise higher, then things await them even worse than death.

- Here is how? Well, okay, I'm not a wimp. - Confidently said "minus." - But I did not understand, but why do I need to assemble a team?

- Here, too, everything is quite simple. You see, Rookie Race is a team game. If someone wins, then his team moves to the next Floor. And since this is a team game, the help of the team is allowed in any form. The team is allowed to communicate with the participant in the race, inform him of all kinds of information, adjust his movement, etc. Indeed, if within ten minutes two people do not appear in the arena, then the person who comes first is automatically considered the winner. Because of this, on this floor you can find many mercenaries offering both indirect services and direct ones, one hundred percent guarantee participation in the arena battle. By "indirect" you can understand all possible maps and plans of all thirteen test areas of the Fourth Floor, and by "direct" - people, for money ready to compete for the team, mercenaries. Our past master earned huge amounts by selling us.

- So you can buy a team member? - Hichigo was a little surprised.

- Sure. - Van answered routinely. - In the Tower you can buy everything, even a member of one of the great families. Although this is not such a frequent occurrence, there have been such cases.

- Well, that's all, of course, good, but tell me, can you or someone else from the nameless be part of my team?

- Unfortunately no. We are soldiers, we were only taught to kill enemies by shooting with weapons, and to protect the master who bought us. We were not trained in specializations. Firstly, it is a long time, and secondly, it is quite difficult to sell a group of such people. Nobody needs low-grade garbage, there are plenty of them here.

- So, it remains to hope for the "Tomb of the Newcomers." Hichigo sighed in frustration. "I hope that I can find at least someone standing there."