Volume One: Forest Knight, Chapter 92: The Rampaging Beast, Part Two

At that moment, the brown bear locked behind the iron gate seemed to sense the threat in the air. It let out an angry roar and slammed its weight against the heavy door.

“Ladies and gentlemen, our savage beast can no longer contain itself. Very well, I hereby declare the bout underway! May the Fire God watch over you!” As soon as the announcer heard the noise from the bear, he glanced back and promptly proclaimed the fight to have officially begun.

Two men standing before the gate quickly climbed onto it and hauled the chains. The door had barely opened when a brown bear with a hideous scar across its face lunged out.

The bear rose up on its hind legs and roared in displeasure at the people in the opposite stands. Its body was enormous; standing upright, it towered more than half a head above the tallest of the five fighters from the Donbass Hills.

It was also immensely robust. Berion made a rough estimate and judged its weight to be well over a thousand pounds. No wonder it bore the ferocious title of savage beast.

Now the beast from the Mist Mountains had dropped to all fours. Drool ran from its jaws as it stared at the five men in the ring. It did not look like a creature gazing at death, but rather at a feast.

Gamji said to Berion, “Brother Berion, you may not know this, but to make the fights more exciting, the people here usually stop feeding the beasts for two days before the match. That fills their heads with hunger, so once they enter the arena, they hunt madly by instinct.”

Gamji spoke in a calm, matter-of-fact way, but Berion was deeply shaken. He admitted that such contests were indeed thrilling and stirring, but using living human beings to entertain a crowd was far too inhumane.

Perhaps noticing what was on Berion’s mind, Gamji smiled and said, “Ah, I know what you are thinking. But you need not look at it that way.

“Only two kinds of people dare to fight beasts here. One is prisoners or serfs who have lost their freedom. If they can defeat the beast, they win their liberty.

“The other is those chasing the enormous reward. If they can kill this brown bear, they will receive at least two thousand denars in prize money. Split five ways, that comes to four hundred denars each. Enough for them to return home, buy land, and become prosperous farmers.”

“To gamble with one’s life for freedom or wealth... how pitiful,” Berion said with a sigh. “I wonder what the Fire God thinks, seeing his people live such lives.”

After hearing that, Gamji pondered for a moment and then said, “Brother Berion, I too once wondered why some people are born to suffer while others are born into luxury.

“Later I understood. Fate is truly beyond words. All of this is arranged by the Fire God. We simply follow it; there is no need to dwell on such troublesome matters.” Like an elder brother, Gamji comforted the somewhat melancholy Berion and expounded his doctrine of resignation to destiny.

Berion only smiled and said nothing. Gamji meant well, after all, and there was a gulf between their ways of thinking, ancient and modern. It was only natural that they should sometimes fail to understand one another.

While the two were chatting, the brown bear had already finished circling. It had eaten only a little more than two pounds of fresh meat before entering the arena, and now it was ravenous. After two days of hunger, it wanted nothing more than to swallow the five men before it in a single gulp and fill its belly.

With a mighty lunge, the savage beast charged toward the fighter on the far right of the five-man formation, the shortest man there, the one carrying a sword and shield.

Seeing this, the others would never allow the bear to barrel in. The two men armed with javelins hurled them at once, but the bear was far more intelligent and agile than its massive body suggested. It nimbly avoided both spears.

After dodging them, the bear reached the formation almost in an instant. It first knocked away the fighter who had tried to smash it with a mace, then bared its bloody maw and lunged for the sword-and-shield fighter, who was already frozen with terror.

The bear seized the fighter in its jaws and carried him off at speed, running to a corner off to the side. There it tore through the man’s leather armor with its teeth and claws, and within a few bites had devoured him completely.

Meanwhile, the fighter who had been struck flying was dead on the spot from the fall, utterly still.

The remaining three men were trembling violently. They were nowhere near as formidable as the announcer had boasted. In the blink of an eye, the bear had killed nearly half of them, and the other three were already terror-stricken.

Then one of the three, the spear fighter, shouted at the top of his lungs, “We surrender! We are done! This beast is too strong, we can’t beat it! Open the gate, let us out!”

But the announcer would not listen. Once a fighter entered the arena and combat had begun, there was no leaving midway. That was simply not permitted.

From the distant stands, the announcer cried out, “How disgraceful! Are these so-called warriors from Donbass truly so spineless? What a disappointment. You have shamed the entire Donbass region! Shameful!”

“Shameful!”

“Shameful!”

“Shameful!”

...

The spectators in the surrounding stands joined in the chant. Those who had just moments earlier cheered for the five muscle-bound men now instantly cast them down from their pedestal and showered them with collective scorn.

By then, the brown bear, having eaten one man, still seemed unsatisfied. It turned around, its face smeared with human blood. The deep scar across its muzzle looked even more savage and terrifying when soaked in gore.

It growled at the audience stands in irritation, clearly annoyed that they were making so much noise and disturbing its meal.

Yet the crowd, far from being offended by the roar, grew even more excited. Worshiping strength and victory, they were now all fans of this savage beast, utterly unconcerned that one of their own kind had been eaten and another killed.

The bear saw that its furious roar had not silenced these wretches at all, but had only made them louder, and it bared its teeth in rage. It could not reach the people in the stands, so the three men still inside the arena had become the targets of its anger.

It continued circling them. After making the three tremble with fear for a long while, it suddenly ambled forward at a leisurely pace. It was now closest to the spearman.

The bear had likely judged that spear to be the most dangerous weapon, the greatest threat to itself, and so decided to deal with that fighter first.

Unlike the swift, crushing violence it had used to kill the first two men, this time the bear adopted a gentler strategy. After drawing near to the spear point, it did not rush in. Instead, it used the stench of blood all over its body to press down on the three men.

As expected, the fighter gripping the spear with both hands was terrified to the point of collapse. He kept shaking the spear in his hands to keep the bear from coming closer, but he did not dare thrust at it, afraid of provoking the vicious savage beast.

In his mind, he imagined that after eating one person, the bear must already be full and was merely playing. So long as he did not anger it, he would be fine and would not be attacked.

But what morals or rules exist between man and beast? If it wants to eat you, it will eat you. Whether you show it kindness or malice makes no difference; the end will be the same. In that case, why not resist at once and seize the initiative?

Clearly, this spearman did not dare. The two fighters beside him, one with a great axe and the other with a war hammer, also stood there trembling, too frightened to move and too afraid to rush in and attack.

Watching the situation in the arena, Berion thought that if the bear were a man, it would surely already be laughing coldly.

Just as the spearman swung his spear aside, the bear, which had been swaying slowly in front of them for some time, suddenly lunged forward with astonishing speed and knocked him to the ground.

Then it bit down, sinking its teeth into the fighter’s throat. Blood gushed out, and the savage beast greedily sucked the man’s blood.

The two fighters on either side were now completely petrified. In a frenzy, they threw away their weapons and ran toward the gate through which they had entered. They battered the iron door and cried out for help.

But at this point, no one would open the gate to save them. On the contrary, the crowd in the stands would hurl accusations and curses at them. Some of the more agitated spectators even picked up stones beside their seats and threw them at the two cowardly deserters.

The brown bear now looked like a general who had won a great battle. It dropped the fighter whose throat had been torn out and then pounced on the one who had been carrying the great axe moments earlier.

Seeing that no one was opening the gate and that the bear was coming for him first, the man could not help but curse his luck. He grabbed the great axe lying not far away and started running around the arena.

Whenever the bear drew close, he would swing the axe to force the savage beast aside. But as his strength waned, the force behind his swings grew weaker, and he began to pant hard.

He knew he could not keep running. If he did, by the time he exhausted himself, he would have no strength left to stand against the savage beast.

He came to a corner, pressed his back to the wall, and wielded the great axe with both hands, refusing to let the bear approach.

The bear, which had been toyed with for quite some time, now came to that corner with anger in its eyes. After taking two slow steps, it suddenly roared at the fighter.

For the spectators in the stands, the roar was not especially loud. But for the fighter standing only a step away from the bear, it was like a bolt from a clear sky. It scared him senseless.

He froze in place like a wooden post, while the bear did not stand there stupidly. It simply lunged forward and bit him to death.

By then the bear had begun to eat the bodies of the three fighters at its leisure, pacing slowly as it did so.

The spectators around the arena, along with the announcer, began to chant in unison from the stands: “Savage beast! Savage beast! Savage beast!”

The large brown bear, accustomed to silence in the forests of the Mist Mountains, was deeply displeased by the shouts from the stands. The clamor made it feel very uncomfortable.

More than that, the uproar stirred memories of the good old days when it had lived freely in the Mist Mountains, hunting at will and stealing honey. That made the savage beast all the more sorrowful, and it roared in fury.

Yet the crowd mistook this for the beast’s response to their cheers, and became even more excited. Their applause grew louder, and some even tossed handkerchiefs, food, and the like into the arena, treating the bear entirely as though it were a hero.

Seeing that the effect was the same as before, the bear no longer bothered with anything else. It charged straight at the last fighter, who by now had urinated in fear and stood there sniveling and weeping, tears and mucus streaming down his face.