Darkness still covered Rome when Lucius passed through the gates of the Ludus Cassius. The courtyard, dimly lit by scattered torches, already buzzed with activity — not the organized work of a military camp, but the controlled chaos of a slaughterhouse preparing for another day of blood.
Across the yard, leaning against a column, Numidius spat on the ground at the sight of him. The massive African didn't bother to hide his contempt.
"Well, look who decided to show up," he shouted, loud enough for all to hear. "The domina's whore has graced us with his presence."
Harsh laughter spread across the yard. Several gladiators stopped what they were doing to watch, sensing the scent of potential humiliation in the air like dogs catching the smell of blood.
"I'd have preferred your sister, but she was busy with the entire garrison," Lucius replied casually.
Numidius's smile vanished instantly. A tense silence fell over the yard, followed by a new wave of laughter — this time directed at the African.
"I'll rip your tongue out and shove it up your ass, provincian," Numidius growled, taking a step forward.
"After you clean the arena shit," a voice cut through the tension. Tacitus emerged from a side corridor, his cold eyes assessing the situation. "Numidius, if you want to make threats, make them with a sword in your hand. For now, you have work."
The African shot Lucius one last look of pure hatred before walking away, muttering promises of future violence.
Tacitus turned his attention to Lucius. There was no welcome in his gaze, only cold evaluation. "Gear, over there," he pointed toward a bench. "You have one minute."
The gear was minimal and worn — cracked leather subligar, strips of cloth stained with dried blood, and splintered wooden guards. The pieces had likely belonged to some recently dead gladiator — a silent reminder of the fate that awaited most.
As he dressed, Lucius could feel the stares. They weren't just curiosity or professional assessment — there was hunger in them, the desire to see the "favorite" broken and humiliated. For men whose lives were defined by brutality and deprivation, a newcomer with special privileges was a personal insult.
"FORMATION!" Tacitus's roar was followed by the snap of a whip against the stone ground. "Anyone not in position within three heartbeats will feel the kiss of this whip on their backs!"
The movement was chaotic but efficient — dozens of men rushing to form lines, shoving, muttering curses, some deliberately shoulder-checking Lucius as they passed.
Still adjusting his armor, Lucius found a space in the back row. Immediately, the men beside him stepped away conspicuously, leaving a gap around him.
"Don't want to catch the whore's disease," one of them muttered, earning muffled snickers.
Tacitus walked slowly before the lines, his whip swinging casually in his hand. His gaze stopped on Lucius, and a humorless smile crossed his face.
"Today we have the honor of welcoming a special guest," he announced, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "A gladiator so talented that after killing three drunken barbarians, he gets to fuck the Senator's daughter." Laughter erupted. "But in the Ludus Cassius, there are no guests. There's only meat — meat to train, meat to fight, meat to die when the time comes."
He stepped right up to Lucius, stopping inches from his face. "Here, it doesn't matter who you fuck at night. What matters is who you kill in the arena. And so far, for us, you haven't killed anyone."
"Understood, Doctore," Lucius replied simply.
"Doctore?" Tacitus laughed, looking to the others. "You hear that? He calls me Doctore as if he's already one of us!" He turned back to Lucius. "You haven't earned the right to call me that, provincian. To you, I'm Dominus until you prove your worth."
Without waiting for a reply, Tacitus stepped away. "Briseus! Show our new brother how we warm up here!"
The tattooed giant stepped forward, a cruel grin distorting his features. Without warning, he drove a brutal punch into Lucius's stomach. The blow folded him in half, air bursting from his lungs.
"First we warm the muscles," Briseus announced, as other gladiators formed a circle around them. "Then we test endurance."
A knee slammed into Lucius's side, sending pain radiating through his body. Instinctively, he raised his arms to defend himself, only to take another shot to the ribs.
"Already defending yourself, provincian?" Briseus mocked. "This isn't a fight. It's a welcome."
The other gladiators started shouting, egging on more violence. Tacitus watched impassively, doing nothing to stop the "ritual."
Lucius knew he had three options: submit completely and be marked as weak; fight with full force and make immediate enemies; or find the middle ground — show resilience without openly challenging the established hierarchy.
When Briseus came in for another blow, Lucius partially dodged — lessening the impact without avoiding it entirely. The move seemed to surprise his attacker.
"Got reflexes, huh?" Briseus grunted, increasing the force of his strikes.
The next few minutes were a test of endurance. Lucius took enough punishment to satisfy the ritual, without looking completely helpless. When he finally dropped to one knee, blood running from his nose and a cut above his eye, Tacitus signaled for Briseus to stop.
"Enough. He still has to train today." Tacitus looked at Lucius with something like reluctant approval. "At least you didn't cry like the last one."
The real "warm-up" followed — ten laps running around the yard carrying sandbags, followed by training at the palus. Each gladiator stood before a wooden post set in the ground, striking it with training weapons twice as heavy as the real ones.
"More power!" Tacitus shouted as he passed among them. "Imagine it's the man who fucked your wife! Imagine it's the Roman who killed your family! HATRED! I want to see HATRED in every blow!"
Unlike the methodical military conditioning Lucius knew from the modern world, gladiator training was visceral, appealing to raw emotions — rage, fear, hatred. The men grunted and snarled as they struck the unyielding posts, some shouting insults as if facing real enemies.
Lucius kept himself in the middle of the pack — not so impressive as to draw extra envy, not so weak as to be marked for constant abuse. It was a delicate balance, especially with Tacitus's eyes tracking his every move.
When the initial phase ended, it was time for weapons evaluation. Lucius chose first the gladius and shield, then the spear, and finally — in a decision he knew would be controversial — dual swords.
"The sica?" Varius, the acknowledged specialist in the style, stepped forward with disbelief. "You can barely stand after Briseus's beating, and you think you can handle two blades?"
"Let him try," Tacitus said with a malicious smile. "I want to see if he has any real skill or if he only knows how to make the domina moan."
There were more laughs, some obscene shouts from the back. Lucius accepted the weapons, feeling the different balance of the training blades.
"Alexios! Show him how we fight in Rome."
The aristocratic Greek stepped forward, his movements fluid as water. There was no cruel grin like Briseus, no open disdain like Numidius — only a cold focus that was, in its way, even more dangerous.
"Begin!" Tacitus ordered.
This was no technical demonstration — it was a real fight. Alexios attacked without hesitation, his refined techniques masking calculated brutality. There was no intent to teach or assess — only to dominate and humiliate.
Lucius blocked the first strike, but the impact made his sore arms protest. Alexios gave no time to recover, following with a flurry of blows that forced Lucius into a desperate defense.
"This is what Rome offers?" Alexios taunted in Greek. "A bed-servant who can barely hold a sword?"
The provocation was deliberate — part of a strategy to destabilize his opponent emotionally. Lucius recognized the tactic, but even so, anger was building. The initial beating, the constant insults, the open contempt — it all piled up.
When Alexios lunged again, Lucius didn't just defend, he countered. A quick, instinctive move caught the Greek off guard. The wooden blade struck Alexios's side hard enough to draw a grunt of surprise.
A momentary silence fell over the improvised arena.
"The kitten has claws," someone murmured.
Alexios stepped back, reassessing his opponent with sharper eyes. "Beginner's luck," he said, though his voice had lost some of its earlier confidence.
The fight intensified. Lucius now returned blow for blow, his technique gradually revealing itself. He didn't show everything he knew — that would be suicide — but enough to earn, if not respect, at least a pause in the more direct insults.
"Enough!" Tacitus cut in when it was clear the match was more balanced than expected. "Mors! Show our new brother what it means to face a true gladiator of Rome."
The silence that followed was different — tighter, almost fearful. The masked gladiator stepped forward without a word or unnecessary movement. Even the toughest veterans seemed uneasy in his presence.
"Mors doesn't spar," Varius murmured to no one in particular. "He just kills."
Without warning or ceremony, Mors attacked. There was no flashy technique or showmanship — only lethal efficiency. His first blow nearly broke through Lucius's guard, and only honed reflexes saved him from immediate defeat.
What followed was not a fight in the conventional sense, but a brutal lesson in humility. Mors seemed to predict every movement, every attempt at defense or counterattack. His mask hid his face, but his body spoke of years devoted solely to the art of killing.
Lucius fought with everything he could reveal without raising too many questions. For a few moments, he even managed to keep things even. A particularly well-timed strike drew murmurs of surprise from the onlookers.
"He lasted longer than the last one," someone said.
"Wait."
The warning proved right. Mors, apparently bored with the exchange, increased the intensity to a level Lucius couldn't match without exposing too much. A calculated move, exploiting a small imperfection in the ground that Lucius hadn't noticed, created the opening.
The defeat was swift and decisive — in seconds, Lucius was on the ground, a wooden blade pressed to his throat with enough force to make breathing difficult.
"Death," Tacitus declared casually, as if announcing the weather. "Our new brother has just experienced his future in the arena."
Laughter and jeers filled the air as Mors stepped away silently, showing neither satisfaction nor contempt — like a craftsman who had simply completed another routine task.
Lucius rose slowly, feeling every bruise and cut. The taste of blood was strong in his mouth — he'd bitten his tongue during one of the final strikes.
"Not bad," Tacitus said, surprising everyone with what almost sounded like praise. "Most don't last ten seconds against Mors. You lasted almost a minute." His expression hardened again. "But make no mistake — in a real arena, you'd be dead. And no one would shed a tear, except maybe the domina… for one night, until she found another toy."
Varius approached as the others dispersed to continue training.
"You've got something," he said, assessing Lucius with a clinical eye. "Raw technique, unrefined, but there's potential." His voice carried no friendship, only professional evaluation. "I'll train you in the sica. Not because I like you — I don't — but because it would be a waste to see such promise destroyed by lack of proper instruction."
"Why do you care?" Lucius tested.
"I don't care about you," Varius said coldly. "I care about the art. And I'd rather see a man I hate master it than see the art die with incompetent men."
As the gladiators returned to their drills, a few glanced at Lucius — not with respect, but perhaps with re-evaluation. He had survived the initiation ritual, shown some skill, and lasted longer than expected against Mors. It wasn't acceptance, but maybe the first step toward being seen as something more than Livia's bed toy.
Priscus, the eldest of the Primi, passed by on his way to his own training. "Defeat is a better teacher than victory," he said, without stopping or looking directly at him. "Learn from it while you still have the chance."
The rest of the day blurred into pain, exhaustion, and more drills. When he was finally given permission to return to the main house, Lucius could barely walk without showing it. His body was covered in bruises and small cuts, his left eye nearly closed from swelling.
As he crossed the ludus gate, he heard Briseus's voice behind him:
"Tomorrow will be worse, domina's whore! This was just the beginning!"
Lucius didn't turn, didn't respond. He had learned the first and most important lesson of the Ludus Cassius: here, there were no allies — only declared enemies and potential ones. Survival would require more than modern knowledge or superior skills — it would demand the ability to endure hatred, pain, and humiliation daily, without breaking.
Rome wasn't just more brutal than the world he'd left behind — it was more honest in its brutality. No one pretended at kindness or respect they didn't feel. Hatred was open, contempt declared, violence celebrated.