Bobby shifted forwards in his seat. He had about ten minutes until they needed to sneak away, so he might as well watch the performance while he was here. Bright lights illuminated the arena, drawing everyone's attention to it. The arena floor was filled with sand, dark patches at the centre and some dunes at the edges.

  “First up we have a brawl to the death to decide our first victor of the day. Only one participant might survive.”

  Five men stepped into the arena, all of them wearing Roman gladiator attire, their only distinctive feature being the variety of unique weapons they were wielding. One man had a halberd, one had a sledgehammer, one had a length of chain with a spikey ball on the end, another had a pair of short swords, and the last, who he realised was actually a really really buff woman had a plainly shaped club with vicious metal spikes along its length.

  The five combatants approached the centre of the arena from their different sides, advancing slowly until they all met at the middle, where they stood, making glowering expressions at each other, but otherwise being silent.

  “Reminder to all contestants, the grand prize is one million universal credits.”

  For a moment silence reigned, then as if a fire had been lit under all the participants, they began roaring and shrieking at each other, rage filling their expressions at the thought of anyone except themselves getting a hold of that money. Wow they must make a lot of money from selling these drugs.

  Before the match had even begun; one of the men, the one with the sledge hammer, jumped forwards and tried to bash in the skull of one of the other men in with the club, but just before he could, the man's weapon went soft in his hands, hitting his opponent and deforming like clay.

  “HAHAHA! There’s always one idiot who can’t withstand the rush of the serum, lucky we put measures in place to euthanize berserkers. Although later we will hold a demonstration of what happens to berserkers if left uncontrolled.”

  A few people began laughing, but Bobby looked closer at the man, noticing a look of pure animalistic terror taking over the rogue participant's face as he clawed at his throat. It was too late though as with a whoomph his head and neck detonated, splattering blood and grey matter over the other participants, which only seemed to enrage them further.

  Most of the blood reached the floor where it sank into the yellow sand staining it and making Bobby realise exactly what the countless dark patches were from.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  “BEGIN,” the announcer yelled, causing chaos to break out.

  The man with a ball on a chain got it spinning above his head immediately, the rest of the contestants quickly retreating out of the path of his whirling ball of mutilation. For a moment they looked like they were deciding who to start with, but then they formed a short cooperation, the halberd man planted his weapon in the sand, causing the ball to stop and wrap around, and the man with the short swords dashed forwards to decapitate him.

  Bobby watched the bloody battle, transfixed by the violence. He had grown up thinking the world was a boring place with little conflict and a lot of safety, but the events of the past month had completely reversed that opinion. The megacorporations had engineered a society where people had those opinions, while small pockets of death and violence seemed to exist almost commonly right under their feet.

  It was a surreal truth, and there was no denying the obsession some people had with it, from the jeering and roar of the crowd which seemed to get louder every second. The brawl continued, with there only being three people left, the halberd man, the club woman and the guy with the swords all circling each other warily before closing in and beginning a melee. The first two were fighting in a balanced fashion, but the latter seemed to have given up his defence to a completely aggressive continuous attack.

  It was certainly a good tactic, but he was against two people well versed with their weapons, and after they got used to fending him off, he lost all advantage and was slowly accumulating wounds.

  The halberd man deflected another blow from a shortsword, sweeping it aside and piercing forward with his halberd's spear-like spike while the man was off balance. The weapon smoothly slid through a gap in his opponents ribs, piercing the man's lungs and causing him to mutely shriek and collapse.

  Then before the halberd man could recover his weapon or dodge, the woman caved in his skull, ending the fight horrifically quickly, and reminding Bobby how quickly life could end if one knew what they were doing with their weapons.

  He looked away as the woman continued to mutilate the corpses of her previous competitors, asserting her dominance via gruesome dismemberment. Bobby looked down at his watch, averting his gaze and finding himself slightly astonished that not even a minute had passed since the fight began. How many people are going to die in this event? On one hand he wanted to put a premature end to it, but the people who were competing were savages, he didn’t want them roaming the streets freely.

  He focused his attention back on the fight, finding the woman still maintaining her win despite the constant stream of challengers pouring in from the sides of the arena. It was atrocious, but that many bodies would expand his armies quite a bit. Bobby was amazed at the women's tenacity as she finally went down under a swarm of enemies a few minutes later. He memorized the location of her fallen body, then realised it was time to leave.

  I hope this goes as quickly as that first brawl did.

  +++++

  https://discord.gg/Y9VndA9eW