This was an arena.
An arena more than a hundred kilometers across.
Its construction had absolutely nothing to do with art. It looked like it had been cobbled together from every kind of random junk imaginable.
Broken stone, iron plates, unidentified bones, trees, even abandoned tanks. The whole thing felt like a gigantic colosseum built out of a mountain of trash.
An arena on this scale, larger than an entire city, looked dangerous no matter how you saw it.
It gave the impression that if any one part suddenly failed, it would trigger a chain reaction and the whole enormous structure would come crashing down.
And yet, if he absolutely had to use one praising phrase to describe it, then that phrase would be violent aesthetics.
It was pure violence made manifest, a colossal arena formed by forcibly jamming a mass of chaotic debris together.
In every corner of the arena, on the walls, the ground, the pillars, and everywhere else, there were rust-like stains and strange crusted residues.
Most of that was blood.
The blood of all kinds of living creatures.
No one knew how many years this arena had endured its baptism of blood. Decades, centuries, maybe even millennia. Only that could explain why the entire place looked steeped in a thick, ancient patina of slaughter.
And now the arena was packed to the brim.
Everywhere, beings were roaring, shrieking, and howling.
Correction.
Not people.
They were humanoid monsters, almost all of them green from head to toe.
Their appearance was hideous, with tusked jaws and brutish faces, their limbs thick and powerful like living rock, their bodies coarse and savage like beasts.
If that green skin had been blue or black instead, they would have looked very much like the oni of folklore.
But their true name was Orks.
In some isekai novels and anime, the image of beastmen looked not all that different from them.
And they were one of the Imperium's oldest enemies, a true plague.
Now, inside this packed arena, countless Orks were bellowing and cheering like enraged gorillas.
They waved their weapons wildly too: clubs, metal bars, antique-looking guns, and all sorts of other junk. In a crowd this dense, some unlucky fool would inevitably get smashed by a stray swing and knocked clean off the railings from heights of over a thousand meters.
The Orks were gleefully watching the center of the arena.
That was the battlefield.
A real battlefield.
And at that moment, a new round was just about to begin.
On one side, a gigantic metal gate, massive as a mountain, slowly opened.
A crowd of figures rushed in, stumbling and scrambling as though something were chasing them from behind.
They did not appear to be from a single race.
If described in fantasy terms, there were demi-humans with animal ears and tails, dark blue-black humanoids like demons, and even half-human, half-monster beings.
The weapons they carried were just as varied: melee weapons, gauss rifles, laser guns, and even solid-shot machine guns.
The instant they stepped onto this arena stage and heard the even louder cry of "WAAAGH!!!" echoing through the colosseum, many of them froze in terror.
And it was not just intelligent species.
There were also huge beasts with little more than animal cunning, all herded onto this massive blood-soaked stage.
A closer look at the giant passage revealed that nothing was actually driving them forward.
Rather, the ceiling and the floor of the tunnel were slowly pressing together.
If they did not run out in time, they would be flattened.
Boom.
The passage slammed shut.
At the same time, a great deal of liquid sprayed out from the seams.
Clearly, some had failed to make it onto the stage in time and had simply been crushed into pulp.
Next came the Orks' turn to enter.
Except in this arena, the whole colosseum was full of contestants. Anyone could join in.
So almost the moment a signal shot, like a starter cannon, rang out...
"WAAAGH!!!"
The roar erupted from countless throats.
It crashed out like a tidal wave, shaking the entire arena.
Uncountable Orks surged toward the central battlefield like a green flood.
At the same time, a special electric barrier spread out and enclosed the combat stage.
The greenskins rushing forward were stopped by that crackling net.
The weaker ones were electrocuted unconscious on the spot and trampled underfoot by the tide of Orks behind them.
The stronger specimens, however, forced the barrier aside like bent steel wire, charging through while smoking under the current.
At the same time, a holographic number projected high in the sky was rapidly counting down toward zero.
A closer look showed that the number was directly linked to the Orks successfully breaking through the net.
Every one that got in made the number drop by one.
Clearly, that number represented how many were allowed to enter.
If they all swarmed in at once, it would be too unfair. A slaughter like that would not be entertaining.
And to win one of those precious spots, the Orks were practically losing their minds trying to force their way in.
Those farther away strapped massive rockets to their backs and blasted straight toward the arena stage.
Some simply loaded themselves into enormous cannons and fired themselves in.
Others swung in like savage Tarzans, howling "WAAAGH!!!" as they came.
Some even seemed to jump down from the sky.
And from that great height, if the ground below had truly been a planet, then what one should have seen was a curved planetary horizon.
What lay below did indeed have a curve.
But the curve was the wrong way around.
Looking closely, it became clear that the earth and the sky were actually connected, as if the whole world formed a sphere.
It was like a hollow world turned inside out.
There were many Orks falling from the heavens too, like a rain of green meteors smashing toward the arena.
Among them was one especially massive brute.
An Ork built rougher and heavier than the rest, with metal spikes driven into its body, giving it the look of some grotesque punk.
Just before it crashed into the electric barrier, it suddenly seemed to spot something.
Its eyes locked onto it with absolute focus.
Boom.
It hit the top of the barrier.
But unlike the others, it made no move to force its way inside.
Instead, it kept staring upward.
In the next instant, it swung its arm hard and thrust the weapon in its hand toward the sky.
"WAAAGH!!!"
Its roar thundered out, louder than all the others, as if it meant to drown the whole arena beneath its voice.
At the same time, the thing in its hand, something halfway between a gun, a staff, and a club, fired an attack upward.
The sky rippled faintly.
For an instant, something almost transparent appeared, like the outline of an invisible shell.
At that moment, the entire arena fell silent.
Then:
"WAAAGH!!!"
This time the cry rose not in chaos, but in perfect unison.
It resonated.
The whole world seemed to tremble with it, to echo with it.
So Kain, now knowing he had been detected, did not hesitate.
He immediately drove the ship upward, smashing toward the sky.
It was the psychic interference that had ruined the ship's full invisibility.
Actually hitting it still felt like striking a projection, but wherever this was, it was far too dangerous. He needed to get out.
The only reason he had not fled immediately was because he had already sensed something deeply wrong and had been waiting in silence for the second warp jump to finish preparing.
But before that could happen, one of the unusual Orks falling from the sky noticed him first.
For a single moment, it felt as if their eyes had met across dimensions.
And once his ship started moving, the trail became much more obvious.
The Orks below no longer cared about their arena game.
Because a far more interesting prey had appeared.
(End of Chapter)
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