The Carleigh Fighting District was the largest fighting district in V Asia Central City catering to the lower classes. Fighting matches were held there on a regular schedule every day.
Those matches had spawned a host of industries, from gambling and entertainment to the trade in organs and mutated tissue, as well as sales of implant equipment and weapons.
Most of the fighters here had signed lifetime contracts. All their organs and mutated tissue had been mortgaged or sold off, and they had inevitably been saddled with debts to the companies as well.
They had to repay those debts through fight after fight, yet the more they fought, the more they owed. From the moment they stepped inside, they had to surrender everything they had, until every last scrap of flesh and value had been squeezed out of them.
Since the matches catered to the lower classes, most of the fighters, apart from a handful of stars, lived in gelatinous dwellings built from biological materials, known as "ant nests."
In these spaces, where they could barely even turn around, they rested, relieved themselves, cleaned and maintained their bodies, and injected drugs, until a sound woke them for their next fight. The cycle repeated endlessly.
Sometimes an ant nest's occupant never returned, and the vacancy was immediately filled by the next occupant.
They were no longer fighters, but slaves of the arena, machines made for combat.
Every day, if they survived their time in the ring, they would be locked inside their ant nests. Today, however, was an exception. Many fighters discovered that their nests had not been locked, yet more than ten minutes passed before anyone ventured out.
Then more and more fighters emerged. They looked at the plaza outside and felt the cool, fresh air, their numbed minds gradually