Micky quickly found out that all the monsters were incredibly… friendly. They also all followed the rules. Any monster that could not was quickly placed under a manager, or ‘boss’. This meant there was practically no crime. Funnily enough the crime was mostly from the races that inhabited the city state. This made no sense to Micky. Afterall, monsters committed cruel acts for pleasure. They reveled in their victims misery. They were not beasts or even the races that killed for out of necessity but for the enjoyment of it. Monsters would only stop when they got bored or tired. The fact that they could focus on the things that needed to get done long enough to go to a ‘parlor’ or more than likely the arena after work only made it more appalling. They enjoyed it, all of them.

Yet somehow their cities were cleaner and better off than a human city. Yes, it was a bit sparser than any human town he had, with much less unique features to it. However, there was nothing that was un-pleasing about it. This was in stark contrast to the races which worked hard simply to be distinctly different, or differently the same. Micky once knew a woman that cut off her nose ‘to spite the face’, though the woman was always a bit crazy…

No, the monsters only did what was necessary to survive in this case. It was sparse and utilitarian. There were plenty of bars and things around, but they were for the ‘visiting’ races. Most of these districts were laughably more pleasant than even the best monster areas. Many having generic fountains and gardens at regular intervals not to mention parks and recreational facilities equally spaced.

It was a severely disturbing place. It unsettled Micky how naturally cohesive the monster civilisation was.

Now that he had seen all he wanted to as far as touristy things went, Micky headed over to the arena. It should provide some nice entertainment for a time. He had bought a map of the city and the surrounding area all the way back to civilisation. Something that would normally be relatively guarded with its accurate views of elevation and accuracy to within a few feet. But here in the monster city it was kept up to date and simply distributed. It was like they couldn’t contemplate the maps being used against them. It made Micky naturally distrustful of the maps. Though anything of military relevance was clearly labeled to stay away from, that only made Micky even more wary of them. After all, you only labeled such things if there were other things you wanted to hide.

Following the far too accurate map Micky found the arena easy enough. He wondered if they had any of the great teams of gladiators here, such as red or blue. Red vs Blue was such a classic it didn’t even need to be mentioned.

Distributing a few chips for the seats hurt. Not physically, nor was Micky in want of cash. It was the principle of the thing. He knew that he would have to make some chips off of, or from his latest acquisition. The red mark was still sitting in his bag. He heard that he could turn them in here. His other red chips were going to stay where they were till his soldiers arrived, but the latest scumbag was its own case. He would have to check that out after he viewed today's events.

It didn’t take long to start. Apparently the arena was also the place to go to ‘get your fix’ because there was currently someone being tortured in the arena already. There were two monsters in the arena one whipping the other while they were chained to the sandy pit. The one that was being whipped went limp and after a few good whacks to make sure that it was done the next victim was brought out. This one was human. The unconscious one was fed a health potion as it left and received healing to stabilize them and bring them back to before the events unfolded.

The new human seemed to be asking something. Micky couldn’t make out everything, but he believed the human said something like “You’re sure?” “I’m going to be paid right? You’re not jipping me?” or something along those lines.

More events happened like these and Micky quickly grew bored of them. He wasn’t someone to live vicariously through cruelty and while it was entertaining to see the blood spray he had seen a lot worse in the recent war, which only soured the experience. After all, he had been given the rare chance to escape the war for a short while and this was the best they could offer?

Luckily the events seemed to have ended. The monster that had been having fun whipping unresisting opponents left the stage and a true battle came about. Now two squads of gladiators faced each other in this small arena. Micky soon found out that this was just one of many small arenas and that ‘The Arena’ was actually a collection of arenas that could be rented out. He had simply been watching one of the renters earlier and this was one of the actual scheduled events.

He was currently watching a practice match for the ‘Eviscerators’. And by that it meant they had bought the lives of their opponents. However, in monster society it was different. They were not going to have a simple match, or face opponents that couldn’t harm them in a warm up match like the races. No, this was an adventurer team that had thought that they could get away with taking out the monsters and bringing them back to the guild to sell. The worst part was that they had been right, the first two times. But when they came back a third time and kidnapped a big bosses 42 son… Things did not go as planned for them.

So the Eviscerators have no purchased the lives of this team. Should they lose, the team would go free as is ‘right’. After all, in monster society, might makes rights. If you wanted more, you had to be the strongest so as to force your own way. It was poetic that even the strongest had to follow the rules however.

Now, the team that the Eviscerators were facing had a standard two shield tanks two rear guard and a support. In this case it was a cute mage healer that pulled double duty in the team.

The adventurers faced off against standard gladiators which could be separated into three types. The heavy melee which had sword and shield. The medium melee which had nets and spear. And the light melee which had daggers and bows. Technically the light melee were not actually melee at all. Unfortunately for gladiators, there was no such things as no melee.

The two groups squared off. The adventurers were slightly outnumbered but it seemed the gladiators were not going to press the advantage and two of the light melee stepped back to the wings leaving their bows strung but over their shoulders.

The announcer was trying to drill up the excitement for the coming match but it seemed that a 5 vs 5 was a common sight around here. Micky was excited because this would be a rare occurrence in the large towns with their own arenas. Here though the spectators barely paid attention. Micky asked and it seemed to be a common enough event in the monster arena. They didn’t care about such small things. If this was a boring fight, a battle to the death with a 5 v 5 Micky couldn’t wait to see what was an ‘exciting’ matchup.

As the two groups stared each other down, the announcer himself got fed up with trying to draw out the non existent excitement from the crowd. He simply left it to be and walked off before announcing the start of the match. As the match was set to begin none of the teams moved. They only seemed to stare harder, not a single muscle twitched. The moment they moved they would give away the tactics and plans and then they would be on the backfoot. The sand beneath a foot gave way as somebody prepped to charge. But Micky couldn’t tell which combatant was first. Then they charged each other...