In the underground prison cells of the arena.
Loki was thrown in like a stray dog, hair in a mess and face smeared with blood.
His miserable state startled the other fighters.
"An Asgardian prince? More like a homeless cur!" The guard who escorted Loki let out a snort, then turned to Bant and said coldly, "You'd better watch yourself too!"
Bant covered his wrist and looked innocent. "I've never even met him in my life. We just happened to be delivered together. And I volunteered to be a fighter."
"You'd better be telling the truth!"
After leaving those words behind, the guard turned and left without looking back.
At that moment, the little broken watch on Bant's wrist flashed once, making a ding notification.
The DNA of two different Sakaar native species had already been recorded.
On Sakaar, there were two different native peoples. The higher-status one were the red-skinned people of the same race as the Red King. The other were the Wraith tribe with silver-gray skin, like Caiera, the woman Bant had seen earlier.
A few minutes ago, after Loki's rude words enraged Sakaar's emperor, the Red King ordered Loki's collarbone pierced, his hands chained, and then had him thrown in here.
Pain and humiliation left Loki unable to speak.
He lay on the ground, sucking in air, eyes rimmed red.
"Hey, brother, what's wrong with him?"
At that moment, two huge figures walked over.
Bant looked up and saw two rock-men who looked very similar. They both had blue-gray skin, their bodies made of jagged slabs of stone. Even their footsteps carried weight.
Bant recognized one of them.
"He pissed off the Red King."
"That's definitely rough." The rock-man, Korg, glanced at Loki with sympathy, then said, "My name's Korg. This is my brother, Margus. On this planet, the Red King is the absolute ruler. Before you're prepared, it's best not to offend him casually."
Margus nodded beside him. "We weren't supposed to be caught and sent here. But my little brother wanted to overthrow the Red King, and we got captured by the Death Crowns."
"Death Crowns?"
"The Red King's army."
Margus and Korg were extremely friendly. The two brothers didn't look very sharp. While Bant picked up small stone chips that had fallen off them and pressed them against his watch, he continued coaxing more information out of them.
Korg said, "We're Kronans. We were originally sent to invade a remote backwater planet in the Milky Way called Earth. But not long after we set off, we got swallowed by a wormhole and dropped onto Sakaar."
He looked full of regret.
Bant: ???
"You said you were going to invade where?"
"Earth. Some countryside place. You've definitely never heard of it. And we didn't even make it there…" Korg spoke as if Earth wasn't worth mentioning at all, then rambled on about what happened after they arrived on Sakaar.
The ones who found them back then were Sakaarans, meaning the silver-gray Wraith tribe.
Some of the Wraith tribe were enslaved by the Red King and dumped into the mines to have every last drop of labor squeezed out of them. Others became scavengers.
These people weren't even qualified to enter Sakaar's cities. They could only roam the wastelands. The cosmic passage above constantly dropped garbage, so they couldn't even build a stable house.
And because of all that junk, Sakaar's ecosystem had already been destroyed. The Wraith tribe had long lived a nomadic life, never warm, never full.
Most of the time, their food was the aliens that fell from the sky.
If someone had the ability to be a fighter, they'd capture them and sell them, then trade the money to the Red King for food. If someone had no strength, they'd be eaten on the spot.
But Korg and Margus were rock-like lifeforms, so they obviously couldn't be used as food.
Not only that, because the two of them looked so much like rocks, when they first arrived on Sakaar, they avoided being caught as fighters by pretending to be stones.
But once they learned the Wraith tribe's fate and the Red King's brutal rule, they decided they wanted to overthrow him.
Whether Korg and Margus had their own motives aside, overthrowing the Red King really would be a good thing for the Wraith tribe. Yet just as they tried to find Wraith scavengers and refugees to spread their ideas, those same people captured them and sent them to the arena instead.
"You can't completely blame them," Margus said, shaking his head. "They've been ruled for too long. They've already forgotten how to resist. Or maybe they forgot resisting is even an option."
Bant didn't comment on that.
Then Korg introduced other gladiators to him, including: Xaloi, Miek, Elo…
Among them, Miek was that disgusting giant bug that appeared in Thor: Ragnarok.
These aliens' genes didn't really improve Bant much, but with the mindset that the little broken watch was essentially a "Noah's Ark," he still recorded their genes.
Kronan gene, recorded. Giant bug gene, recorded…
Record, record, record…
In the arena, most gladiators actually got along pretty well.
Most of them had already accepted their current fate. They never considered challenging the champion to win freedom. Surviving in this environment was hard enough, and picking fights with others wasn't a smart move.
"You really do look weak enough to blow over," Xaloi said.
He was a Wraith tribesman. According to him, he had once been sent by the Red King's father to assassinate the Red King, but because the Red King was still a child at the time, he felt a moment of compassion.
The Red King survived by sheer luck. But instead of being grateful, after he killed his own father, he enslaved Xaloi.
"But don't worry. We're just the warm-up before the real show starts," Xaloi continued. "Everyone puts on a fake fight, at most you get some minor injuries. As long as you aren't stupid enough to challenge the champion, there's nothing to worry about. By the way, why does your watch keep flashing?"
"Oh, don't mind it. It's been useless for years," Bant said casually, brushing it off.
He quickly got friendly with most of the gladiators. Meanwhile Loki, injured, went alone into a corner and curled up, licking his wounds.
At this moment, the prince finally understood that all the "unfair treatment" he had suffered in Asgard wasn't worth mentioning.
Now he was like a true outcast, enduring every wound alone, swallowing pain and humiliation down into his gut. And what awaited him next was an even more brutal fate.
"Is he going to be okay?" Korg looked a little worried. "He looks badly hurt, and he's like a little puppy that got abandoned…"
"Don't worry. He's Aesir," Bant shook his head.
"Oh." Korg made a sound like he'd just realized something. "They really are tougher than cockroaches."
Besides, Bant believed that every bit of Loki's pain right now was being watched by the God-King of Asgard.
Since Odin didn't say anything, Bant wasn't going to worry about Loki either.
Just then, the door opened again, and a hideous-looking monster was carried in by several people.
Korg immediately stood up and shouted, "Ah, Horse Guy!"
Xaloi immediately introduced him in Bant's ear, "That's Beta Ray Bill. A Korbinite."
"So he's not actually a horse," Bant said. He stood up, covered his watch, and walked over.
/-\
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