The sound of breaking bones reached my ears as I struck my opponent on the jaw, my jagged steel knuckles digging into his skin for a moment as he fell backward, dropping the blood-stained knife he had been holding in his right hand through the entire match.
He fell on his back and didn't get back up. His broken jaw was proof enough of the miserable state that he was in. As soon as I recognized that he could no longer put off a fight my right hand went to cover the wound on my abdomen. Blood was spilling from the stab wound even as I applied pressure to it, treating the wound by myself was impossible, not with the cheering of the audience and the coach assaulting my ears, so I just stood there, waiting for the presenter to announce me as the winner to be able to go to the doctor that worked in the death cage.
I leaned against the metal cage surrounding the ring as I saw the announcer enter. He ignored my fallen opponent and rushed towards me. He grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me to the center of the ring before lifting my arm in the air.
"And the winner is the steel fist, Inoue Ren, marking his fifteenth consecutive victory!"
My victory was finally announced, and I didn't lose time as I stumbled out of the ring and towards the doctor's room. My coach didn't pay attention to my condition; he was just happy to get part of the prize money from my victory. As I stepped into the room, I saw the doctor already waiting for me with a simple expression on his face.
"Won again uh? How bad for me, I bet against you"
"Bitch"
The blue-haired woman laughed at my insult, the eyepatch on her right eye making her seem odd. I wasn't allowed to know the name of the doctor; none of the fighters of the death cage could, so I just called her doctor. This room was the first destination for the winner of a fight, to treat his wounds while the loser bled and waited for his turn, if he was not dead, of course.
The doctor doesn't talk much unless she wants to clown me for getting beat up, so I just lay down in the bed and let her do her work. As a clandestine fighting ring, the death cage is a place where it isn't weird for a fighter to die during a match, so apparently they hired this shady doctor to prevent unnecessary deaths as much as possible. It would attract the authorities like flies after all.
I checked my phone as she patched me up. The money promised for winning the fight had already been delivered to my bank account, as well as the participation money, a little over two hundred thousand yen between both amounts. Good money for a single fight, but not worth risking my life for it.
"I think this will be my last match in the death cage"
The death cage cashes in a lot of money with each fight because of the use of lethal weapons. The kind of people who come here are wealthy men or women who enjoy the grotesque aspect of everyday life hidden behind the curtain of safety that the witches represent. Just yesterday they found a group of teenagers mutilated by some stray devil two blocks from my apartment building, but the media instead just focused on the witch Verdeluna's latest hunt of a medium-ranking devil that appeared in the outskirts of the city, not even mentioning the death of those kids in sidenote or something.
That kind of thing sickens me. Of course is not like I hate witches or something like that, they are the only reason why the world isn't burning in flames and flooded with devils after all...I just don't like how society has mutated so horribly.
The death of hundreds doesn't matter to the media or the public, any kind of death caused by devils or even accidental deaths caused by Witches are purposely hidden and ignored. Young girls are sent to hunt and fight scary monsters every day by the needs of society, which does not care for the fate of those girls if they ever lose, and instead just admires them like flying idols in the sky, intentionally ignorant of their fears.
"You are a favorite here. Why would you throw away what you have been building for over three years in here?"
Her words snatched me away from my thoughts. I looked down, realizing that my wounds had already been treated I immediately stood up, tracing the stitched wound with my finger before letting out a quiet sigh.
"It may sound hypocritical coming from me, but there is nothing I value more than life"
I took some painkillers from one of the drawers as I always did, throwing a bunch into my mouth and swallowing. This wound would be a new scar in my body, another aching pain to endure at night, so these things helped a little.
"The death cage can't keep stocked in what had always worked, those big fishes will eventually lose interest which means the organizers will need to do something more extreme, and I do not want to be here when they do"
"... I see"
I could swear I saw her smile for a split second, but when I tried to double check she was just looking at me with a boring look. After changing into normal clothes I decided to leave the death cage for the night, there were still two fights tonight, but im not interested in them at all.
As I left the building I glanced back, watching the old abandoned factory under which the clandestine fight ring operates with disgust in my eyes. I´ll make sure to notify my couch and the organizers that I quit next week, they will most likely try to make sure I don't speak about this place to outsiders, even if it has to be by force, so I need time to prepare for that just in case.
"I should buy a gun"
Is surprising how easy it has become to acquire guns, a few years back it was so hard to acquire a simple handgun in Japan that the Yakuza even lost power because of it, but today getting your hands on a gun is a simple matter of knowing who to talk to. It's so fucking laughable, but il take advantage of it for my safety.
"Sometimes I wish I had magic powers like the witches, it would make things much easier"