Seeing how prosperous it was for epic fights to be born, many soldiers had to dig the arena further. It looked like the many Roman ruins left all around Europe, the way it would dispatch spectators was too good to be true. They had enough of the assault tower, it was often crowded and wasn't suited to observe the fights from up close.
While Laurel was playing with a sword, juggling with it like a mere stick, he had to adapt to the horrendous scent that aggravated the atmosphere around it. Sure the macabre ambience already darkened everyone's mood, but death's scent was so dense it almost blinded both sight and smell sense to Oswald and Laurel.
The echoing coughs kept multiplying. The plague Claudia feared had started. The omnipresence of corpses around them and flies had multiplied the chances of infection in the troops and decreased the average hygiene, the camp and the many water ponds became invisible clusters where diseases and germs would duplicate within hours.
