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This book starts off with a human guy being abducted by alien's and they medically process him. After they put him in a cell with a human woman and take them to cargo transport with various other alien's. Both find out that will soon be fighting others in a battleroyale style game and they form an alliance with a couple other alien's. The only one I remember was a lizard man and after they get dropped of on the hunting grounds. This group sticks together and one night they talk philosophy and the lizard man speaks about his home world and beliefs pertaining to the great egg.

I don't remember much after this except they win and go back to thier own planets or fight again for greater rewards.

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  • When did you read it? Physical book or e-book? Do you remember the cover art? You say it's a battle royale; that means that the losers die, right?
    – DavidW
    Mar 29, 2022 at 21:28
  • The Gorn go on about "the great egg bringer" in various star trek books, plus they're lizards.
    – Valorum
    Mar 29, 2022 at 21:31
  • I read this book like around 10 years ago. But it was a old book like maybe from the 70s or 80s.
    – Avery Gene Escarzega
    Mar 29, 2022 at 21:53
  • How was it made clear in the story that the fighting aliens were from more than one galaxy? Was the fact that some of the aliens came from outside our Milky Way galaxy of 100 billion stars a major plot point?
    – user14111
    Mar 29, 2022 at 23:21

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If it's an older book, you might be thinking of Hunters of the Red Moon (1973) by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Paul Edwin Zimmer.

Dane Marsh is sailing solo around the world when he is kidnapped from the middle of the Pacific ocean by a ship of Mekhar ("proto-feline") slavers. Dane first meets a couple of Mekhar when he awakes after surgery to have a translator disk implanted, which seems similar to "medically process him." He is put in a cage with some human-appearing ("proto-simian") people and a large reptilian (proto-reptilian) being named Aratak who becomes Dane's ally. The woman he first meets, Rianna and Aratak survive with Dane to the end of the story.

Aratak believes in "the Divine Egg" as a source of wisdom:

he tended to fill every lull in the conversation with some excerpt from the Wisdom of the Divine Egg—who had been, Dane gradually gathered, the Confucius, Lao-Tzu, Hillel, and Hiawatha of his race.

The Mekhar sell Dane, Rianna, Aratak, another prisoner, and empath named Dallith who becomes bonded with Dane, and a dishonoured Mekhar named Cliff-Climber to the unknown Hunters to be hunted for sport:

"Prisoners," he said quietly. "Your chance of escape, or honorable death, is upon you. You have proven that you are too brave, too courageous, to be sold as slaves; it is, therefore, our honor and our pleasure to provide you this alternative. Do not be afraid. You are about to be given a small dose of a mild anesthetic gas, which will have no lasting side effects, so that you need not be harmed by struggling in the transit to the Hunters' World. Let me congratulate you, and wish you all an honorable escape, or a bloody and honorable death."

They win a great reward of riches, but Aratak and Dane mostly value their freedom:

"Riches," she murmured," enough to start a scientific foundation-maybe to come back here and explore the old city and find out about the old race that saved my life-"

Aratak said quietly, "The Divine Egg has seen fit to preserve my Me; he must have work for me somewhere in the Unity. But before I go and do it, I will journey to Spica Four and tell Dallith's people how she died—and Cliff-Climber's. I have no other use for wealth."

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  • That's the one I'm looking for. Thanks a lot for finding it.
    – Avery Gene Escarzega
    Mar 29, 2022 at 21:58
  • I'm not familiar with that book. Were the battles "intergalactic"? That, after all, is the most striking feature of the description. Did it involve just the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, such as the Clouds of Magellan, or were aliens from more distant galaxies involved?
    – user14111
    Mar 29, 2022 at 23:26
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    @AveryGeneEscarzega: Don't forget to accept by clicking on the checkmark.
    – FuzzyBoots
    Mar 30, 2022 at 0:10
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Hunters of the Red Moon (1973) by Marion Zimmer Bradley...?

It was the first of a two-book series, with the follow-up being The Survivors (1979).

From Goodreads:

This long unavailable novel by Bradley, the bestselling author of The Mists of Avalon, and her brother, a well-known science fiction author in his own right, tells the story of the Hunters--fierce killers and shapechangers who promise fabulous wealth to any opponents who can survive being hunted by them for the time between two eclipses of the Red Moon.

Some of the user reviews -- such as this one -- mention a lizardman philosopher named Aratak, and the cover depicts a lizardman as well.

The novel is set on earth as a Richard Branson type of modern day explorer, Dane Marsh is absconded by some wolf-type aliens reminiscent of Larry Niven's Kzin. They're slavers who trade Marsh and 4 other alien companions to a mysterious sect of "Hunters" who engage in a ceremonial hunt of prey on a - you guessed it - red moon. Dane is involved with Rianna and Dalith. Rianna, a foxy anthropologist human female, and Dalith a human empath who quickly forms a love-bond (asexual) with Dane. The other two are a giant Lizard man who is a non-violent philosopher and a deposed cat creature who is a jerk the whole time.

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