Chapter 78. Hall of Gladiators (1)

Red Sun, who had arrived at the Hall of Gladiators, first registered himself. The 8 members of the Red Line guild also registered themselves in the Hall of Mortality.
With that, an addition of 9 players had joined the Hall of Gladiators.
Having become gladiators, they first started learning about how to use the Hall of Gladiators.
Fortunately, NPCs at the Hall of Gladiators kindly told them how the hall worked.
The NPC told Red Sun that there was a league could be created in three battlefields. Of course, there were more battlefields available, but right now, only the three were open.

1vs1 infinite duel ‘Road of Attestation’
3vs3 infinite duel ‘Shadow Forest’
7vs7 battle ‘Lunar Shrine’

These were the three, that was available now, and would continue to be the most popular in the future. The Road of Attestation was especially treated like the battle that decided the strongest person of EL, and many people contended for its championship.
Both the Hall of Gladiators and Hall of Mortality did not allow matches between members of the same guild, so to open a league, another guild was necessary.
“We wouldn’t lose to Terriculum right?”
Ludmilla, who managed to survive and arrive together with Red Sun at the Heroic Lands looked at Red Sun with a slightly worried expression.
“Terriculum will only answer the first match just to open the league. Of course, they would have to show that they are doing their best in order to prevent abusing…… but if we get beaten up by a raid-specialized guild, we should just all quit the game. In the end, our opponent will be One guild.”
Red Line and Terriculum decided to cross-support each other to create the league at the beginning.
It wasn’t to abuse the system. Both guilds knew that abusing the system may lead to critical consequences, so they had already negotiated that they would ‘do their best’.
“One Guild would try to take both Gladiator and Mortality, right?”
“Probably. That’s why we need to stomp on them on the get go. If they decide to give up Hall of Gladiators and go to the Hall of Mortality…… we’ll breeze through getting that championship.”
Red Sun’s intentions were simple. Although he had negotiated with Terriculum and the rest of Line Illusion, he did not share everything with them.
Everything considered, what mattered was profit for himself and his guild.
“Let’s make a team first.”
Red Sun had experienced many other games than EL, and understood these kinds of colosseum-like contents well.
And he had considerable skills as well.
His VRA was around 240, and this nearly pro-gamer level. In actuality, he had worked as a pro-gamer in a few of DN games.
He had both experience and skill, so he was confident in his chances.
So, he decided to register himself first for the Road of Attestation.
‘Hall of Gladiators! This is my territory from now on!’
Red Sun was full of confidence……. However, before he even decided to take the championship of the Hall of Gladiators, someone else had already pressed the ‘ready’ button for all three battlefields.

[…3, 2, 1, 0. Being summoned to the battlefield.]
Red Sun was surprised to see that a match was going to be held as soon as he applied for the Road of Attestation. He did already talk to Terriculum about this, but he didn’t know that they were so quick to act.
However, when he read the name of the opposition, he became nervous.
The opponent was from One guild, it was a user named Lone King.
Although he had never heard of this name before, what mattered was that the opponent belonged to One guild.
Flash, light scattered everywhere, and a large passageway appeared in front of him. The width of the passageway was around 15m, and in the middle, there was a 1m-wide muddy path that extended out far.
The general feeling he got was that there was a small road inside of a jungle. A large red crystal was shining behind his back, and in front of it was some kind of shield that protected the crystal.
The rules were simple. Victory was given to the user that killed the other five times first, or destroying the red crystal after destroying the shield.
The Road of Attestation was a rectangular-shaped battlefield, with a width of 15m and a length of 1km.
This size was the same all the time, but stuff like the terrain and the weather changed all the time. Although it was a jungle right now, there were many other kinds of terrain as well.
‘Lone King? I thought it would be Blake…… well, I just need to defeat whoever comes at me.’
Red Sun was confused at the unfamiliar name of ‘Lone King’, but stepped outside the shield thinking that it didn’t matter that much.
Since this was his first time in the Road of Attestation, he was slightly nervous.
‘Well, PvP is all the same, isn’t it? Let’s just take it easy.’
Red Sun decided that he would take this easy and think as though he’s killing a player on ani ordinary field. However, this was a huge mistake. The Road of Attestation contained buff zones and debuff zones which fields didn’t have.
As such, even though they were both PvP, the approach of killing a player in a field, and killing one in the Road of Attestation was completely different. If he didn’t realize this quick enough, then he may be toyed around by the opponent without being able to do anything.
Red Sun took out two pistols and held them in both hands. These were his main weapons.
These pistols were called ‘Magic engineered guns’, and had clear advantages and disadvantages.
Red Sun was a double-soul user.
HIs first ancient knowledge was Gunman, and his second was Bloody Hunter.
‘Let’s first turn on Blood Sense…….’
Blood Sense was one of the soul skills of Bloody hunter, and it allowed the user to amplify the smell of blood and obtain information about the opponent through it.
This ability was more effective the more injuries the opponent had and bled ‘white light’(in-game blood). Instead, if the opponent didn’t have a single injury, all it allowed was the position of the enemy if they were close by.
Having activated Blood Sense, Red sun carefully walked on the narrow path and looked to his surroundings. He wasn’t a perfectly long-ranged attacker, nor was he a completely close-ranged attacker, he had attacks that were mid-range.
Actually, this kind of battle distance became both an advantage and a disadvantage according to circumstances. What was sure was that if he maintained his distance, he was able to put his opponent to helplessness.
‘You aren’t coming out? Heheh, you are trying to play hide-and-seek with me? You’ll regret that.’
Red Sun had complete trust in Blood Sense, and thought that he would be able to sense the oncoming enemy regardless of wherever he hid.
He intentionally didn’t go inside the forested areas, and moved on the narrow muddy path while maintaining his concentration.
‘I’m a hunter! No matter how well you hide in the dark, you will not be able to escape my senses!’
Red Sun expanded his Blood Sense as much as possible to calmly search for Lone King. He scanned through the jungle as though he was a hunter hunting for a hidden leopard.
Then, Red Sun’s sense of smell detected a faint smell of blood. After that, the information became visual, and a red human-shaped object appeared in front of him.
The distance was around 12m.
This distance was precisely to Red Sun’s liking.
‘Got ya!’
As soon as he discovered the enemy, Red Sun aimed his gun at the red shadow and pulled the trigger.
Find and shoot, the basics of a hunter.
The two magically engineered guns in Red Sun’s hands emitted blue magical flames and bullets headed towards the enemy.
Guns were strong weapons. Though, in the world of EL, their might was less than that of a bow’s in compensation for their rapid attack speed, that only applied to EL.
Because of this, Red Sun also didn’t think that he would be able to subdue the enemy with his first round of attack. He was planning to disturb the enemy with the first round and finish it with follow-up attacks.
In that sense, the two bullets that Red Sun had just fired were very satisfactory attacks. He was sure that the opponent wouldn’t be able to dodge his attacks.
Red Sun thought that because he had reverse-ambushed someone who was ambushing him, it would be impossible for the enemy to defend or avoid his attacks.
However, his convictions were shattered immediately.
Pew, pew.
The opponent had actually dodged his attack. Not blocked, but dodged. If the opponent had defended, then that itself would be a move and would delay the next moves of the opponent, allowing Red Sun to continue attacking.
However, the opponent had actually dodged both of the bullets.
Not only that, he had not lost his momentum at all.
At this point, the distance between the two players would shrink rapidly, and Red Sun wouldn’t be able to attack properly.
However, Red Sun couldn’t stop attacking there, and had no choice but to shoot more. He shot four rounds.
However, as the enemy had already shrunk the distance, his aim had deviated severely, and the bullets all scattered in many directions.
When his second attack failed, the distance between him and Lone King was shrunk to a mere 5m.
‘Defend first!’
Red Sun immediately switched to a defensive stance. If he became greedy and maintained his offensive stance, then there was a chance that he may be done in instead, so this decision of his could be seen as quite wise.
He pulled his two guns to his chest and stepped according to the ‘Gunman backstep’ skill. He was thinking of distancing himself from Lone King.
Up until this point, Red Sun’s actions against Lone King didn’t seem to have any flaws or mistakes. He attacked first after finding the enemy, and he had immediately switched to a defensive stance once he had failed.
He definitely belonged to the top-notch players in regards to PvP.
However, the problem didn’t lay with him, but with his enemy. Lone King had forcefully created a problem for him.
The moment Red Sun backed off using Gunman backstep, Lone King sped up as though he had predicted that this would happen.
Of course, Red Sun hadn’t backed off without thinking of his next move. He was planning to switch stances again and attack with full force if the opponent decided to close in on him.
‘You want to close in on me? You’re looking for death.’
Red Sun did not hesitated and used one of his soul skill ‘Close-range bombardment’.
Using Close-range bombardment made his attack range very short, and his attack power weaker, but his continuous shooting speeds would increase rapidly.
In other words, he was able to fire his guns without restraint at extremely close range.
Red Sun and Lone King were within 3m of each other. Since the range of Close-range bombardment was 3m, Red Sun believed that his attack would definitely succeed.
However his convictions…… were broken again just like a curse.
Lone King had deflected a few of the bullets with the sword in his hand, and dodged the rest by twisting his body in a weird way.
Not a single one of the 16 rounds had hit Lone King’s body.
‘No, no way!’
Red Sun was flabbergasted by Lone King’s movement.
It was simply impossible to block or avoid his skill Close-range bombardment in such a short notice. At least, Red Sun thought so. However, his opponent, named Lone King, had achieved such a feat.
Not only that, he almost simultaneously reached out with his sword and drove the sword into Red Sun’s heart.
Red Sun felt the cold metal piercing his body. And unfortunately……. a ‘critical hit’ had occurred.