As Sen is teleported back outside, he’s the first one out, but it isn’t long until Xue gets out as well. He starts to consider going to spectate the other’s matches, but before he can act on the thought, everyone appears, with just a few seconds in between each.

“Have trouble this round?” Sen asks.

“Just another guy abusing a footwork skill” Jennifer replies.

“Mine actually put up a bit of a fight!” Lynna cheerfully answers.

“He used a bunch of shurikens and kept running away, it took a bit to catch him.” Julie adds.

Sen tilts his head. He’s seen shurikens before, but they aren’t exactly a common weapon. They’re usually hidden in the sleeves and used for surprise attacks rather than simply using them straight up, or at least that is his experience in Gladiator. One of the most frustrating opponents he had faced loves to use them with a short sword, just throwing with one hand whenever he went to parry the sword. He’d played against him a number of times, and each time he had ended up with a lot of wounds from them until he managed to get a fatal blow.

The semifinals start without any warning, and when Sen enters the arena, he sees an absolutely massive number of people in the stands. He’d assumed that he would have more spectators as the matches continued, but this was way beyond what is within his expectations.

Looking over to the other side of the arena, he sees a handsome man with blonde hair and blue eyes, showboating for the crowd before he presses the accept button to start the match. It isn’t until the white walls cutting them off from each other disappear that he recognizes his opponent. Not that he needs to recognize him seeing as he starts off with his tag.

“Be proud, for you shall fall to the blade of LightBringer!”

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Sen tries desperately to hold in a laugh. LightBringer has the dubious honor of being by far the worst player to reach the top ten thousand in Gladiator, and is totally infamous on the chat servers for it. He is a popular streamer, with a personality catered to younger kids. Unfortunately, many of those kids are pretty damn good at gladiator, even if they played with the massive censorship, and would stream snipe him and grant him free wins.

Much of the Gladiator community absolutely hates him, and Sen is glad to get a chance to stomp him. Deciding to make the match fast, unlike some of the other people who would drag it out in order to embarrass LightBringer, he starts off with the strongest strike he can muster.

He dashes forward with Earth Step, his sword held overhead, and swings down with as much force as he can muster, empowered by body strengthening and Weight of the Mountain. LightBringer brings his shield up to block, stabbing out at the same time with his sword, but Sen doesn’t bother to dodge as his sword slams LightBringer’s shield into his head and knocks him onto his back. Stepping forward, he thrusts his blade into Lightbringer, who probably can’t even see straight after taking that blow to the head.

He shakes his head as he finishes the round. While LIghtBringer isn’t a bad swordsman, he could have placed top thirty thousand in Gladiator on his own merits, his strength stat was clearly not even E rank. Sen wonders for a bit how he managed to get to the semifinals, but thinking of the random match he’d specated, most of the players participating still had only had stats at F rank.

He looks around the arena to see a lot of booing, and leaves the arena to join the group again. Once he’s out, he sees he’s the first, and waits a while until Xue joins him, looking a bit worn out.

“Tough fight?”

Xue only nods in response.

They wait in silence until Jennifer gets out looking seriously annoyed.

“That bastard clearly had his strength stat at D already! Stupid Ares guild!”

Sen smiles. Jennifer, Lynna, and him have worked with the Ares guild a number of times, but they still hate getting shown up by them, even if a player supported by a guild can grow faster than a small group of people. They were even going to work with the Ares guild later today, to take control of the hobgoblin dungeon back from the King guild.

Sen realizes at this point that he hasn’t talked with his group about taking back the dungeon, and informs everyone of the plan. Lynna is happy to have any chance to screw over the King guild, Jennifer wants another chance to compete with “That bastard from the Ares guild,” as she puts it, and even Xue’s cold face has a little smile on it.

They wait for Julie to get out, who looks exhausted but proud as she appears, Sen asks her if she wants to join the fight, and she mentions that she wants to see how well her arrays do on a larger battlefield. With everyone’s agreement, he gives them the time and place to meet, and is soon whisked away to the finals of the tournament.