The Honor of the Arena
The Skeleton Gladiators (2)
“My opponent is me!”
The skeleton gladiator wielding a massive battle axe swung it down at me with terrifying force. Meanwhile, the spear-wielding gladiator charged toward Lee Suyoung, who had been waiting in the rear.
I lightened my body with light footwork and dodged the crushing axe, then pulled a hand axe from my pocket and hurled it at the spear gladiator who had just rushed past me.
The spear-wielding skeleton gladiator moved his weapon with dazzling speed, blocking the water bombs and fire bombs spat out by the slimes in front while simultaneously defending against the hand axe I’d thrown from behind.
“My opponent is me, I said!”
When I spun around to attack the spear gladiator, the axe-wielding one apparently took it as an insult that I’d ignored him. He let out a ghastly wail and swung his axe at me once more.
Though simple in technique, the axe strikes powered by immense strength were brutal. I dodged the battle axe and slipped into his range, aiming for his neck. Because it was a proper battle axe with a long handle, once I closed the distance he couldn’t swing it properly.
“Hah!”
But the axe gladiator seemed familiar with this situation. He twisted his body and avoided having his head severed. Before he could create distance again, however, I stepped forward and drove my sword into his shoulder joint, twisting it viciously to rip the entire arm free.
Crack!
“What?!”
“No!”
Having lost an arm in an instant, the skeleton gladiator could no longer wield his heavy battle axe effectively. His head flew off right after.
After confirming that neither the arm nor the head of the axe gladiator was regenerating, I tossed the axe far away just in case and immediately turned around.
“Suyoung!”
Lee Suyoung was blocking the spear with her shield, running around as much as possible while attacking the spear gladiator with her slimes. The spear gladiator’s bones were cracked and shattered all over his body, but he hadn’t taken any fatal wounds yet.
Anticipating that the skeleton gladiators might resurrect, I snatched the axe and immediately spun back around, throwing a hand axe at the spear gladiator.
The spear gladiator must have judged my thrown axe to be more dangerous than the water bombs fired by Lee Suyoung’s slime, Mulpung-i. He turned and blocked it with his spear.
It was the correct decision.
I had poured a great deal of internal energy into that hand axe. Its power far exceeded that of an ordinary throwing axe.
“Ugh!”
The spear gladiator clearly hadn’t expected the force behind my throw. His body staggered. Even the spear shaft bent severely from the impact.
Because he’d focused entirely on blocking my axe, he left his back completely exposed. A water bomb struck his skull, shattering it into fragments that flew in every direction.
As the skull exploded, a mana stone fell to the ground along with the bone shards. The spear gladiator collapsed completely.
The moment the spear gladiator crumbled into a pile of bones, Lee Suyoung sank to the ground in exhaustion.
“Haa~! Thank you, oppa. I really would’ve died without you.”
“It was nothing.”
I shrugged and walked over to the axe gladiator’s skull. He was still “alive.” If one could call this state of being nothing but a skull alive, that is.
The axe gladiator laughed with genuine joy.
“Uahahaha! Yes, at the very least, our deaths should have been like this! That cowardly, dishonorable end was an insult to us!”
Though his voice sounded almost cheerful, it was laced with bitter resentment and lingering attachment.
“Do you have any more regrets now?”
At my question, the axe gladiator answered with clear relief.
“Yes. Thank you, warrior. The location where we hid that bastard’s stolen fortune is the third room on the right after entering that doorway. It’s hidden beneath the floor. We stole quite a lot, so even the owner of the colosseum must have been in quite the predicament. Hehehe.”
The axe gladiator chuckled, then asked me to finish him off so he could depart with his dear friend. At his request, I pulled the mana stone from inside his skull. Only then did the axe gladiator, who had somehow maintained his form until now, finally collapse into a heap of bones.
Having completed the quest, I turned to Lee Suyoung.
“We should probably get you more self-defense options.”
If I could cover her, that was one thing, but in such a wide area it was impossible to block every enemy that rushed at her.
“I was surprised too. The barrier broke much more easily than I expected. I thought it would hold out longer.”
One of the magic tools Lee Suyoung had obtained on the 14th floor created a protective barrier, but it had shattered after just a few spear thrusts. And since the cooldown hadn’t finished, it didn’t regenerate immediately. It was unrealistic to expect top-tier performance from a magic tool acquired in the 10-floor range.
“Still, it held long enough for me to finish off the axe gladiator, so it did its job.”
“When you put it that way, it really was helpful.”
“I think the matchup was just bad this time.”
It was quite unreasonable to expect a long-range damage dealer to fight a close-range fighter who felt no pain in a one-on-one duel. Even though the arena was large, there was a limit to how long she could keep running.
“If I reflect on it, I should have fought the agile spear user myself and sent the much slower axe user to you. Then you could have dodged more comfortably.”
Lee Suyoung shook her head at my words.
“No, not at all. Actually, because you quickly took down the slow one first, we reached a two-on-one situation much faster. The barrier managed to block the spear a few times, but the axe would have torn through it instantly and I might have been seriously injured.”
Her positive feedback made me chuckle.
“When you say it like that, I guess you’re right.”
If both gladiators had been alive, we probably wouldn’t have won this quickly. The decisive moment came when I drove my sword into the axe gladiator’s shoulder and arm joint, tearing his arm off. If he had been a living person, thick muscles would have prevented me from severing the limb so cleanly. Just from watching the power and trajectory of his axe swings, I could vaguely tell how strong he was.
“Still, getting more protective measures like you suggested is definitely something I should consider. Or maybe I should learn close combat like you, oppa.”
“If you want to learn later, I’ll teach you some martial arts.”
“Huh?! Really? Is it okay to just teach abilities you got from the Tower to someone else?”
I smiled at the surprised Lee Suyoung.
“Why wouldn’t it be? There are people outside the Tower who opened martial arts dojos using techniques they learned here.”
She was probably asking if it was okay to give away my foundation so easily, but martial arts weren’t my real foundation. I could teach them to anyone. My true foundation was something I couldn’t give to others.
At my answer, Lee Suyoung looked apologetic but didn’t refuse. She must have been tempted after watching me fight up close.
“Still, I can’t just take it for free. I have to pay the proper price. Like I said before, these kinds of calculations are important if we want our relationship to last.”
After thinking for a moment, Lee Suyoung clapped her hands as if she’d had a good idea.
“Ah! I’ll give up my share of the Ability Stone we got from killing that monster wolf on the 11th floor. Wait, is that still not enough? If we get any more Ability Stones in the future, I’ll give up my share on up to two of them. That should be fair compensation for learning a skill, right?”
I nodded at her suggestion.
“If that puts your mind at ease, then sure.”
“Before we head to the next floor, let’s check the place the gladiators mentioned and the surrounding area. We might find more magic tools or something.”
Even Agent K from the community said that after completing a quest, the farming time was enough to make even a hungry girlfriend wait for her meal. It meant that climbing the Tower often revealed many hidden secrets and rewards.
I still didn’t understand why the analogy involved a hungry girlfriend, though.
“Before that, let’s make them a grave.”
Using simple earth magic, I dug a pit in the center of the arena and buried the axe gladiator and spear gladiator side by side.
“May you rest in peace.”
After offering a prayer for their souls, instead of tombstones, I planted the axe and spear each had used.
For gladiators who hadn’t feared even death, there could be no more fitting monuments.
After finishing the grave, Suyoung and I explored the inside of the colosseum as the gladiators had described. The colosseum was quite large, but it seemed to have been abandoned in a hurry and was rather messy.
“Oppa, look at this. Aren’t these gold coins? Can we sell them?”
When we broke the floor, we found about twenty boxes and old sacks filled with gold coins. They really had stolen a lot. Each sack seemed to contain at least a thousand coins.
“These aren’t credits, right?”
There were no gold coins among the credits. Credits came in nine types, all coins of the same 100-won size. From 1 credit to 100 million credits, they were white, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, purple, and black in ascending order. I thought the yellow ones might be 1,000 credits and bit one, but it left teeth marks. These were real gold coins. Credits didn’t get tooth marks even if they were yellow.
“How much would these be worth?”
“Hmm, still, since they’re gold, maybe around 1,000 credits (100,000 won) each? I’m not sure because the gold purity matters.”
“Isn’t 1,000 credits too little?”
Each coin seemed to weigh about 5 grams. Even with impurities, they should sell for around 400,000 won each, right? For now, we collected the sacks and boxes, then searched the area further. We found some rotten clothing, fairly high-quality swords, spears, nets, axes, and other weapons the gladiators had used. We also discovered an old diary.
According to the diary, the gladiators we fought had been a famous duo. They were forced to eat poison as part of a match-fixing scheme, became ill, and died in the arena without ever being able to fight properly. Afterward, rumors spread that their grudges lingered as ghosts. Then, when foreign invaders suddenly attacked, the colosseum was abandoned. Most gladiators were conscripted to fight the invaders, and the colosseum owner seemed to have left in such a hurry that he couldn’t take everything.
Inside the box the gladiator duo had hidden was a kind of secret manual.
“This book contains the Battle Qi Method that gladiators learn, along with swordsmanship, axe techniques, spear arts, and so on?”
“Oh! Then should we learn it?”
“No, wouldn’t it be better if you learned from me? As you climb the Tower, you’ll eventually learn higher-level martial arts anyway.”
My insight and realm weren’t particularly high, but honestly, these techniques didn’t seem that advanced. There might be better advanced martial arts out there, but I wasn’t confident we could obtain them.
“Hmm, thinking about the future, that does seem better. If I learn the martial arts you’ve mastered, I might become as strong as you, oppa.”
Well, that strength was the result of years of hard training on my part. Honestly, the Cheon Clan’s introductory martial arts focused on purity and body conditioning rather than immediate power. If the goal was to become strong right away, the gladiators’ combat techniques would actually be more effective than Blue Wood Swordsmanship.
“We’ve collected quite a lot. We won’t be able to carry everything.”
Especially the gladiator weapons. Combined, they easily weighed several hundred kilograms.
“Let’s take as much as we can back to the 10th floor. It would be a waste to leave it.”
Naturally, we prioritized small, light, and valuable items like the gold coins. We descended to the 10th floor, sold off all the weapons, and immediately headed up to the 16th floor.
There was nowhere to sell the gold coins, so we had to store them in our inventory and deposit them on the Tower 1st Floor. According to the association staff, there was a Climber’s Bank in the city on the 20th floor, so we should consult with them there. It seemed the 10th floor only had banks for the First Settlers.
The reason they separated banks for First Settlers and climbers was because the Climber’s Bank allowed you to withdraw stored items even after moving to the middle layers of the Tower where entire worlds changed.
(To be continued in the next chapter)