18 Crushing King

As the group takes an automated vehicle to meet up with the Ares guild, they arrive at the Volcanic Ash school rather quickly, and Sen waves to one of the sub-guild leaders, David. David is a small man, shorter than Sen's height while being fully grown, and with a wiry build, but Sen knows not to underestimate him. He's never played Gladiator, but Sen has seen him beat someone in the top five hundred in Gladiator in a different game. Even accounting for the more game like system with skills and such, he's clearly very skilled.

They each give each other a short greeting, and as they turn to call some more automated vehicles, Sen sees Jennifer sticking out her tongue at the man who had beaten her.

"So why didn't we see almost any of you in the tournament? I would've expected you guys to dominate it."

David looks massively angry at that. "For some stupid fucking reason they stuck almost all of us in the same bracket. At least the King guild got the same treatment."

Sen winces in sympathy. It seems that the devs don't want any one guild to dominate the tournaments. Ares guild will have been one of them, seeing as it's the largest PVP guild. The Ares guild is usually the third best guild when it comes to PVP, simply due to it's recruiting standards. Considering the best two in each region are pretty much professional teams with a bunch of support members, they are the most populous competitive PVP guild in most regions. The only requirement for joining Ares is to enjoy fighting, and with how obsessed they are with PVP, even the new players soon become quite good at it. The Ares guild, unlike the local pros, has branches throughout the two continents, with one of the branches on Iowes having a very strong professional team.

On the other hand, when it comes to PVE content, the Ares guild tends to not even place in the top fifty. Sen does admit that it wouldn't be very fun if they dominated the global competition though. While he expects the top two or three guilds in each region to stomp them pretty hard if they meet, Ares has enough skilled players globally to take up a good portion of the competition. Locally, the top two guilds have the only professional teams in the region, and the only proper competition they'll get is from other professional teams.

Sen gets his mind off of guilds as he hops in the automated vehicle, the girls still talking about fashion and other girly things, and he starts up a conversation with Xue about the different players in Gladiator, even if he only gets short responses to his questions.

They soon arrive at the outskirts of the city, and get off to head over to the dungeon. Along the way, the monsters run away from the group, not willing to fight with so many people. It takes about half an hour to get to where the dungeon is at a jogging pace, and Sen can see around a hundred members of the King guild around it, all wearing their armband with a crown logo on it. Unlike the King guild, only about a quarter of the Ares guild have their arm in a band with a helmet logo on it.

They don't bother hiding, simply walking towards the King guild and forming up in a shield wall. At this point, Sen is starting to regret not buying a sword and shield to join them, something that he usually does. Xue and Lynna join in with the shield wall, but the others are going to be fighting on their own. The King guild, seeing they're being challenged, charge at the group in a disorganized mess. As they start to impact the shield wall, they're shredded in seconds, blue lines appearing on them, and many of them turning into blue sparkles.

The shield wall starts pushing into them, as Sen, and the rest of the group that doesn't have a shield start cutting into them from the side. The King guild, seeing them not with the group, take them for easier prey, and Sen grins when their swords start going straight through where they think Julie is. Sen himself is simply crushing anyone who comes near with his superior stats, not needing to use his prided swordsmanship.

Eventually, the King guild breaks and runs off in all directions, nobody bothering to chase them. The shield wall is let down, and everyone in the Ares guild starts chatting, mostly about different professional players or PVP in general. The fight they just had, even outnumbered more than two to one, is just considered mundane for them.

The dungeon, as Sen approaches it, looks like nothing more than a hole in the ground, and he wonders how anyone even found it. After chatting with Ares, they agree to let him and the others be one of the first groups in the dungeon, along with their main team, the rest taking guard shifts.

Sen grins, he's going to find out what dungeons are like in this game.