Chapter 343: Checking out the Arena

After Joshua had finished getting the skills and abilities for his new recruits he started browsing through a few other things to see if there was anything interesting that he could find for himself. At first he browsed through the skills, but didn't find anything of interest for himself. He wasn't surprised by this, after all the new auction had just been set up and there would be a lot of people that still weren't willing to sell off things they thought were to useful.

When Joshua stopped looking through the skills and started looking through the materials that were becoming available he was actually able to find something that he had been looking to find for a while. It was another component to his future scale blade that he had been trying to find all of the materials for. He was still quite a bit away, but at least now he had another way to find more of the materials that he would need.

After rifling through the auctioned items a few more times, Joshua figured it was time for him to make his way over to the arena and see how things were going. While leaving the auction house behind he noticed that the place was getting far more crowded than it had been when he first got there. It was a good thing in his eyes since by the next time he came around there would be far more items to choose from with the auction house becoming more active.

Since the streets were fairly crowded Joshua knew that it was going to take a while for him to get to the arena. Traveling by portal at the moment was basically impossible since there wasn't very much room for a portal to open up and he didn't really know the lay out of the area enough to judge where he could open a portal. So while on the way to the arena Joshua decided to pass the time by checking out the power ranking leader boards to see where he currently stood amongst his hub city. Thoren had already gave him the hint that being high on the local power rankings would be extremely important for the next phase, so Joshua knew that it would be best for him to be as highly ranked as possible.

When Joshua brought up the power rankings through the system it created a projection of a board in front of him that listed the top hundred people in the power rankings for the moment. Next to the list was his name with his current ranking. He was honestly surprised that he was so high sitting at number fifty-seven in the power rankings. Considering the fact that the hub city they were currently in could hold up to a hundred million people with the way the system had things organized he was surprised by his ranking.

There were millions of explorers in the local hub city alone yet Joshua had already made it so far up the rankings. It showed how valuable clearing the large town out was since all the main participants in clearing out the large town were somewhere on the top hundred rankings. At the moment Monika was the lowest one rated in that group and she sat at ranking number ninety-eight.

The people that were currently above Joshua in the rankings were all large guild leaders and there right hand members. There were a few mid-sized guild leaders around where Joshua was in the rankings, but for the most part the rankings were filled with members of the larger guilds. In fact there wasn't a single small guild leader on the list outside of Joshua's group, but at this point they had become a mid-sized guild even if they weren't at full capacity yet.

When Joshua looked towards the top of the power rankings he could see Madalyn sitting at the top with Laura right behind her. Joshua wasn't surprised by the fact the both of them were at the top of the list and even less surprised that Madalyn had taken the number one spot. Although they were both at the top in strength when it came to their guilds, the Serpent Guild was a bit more active when it came to territory wars with other guilds. That had given Madalyn the edge over Laura in the rankings, but they were neck and neck.

One other thing Joshua noticed about the power rankings was the fact that there weren't any solo explorers on the list which proved how much being involved in guild activities boosted your rankings. Being the leader of a guild also seemed to give a decent boost in ranking considering the fact that the only people on the list that were ahead of Adrian, Aito, and Henry were all guild leaders of large guilds. The three of them took number seven through nine on the rankings.

After looking through the list while making his way through the crowd Joshua was able to eventually make it to the arena area. The place was no longer a big open area with nothing but a blank billboard out front. Now it seemed almost like a city in itself with all of the arena's that were on display. Each arena was the size of a football stadium and from what Joshua could see there were ten arena's in total.

There was one arena that stood out from all of the other ones from its size alone since it was twice as big as the others and design wise looked like a futuristic version of the colosseum. This building stood out among the rest with its banners that hung from the top all the way to the ground. Between each set of banners there was entrance to the building and at the moment each entrance was being flooded with people. The other stadiums were fairly barren in comparison to the large one that everyone seemed attracted too.

From the design and the crowd around the large colosseum Joshua could tell that it was the battle arena that Thoren had been talking about. While the other stadiums and arena's looked like they could be used for any purpose in the future the battle arena was clearly there for only one thing. It stood out like a sore thumb and was the only reason so many people were attracted to the area civilian and explorer alike.

After looking over the area Joshua immediately got into one of the long lines that would lead him into the battle arena. The fact that he could only see people going into the arena and nobody leaving Joshua was certain that the exit was most likely portal based, but he'd have to get inside to check. Joshua new the rest of his guild was already inside the place, but he would have to wait in line to get a chance to catch up with the others.

It took half an hour just for Joshua to get to the front of one of the lines. After the long waited he was thankful for the design of the building since there were several entrances around the place. If it had only one large entrance at the front it could take hours just to get inside with the rush that was going on at the moment. When Joshua did get inside he was able to understand how so many people were able to fit inside the building in the first place. It was set up like a giant stadium with several different section of entry. At each of the sections there were robot attendees that were allowing people entrance through a portal.

Joshua had to wait a bit longer to get to the robot that was in charge of his line, but while he was waiting he was able to look around the place a bit. While the colosseum was well designed and had all sorts of architecture you would expect from a human built building it still had this overly clean feeling to it just like all of the rest of hub city that made it feel unreal. While waiting in line Joshua looked at a screen that was set up above the desk the robots were working at. On the screen he could see a one on one duel between two swordsmen in action that looked fairly evenly matched. When he turned to look at the other screens along the walls of the stadium he was able see several other battles taking place. Apparently the battle arena had already opened up to registry.

Eventually Joshua was the next one up at the desk since it seemed to be moving at a fairly fast pace with so many robots there to help out. The nearest robot turned its attention towards him with a smile. This time around the person took the appearance of a handsome man. The robots always seemed to take the appearance of inhumanly beautiful people which made them hard to miss.

"Welcome to the battle arena sir." The robot said with a smile bringing Joshua's attention back to the task at hand instead of wondering about pointless things. "At the moment there are two forms of entry that you can take. You can either enter the stadium seating where you can watch an assortment of the highest level combatants facing each other or you can spend a little more to get a private room and watch any match that you want."

"I've got others already here waiting for me with a private room. It should be under the Fenrir Guild name." Joshua said causing the robot to stop for a moment as it processed the information rather quickly.

"Certainly sir. Your party is already in the private room that they have rented out for the day. Any information you need on how the battle arena works can be found in the system's database. Have a joyful stay and good luck in any fights you participate in." The robot said before stepping aside so that Joshua could enter the portal without any issue. The moment Joshua stepped through the portal he was taken away to a large room that looked like some sort of suite. It still had the same design as the rest of the battle arena with the roman architecture mixed with a futuristic aesthetic.

When Joshua entered the room the first thing he noticed was the fact that all of his main group guild members were in the room, even the new recruits that had been training with them lately. The room was more than large enough to handle a bigger group so Joshua was certain that this was probably one of the more costly rooms to be bought in the battle arena. Seeing as the room didn't seem to be a direct part of the battle arena it explained how so many people could be in the area at once. Although there could probably only be around a hundred thousand people in the stadium portion of the battle arena, the individual rooms connected by portal could be endless.

Joshua shook off those thoughts as he made his way over to the group to see what they were up to.