Chapter 1563: The Battle on the Battlefield (7)

In 512 A.D., men were freed for the first time from the prisons where slaves were held.

As he strolled away from the Roman arena, he was greeted by the applause and cheers of countless Romans.

People called this man a hero, a warrior, a unique champion. People admired his strength and bravery, and even praised the man's mechanics and sophistication in battle, but they never understood him.

Before leaving, the man looked back again, glancing at the building behind him that had made him move, had made him struggle between life and death countless times, and had made him love and hate. For the first time in his life, he felt hesitation.

That's right. Berelde, a gladiator, was originally a slave. A freak from birth, with four arms, even though his parents thought he was a foreign object that should not exist in the world, a cursed baby, so they abandoned him in an instant.

He spent his childhood in an orphanage until he was six years old, and then became a slave in a blur, wandering between the cells and auctions of countless slave owners. Berelde's last slave owner was so clever that he bought him into the gladiatorial arena and was paid a good sum of money. The year he entered the arena, Bereld was only twelve years old.

Incidentally, Berelde's name wasn't his original name, and it was probably changed by the organizers of the arena because they needed a domineering-sounding name for each player to attract the attention of the audience.

All in all, he was only twelve years old at the time, and he was sent to the ring in a daze and became a gladiator.

I don't know whether it was luck or misfortune, Berelde, who had been a slave from the beginning, had already experienced the bitterness and cruelty of the world, and honed the indomitable will to survive no matter what, as well as the physical strength necessary to fight the enemy. Even at the age of twelve, he was still very strong and ready to fight his opponents.

He survived the first wave of challenges thanks to his physique, which he had honed as a slave and his gifted four arms. Every day, he must fight with his primitive weapons and fight to the death against opponents who resemble him. For these little characters who have no status and have just bought cheaply from other slave owners, they are all consumables. Failure is not allowed, and the only price is death.

Again and again, at the age of ten, Bereld had to cut off the heads of his defeated opponents. Because that's the only way he's going to survive. He survived in the trials of blood and iron, and grew stronger...... as well as numbness. He understands his situation and can kill his opponents mercilessly in order to survive, and this state has remained for years.

During that time, he always fought cautiously and outmaneuvered his opponents as unscathed as possible. Because gladiators of their level were sent to forced combat every day, and were usually kept in prison cells to prevent escape. Even if you win the last battle, if you fall into a serious injury and can't heal, the next day's battle will be enough.

By the time Bereld was fifteen years old, however, his situation changed dramatically.

It was not because the Romans were more tolerant of gladiators, but because Bereld had accumulated a lot of popularity in successive battles and gradually became famous. Even if they are defeated, the gladiators who have made a name for themselves are not killed immediately, but are voted on by the spectators outside the arena.

Of course, Bereld, a gladiator who has reached this level, must also start fighting fighters of the same high caliber as him. Those are the excellent gladiators who have gone through thousands of baptisms of death battles, and the remaining ones after the great waves have washed away the sand, so the difficulty and danger of the battle have become higher. In this level of fighting, Bereld has won and lost, but has never been executed by the spectators, for a simple reason: because the battles he has participated in are spectacular.

In the midst of numerous battles, the boy, who was only fifteen years old at the time, finally understood the nature of gladiatorial fighting.

Its essence is not killing, just cruelty.

Although they do not want to admit it, the Romans who ruled the Eastern Roman Empire at that time were actually a power-worshipping, barbaric and brutal race. It is precisely because of their natural instinct to worship strength that the cruel competition of gladiatorial fighting exists and becomes a public entertainment. The citizens vented all the stress they had accumulated in their daily lives and watched the gladiators fight, not caring which fighter would eventually fall, or who would live or die - all they cared about was a good fight.

Knowing the nature of gladiatorial fighting, Bereld was relieved. Without the pressure of "defeat must die", all he can do is fight with all his might. Gain more experience in battles and then become stronger. The higher his level, the stronger the opponents he will face. From battle-hardened veterans, to all kinds of monsters, and even dragons, he has fought them all.

Gradually, Bereld's win rate became higher and higher, and his skills became more mature and his reputation grew. When his fame was so high that his appearance in battle became merely worshipped, and victory or defeat was no longer so important, he degenerated. He could no longer find the slightest passion in the battle, and some were just superficial flashy moves, and the vain fight with the circus performance. However, the general public could not tell the difference, and for the common people, as long as the gladiators' fights looked gorgeous, it was good.

He forgot that he was still a slave, and only remembered that he was a big celebrity in the gladiatorial arena, and he was fearless because of his fame. But it is so with all men, born in sorrow and dying in peace. As Berelde's old enemy and his friend, another gladiator named Leonard had already foreseen Berelde's fate. During a battle between multiple gladiators and a dragon, Bereld was mortally injured by a mistake, and Leonard was killed by the dragon for protecting the immobile Bereld.

After that incident, the gladiator Bereld remained in his mind, and his fighting style changed back to his original conservative style. Since then, the gladiator Bereld has become an undefeated legend in the death arena. Fights in which he appeared would end with the complete defeat of the opponent and the complete unscathed result of Berelde. He's as strong as a monster, winning with an impeccable, watertight defense and a ruthless, on-the-spot counter-attack that his opponents can't even make a small wound on him.

After many more years, Berelde's undefeated legend was recognized by the public, and at the same time feared by the operators of the death arena. As long as Bereld played, he would win, which was a nightmare for those who ran underground gambling - no matter how low the odds were, gamblers would buy Bereld to win, and Bereld would win as expected, so the bookmaker would lose money. After hundreds of such big losses, the operators of the Death Arena decided to fire the gladiator Bereld. On the surface, it gave him freedom as a slave, but in fact, it was to drive away this plague god who made the merchants lose money repeatedly.

At the age of twenty-five, the gladiator Bereld left the Roman Arena of Death, and while the Romans regarded him as an undefeated warrior in the Arena, [Gladiator] became a title that he could never erase. After that, he worked as a mercenary, a bodyguard, and even a bandit for a short time, but he never let his identity stay in a fixed industry for a long time. Beginning a few years ago, gladiator Bereld resigned from all positions to participate in the Round Table Trial, his motives remaining an undecipherable mystery.

......

Inside the bridge of the Great Britain battleship, King Arthur watched the battle between the werewolf Bediwell and the gladiator Bereld through a holographic screen, while flipping through Berelde's biographies.

Although the Roundtable Trial does not prohibit unidentified candidates from taking the exam, for the sake of safety, the organizers of the trial generally conduct unannounced visits through various means to understand the origin of each candidate. However, even though Great Britain's intelligence network is so large that there is almost no information that cannot be found, the origins of some candidates are still full of mysteries. Regardless of the current battle of Bediville (whose identity is a complete mystery!), even the gladiator Berelde's background is full of doubts.

Although freed from Rome's death arena and freed from slavery, Bereld was never a legitimate Roman citizen, and as a result, his identity is rarely documented, and most of what the British intelligence network can find is only some rumors, gossip, and some exaggerated statements.

The biggest problem was that the gladiators were reluctant to tell King Arthur his true wishes, even though King Arthur had made a private visit to Bereld before. The private interview did not force the candidates to answer every question, so the Knight King did not force Bereld to say what he wanted, but only tried to find out the true purpose of the gladiator's participation in the Round Table Trial from the other party's words. The gladiator Bereld was a man of great care, and King Arthur's temptations ended in vain.

What is this guy trying to achieve, or what is he trying to achieve?, the Knight King looked at the gladiators who were fighting on the screen, and fell into deep thought.

Was Bereld's struggle to resurrect his former friends who had died in his place, or was it simply for the sake of glory and wealth? The former, the Knight King had already told Bereld, could not have been possible even by the Knights of the Round Table, and the latter, which was not a strong enough motive to contradict the gladiator's present posture of sacrificing his life.

What did the gladiator Bereld really want?