Hello,

Me and my friend are having a little disagreement about the correct use of the word "gauntlet"

Some context: In video game called Dark Souls, there is this one section that is a long tunnel filled with enemies and traps and at the end of the tunnel, there is a boss battle.

I commented this about it to my friend:

"The gauntlet to get to that boss is stupidly hard"

He was originally confused about what I was saying, but after I explained that I used the word "gauntlet" as a synonym of sorts for the word "challenge" or such, he claimed that I used the word "gauntlet" all wrong.

I asked him to re-phrase it so it would make "sense", and he came up with: "I had to run the gauntlet to make it to the boss" , but that is still awkward sounding.

What is the right way to say it? Are we both wrong?