After confirming the identities of the Hunter and Priest, Shiller received a map that only the Priest could see. It was a very detailed topographic map, depicting a bustling commercial street.
This was a topographic map because it was a three-dimensional map, appearing as a semi-transparent image in front of Shiller's eyes. All he had to do was focus his attention to see it, and no one else could see it.
Compared to Shiller, Stark's safety was more worrying. However, this was not a barren wilderness, but a bustling city. Upon discovering that the level of civilization here is close to or even higher than that of the human race, Stark felt assured that he could build a useful battle armor here.
Therefore, his destination was the factory area, which was far away. He planned to find a car first to see if it could be started. Not far from here was a parking lot, so they diverged under the spawning point's signal light.
As for the mapping location, it was just to show where exactly the commercial area presented by the map was located. Luckily, there was a high-rise building nearby, and Shiller planned to go up and observe the surrounding terrain first.
The interior of the high-rise was full of dense fog and was very dangerous. Shiller had no plans to go in, but the advantage of this building was that it had an external staircase that could reach around the 9th to 10th floors.
Without hesitating, Shiller quickly headed towards the staircase and soon climbed up to the 6th floor from where he could see far and wide.
Looking out from a high vantage point, the entire city was already in ruins. However, Shiller quickly noticed that the streets of this city were very narrow, even narrower than those of ancient European cities, or they were not meant for cars at all. Rather, they appeared to be more like walkways or bike lanes.
But some of the shorter buildings that had not completely collapsed all had flat roofs, each installed with some facilities, which looked like helipads.
It was probable that this world had popularized air transport facilities. With these assumptions, Shiller continued to climb upwards.
When he reached the area around the 9th floor, he could no longer continue upward. The staircase steps and railings all appeared shaky and unstable. At this height, the entire view of the city was already in full view.
Unexpectedly, this city was not large, at least the city area was small. On careful observation, it was merely the size of a New York district. However, due to the lack of roads, the buildings were more densely packed. All functional areas were crammed together, appearing just like a miniature model.
There seemed to be no residents left in the city, but Shiller spotted two dark figures on a street not far away. He immediately held his breath because he recognized one of them as Superman.
In the absence of ability restrictions, Superman's super vision and super hearing abilities were still intact. Although the city was filled with fog, it was hard to say whether Superman's super vision would still be effective.
This Superman wasn't wearing his uniform, but because the distance was too far, Shiller couldn't quite make out his age range, making it hard to guess which universe's Superman he was. The vague figure on the other side had two pointed ears, looking like Batman, but it was also too far away to identify which Batman it was.
Things were getting tricky, thought Shiller. Regardless of which Batman it was, they were all intelligent. Anything that Shiller could think of, they would naturally think of too. Deceiving them wouldn't be easy.
Shiller suddenly noticed that both Superman and Batman were also about to split up. It seemed that their plan was the same, with both of them pretending to be Hunters.
This was getting interesting. If each group contained a smart individual, then there would now be 12 Hunters on the field. Nobody would know who the real and fake Hunters were, resulting in both sides being too afraid to act.
Shiller felt that things weren't as simple as they seemed. The organizers must have some method to intensify the conflicts.
Just as he was thinking this, he saw the map suddenly pop up, and an eye-catching red arrow appeared above one of the buildings in the commercial area, with a pattern of a totem pillar on top.
As expected, totem pillar fragments couldn't simply be found by luck. The location of the totem pillar fragments would be specifically marked on the map given to the Priest. Any Priest who saw this would understand that the more maps they had, the greater their advantage would be, because the totem pillar could directly kill people.
Shiller suspected that each Priest's map would have some overlap and eventually, two Priests would be able to spot the location of the same totem pillar fragment.
Shiller didn't hesitate, he rushed towards the location marked on his map. During his previous observation, he had already confirmed the location of the commercial street.
As he made his way to the location, a plan gradually formed in Shiller's mind.
The entire game was a large-scale practical experiment of The Dark Forest Theory.
If everyone was a Hunter, then they would fight as soon as they met, as gaining the upper hand was crucial. But if a Priest was behind a Hunter, and if the Priest died, the Hunter would also die, meaning the Hunter's primary task would become protecting the Priest.
If everyone assumed the potential opponents they might encounter consisted of a Hunter and Priest, then their desire to attack wouldn't be strong, because they would realize that a Hunter protecting a Priest wouldn't attack them proactively.
Then the plan to pose everyone as Hunters could be smoothly executed. If one person was discovered to be a Hunter, they would assume that there was a Priest behind him, and realizing that protection of the Priest meant there would not be a proactive attack, they would see no need to attack and could leave cautiously.
However, if there was something that had to be grabbed, this wouldn't work. When both sides met and claimed to be Hunters, anyone coming to grab the totem pillar fragment would prove that the Hunter wanted his Priest to kill—possibly themselves—meaning they absolutely could not let him grab it. Therefore, there would be an attack.
But Shiller had another idea, the secret of how many Totem Pillar Fragments each person possesses. The priest who has three fragments poses the highest threat for he could bypass the process of a hunter's attack and directly kill people.
Following this logic, pretending to be a priest with three fragments seems like the better choice. As soon as you move, I can instantaneously enact a death curse, and no one dares to gamble whether it is real or not.
But the problem now is that the game has only just started, and even those without brains could figure out that it would be impossible for a priest to collect all three Totem Pillar Fragments within these few minutes. Therefore, the threat can easily be debunked.
Shiller's solution, however, is fraud.
But the fraud does not involve creating fake fragments which could easily be exposed since priests could see the number of fragments they have acquired. Yet, a lot can be done regarding the step of casting a death curse.
Upon arriving at the commercial district, Shiller immediately found a house with Totem Pillar Fragments, and obtained a fragment—a rather short cylindrical shell, which seemed like it could form a complete priest totem if stacked with two similar items.
After obtaining the Totem Shard, Shiller should have started looking for other information right away, but instead, he carefully examined the fragment for about two or three minutes before determinedly heading towards a location on the commercial district map that seemed to be a supermarket.
Sure enough, the largest and flattest building with a three-tiered parking lot was a large supermarket, except all items had stickers in an unfamiliar language. The language seems to not be used by any race on Earth, indicating that those living in this city were likely of a proximate civilization.
From the architectural styles previously observed, Shiller guessed that this civilization was not much different from the human race, having achieved remarkable artistic accomplishments and relevant art educations.
Indeed, within the supermarket, Shiller found items similar to paint. However, the paint here was in spray cans formed by a bottle tied onto the back and a spray gun.
Shiller selected several cans of paint, found an object resembling a mop cloth and a long pole, as well as several plates and bowls for preparing the paint in the living supplies section.
About half an hour later, Batman, who had parted from Clark, came across a tremendous Array on the rooftop of a building—the ensured path towards the region of his map.
Batman has always fancied occupying higher points. Firstly, due to the broad view allowing a better understanding of the terrain; secondly, standing at higher places permits the early detection of potential threats, hence he was always walking on rooftops.
Donned in his bat suit, Batman could glide temporarily and had various grappling hooks. Having just ascended a taller building than the previous one using his grappling hook, he was met with an extraordinarily intricate pattern.
This pattern, almost occupying the entire rooftop, is a set of concentric circles with a colossal glyph at the heart. The surrounding area was densely packed with tiny characters, along with many similar but entirely different symbols interlinked in different ways.
The moment Batman stepped over, he noticed the wet paint, indicating that this pattern had just been created.
Instantaneously, Batman was drawn to the central glyph, silently etching every character and symbol on the Array into his mind, before hastily proceeding to where his map showed the presence of a Totem Pillar Fragment.
Batman also managed to obtain his first Totem Pillar Fragment safely. However, as soon as the fragment came into his hand, he discovered the drawings and characters on the Totem Pillar Fragment bore a striking similarity to those on the massive Array he'd just seen.
Or, it could be said that they all belonged to the same glyph and character system, identical from writing style to stroke order.
Batman instantly rushed back to where the massive Array was, with the Totem Pillar Fragment, and began comparing the glyphs and characters one by one.
As he suspected, there was a pattern. Within a short while, Batman found that all the glyphs and characters on the Fragment he held were also present on the Array, but only took up one-third of the Array's information.
One-third of the Array's information was on a single Totem Pillar Fragment, and there happened to be three Totem Pillar Fragments—this could not possibly be a coincidence.
Batman also took out product packaging he had brought with him from a roadside store and glanced at the place filled with characters. He found the glyphs used by these aliens today were connected to those on the Totem Pillar and Array but were also different.
It could be the ancient glyphs of these aliens. Batman concluded that the glyphs on the Totem Pillars and Array evolved into the glyphs used by the aliens today.
There were plenty of glyphs on the product packaging, enough for Batman to decode parts of them, but he clearly didn't have enough time for it now.
Batman, of course, pondered about the matter of the organizer not announcing the victory conditions. He believed it might have something to do with the danger lurking within the fog, but what he needed to do right now—get his hands on all three Totem Shards.
His thoughts similar to Shiller's, the complete Totem Pillar was akin to a nuclear weapon—it didn't necessarily have to be fired to kill. It could, instead, make others act according to Batman's will.
Upon glancing at the Totem Pillar Fragment again, Batman believed that this Array was definitely related to the Totem Pillar.