Witnessing the arrival of doom train was like watching the arrival of badass Over Powered dark overlord. That was the exact thought in everyone's mind right now. The majestic and ominous appearance of the train was not something the people on the train were expecting. Some of them are gulping down their throats just imagining that they have to climb the realm in this monster. How in the world can some one climb realm travelling on this beast of a train. This is ridiculous , utterly and insanely ridiculous.( For those who imagined Remus teaching the darks arts in Hogwarts give me a imaginary high five )
Nathan knowing most of them will loose there will just by witnessing the train was already prepared to give them a boost. He spoke in a higher pitch this time drawing everyone's attention to himself. Let me explain to all of you how this works. The train has exactly 13 compartments excluding the engine and it will stop at 13 station before the last stop. To have a ticket to upper realm you need to cross all the compartments before you get to reach the engine. the engine has a seperate pocket space for people who complete the final trail.
ideally one will start from the 13th compartment at the last and cross all the way till engine, that gives a person chance to grow slowly adjusting your body as well as your mind to deal with the challenges it throws at you. But here, I will give you chance to have a head start on everyone present here, this is where the test comes in. As told that there is a test before entering the train, I shall now present the test so listen well. I shall provide you with once in lifetime opportunity, there are three options available to you.
Option one - You will have to solve a puzzle. The ones who are able to solve it in a fixed given interval of time will have a chance to enter the train not from 13th but from 12th compartment which will give you an advantage over the others. I will also credit 3000 points to the ones that solve this which can be utilized anywhere in CNC system to purchase anything of value to you.
Option two - You fight a beast captured from 13th realm which is equivalent to two levels above you. This fight is not to defeat him but to last for 10 minutes with it in the battlefield. If you can accomplish this you still enter the 13th compartment but you get 4000 credit points for this as well two 3 star portion of ki refining and body strength enhancing portions.
Option three - You don't take any of the options and would like to your chances by starting from the 14th compartment. But keep in mind that you start with zero credits then and you will loose out the advantage ahead of everyone as you will have to complete the challenges in the 14th to be allowed enter the 13th.
He then added, Even if you loose the challenge, you will have the option 3 open and will be allowed to enter the 14th compartment. So choose wisely, which option will you take, if you would like to have an advantage you will have to compete for it and prove you are worthy to get that advantage. It is said ,Fortune favors the brave and my final gift will be to the ones performing best will get a special contract from CNC to work with us while you climb the realms. We will provide him all the necessary help for obtaining resources needed along with the information network to allow your climbing experience more easy compared to others.
Raghu is thinking hard about this, the variable here is that they don't know what the challenge will be. He would ideally like to avoid wasting time and avoid the challenge of one compartment completely, but something here does not sit right with him. He feels that there is something else that is going on but he can't point out what. His instinct is telling him not to take the challenge and start with the 14th as he feels he will miss out on something very important.
But not everyone here has the same opinion , most of them have the eyes set on prize and want to take the challenge to reduce their efforts as Nathan told them already nothing will happen if they loose, that means they will always have the option 3 open and they can start from there. Confirming no threat to life and having nothing to loose, giving it a try should not hurt them. At the least they should try to gain something from this golden opportunity provided to them on silver platter . A decent amount of credits to start with will only benefit them.
Nathan announces again now then everyone, you have 5 minutes to decide and act upon it. The train leaves in 2 hours and you have hour to complete the test and take the prize from me. Having put out the bait Nathan now has to wait, he understood the human psyche well, people tend to do things that benefits them easily when their life is not at stake and they will try to get advantage of the situation.
Even though he plans on not harming anyone in any way, he still need to have accurate data of their powers and Weaknesses to recruit them in advance. Data is gold they say, the CNC runs on data. The more data they have the better they can manage others. Correct information is valuable. These people here are new to system and they don't understand how important it is to hide your talent and skills ,let them compete here so that we can have initial analysis of their power.
Accordingly these can be utilized for future operations as well. No information is bad information in this world after all. This is his understanding at least, the credit points given are anyways given by the CNC anyway, only the potions he is providing is from his own pocket may be valuable to them , but for him they are just some unusable resource , he can't utilize it at his level anyways. May as well be utilized for some valuable information, trade off value is immensely profitable for his organization.
While most of them are debating whether to attempt the first one or second one , there are only select few who don't want to attempt any of it. Raghu belongs to this side of spectrum of people, he has decided to not attempt any of it. His gut instincts have never been wrong and he intends to follow that.
Nathan announces that the time is up, and instructs the people to form a line according to the choices they have made, the people start sorting themselves as the ones who want to attempt options from left to right. The left most line is huge has more than 70 % of the people on this platform wanting to attempt the puzzle . The rest 29 % wants to attempt the 2nd option of fighting the beast. Only the last 1% have chosen to attempt neither of the option and will directly enter the 14th compartment.
Nathan had expected this, most of them have taken the middle ground. Neither backing down nor over committing, this was in line with what was the usual trend over all the years that he been recruitment. So , he allows the people who have no intention to participation , as this is voluntary but he still uses his skill one last time to scan if he can find someone who has something special, he observes that there are three people in that group that may have potential but ignores them as potential need to develop, they can always recruit if they make it in star list.
He instruct them to move towards the end of the train and for the rest he prepares the battlefield. Raghu simply goes to side and sits with the other people who choose not to attempt and wait for the time to get over. Till that , he can always entertain himself with the battle happening in front of him. He looks at the halo watch to see : Time for departure of train 1423568 - 1h:29m:43s left.