"It's you." Donald angrily flared his nostrils. He wasn't happy about 'his' kill getting stolen.
Ramon picked up his machete from the ash pile and wiped the dust off its blade with his sleeve.
"My machete..." He pressed his cheek against the blade and sighed deeply with great emotions behind his sigh, as if the machete was more than just an weapon.
At that moment, Adam walked past him and approached the archway at the other end of the room, which led even deeper inside the mountain.
"Hey, you bastard!" Ramon shouted, pointing his machete at him. "You again stole my prey. This is becoming a pattern I do not like."
Adam looked over his shoulder and saw most of the players gazing at him with hostility—he, after all, had stolen their kill as he didn't do anything except get the final hit.
Still, it would be Adam who would get the most points, as he was the one who killed the wolf.
"This is competition." Adam said without any emotion and entered the archway towards the next challenge.
"Tch," Ramon clicked his tongue. "Parrish, Hannibal!"
"What?" Parrish walked over to him while cleaning his bloody brass knuckles.
Hannibal twirled the knife in his hand, his eyes showing a sinister light.
"I think I've found a new prey," Ramon said with a chilly tone as he watched Adam disappear into the passageway. "I can't wait to see how this new game of cat and mouse unfolds."
A small distance away, Donald whispered something to Niko and Luke, who were equally angry at Adam for stealing the kill.
Near the archway, Seth walked into the passageway, walking slowly as he didn't want to bump into Adam accidentally.
'He stole their kill...' Seth sighed. 'He'll definitely get killed for that. I only planned to hurt the wolf a little bit and maybe get some points for that, but now he had put a bullseye on his back.
'That is pretty foolish...'
Ahead of him, Adam strolled casually, as if he wasn't in any way bothered by kill-stealing. He seemed completely unfazed by the situation.
After a short while, he left the passageway and entered a small room that was a little bit bigger than his own room back in the real world.
It had one door, reaching the ceiling, and covered the entire wall of this strange room. It had strange engravings, depicting scenes of battles and mythical creatures.
As Adam walked closer to the door, Seth also appeared in the same room and looked at the door with fascination.
Adam traced his hand across the door, feeling the intricate patterns and symbols etched into the surface. It also had two door knobs, which he could use to open the door.
However, he didn't do that and instead leaned on the wall, waiting for more players to arrive.
"Why aren't you opening it?" Seth asked, curious about why he was waiting.
"It's a door to the boss room," Adam said casually. "Didn't your brother tell you about this?"
"He did, but why should we wait for other players?" Seth asked with his brows creased. "It's a good time to get a head start."
"Impatience is death in here." Adam said with a serious tone and put his pitchfork leaning against the wall right beside him.
He then started fixing the straps on his shield a little bit, as they seemed to be a little bit too loose.
"Ugh..." Seth wanted to enter the room and thought the reason Adam didn't want to was because he again wanted other players to do all the hard work while he went for the final hit.
'Is this why he wanted to play alone, because he can't do this with someone else? That is a very douchey way of doing things.'
At that moment, Ramon and his friends entered the room, followed by other groups of players, soon making the room packed. Donald and his group were the last, but they had to stay in the passageway as it was too cramped inside the room.
"Why aren't ya opening the door?" Ramon asked with a pompous tone and grinned as he looked at Adam. "I'll keep my eye on you. No kill stealing for you anymore!"
"..." Adam picked up his pitchfork in silence.
"Hmph." Ramon expected him to reply with his sharp tongue, and after not receiving an answer he was hoping for, he was quite displeased.
Parrish and Hannibal walked over to the door, each grabbing one door knob, and then pushed the door wide.
After the door opened, dust flew in, and a stench of rotting flesh wafted in like a deadly cloud.
They saw a spacious room, with pillars holding the ceiling in place. The room was circular in shape, and there was a strange magical circle in the center of the room.
It was a twelve-pointed star with strange symbols drawn inside the star—one symbol was a horned devil, one was a winged lion, one was a serpent eating its own tail, and the last one was a burning phoenix.
After all the players entered the room, the heavy-looking granite door slammed shut, trapping them inside.
"Hey, there is a door!" A player shouted, pointing towards the end of the room. There were six steps of stairs leading to an ordinary door.
"That must be the door to the second floor!"
A group of players started running towards the door—they joined forces when they met each other in the snowy forest. The group consisted of four players, but each was a duo before joining forces.
As they ran over the magical circle, it started glowing with the colors of the aurora, and four arms shot out from the ground, grabbing the players from their legs, causing them to trip and fall to the ground.
As they looked behind them, seeing their legs held by strange arms that were growing from the magic circle, they started screaming and tried to cut down the arms.
They were successful in cutting the arms in half, but shockingly, more arms grew from the magic circle and grabbed their limbs, then slowly started to drag them towards the magic circle.
After being unable to use their weapons anymore, they screamed for help from other players, but they all stood silently, wanting to watch what would happen.
As soon as the players were dragged to the magic circle, their flesh was ripped off like peeling paint, and their blood was sucked into the magical circle.
In just an instant, those four players were killed and used as sacrifice for some satanic ritual because the blood from the players changed the magic circle's color from aurora to blood-red.
At that moment, four figures climbed from the magic circle—the shocking thing was that they looked exactly the same as the players who were killed moments prior!
The players exclaimed by the shocking revelation—they wondered whether those four were actually those four players, now manipulated by the magic circle to do their bidding, unable to resist.
However, Adam kept a calm face as he knew what was happening.
'The boss of the first floor cannot appear without a form, so at least one sacrifice is needed.
'The power of Bloody Chaosbeing—it has the potential to become one of the most dangerous Chaosbeings if it gets over a thousand sacrifices, as it can create over a thousand clones of itself.
'To successfully kill the boss, we need to kill all of its clones and, kill its main heart, which is hidden below the magic circle.'