It was basic knowledge that lone mountains are geographically unheard of, however, this landscape seemed to have a single conspicuous mountain as far as the eye could see. The information she bought about the second stage was fairly simple and it was also the reason she rushed towards the mountains at top speed, uncaring of her stamina.
The distance between her starting point and the mountain itself was substantial, even with her enhanced velocity. Getting to the base of the mountain took Alex a good fifteen minutes. Of course, she drew energy from her trusty weapons after the first 1 minute, otherwise, maintaining maximum speed would have been impossible.
At the base of the mountain, Alex tilted her head upwards. Her attempt to see the mountain's peak was thwarted by thick clouds, swallowing what Alex hoped was the tip of the mountain.
From what Alex could see, there was no way any human could ascend a mountain this tall with only their bodies, especially when the mountain was specially designed to deter said humans.
" Stairs… There has to be stairs." Alex grumbled, annoyed by the mere thought of scaling the gargantuan mountain.
Alex bit into her into her second apple with much more vigour. She had finally found what she hoped to see.
' Stairs!'
It took her 8 minutes to get to this side of the mountain and find the stairs. She did not run this time but decided to eat while she walked.
Done with her apple, she stuffed the core into one of her pockets, materialised her chakrams, and ascended the stairs at a lukewarm speed. With every step, Alex's speed increased slightly - and the mountain had an abundance of steps. At the 150th step Alex was practically running, however she was not too far from the ground. She wanted to ensure she got accustomed to the height of the steps and the distance between them before running.
The information for the second stage did not reveal any sort of secrets or hidden requirements, but general facts concerning the stage that anyone could take advantage of if told beforehand.
The second stage joined every challenger who survived the first stage onto a single grand map. This map was divided into four zones: they were only described as hot, cold, windy and water.
All the challengers will be divided into these four zones. At the centre of each zone is an area in which they can remain in, to receive 250 spirit shards every hour, but the information hinted at the difficulty in reaching these areas.
The most disturbing rule is that a challenger is granted 10 spirit shards for every fellow challenger they kill.
Oh and at the end of the second stage, the ten challengers that have earned the highest amount of spirit shards will receive 1000 more each, an astronomical amount for some. A thousand challengers that get the least amount of spirit shards will be eliminated after the completion of the second stage.
Worst of all, all challengers will be informed outright the moment the stage starts.
'That twisted deity wants a bloodbath.'
Alex surmised the deity wanted to weed out the naive ones and the weak-willed, while also normalizing killing fellow humans - even if it's just slightly.
That was all she learnt from the information pack. Alex naturally decided to occupy the central area in her zone for the entire stage. Chasing humans for ten shards each would not be worth it unless she killed at least 500 and she did not want to mindlessly chase people for a few extra shards. She doubted killing people was as profitable as it sounded.
Unfortunately, Alex had killed more people than she cared to remember, but they were all people who had attempted to harm her. Therefore, she killed them. As long as someone did not cross her or there were simply no benefits to killing them, she would not bother. Although, there was a certain charm that came with crushing your enemies… Having an endless stream of enemies plotting against you was not as nice.
Alex instinctively glanced at the scar on her left wrist only to sharply gaze forward, continuing her march to the peak.
°°°
00: 30: 23
Alex had spent a kind numbingly long time simply running up unending steps. She was not impeded in any way, with no traps, no hurdles, not even a slightly higher step to make her trip and fall. It was going so smoothly to the extent that it was extremely boring.
At one point Alex thought of trying her luck with the fire zone, nothing stopped her from running all the way there, but she remembered how she would most likely burn and decided to be grateful for her starting zone.
While reading the information pack, Alex immediately understood that there were four potions in the shops which were connected to a certain zone. This led her to believe getting to the centre without these potions was almost impossible, based on natural human capacity.
Although Alex still wondered why anyone would need to reduce the amount of gravity acting on them to simply walk up a flight of stairs, she shrugged and brushed off the unnecessary thought.
She raised her head, as had become her routine on this mountain and was elated to see the end. Though she was overjoyed, Alex did not let it affect her reasoning. She slowed down to a human-level pace and raised her guard. Surprise attacks extremely close to the goal were not too uncommon.
Even as she had completely ascended the mountain, Alex did not let go of her caution. She found it more likely that there would be others with early access than her alone, considering the last survivor of a group would get a free pass out of the first stage.
The mountain's top was completely flat, with a dome shape encasing the entire area. Alex positioned herself in the middle and sat down holding both chakrams. As much as she didn't believe in pointless killing, she wouldn't mind if a few spirit shards fell into her palm.