Sitting at the peak of a mountain doing nothing was more boring than Alex thought it would be.
She had tried everything to alleviate herself of boredom: training was a waste of time and stamina when her body would be destroyed soon. She had nothing left to strategize as all her plans had already been finalized, and unfortunately, she did not possess any mystical art or weapon art to grind for mastery.
This was the first time in a long while since Alex had been idle and as much as she disliked it, she endured.
After some more waiting, Alex stood from her lotus position and stretched excitedly.
'Finally!'
00:00:00
Alex didn't dawdle and directly willed for the interface to open.
The map was truly expansive; the size of its 3D model surpassed the desert by a landslide.
Each zone was distinct, coming to life on the horizontal plane. A marker icon pointed to the centre of each zone. The 'hot' zone had what seemed to be a wide lake of molten lava encircling the centre area while the rest of the zone was completely flat, built of obsidian or some other black mineral.
The 'water' zone was an ocean with multiple underwater pillars to act as solid ground. The centre of this particular zone seemed to be underground, but Alex did not want to investigate just yet.
The 'cold' zone was set on only ice, its centre produced ice spikes randomly, popping in and out every second.
Her zone, the 'windy' zone had a single mountain at the centre, with luscious grass making up the rest of the zone.
It took her less than ten seconds to observe a bit of all the zones before rapidly zooming in on her own 'windy' zone.
Alex was appalled when she saw clusters of green dots appearing at three different points in her zone as she used the map. All these points seemed to be an equal distance from the centrepiece- the mountain.
She randomly chose one of these evenly sized clusters to zoom into. It had only been about fifteen seconds since their arrival and a few people were already plunging their weapons into any they laid eyes on.
Pandemonium, chaos, and fright assaulted the new arrivals as they ran for fear of a quick death. Many of them could not comprehend why their fellow challengers had suddenly attacked them. They had not even been told the rules of this stage.
They fled haphazardly in varying directions while the two instigators of the mass terror chased after them ferociously.
'How devious.' Alex did not believe the deity had done anything too amazing, but she deserved recognition nonetheless.
What had happened just now was likely to have occurred in every zone as well as every 'spawn point'.
Every zone had little to no hiding areas and promoted visibility. It was easy to see that those who did not kill would certainly find themselves dead at the end, making anyone desperate for an advantage.
If you bought the information pack in the second stage, you would certainly understand the consequences of passivity. This caused Alex to believe the deity evenly distributed these information holders to every appearing group, ensuring distrust, desperation and dissonance would infect most of the challengers. An indirect way of using their knowledge against them.
Of course, these information holders would get a few steps ahead, but after that, they would surely be targeted in the next stages. Those around them would see them as vicious for abusing their ignorance, even though they would have done the same.
This scenario was probably the reason why Stemma stated she would not know who had bought the [ Soul ] information. An indirect hint that Alex would not be manipulated for having it.
' Am I truly only getting benefits?' Alex could not help but question the value of such information and the deity's purpose for giving it away.
'To what purpose?' The deity likely had an intricate plot at play with the challengers as the unknowing characters.
As bothered as Alex was, she decided not to stress on the matter for now. In due time, she would unveil the myriad of deceptions and break free from the chains of weakness that bound her entire existence and ambitions
The only saving grace for the challengers was the sheer size of each zone. It would likely take an average challenger in her zone at least five hours to get to the mountain with no breaks. However, a challenger that had received rewards would be a different story. Alex had to consider that as a possibility as well.
She navigated her map to the top of the mountain and was shocked by a whirlpool of volatile wind circling the mountain just below the area where she was currently.
The winds were not shooting condensed air or anything at that level, rather the sheer velocity and pressure were surely enough to hinder any advancing humans.
'What?'
The trap seemed to come to life only at the start of the second stage.
Even Alex was uncertain if she would have been able to get past that.
' Another perk of starting the stage early I suppose.'
Alex hoped she would get a visitor on the mountain soon. She was extremely bored.
'Close interface.'
The moment her vision cleared, Alex's eyes widened with both shock and joy.
The mocking timer was gone. It got under her skin for so many reasons, like how a scientist would time their experiments and judge how well they performed. It was too insulting.
What shocked her was another icon joined to her vision. This one showed a No. 1 symbol. Her prolonged staring at it triggered access to a ranking board.
It showed her name in the holographic board as number 23 with 0 gained shards while directly above her was a Lee Shun with 10 shards.
Alex physically interacted with the board, scrolling down to see the many beneath her. She soon stopped her pointless scrolling as atop the board the information she wanted was displayed.
[ Total challengers: 25, 678 ]
She left the leaderboard and then re-entered. She saw her position had dropped to number 32, Alex paid little attention to this and scrolled to the top names. She was unsurprised by the name above with two hundred spirit shards.