Kill The Old Ones!

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Day 4’s event was another challenge to the remaining participants.

The event was called ’Guardian Awakening.’

10 giant guardians of varying shapes and sizes suddenly appeared on what remains of the Verdant Expanse. These creatures were large enough that they could be seen from miles away. They were strong and looked difficult to put down too.

These 10 guardians didn’t stay in place. They moved, and some even started fighting each other. Their clash sent shockwaves across the map.

However, their priority wasn’t fighting each other; it was to hunt down the participants. Even when two guardians were in the middle of a fight, if they sensed the presence of a participant or more, they were programmed to go after them instead of continuing their fight.

The movement of the guardians had no specific pattern, and there wouldn’t be since, regardless of how many of them were left by the end of the day, they would disappear anyway.

Although the guardians looked tough, it is possible to kill them. They have vulnerabilities, and they also have an HP bar above their heads and several weak spots, which are not hidden at all.

The guardians don’t heal or recover; they won’t care whether they have missing limbs or not; they will advance, prowl, and hunt so long as they can. Killing them was the only way to stop that.

Killing a guardian bestows immense merit points to the team or individual who kills them. Killing one could propel a team that’s originally falling behind to a comfortable rank.

As they say, risk and rewards are both sides of the same coin. As dangerous as it was to clash against these giant creatures, taking them down will give teams an edge that will create a buffer for them to be comfortable later.

That’s why even though it’s risky, they watched the guardians closely from a safe distance and planned on how to take them down.

Of course, not every team had the opportunity to watch first and act later. There were teams who were caught within the range of the guardians and were immediately chased.

Some teams had no choice but to grit their teeth and fight their way out because they were cornered. They had no other choice left.

Of course, this isn’t even mentioning the fact that, at some point, the map will shrink again.

45% of the map had already been gone. The remaining area left for the participants to use made it so that clashes against teams had become a certainty.

Add the guardians to that mix, and the tension starts spiking at an alarming rate.

Some of the teams who were cornered and were forced to fight the guardians were unaware that other teams were watching them from afar. Of course, there were others who were aware and were purposefully putting on a show to turn around the situation later.

One of these teams was the Central City team led by Adrian Arclight.

There are only seven of them now. Magnus Stoneheart and Charles Atelier had been eliminated due to unfortunate events and through sacrifice.

Magnus sacrificed himself because the team had nearly been swallowed by the erosion shrinking the realm. There were teams who were trying to pull them back, wanting to use them as a stepping stone to get themselves to safety.

And those teams would’ve succeeded if Magnus didn’t do something. He used his sect’s martial art to turn into a giant and created a blockade using his own body to let his team pass and stop the other teams from harassing them.

He didn’t block all of them, but he had allowed his team to get away safely and even dragged others down with him. His sacrifice was remembered and admired by the team and the city behind them.

They lost Charles on the third day.

The curse of the resource bloom proved too much even for someone like him. To make this worse, the team had been sandwhiched between two treasures that appeared out of nowhere.

Before he lost his sanity, Charles donated his merit points to everybody in the team and told them to leave him behind to deal with the teams that are chasing after them.

Charles did more than just that. In his insanity, he tore through teams, took their merit points, and got more resources and treasures, which earned him more merit points, and managed to awaken from the effects of the curse before he was killed by other teams. He donated all of the merit points he managed to get while he was still insane to the team before he was killed.

Those who killed him didn’t get any merit points from killing him.

And now, the team was once again in peril. They were caught between two guardians who are hunting them. The good news is that both of them are low on health; the bad news is that they are surrounded by hyenas who are just waiting for the right time to pounce.

Adrian already alerted the team. And because of that, they managed to turn the situation around. They not only killed two guardians but also eliminated other teams who tried to ambush them.

Because of this, C-City’s actual ranking had shot up to the top 5.

The shrinking happened later that day, and fortunately, there were no other accidents anymore. The team was far enough from the range of the erosion.

**

Day 5’s event wasn’t as explosive as the previous days even though it was the last day of the preliminary round.

The event was called ’Heart Tree ’Awakening’—the Heart Tree, a massive tree that’s rooted at the very center of the map, released a pulse and a pillar of light that alerted everybody of its location.

Every team felt a calling towards that location. It’s as if it’s telling them that the Heart Tree is where the final battlegrounds are for this round.

There were no other mechanics, just that. A final clash between teams to determine who’s on top and who’s on the bottom.

Every team was compelled to go there. Actually, they were forced to go there because the shrinking started early.

Everything outside of the Heart Tree’s range will be removed, truly indicating that this was the final day and the final clash amongst teams.

And it was the most chaotic, most dramatic, and most action-packed scene of the preliminary round.

The rankings of the teams fluctuated madly. One team will be on the top of the rankings before suddenly dipping to the bottom half.

A lot was happening all at once. No team could find peace for long, not even a decent rest.

The Heart Tree’s biome had no ruins or rubble to hide from. It was a clear expanse blanketed only by grass and sparse trees. Only the heart tree was there.

Some clever teams tried to climb the tree and use it as cover or to hide from other teams. Alas, it wasn’t that simple because the tree siphons chakra through touch. Actually, it doesn’t even need to be physical touch either; just being in the vicinity of the tree allows it to drain chakra from its targets.

Eventually, after such a long day of nonstop battle and stress, the end of the preliminary round was announced.

It was finally over.

All teams collapsed in exhaustion and emotions from everything they went through during these past five days.

From more than two hundred participants that got here to participate, less than 80 remained on the final day.

Central City’s team was down to four people: Adrian Arclight, Lucian Skyrend, Elena Frostmere, and Seraphina Whitelock—the city’s Four Heavenly Kings.

Like Magnus and Charles before them, Julius Vermont, Erickson Kupkha, and Alden Silvereye sacrificed themselves for the team.

There were many times where even Adrian himself thought that he was a goner. If it weren’t for their unity and teamwork, he would’ve been eliminated early, too.

He was right to not underestimate other city reps, but even then, they still surprised him.

Through the sacrifice of others and the collective hard work of the team, Central City was currently ranked 3rd amongst every city in the Letter Kingdom.

Above them were City A (2nd) and City Z (1st), surprisingly.

The representatives of Alpha City and Zephyr City were real dark horses. Immensely talented, smart, cunning, and strong. They had the equivalent of Central City’s Four Heavenly Kings amongst them, and they were fortunate as well.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that they’ve won. This was just the preliminary round. There was still the second round and the finals after this.

It’s not the end yet; other teams could still catch up and turn things around.

That said, being able to do this much for the city made Adrian and the rest of the team happy. At the very least, even if they were to fumble later, they’d have a buffer to save them from dropping too low into the rankings.

Now that the preliminary rounds are over, there will be a one-day break for the qualifying participants to use for rest and recovery.

The second round of the tournament will continue after that.

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