Two emaciated wolves with hungry eyes pounced upon the young man standing before them.
The screech of their fangs tore through the silence.
A tall young man stood before them, his sharp emerald eyes fixed on them as he firmly gripped his sword.
Both wolves lunged at him.
With lightning-fast speed and precise steps, he surged toward them.
The sword flashed once…
The first head went rolling.
Before the body could even hit the ground, the blade had already plunged into the skull of the second, splitting its head in half!
Dozens of contestants surrounded him, fighting the savage wolves.
Some managed to kill several of them, while others were overwhelmed by the wolves and killed.
Meanwhile, he had barely caught his breath when Evander, one of the contestants, suddenly shouted at him.
Evander was fighting alongside his friend Mizushi against a gigantic bison.
They had managed to tie one of its horns with a rope and quickly wrap it around a tree, partially restricting its movement.
Evander immediately shouted:
“Ryota! Now!”
Ryota immediately sprinted toward the gigantic bison and leapt high into the air.
The gigantic bison attempted to attack him with its horns while he was in midair, but Ryota performed an astonishing twist in midair, evading the attack.
With all his strength, he drove his sword into the gigantic bison’s head, killing it!
The bison began to fall, and Ryota leapt away…
The bison crashed to the ground, dead.
Ryota walked toward it and stood before its corpse, his expression tightening as he stared down at it.
“This damned bison… It killed three people before I could take it down! Even though I didn’t know them personally, I still can’t help but feel angry at the absurdity of their deaths!”
He clenched his fist and said angrily:
“Why does this test have to be so cruel…”
“Hurry, Ryota! Before the next group arrives!”
Ryota immediately hurried along with Evander and Mizushi, followed by a group of contestants who had managed to survive.
Together, they entered a path surrounded by dense trees.
As they ran along the path, they encountered several ground traps, which were relatively easier to deal with.
As Mizushi was dodging one of the spears that nearly struck him, he heard a whisper resembling the voice of the chief supervisor:
“Kill one life to obtain another.”
Mizushi was startled for a moment, but soon heard Ryota’s voice from the front.
Ryota was cutting through a net of ropes that had trapped one of the contestants as he shouted at them:
“Ignore those illusions. It’s a trap!”
Mizushi returned his focus to overcoming the traps.
After several minutes of continuous running and overcoming the traps, during which many contestants fell victim to cunning traps, they found a sign that read:
“Third Quarter.”
Not even a minute after they passed the sign, the forest path came to an end, and they entered a path surrounded by enormous stones.
Even the ground beneath their feet had become stone, resembling a well-paved road…
After running along this path for some time, they found a sign that read:
“Stone Pillar Area.”
Sure enough, not even a minute later, they arrived before a huge area filled with hundreds of small stone pillars, with several enormous and extremely tall pillars scattered among them.
At the very end of the path, directly before the area, stood a large, elevated sign approximately five meters above the ground.
Written on it were the words:
“Follow the elders… even if their words make no sense.”
“Follow the elders, even if their words make no sense ? What exactly are they trying to say?”
“They probably want us to reach the enormous pillars.”
“Yes, then what?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps we’ll find out when we get there?”
Amid everyone’s confusion, Ryota climbed onto the sign and began studying the shape of the area.
He thought:
“The small pillars…
each one is approximately three meters tall, and the distance between each pillar is approximately three and a half meters.
“As for the enormous pillars, the closest one to us is that pillar over there, which is probably more than 300 meters away.
“And although there are enormous pillars scattered throughout many random locations across the area, they really aren’t that random.
“The reason lies in the shape of the area itself.
It isn’t completely circular.
Rather, to follow the logic of a one-way path, it’s most likely closer to being oval-shaped!
“But the most dangerous thing of all is those obvious cracks on the small pillars…
“This is not a good sign at all…
“If they’re really capable of falling, then there is probably nowhere safe!…”
The biggest problem was that the strongest evidence supporting this terrifying theory might not be the cracks themselves, but rather the precise distance between the small pillars.
The distance was approximately three and a half meters, while each pillar was only three meters tall.
That meant that if one of them fell, it would not pull the others down with it.
As he was thinking, someone’s shout interrupted him:
“Have you forgotten that we’re competing against the other paths?!
“What if they’ve already finished the test by now?!
“We have no time to waste on hesitation. Whoever wants to pass, follow me!”
He entered the area with several contestants following him, leaving Ryota utterly stunned…