CHAPTER 300 GUYSSS! It’s been a long time coming. Let’s get into the good shit! ~Author San.
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Together, Geralt and Yennifer watched as all five of the members of MyrkLys raised their hands and pressed the notification indicating it was time to move to Floor Twenty-Two. In an instant, the individual screens merged from the five different equal-sized displays into two.
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Opening his eyes after teleporting, Brance looked around, taking in his surroundings but was suddenly tackled to the ground with a loud “HMPH.”
“HUBBY!” Gabby shouted as she nuzzled her face into his chest like a kitten.
“Eh? Gabby? What are you doing here?” Brance asked while chuckling lightly and rubbing her head.
“Looks like there’s been a change in the formula again.” Walking over and looking down at the affectionate couple on the ground, Cynrik snarkily spat while shaking his head.
“Big Bro, you’re here too, tsk.” Hopping off Brance and helping him sit up, Gabby pouted. She had hoped it would only be her and Brance so that she could treat it like a date, as she had in the tower.
“Happy to see you too, dumb rabbit, now get up and get ready. Don’t forget we are still in the middle of a trial. Dropping your guard even a second after the creatures begin spawning could spell out danger.” Turning his eyes and examining the room twice the size of the Twenty-First Floor, Cynrik took note of the layout.
Like the previous Floor, this one was dotted with similar beveled pillars rising to the ceiling. Aside from being more expansive, the only difference was the color of the flames emitted by the wrought Iron torches. This time they were purple.
“Hey, Yenni, send those notifications our way already! The sooner we clear this final challenge, the sooner I can get my Incubators.” Cynrik shouted as he crossed his arms over his chest and ignored Gabby and Brance, who were in the process of helping each other back to their feet.
As if on cue, several notifications flooded everyone’s vision.
|Welcome to Floor Twenty-Two. As challengers who are above Tier-1, the common challenge no longer applies, and the difficulty for the final Floor has increased dramatically.|
|Under consideration of both the Headmaster and the Obelisk AI Yennifer, a decision has been made to create a custom challenge for Students Ivar Ragnarsson, Björn Ragnarsson, and Gabriella Sanford, who so far have completed every Floor with a Perfect Clear.|
|The Challenge this time is a group battle broken into two parts.|
|For Part One, you will participate in an endurance battle lasting precisely one hour. During this Endurance Battle, each time you kill one of the Virtual Creatures, two more will spawn one minute later. There is no limit to how many Creatures can be generated, and each challenger MUST eliminate a minimum of 30 creatures.|
|All opponents in Part One will be set to Early Tier-2, and three creatures will be spawned to start.|
|If any team member(s) does not defeat the proper amount of Creatures within the allotted time, they will be removed from the Obelisk and will be considered to have failed the final Floor. They will forcefully vacate the right to increased rewards and the Perfect Clear Title and will be expelled from the First Obelisk|
The pair of Brance and Gabby read through the description of part one and either scoffed or groaned in response to the notifications, with Cynrik being the odd man out as he smirked and reread the information on-screen while calculating the potential gains and timing necessary to secure victory.
[Cyn, this is going to be a pain in the ass. The Hydra effect is never easy to handle, and that’s only with heads. Kill one and two more spawn; that means we will flood this room too fast to keep up with our actual kill counters; how are we supposed to handle that?] Brance asked as he attempted to run the numbers in his head but came up with question marks instead.
[In theory, the Hydra effect should keep multiplying to infinity. This means that after ten kills, if you continuously kept slaying everything that spawned, there would be about 1000 bodies in the room, making it so that no one could move if they kept killing one after another.]
[THAT is where the flaw in your logic shows up, Brancie. Not only is there a one-minute cooldown on the spawns, but that applies if you are only starting off with one hydra head.]
[The apparent flaw is shown immediately by starting us off with one enemy each. Killing the first creature spawns two; once we kill those two, four will show up a minute later. Following that train, kill those four; eight show up, then 16, then 32. I could continue, but it is entirely unnecessary. Because one plus two, plus four, plus eight, plus sixteen is thirty-one.] Uncrossing his arms and pacing around a small area, Cynrik ran the numbers multiple times to break down how many kills per minute they would need and how quickly they had to kill them off before getting flooded.
Standing nearby, Gabby anxiously looked between the brothers and the notifications on the screen. No matter how she looked at it, within that hour’s time frame, the room would be swarmed entirely with enemies as strong as her. Feeling her heart palpitate, Gabby grabbed Brance’s hand for comfort.
“Don’t worry, Gabby, Big Brother, will figure it out. See look,” Leaning over and whispering with a smile on his face to calm her down, Brance paused and pointed at Cynrik.
“He’s already pacing; you know what that means.”
“He’s working through something complicated, and we should blindly trust him because he will lead us through this challenge.” Nodding in recognition, Gabby replied.
“Haha, I wouldn’t go THAT far, but he is running through all the different scenarios. He already figured out something, and that was when the pacing started.
Chewing on his cheek with his eyes flickering back and forth under closed eyelids, Cynrik envisioned strings of different mathematical formulas. However, they all came up short of the one-hour marker after some time.
The goal was to kill the correct number of virtual creatures in the right time frame so they don’t get swarmed. Accounting for the limited maneuverable space due to the stone pillars every four meters, Cynrik was in a bind.
Unfortunately, as if Yennifer was against him, the AI triggered the Event start notification before he could come up with a solid idea. Looking up, Cynrik saw the storm of particles moving. First, it moved and took the shape of a giant arena jumbotron, with 00:00 displayed in bright purple numbers. As soon as the object solidified, the numbers climbed until 60:00 was shown on the screen.
|The One Hour Timer has been set, and a digital display clock has been positioned in the direct center of the room, hanging from the ceiling.|
|The Floor Twenty-Two Challenge begins in 30 seconds. The Race for the opponents has been chosen.|
“Tsk, fuck, form up, guys.” Clicking his tongue and exhaling a sharp breath, Cynrik shook his head angrily and chewed his bottom lip until he tasted copper. Gabby and Benny came running over at his words and pulled out their weapons, preparing for battle.
“Objective one is to drain down the clock. Once we kill a creature, the spawn timer begins, and we will have one minute until two new ones are generated. By running down the clock, we are taking a risk, but it really is the best option I can come up with on short notice.”
“So long as you land the finishing blow, it should register as a kill for you, so for the first 20-30 minutes, we will test the durability of whatever creatures spawn and take things from there.” Moving his eyes to meet Brance, Cynrik dished out the roles for the mission. However, since the first notification they received stated that the Headmaster had a hand in this challenge, he chose to use nicknames instead of calling his brother by his real name.
“Björn, you have two jobs: don’t get hit and manipulate the terrain. Since I will be using the kiting method, I will need to keep their aggro, so I will start by peppering them with weak fireballs until I pull their aggro and go on the move. I want you to keep your distance but raise barricades behind us so we can box them in quickly.”
“Copy,” nodding his head, Brance resheathed his Greatsword and swapped to the katana since it was the lighter of the two weapons and wouldn’t hinder his speed.
Next, Cynrik looked at Gabby, who was visibly nervous, and offered her a reassuring smile.
“Gabby, you’ll have to keep on my tail, but stay a few meters behind and run alongside me. Once I have the aggro, I want you doing chip damage, whittling down their HP slowly. Brance and I will monitor how much they have left and stop you when they get close to dying. Remember, these are Early Tier-2 creatures, which means they will be WAY tankier than any of us. So you won’t have to hold back much.”
“Got it!” Gabby said as she loaded a bolt into her crossbow and propped it against her shoulder.
|Now spawning the Three Starting opponents, Early Tier-2 RaptorBasilisks.|
“What the fuck is a RaptorBasilisk?” Brance asked while shooting a confused glance at Cynrik, who appeared equally confused.
“SCREEEE Twhalllalal!”
“Raaaaeeh!”
“Fuughhh, Twhallalal!”
Instead of receiving an answer, three different dinosaur noises came from the center of the room, where the team spotted three massive, serpent-like velociraptors. Looking like a cross between a snake, dragon, and feathered dinosaur, the huge navy blue-skinned and feathered creatures sniffed the air several times before whipping their heads in the direction of Cynrik, Brance, and Gabby.
“Oh…fuck…they look kinda cool.” Cynrik couldn’t stop the words from spilling out of his mouth, earning him a glare from Brance.
“Reeesss, raunkk raunkk!” The middle RaptorBasilisk chirped at the other two, who instantly went on the move, peeling off and heading to the group’s flanks. At the same time, the one who made the noise opened its long-snouted mouth wide, revealing two half-meter-long fangs in its top jaw, while rows of thin sharp teeth coated its bottom and stalked forward as if on the hunt.
“Whew, ok, battle time,” Cynrik cockily said, smirking as he drew his longsword off his hip and the dagger from behind his back.
“Stick to the plan, Björn; keep those walls high; they will need to reach the ceiling; just take a look at those glorious calves, thighs, and those front claws; it’s just like the Velociraptor, man I wish I could study them. They look like snakey dinosaurs; how majestic.” Cynrik said with sparkling eyes.
“IVAR! KNOCK OFF THE PALEONTOLOGIST BULLSHIT AND GET YOUR HEAD IN THE FIGHT!” Brance roared as he began channeling Terra and Light Mana into his palms.
“Tsk, I know, bah, such a killjoy. Alright, Gabby, time to move! HOBEY HO, LET’S GO!” Kicking off the ground, Cynrik darted to the left, with Gabby hot on his tail.
-This series is exclusively published on WebNovel if you are reading it anywhere else…You Wrong, Fam. PS Check out the discord, https://discord.gg/dcxKNJEMwg-