Chapter 65 – Hidden Challenge Part 2, The Red Mage

“Anyone else wanna cause trouble? Huh?” the bunny yelled, hopping back and forth with his oversized mallet in hand.

Nobody else stepped forward to complain, after seeing the bunny brutally murder the high level female bounty hunter in such an abrupt and gruesome manner. The hidden challenge was no joke. Even the cute animal guide could bare its fangs in a split second.

“Oh, it’s Bubs~” Meat Shield exclaimed happily as she landed on my shoulder. She smiled at the bunny who just hopped back onto its floating podium, and I swore to god that the bunny winked back at her from a distance.

“That’s the Bubs you were talking about?” I asked. “The murder bunny?”

“Yep~”

No wonder the rabbit’s overly enthusiastic voice sounded so familiar–it was the same one that announced the new dimension shop features that were unlocked at 1000 souls. Bubs the bunny seemed to play an explanatory role in Eclipse Online. Although, I expect a customer service kind of guy behind the voice, not a violent maniac rabbit.

“A-hem,” Bubs said loudly, clearing his throat. “As I was saying, I will be your guide for the hidden challenge. I’ll be announcing the rules and objectives for the first round right now.”

“The first round is a qualifying round, so the objective is simple. Survive a week here, and collect twenty tickets for admissions to the next round. Tickets can be found throughout the region, and can be earned through quests, or you can just kill other players for tickets. You can also redeem special prizes with excess tickets at our special hidden outposts. Think of it like a carnival or game room. The more tickets, the better!”

“Now let’s get to my favorite topic,” the rabbit said as he hopped excitedly on his platform, smirking. “Killing! Murder! Mayhem!”

“Killing a player yields two tickets regardless of how many tickets they’re holding at the moment. But be careful, if you gain pk status, you will be designated as a Wolf. An icon of a wolf will appear above your head and you will drop all your tickets upon death, making you a juicy target for other pkers!”

Bubs slung his mallet over his shoulder and began rummaging in his pocket. “And that’s all for the explanation. There are more rules, but you’ll figure them out as you go along.” The rabbit announcer pulled out a firework gun from his pocket and shot it in the air. “The hidden challenge… starts… NOW!”

The fireworks exploded into a massive colorful display, spelling the words GOOD LUCK in the sky. Right after that, the bunny reached into his logic-defying pocket-of-many-things yet again and pulled out a huge baseball stadium sized chalkboard, which had the rules of the first round written in bold across the board. The chalkboard levitated in a fixed position in the sky for everyone to see.

Preliminary round – Survive a week and collect at least 20 tickets to advance to the next round.

Rule I – Killing an innocent player yields two tickets and labels you as a Wolf.

Rule II – Wolves drop all collected tickets upon death.

Rule III – No loitering in the starting zone. Loitering is allowed outside of the starting zone.

Rule IV – No fornicating in the starting zone. Fornication is allowed outside of the starting zone.

Rule V – Breaking the rules causes you to be disqualified.

Rule VI – Disqualified players are subject to immediate execution by Bubs.

Additional rules may be added as the round progresses.

“Oh, and I forgot to say,” Bubs yelled down at us with his magically reinforced voice that boomed like thunder. “I’ve found out that some little shit called Beezlebub stole my name, and had the audacity to spell it wrong as well. 100 tickets to anyone that brings me his head! Kill that son of a bitch!”

A new rule appeared overhead.

Rule VII – Killing the player named Beezlebub yields 100 tickets.

Wasn’t that the name of the ranker they interviewed on tv? The one with the silver invitation?

On the other end of the hill, a player started sprinting as hard as he could. It was Beezlebub the ranker, who was now being chased by a growing mob of several dozen players.

Before the fireworks could even fully settle, an earth shattering roar rang through the mountain range.

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Everyone looked back in unison, even the players chasing Beezlebub. A titanic dragon the size of a skyscraper emerged from the sky and flew down towards us, bearing open its jaw in an awe inspiring display of ferocity. The dragon let loose a searing torrent of flame from its mouth in a line, straight into the crowd of players near me. Every player the flames touched was instantly fried and killed.

“Shadow!”

My body burst into black mist and flew its way to safety as dozens of players near me screamed in agony as they got burnt into a crisp. Just like that, at least a hundred players were eliminated from the hidden challenge a minute from its start.

I ran as fast as I could. It didn’t matter where I was going, as long as it was away from that fully grown dragon.

Bubs’s voice sounded behind me, accompanied by a whack of a mallet. “I said… NO… LOITERING!”

Some of the players were paralyzed in fear after the appearance of the dragon. True to his word, Bubs appeared before them and was killing them one mallet swing at a time. He seemed to be choosing targets indiscriminately, and just laid down the hammer on a female healer, before switching to a male archer. I almost felt bad for them, but this was a competition.

The dragon flew back up above the clouds, before bursting through again with another deadly pillar of flame.

To survive a competition like this, I needed to employ the full extent of my wits. I did some quick calculations based on the–

[New task: Slay the dragon.]

Reward: 30,000 tickets, achievement.

Ha… haha… good joke. Look at the size of that thing. That dragon can’t be killed.

Anyway, if I went the wolf route, I’d have to prey on ten innocents for enough tickets to cover admission to the next round. But another strategy could be to wait until the end of the hidden challenge, and then poach a wolf with a lot of tickets. That would mean I could keep my innocent status for a longer period of time, making me a less desirable target for most of the challenge.

But the longer I waited, the more likely it was that my targets would be stronger. It was conceptually similar to a battle royale game. The last ten enemies were the ones that survived and killed all the other players in the tournament, and were an entire tier above the rest. The survivors were those naturally selected to be the best, or the luckiest.

So a good conservative wolf strategy would be to kill innocents and wolves early on enough that they were still relatively bad, and then play survival for the rest of the period.

I also wanted to find Rosalia and Euphemia. They were both in the challenge. Flipping open my status screen, I tapped towards the communications function.

[The communications function is blocked during the hidden challenge.]

They really didn’t want to make this easy, did they…

SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHKKKKKK-

Screams echoed through the valley as another batch of players were taken out by the rampaging dragon.

For now, it was in my best interest to just run, and not think about anything complicated.

------

“Cone of cold!”

-1 health

-1 health

I felt my movement slow momentarily, and whipped my head back to see who just casted magic against me.

A sneering male mage in his mid thirties looked down at me from the hill he was standing on. Another magic circle appeared in front of him.

“You picked the wrong guy to mess with,” I growled, breaking free of the movement debuff and sprinting straight towards him.

The magic circle in front of the mage rotated to completion.

“Analyze!”

“Petrify!”

A smaller circle appeared in front of his left eye, and I felt my body solidify into stone. Oh shit. I remembered reading about this on the forums. This guy had to be a red mage, a mage class that specializes in casting speed and access to multiple schools of magic.

As long as he had petrify, I couldn’t trade spells with him with thunderbolt. If I took that trade, I’d end up petrified and vulnerable, while he’d just take a long range thunderbolt, which was definitely not enough to one shot a red mage.

He really picked a wrong matchup, though. I smirked and activated [Shadow] right before the petrification took place. My mobility spell cleansed the debuff immediately. My class dimension thief’s flagship ability had to be respected.

“Huh?”

Closing the distance, I summoned adamantite poleaxe in my ghastly state so that it would be ready as I materialized. I tried to summon love whip as well, but nearly tripped. It was hard to direct a telekinetic summon while simultaneously piloting a gaseous cloud that traveled as fast as a race car. I needed more practice to pull off complicated maneuvers like that.

I reappeared back in human form with a poof, just a few meters away from the red mage.

“Ice fan!” the red mage shouted.

Icicles shot out in a hand fan shape in front of him, striking me in the arm and belly.

-10 health

-12 health

[You have been chilled. Your movement has been reduced to 97% efficiency.]

Health: 840/864

“H-how?” the red mage said in a panicked voice, realizing that his spells did minimal amounts of damage to me.

I laughed. This really was a huge mismatch. He incorrectly thought that I would have average to low magic resistance because I was a melee class, but little did he know… I had S tier magic resistance growth.

“As I said, you picked the wrong guy to fuck with.”

I charged forwards with my adamantite poleaxe and swung down on the red mage, who was clearly inexperienced in physical combat. He must have thought that his crowd control and whittle down from a distance strategy was infallible. I could see it working against my former 4th regiment comrades [Donovan] or [Felix], or even [Aeric] with his big and cumbersome shield, but the [Dimension Thief] was the ultimate anti-mage class. He was well out of his depth here.

250 damage, critical hit!

The red mage raised his hand again and casted a frantic spell. His cast speed was noticeably faster than a regular mage’s.

“Spider web!”

Webs shot from thin air and enveloped me, knocking me backwards and sticking me to the ground. No wonder the cast time was so fast. It wasn’t as if he was using [Meteor] like [Baran], the sorcerer officer from the 4th regiment.

[You have been restrained.]

“Dimension ripper!”

My left arm burst into a hungry black void, and I swept downwards, burning right through the sticky spider webs on my body. The mana cost for burning through the webs was minimal, so I could do this all day without breaking a sweat.

“Impossible! W-what are you?”

Removing the webs from my legs, I stood up and paced towards him. “I’m your worst nightmare.”

The red mage attempted to cast another spell, but this time I was too fast for him. I closed the distance and stabbed him with my adamantite poleaxe, and then sank my left arm through his chest and lungs, dropping his health to zero as blood spurted from his mouth.

[You have slain Eustice.]

[You have earned 112 silver.]

[You have gained 2 tickets.]

[You have gained status: Wolf]

[You have gained 4 souls.]

Tch. Bastard didn’t drop anything good. Ah well, I knew I’d get the [Wolf] status eventually. With people gunning for me left and right, I had to defend myself.