Scene 1 - Against the clock

Her breathing started to grow heavy as sweat poured the size of peas started flowing down her body. Where the snake bit the skin had started to turn purple and like little threads started to climb up her leg causing her to feel nauseous as her hands started shaking uncontrollably.

Like a snake she would feel the poison racing towards her heart a steady speed, if she didn’t deal with this poison soon she would die. Using her poison Mana she began to fight back against the venom.

The heated battle against the two forces battle line was drawn at the lower part of her knee. The two clashed head on to one another trying to devour one another, with the venom showing a small upper hand with its powerful concentration.

Luckily Rune’s Poison Mana was easily replenished from the outside world with how dense the poison mana in the air was. Still, at this pace, Rune judged that it would take more than four hours to a destroy the venom fully. With the three-hour time limit ticking down she wouldn’t be able to make it, she needed to cut down the time or be forced to quit the competition. And her pride wouldn’t let her quit, she had to keep moving she had to win.

Making up her mind Rune gathered up her fire mana as well and used it to battle against the venom creating a large circle formation around the bite like a seal to stop the venom from spreading. At this point, Rune was using up about fifty percent of her mana reserves to keep the venom at bay and destroying it bit by bit. By this pace, it would take her about twelve hours to remove, but for now, she could move again.

Only that she could only move at a reduced speed and her combat prowess was reduced to a middle 6th stage HBR expert. BY now twenty minutes had passed since the beginning of the contest that Rune started moving again.

Gritting her teeth Rune stood up and clenched her hands into fists to stop them from shaking and took her first step forward. Her leg was throbbing with pain, but it was manageable she had gone through worse things in her life she wouldn’t be stopped with this!

Jumping from tree to tree snakes descended upon her in the masses with hidden snakes hiding along as branches wishing to bite her to death. But despite her power being lessened, Rune moved unfazed igniting fire around her feet and hands.

Smashing heads into blood and gore with her feet and piercing bodies with her hands making claws Rune eventually reached the halfway point at the one hour mark. If she wasn’t injured she bet she could get to this point twenty minutes before, right now she stood in a familiar spot before starting the contest.

“So this was the place we were before.”

With a thought in her mind, Rune climbed one of the tall trees to get a sense of how far the bridge was. Ever since she started cultivating her eyesight had gotten much better she could make out objects with much more clarity.

Putting her hand over her eyes to block out the sun she narrowed her eyes and scanned the area. Ahead of her she could see in the vast green every so often flashes of color, she judged ahead of her were about twenty participants.

If she wasn’t stupidly wounded in the beginning she knew she would have been at the head of the pack. Just the thought of her carelessness frustrated her greatly, quickly she shook away from her thoughts and got back to moving towards the bridge.

By now the number of snakes in front of her was a headache to kill if she had a choice she wished she could run away from them instead of fighting them. Alas, until she got rid of all the venom inside her leg she would have to brutally slaughter all that stood in her path.

Step by step as she jumped along the trees Rune noticed something strange, that in front of her a large amount of destruction among the trees lay bare; the trees mangled in various ways be it explosions, cut to ribbons, on fire, ice pillars, etc. A great battle must have taken place among the contestants here making Rune sad if she wasn’t injured she could have joined in the fight!

Sulking to herself Rune moved along the wartorn path at ease with no snakes jumping at her making her slightly happy. Jumping to and forth along the wreckage Ruen could start to smell an all to the familiar stench of rotting corpses in the air.

Inspecting the area Rune could see the cut up bodies of snakes and a few contestant bodies ripped to shreds it seems a great battle royal got fought in this place. It made her wonder who made it out of such a battle? Did they get out unscathed from such a battle or did they get wounded? Or was their more then one?

She could only guess as to what happened and move forward with a quickness lest those still behind her catch up to her. Walking only for a few minutes more Rune had finally reached the bridge, but stayed in the forest cautiously checking out the bridges gate.

What she saw made her eyes narrow in displeasure, standing in front of her was ten contestants standing shoulder to shoulder guarding the bridge ill intent. What a garbage play to pull on the first bridge instead of problems arising in the later bridges this group wanted to finish of many contestants her then later.

And judging by their aura of killing intent they weren't pushovers that she could fight alone in her weakened state. They was only one annoying method she could use, she would have to team up with others to take down this annoying bunch of pests down.

And speaking getting teammates Rune turned to her left to see two people walking towards her, one a silver haired woman and the other a nervous boy fidgeting with his fingers. If she remembered right this the guy she saw before the island contest started.