Once that timer clicked over, several things occurred. Starting with the timer, it was replaced by the elimination boundary countdown timer on the three walls.

[Elimination Boundary Commencement – 1,239min 59sec]

At the same time, the wall changed from red to green. Where before it was opaque and solid, now it was transparent and intangible allowing access from what could be considered the safe room into the Loop proper.

The third component of the event initiating were several messages appearing in Carly's vision.

< You have performed the action [Read] for sufficient time and proficiency. [Read] is now available for activation on the [Personal Skill List] >

< You have performed the action [Reading Comprehension] for sufficient time and proficiency. [Reading Comprehension] is now available for activation on the [Personal Skill List] >

< You have performed the action [Evaluate] for sufficient time and proficiency. [Evaluate] is now available for activation on the [Personal Skill List] >

< You have performed the action [Planning] for sufficient time and proficiency. [Planning] is now available for activation in the [Personal Skill List] >

Carly was surprised by the four skills popping up. She took a quick glance at all the text, reading that these were skills now available to her for activation. Looking at this took only a few seconds before Carly decided not to let it tie her down with new information. According to the timer still had almost a day before the elimination boundary would even start chasing her down. Plenty of time for Carly to have a more substantial look into the [Extant Upgrade Store]'s full list of available items.

Taking off at a walk, as Carly immediately began to set up her [Loop Data] screen.

Loop Data:

Activate any of the available options to be aware of them at all times. [Current Lap] [Boundary Start] [Boundary Timer] [Last Lap Time] [Lap Position] [Boundary Position] [Remaining Competitors]

'This is interesting, though not unexpected,' she thought. There were three new options she had not seen before. The two that reported position and remaining competitors were all new, but this was after all a race she was competing in against others. Activating all options, she placed the information on the same plane to the right of the survival and vital bars.

Loop Data: [Lap]: 0 [Boundary Start]: 1,259.46 [Boundary Timer]: 1,259.46 [Last Lap Time]: 0 [Lap Position]: 0 [Boundary Position]: 0 [Remaining Competitors]: 15,661

Carly was out of the short connecting tunnel and a few strides into the Loop proper at this point and began to jog. It just like the safe room was bland, basically a 5-meter wide arched tunnel with the same boring shades of grey for the floor, walls and arched ceiling which was once again luminescent. The loop itself was not round but more of a wedge shape track with a rounded middle section.

From the safe room, where Carly had been transported from the Secondary Arena, it was a straight tunnel out for 80 meters. Additionally, there were 5-meters of the connecting tunnel between the safe room and the loop.

The finish straight reentered the start straight to the right at an obtuse angle of 120 degrees. Meaning that a runner did not have to slow down much to start the next lap. The rest of the loop was comprised of a lazy sweep until it reached the 60m short finish straight. The curves off the start and onto the finish straights were slightly sharper than the rest of the sweep to make the 1-kilometer distance. One could only describe the loop truthfully, as dull.

Traveling 35-meters in, Carly slowed down. She had reached the first NPC beast, monster, mob. It was a new one, something she had never seen before in all her thousand plus loop runs. Most likely all the other MDP trainees would be unfamiliar with this gelatinous blob. That was because none of them had the sort of access Carly's association with Ross, gave her. Part of her many years spent training under time dilation in her TME, included Carly playing several popular RPG games from times long past and recent.

It was a slime or ooze, and at around 1-meter wide and 60-centimeters in height, it contained a decent quantity of gelatinous whatever it was. The slime was blue in colour and upon close inspection, Carly could see floating in it, a crystal. Her information sources, RPG and fantasy novels, informed her that a slimes crystal was usually its weakness. It was incredibly slow moving, bending over it she felt perfectly safe as the slime instinctively raised part of its surface towards her. She eased the tip of her finger onto it, the slime automatically responded, pumping some of its mass up onto Carly's finger then hand and wrist, latching on. Carly reacted instantly with a girly squeal and several quick flicks of her wrist sending the goop flying off into a splattering arc.

A text window popped up, this was her combat log, designed to report the play by play of battle.

Carly felt a little embarrassed at her reaction despite being all alone in her loop instance.

Each second the messages were appearing. “Shit, that's really fucking burning!” at first the gelatinous substance did not hurt, a few ticks in with the damage Carly was feeling a severe pain that shot up past her elbow as her skin started to dissolve.

With an angered growl Carly [Stomped] the slime with her right leg.

Carly didn't like this, not one bit, but currently, she couldn't see too many options other than to fully commit to the attack.

Nine attacks later she was glad to receive the kill notification.

.

.

.

Carly's heart withered as she watched the enzyme damage gradually tick down. Shockingly the first slime had 826 damage leaving her with 876 health. The skin on her right leg was mostly dissolved, exposing the muscle underneath and leaving Carly in overwhelming pain.

Limping over to the wall, she leaned against it, perspiring and feeling physically weak. “Fucking hell that's painful,” Carly loudly complained to the wall opposite. She closed her eyes and tried to bare it as best she could. Taking notice of her health regeneration, Carly observed it as it ticked up one point at a time. Looking at it for so long activated additional information which she delved into immediately.

Health Bar:

Shows your current and maximum health graphically and numerically. Health regeneration is reduced by 80% during combat and immediately after for 3 seconds. Total Health = (Height DP + Weight DP) /2) + Frame + Health Stat + (Constitution *1.4) Total Health Regeneration = (Vitality *0.5) + (Constitution *0.02)

It was going to take far too long to regenerate her health back. Activating [Extant Upgrade Store], Carly looked under [General]. There was a [Potion] sub-category she accessed. Carly first looked at the lowest health potions. There were a few variations, she looked at the most basic one, an instant heal health potion that returned 200 health instantly and cost 20-minutes. Carly found them unsatisfactory toward her current predicament. She looked down the loop straight at the next slime waiting unawares for her to attack it. Scrolling down past the endurance and mana restore potions, the stat enhancement potions, finally she found the potion type that would be useful.

Enzyme Resistance Potion (Tier 1):

Consumption of this potion will provide a temporarily improved resistance value to enzyme damage.

[Purchase: 30 (Minutes)] Descriptors: Variables: Effect: Enzyme Resistance Resistance: 10 Requirement: - Duration (min): 30

There were higher tiers available for puchase, they cost an additional hour for each tier though. Carly did not bother with such things, instead sending this one to the checkout.

Before she made the purchase, she intended to check something out. Hobbling to the next slime, she dipped the tip of her finger in this one and pulled it out instantly, not giving the slime any time to encompass her hand and wrist again. Stepping out of reach and walking away from the slime, she watched the damage tick for three health this time. Good, that explained the damage variations she took from that first one, and with that, she completed the purchase of the resistance potion.

A lame little trumpet sound echoed in her ears along with a beam of golden light and a small golden chest appearing at her feet. Opening the chest a small glass potion bottle sat with a yellowish liquid contained inside. Pulling the potion bottle out and standing back up, the chest began to dissipate after a few seconds. Carly moved to a step away from the second slime, popped the wax sealed cork from the bottle and with three quick swallows consumed the lot.

She felt the liquid go down. It tasted foul. She felt no different so checked her [Personal Status]. It reported she had 11 points in enzyme resistance now, apparently, it had worked.

Only one way to know for sure, Carly dipped her finger into the slime again and received three ticks of 1damage. "Better, much better."

Carly began stomping the second slime, this time despite her doing the same thing, she only took 1-damage on her both left and right leg.

With that, her health regeneration could well surpass the damage she received from the slime and continue to heal up while moving through the loop at as fast a rate as she possibly could. She needed to accumulate experience and improve her health regeneration it was far from sufficient if this was how things would go for the start of the loop.

Early on while stomping the third slime, Carly received an additional message during the combat.

< You have performed the action [Stomp] for sufficient time and proficiency. [Stomp] is now available for activation in the [Personal Skill List] >

Her first combat skill, it was useless to her at the moment, instantly pressing forward after the death message, two more dead slimes later and another essential message appeared.

< You have received sufficient experience to exchange for a [Development Point (DP)]. You can perform the exchange by accessing the [Experience Exchange] >

Carly, of course, accessed the [Experience Exchange].

Experience Exchange:

Experience is the primary currency that is used to trade for goods and services rendered as well as being used to improve your personal capability. Exchange Options: [Convert Exp to DP] [Convert DP to Exp] [Trade]

Interesting, and what Carly was reading paralleled with what Mal mentioned, with regards to experience being exchanged during the beta. She wondered how that lanky guy was doing for a moment before refocusing. Carly accessed [Convert Exp to DP] and the menu transformed.

Convert Exp to DP:

Choose your preferred method to convert [Experience (Exp)] to [Development Points (DP)]. Conversion Options: [Manual Experience Conversion] [Automatic Experience Conversion] [Assigned Experience Conversion]

Carly read the screen and chose to activate the [Manual Experience Conversion] option for now.

Manual Experience Conversion:

This option manually converts [Experience (Exp)] to [Development Points (DP)]. Current Accumulated Experience 10,000 Experience Required for the next DP - 8,734 Remaining Experience 1,266

Carly was very glad that the experience for the DP came in so quickly, she saved up the DP until she knew how things would continue to progress. She also went back and activated the [Automatic Experience Conversion] option.

Comfortable with the situation, at least for the moment, Carly continued to press forward and began with a quick review of the [Loop Data] screen.

It was pretty simple, [Lap] represented how many times around the oh so bland and boring loop a person traveled, and was a measure of distance since each completed lap was one kilometer long.

[Boundary Start] was the countdown timer she left back at the safe room behind the now green transparent doorway. It was the time until the elimination boundary started its chase.

The [Boundary Timer] was the time, factoring in current variables, lap and lap time until the elimination boundary caught a person. That one would start changing as people began completing laps.

It was fairly obvious what [Last Lap Time] did.

The last two Carly checked the descriptions provided even though she thought she had a pretty good idea what they did.

[Lap Position], refers to a competitors placement by completed lap times in comparison to all competitors.

[Boundary Position], refers to a competitors position determined by the [Boundary Timer] compared to all competitors.

No need to explain [Remaining Competitors], right?

It wasn't long before Carly received another skill accessibility message.

< You have performed the action [Jog] for sufficient time and proficiency. [Jog] is now available for activation in the [Personal Skill List] >

With a number of skill messages coming through Carly decided it was time to take a look at the lists

Personal Skill List:

All activated and available skills, both general and combat oriented. 

[Customise] Activated Skills: DP Available Skills: DP [Evaluate] Understand the intrinsic value held within specific information. [10] [Jog] A movement with relatively low endurance expenditure. [5] [Plan] Deciding a course of action to achieve a goal before taking action. [10] [Read] A skill of reading text. [5] [Reading Comprehension] Processing text and understanding its meaning. [5] [Stomp] Slam your foot down on a small or prone enemy to inflict damage. [5]

It did not take long, having access to [Vital Bars], for Carly to realise she was burning through her endurance at a rapid rate by using [Stomp]. She needed to change tactics on these slimes and so on the next one along the tunnel, decided to try something different, she had enzyme resistance after all and thus was not fearful of the slimes slime at all.

She reached in and grabbed the slime core, which was about the size of a golf ball, and pulled back with everything she had. The speed and ferocity caught the slimes lack of intelligence unawares. With its slow reaction time, Carly had almost removed the core from its body before any resistance was exerted by it. Too late, Carly's momentum backwards landed her buttock hard into the ground as she rolled onto her back to absorb the impact. The landing only did 7-damage, which was nothing to worry about, releasing the core on the ground her arm received a total of just 10-damage from the slime. Much improved to the usual 36-damage, she received from [Stomping] them.

Standing up, Carly took a look at the slime's body, it had collapsed into a pool of goop, she then took a look at the core, despite its separation she didn't receive a death notification from it yet. Carly guessed that until the core was broken then the slime still lived and so with a bit of wicked pleasure [Stomped] on the core. It only took 5-attacks before the experience came through, it was too much endurance used and was eating into her pool of it as evidenced when she looked at the bar.

Trying again, Carly didn't land on her arse this time, instead, pulling to the side to rip out the core. Dropping it on the ground away from the cores body, she placed the heal of her foot on the crystal and ground it using her body weight to damage it. She could hear the grinding and soon heard a fracturing sound. With a quick examination, she could see the damage already done to the crystalline structure. Now she just stood on it using her weight to continue damaging the core and was soon rewarded with the death notice and experience. This approach took more than twice as long but utilised significantly less endurance. All in all, Carly thought it was a more efficient method of destroying the slime core.

Finishing the first lap, Carly already received sufficient experience that the [Experience Exchange] now registered 5 DP available for Carly to use. Quick and easy after the initial shock the slime enzyme damage could passively cause.

Just ahead, Carly saw there were more slimes to be killed on this lap. That was good news, Carly had just under 20 minutes remaining she did not want to waste those precious resistance points nor the minutes she spent on gaining them.

Carly looked at the [Loop Data] now that the first lap was completed.

Loop Data: [Lap]: 1 [Boundary Start]: 1,220:28 [Boundary Timer]: 1,235:28 [Last Lap Time]: 10:32 [Lap Position]: 1,241 [Boundary Position]: 417 [Remaining Competitors]: 15,661

Looking at the numbers, Carly was pleased, up near the front for lap completion speed and at the very point end for minimal spending at the [Extant Upgrade Store] presently. To Carly, it felt like she was in a very comfortable place right now, even if the slimes were an unexpected mob. With her health rising and endurance was now holding steady, it was time to begin an in-depth examining what was on offer at the store.