Carly stirred from her rest. 'What is this, somewhere between her fourteenth and sixteenth sleep break, sixteenth? Meh, who cares. Just get going,' she mentally pushed herself. The important thing was that her days were numbered. Although she guessed they always were, that was the whole point of what had turned out to be an exhausting endurance grinding event. Both mentally and physically but mostly mentally.

"Come on, get up, Carly. Its loop time."

"Yes, Carly. But you're loopy all the time."

Carly chuckled to herself as she got herself mobile and activated the first of her boot runes, then went over to her supplies and grabbed a drink of water.

"Let's go hunting for some food."

"What's on the menu for this morning? Evening? Even-morn? Fuck what time it is. I don't even want to know. Just move, bitch."

"Ok, ok, I'm leavening already," Carly said to herself with a warped smile on her face.

Indeed, Carly had just awoken from her fifteenth sleep, and she had been participating in the Loop Elimination Event for 26-days, 16-hours, and 6-minutes.

Carly was definitely feeling the strain, her mental fatigue while being sated still piled up, and it was starting to have some unsavory effects. Even with her extreme work ethic, the level of focus she required of herself was extraordinarily draining.

Carly was currently starting out on lap-997. Not that she cared overmuch right now. The only thing that could lighten the exhaustion was the hope she would get a milestone reward for crossing past lap-1000.

Carly had received notifications that additional rewards would be available for her to select once the event was completed at present. The first was for crossing the boundary of lap-800 and occurred on day-18. The second occurred just before her current sleep on lap-981. It was the lap that the elimination boundary would reach its maximum time increment of 60-minutes.

Rightly so, it was an important marker for the three competitors still remaining in the event. Now having the elimination boundaries loop time capped out was a clear indicated to them that they were now on borrowed time. Not that they were unaware of that fact for a long time before that.

It had been clear from the early days, that the incremental frequency of the elimination boundary was slowing. Effectively eating up competitors unable to recover vital time as their progress slowed.

At this stage in the event, it was no surprise that three remained out of the starting 15,661-competitors. Adding to the difficulties the competitors faced, the mobs continued to gain in stats above what they returned through experience.

Indeed, despite her improved stats, skills, and gear, Carly was merely able to circulate at parity to the elimination boundary. The common mob types she faced were high agility and attack damage. Or, ones with a special attack that could prove devastating if when landed. In the end, Carly could only accept the situation and continue doing her thing. She was already out in front, she assumed, considering how long ago she passed them, it would be by quite a number of laps.

Lap-1,000 came and went, to Carly's disappointment no additional reward notification appeared. Another 17-laps passed, and she noticed in the [Loop Data] that the race was down to just two people. Considering she had passed that third-placed person about 110-laps ago, she thought it would probably be dicey if they made it to lap-981.

'It would be a shame if that person just missed out, they certainly deserved an additional reward for the massive effort they must have put in,' Carly thought.

Carly swayed and stumbled toward the safe room, once more needing sleep. She was at her limit with physical fatigue and far beyond it with mental fatigue she felt. During this stretch, she boosted her [Constitution] to 1,000-DP, which added an additional 4-hours she could keep fighting until rest was required. Still, she was loosing out to the elimination boundary. In response, Carly took the risk and pushed beyond her limits. Gaining debuffs in her combat performance, but still, she circulated for an additional 8-hours for the stint. Those debuffs as they gradually ramped up became too detrimental in the end and forced her to take a break, get sleep, and recover. Carly did just that virtually faceplanting into the ground from exhaustion upon arriving past the green translucent light screen of the safe room.

Carly woke up to a blue screen notification awaiting her attention.

Congratulations!

Loop Elimination Competitor, MT27347, Carly Berkstead.

I, Richard Isaccs Shrodastower, am so very pleased and honored to personally send this message to inform you that you have done it. You are the final competitor remaining in the Loop Elimination Challenge.

You are now able to retire from this event victorious.

Or you could continue for additional rewards.

For instance, if you choose to continue on and complete lap-1,050. You will receive an additional week of early access. On top of that, you will gain an additional two days for every additional 10-laps, complete.

How is this possible? You might be asking right now? There shouldn't be enough time until launch? Well, in fact, after the first 3-days of the event, the PURG data analysts and actuaries assigned to the event reported that the event could cross past the official launch date. Of course, that was while the event was running at standard speed. A slight time dilation adjustment to 4x speed was implemented on November 30th, along with some minor difficulty tweaks.

What that means for you is that despite running the loop for almost 29-days, its really only been 11-days. It is currently December 6th, as you receive this message.

What's more, if you complete 1,100-laps, something the PURG actuaries say is almost impossible for you to achieve, you will be gain a Special Request Reward. As in, you make a request, and the development team will try very hard to fulfill it, so long as it is not world breaking. No god-like powers allowed, I'm afraid.

So there you have it. Since you already know you are the victor of this event, getting that early access is incredibly valuable to you. You are going to need all the extra time you can get to help you with the Special Cumulative Reward. So I challenge you, do the near-impossible and get that Special Request Reward. Prove the numbers experts wrong.

Congratulations,

Carly Berkstead

I look forward to meeting you soon.

Richard Isaccs Shrodastower

Carly was kind of stunned. 'Is that bastard really handing out additional generous rewards?'

It almost seemed too good to be true, especially since the start of lap-1,046 is when she rested. Looking at her [Loop Data] she still was in front by 204-minutes of the elimination boundary. She could easily gain the additional week of early access. Trying to reach lap-1,100, on the other hand, she had to admit, was going to be a hell of a challenge.

* * *

Carly aimed to get that Special Request Reward. After thinking about it for a couple of laps, she already knew what the request would be.

Carly decided that she was only going to have a chance of making it to that point if she fought much more aggressively. Doing so, however, would greatly increase the chance of her taking damage. To compensate for this, Carly adjusted her stat progress, dropping all of her remaining DP into [Vitality]. Once it was increased to 500, she then began to invest the rest into stamina. Carly went with the mindset that she would not rest until she crossed the line of lap-1,100 or until she was eliminated.

Of course, she tried to avoid taking any damage even with her more aggressive combat stance, but sometimes a mob type would do something unexpected, and even Carly had to take a hit or drag out the fight and waste valuable time. As long as it was only superficial, she gritted her teeth with determination. Nothing was going to slow her down.

Lap by lap, Carly got closer to her goal. All the while, the elimination boundary got closer to her. The mobs continued to get tougher to fight after every 10-laps. Carly could feel it, the mobs improved, and the equivalent experience declined. The elimination boundary bore down upon her as her minutes reduced at a steady flow.

Carly had set her [EXP to DP Conversion] to automatically assign any DP into her [Stamina] stat long ago. She crossed the line again. Lap-1,090 complete. She looked up the starting straight, a new mob while she veered left to the safe room, great it was a large chicken.

After grabbing a drink of water, some cold meat, and a couple of minutes rest to regenerate her endurance pool, Carly set off once more.

She pumped herself up, repeatedly telling herself she had just 10-laps more. Just 10-kilometers, for her prize. Then she could rest all she liked back in her TME. Rest, until she went to the new world with her early access.

Carly finished up her short break, stepping into the loop once more with about 20-minutes up her sleeve against the loop boundary. She had already been going for 48-hours since her last rest. The debuff penalties were starting to stack up. But so what.

Carly squinted at the enemy. How dare food, try and stop her. Nothing was going to stop her, especially chicken. She felt a burning hatred build up as she charged at the nearly 1-meter tall flightless bird. Diving into a tackle, Carly threw caution to the wind and got brutal. Punching deep with her blade gauntlet, then ripping the blade out, doing as much damage as she could as quickly as she could.

The other thing Carly figured was that if she was within grappling range of her foe, she could fix several problems she was facing at once. Firstly, if she could be that close and manage to get behind the mob, she would take the impressively sharp talons mostly out of the equation. Secondly, at that range, the defensive fatigue debuffs she was stacked with would be voided. Finally, that close, even with the accuracy fatigue debuff, how would she be missing her attacks? She would have to watch out for that dangerous beak. But, all in all, Carly could not see a better course of action. She just needed to make it to the start of lap-1,101. She did not need to take care of herself as much now because getting caught by the boundary was imminent, completely unavoidable. As long as she had one health left as she crossed the line on for that lap, nothing else mattered. Indeed Carly had committed to attacking with utter brutality, and she did exactly that.

There was a purity within the savagery that Carly unleashed. It could put the beasts to shame. She unleashed her feral. All that time, all that effort, the endless fighting. Carly was not about to lose, not to that boundary, no way. She kicked, and grappled, and kneed, and held on. She even bit, spitting out mouthfuls of blood and feathers. But, mostly what Carly did was strike with the blade of her gauntlets. Her poison gauntlet. At such close range, Carly did not worry about inflicting heavy blows. Instead, she worked the blade like a shiv, lots of light blows as fast as possible. Letting the poison effect from the weapons runes stack up.

The entire time Carly had used the blade gauntlets, she had fought strategically. Aiming first to avoid all damage and secondly to capitalise on any openings to maximum effect. It meant that Carly had not really tried to defeat any of the mobs through stacking the poison effect. Sure, the effect was there, and it was very helpful, but Carly also aimed for critical damage. Alternatively, she aimed for brutal damage. By surpassing a mobs' defenses with an attack with greater than double its resistance to it. An attack with both critical and brutal damage occurring could be exceptionally devastating. On the downside, it may also take Carly precious seconds to set up and position for the perfect strike and achieve these bonus forms of damage.

Now, she didn't have the time. It all boiled down to this new mindset that Carly chose to adopt. She leveraged off the true power of a stacked damage effect. As with all things though, there had to be a balance. The close-in grappling had already caused Carly to pay the price several times. She was missing several large chunks of hair that had been ripped out, along with a couple of nasty head gashes that were weeping or bleeding. Already, Carly had almost lost an eye. Fortunately, she was quick enough to turn her head, getting her cheek ripped off to her lips on the left side of her face. It left Carly with a horrid grimace, all teeth, and gums. More blood dripping off her jaw, making an impressively gruesome scene.

Birds had no trouble turning their heads 180-degrees. It made picking their back feathers rather easy. Likewise, the annoying woman wrapped around it was rather handily accessible to pecks.

Despite the head wounds and a nasty chunk of flesh ripped out from her scapula, Carly was able to progress through the laps exceedingly well, completing them at around 63-minutes.

Carly was forced to take a break at lap-196, needing to get back some endurance. The 5-minute reprieve allowed time to recover hitpoints as well. Exiting the saferoom for what could only be the final time, she knew she had to push even harder. Dropping the lap time down by another minute, she had 8-minutes ahead of the elimination boundary, and 4-laps left to go.

It was hard going, Carly was no stranger to pushing herself both physically and mentally. She was confident that she trained harder than anyone in the Martial Development Program. Add to that, her unique TME that utilised time dilation, and Carly had not only had trained harder but far more over the past 5-years. She wasn't out in front because she got lucky or because she had assistance, even though she did.

No, she would have been in the same position, possibly a better even one, without the help.

One thing she was sure of, this even had exceeded all her expectations of how difficult it could be. It was the constant hours, seeming endless in their request that she, and all the competitors, push harder. The first time she slept, she had fought for 32-hours straight, before taking a sleep break. In recent days she had boosted her stats so she could remain active on the loop for 44-hours before the negative effects started to come into effect. But now, in this final stint, her last sleep was 52-hours ago. She was far surpassing all her previous effort for this final struggle. She just needed to keep going, pushing through, and most important of all, making sure her lap times did not drop, no matter the cost.

Lap-1,097 was completed in 61-minutes 24-seconds.

Lap-1,098 was completed in 61-minutes 51-seconds.

Lap-1,099 was completed in 62-minutes 17-seconds.

With one lap remaining Carly had about a 2-minutes gap between her and the elimination boundary. It was visible the entire length of the lap now.

Carly held on to the back of the Sawbeak Fowl, using her legs to trap its wings while she laid along its back. Her left-hand blade gauntlet was plunged deeply into that side while she punched into its side over and over with the right-hand blade gauntlet. The creature fought to throw her off, but Carly's [Strength] was at 300-DP, more than enough to resist its struggles.

* * *

Realising it was stuck and couldn't free itself from the predator attached to its back, that kept hurting it, the Sawbeak Fowl reacted. It was trying to bite the head or fleshy bits, anything to stop the stabbing pain and sickness it was feeling.

Instead, the sharp-clawed monster blocked its attack by jabbing its claw directly into its throat as it struck with its beak.

Instant pain again ended that retaliation as it now struggled to breathe and made a hacking sound as more blood flowed. Unable to flap its wings, unable to bring its claws to bear, and unable to peck at this wicked predator.

The NPC monster soon began to get weaker and weaker as the many poisoned wounds bled and eroded its life away. Stumbling, it twisted and dropped to the ground. Nothing could save it from passing now. No strength in its legs to move, the monster on its back continued to plunge its claw into it. Weakening by the second, its body soon went limp its rolled to the side, darkness enveloping its sight.

* * *

Another dead mob, but Carly did not pay overmuch attention to the message. It was the second kill of this final lap, 23-fowl still needed to die, and the boundary was closing in at a rate of about 16.7-meters per minute. Even with Carly giving it everything she had, it could complete the lap slightly faster than her.

It put her situation into a clear perspective. To get the additional reward, Carly just had to finish the lap before the boundary caught her. It had been that way for the past 31-days. But knowing it was very different from seeing the mechanism of your approaching demise. Carly turned and ran towards the next mob in a hurry. She didn't want to waste a second as she ducked a peck and slammed both fists into its chest before sidestepping and laying a jab into its thigh before attempting to mount it. She used the elimination boundary, forcing herself to go harder, be more aggressive. She was exhausted, but her tenacity was such that she was never going to give up. Ever.

Of course, using the Blade Gauntlets and their poison runes were not Carly's only method of attack. Every tenth mob, she utilised the full effect of her [Melee] spell. For a couple of seconds, she would form large a mana construct blade and, with a heavy horizontal swing, cleave the mob in two, giving an instant kill.

The mana expenditure for such an attack was exceedingly high. On top of activating all the runes from the gauntlets and boots, plus the mana reserved from the [Enhance] spell, Carly found herself tightly constrained with mana use.

As a result, Carly had been conservative with her mana use for the last couple of laps. Now, on her last, all that was getting thrown away. If she had anything left and got caught, she would feel as though she failed. She knew this. It was a part of her. Competitive. Carly always had been and with herself most of all.

That in mind, she had already decided to use the [Melee] mana construct spell an extra time this lap. The additional instakill would save precious time, and that is all that mattered on this, her last lap.

* * *

Carly came up upon the second last mob of the lap, she was in the finishing straight, the elimination boundary was still right behind her. It had closed the gap, now just meters away. Checking her mana, she was going to use her mana blade but decided to hold off. The fourth use of the mana construct would slightly exceed what her mana regeneration had currently restored. She knew the numbers, and while she could probably get away with using the blade just fine right now. There was a margin for error, so she decided to wait for one more mob, regenerate those few extra points on mana. Have less chance of stuffing everything up so near to the end.

Carly also checked her health and endurance pools. Both were in reasonably good order. Carly still had 1362/3112 [Health] and 2293/8000 [Endurance] remaining.

With a final look back at the elimination boundary and a look ahead at the remaining two mobs on the lap, Carly cracked her neck from side to side. With a smile remembering one of the regularly used quotes for memes that came from one of the old viewing movies before she was even born. She shook her head. "That is so cliche, but fuck it. I am going to enjoy this moment," she spoke aloud.

Charging ahead, she gained the attention of the Sawbeak Fowl. Carly diverted to the side just before the creature was in range to peck her as she wall ran, getting about 4-meters up the wall before flipping backward. Carly hoped the bird would do the predictable thing and position itself right where she would land. Unfortunately, as she spun, she found that it was not to be the case. Damn that was a waste of 140 [Endurance].

Landing to the right of the Fowl with a clang her the plated boots, Carly hit and backward rolled to absorb the landing and gain range in the process. The mob tracked her antics and charged. Carly kept her momentum rolling until she was back on her feet. Then gracefully moved into a roundhouse kick landing the first damage on this particular mob. Carly closed to, unloading with an uppercut, gauntlet blade glancing off its beak but knocking its head up with the impact from her actual gauntlet armor. Sliding to the side, she backed off towards the finish line, creating some additional space between herself and the elimination boundary.

The razorbeak foul charged in again, Carly deflected its peck and evaded a raking swipe from its taloned feet before stepping in. Now, she unloaded with a flurry of fast jabs before sweeping around behind it and rampaging along the birds' side and wing. Sheer volume of strikes, enough to force the bird monster further away from the boundary.

Taking just short moments, the bird was losing 42 [Health] per second from the poison damage stacks from all the successfully landed strikes.

The bird spread its wings flapping. It attempted to leap and rake Carly with its claws but somehow managed to deflect. The gauntlets defense far above the effective damage the fowl could produce. Carly ducked and rolled while the bird was still in the air. Coming up, Carly spun as the bird landed. Now behind it, she leaped up, like some rodeo cowgirl, riding a giant chicken. Carly clamped her legs around its wings, then slammed the blades of both fists into the base of the bird's neck, holding herself in place. The bird jumped, bucked, and twisted. But with the combination of Carly's [Strength], [Agility], and [Reaction] stats, it was easy to ride out its initial startlement.

That handled Carly began to lay into the bird upping the poison damage even more. This one decided to run into the wall to try and dislodge Carly. It proved a fruitless effort, knocking off 217 [Health]. Carly bit into its neck, freeing up both hands to repeatedly land piercing blows on the mob. In retaliation, it twisted to bite at her back. Spitting out blood and feathers, Carly got a solid peck on the head, opening up a nasty gash that cost her 67 [Health] and left her with an 18 [Health] loss bleed effect. Ignoring the damage, she pulled her head away before skewering the bird in its neck, just at the base of its head. The bird struggled to get away, ripping its flesh from the blade with its efforts. A few more punches to keep the poison stacks going. Soon the bird wilted, legs losing strength before it collapsed on the ground.

Carly received the expected system message and immediately after was spitting blood and a feather from her mouth. "Well damn, I made a bloody mess of my finale," was all she mustered as a comment.

With only a single mob to go, Carly pulled up the message from way back during her last sleep more than 55-hours ago and began reading it out loud.

Finishing up, Carly stated. "I am absolutely sure since I have it in writing that the special bonus is guaranteed. Right? Mr Shrodastower."

With the elimination boundary just a step behind, Carly charged the final fowl. In range, she burned all of her mana in a single summon of the massive mana blade chopping the bird's head clean off. Carly read the system message as she casually jogged over the line, marking the beginning of lap-1,101.

"MADE IT! WOOOOO HOOOOO!" Carly yelled into the tunnel.

Slowly she raised her hands into the air in victory. Turning around with a satisfied smile, she faced the red screen of the elimination boundary. Moments later, she dropped hollow leged to the ground, legs and arms splayed out haphazard like.

She was still smiling while looking up at the arched ceiling of the loop tunnel, she said to no one and everyone. "I was going to say something cliche, but I didn't really pull off that second last fight how I wanted. So instead, I think this works better. I'm feeling very tired right now, exhausted even. You might say I am somewhat gelatinous with fatigue, what do you reckon, big bro?"[1]

The elimination boundary continued on its steady journey. No faster, nor slower, circumstance irrelevant, oblivious to all, and just as unrelenting.

* * *

[1] George Orwell, 1984.