There were only five geniuses remaining in the competition.
August, Valerie, Remelia, Eris Noct, and a man named Mikael from the Dawn Dragon Clan.
Now, less than half of them were left in the arena. The rest had been eliminated in some way, shape, or form.
Mikael just took down the last one, leaving the five of them as the only remaining competitors.
He was nowhere near any of the others, but his actions had a profound impact on them all.
Suddenly, a map appeared in front of each of the geniuses.
Its contents were simple.
A rough picture of the maze that showed them the relative structure of the labyrinth without revealing its actual paths and patterns.
And, on it, five red dots.
Not a single one of them misunderstood what those dots were.
Their positions had just been revealed to each other, as had their progress.
Valerie had just created a territory for herself which allowed her to fight Remelia evenly, so she now had the freedom to look at the map.
There were two groups and an individual.
One group was her and Remelia, but the other…
Two dots were moving closer and closer to the labyrinth's center with every passing second. She and Remelia weren't moving, so it was obvious that those were two other geniuses.
Somehow, in the small amount of time that had passed, two people had made an alliance that allowed them to see the finish line.
Which meant that everyone else was falling behind.
"Hey, let's stop!" She yelled, getting Remelia's attention.
They needed to rush towards the center before continuing this battle if either of them wanted a chance to score more than a single point.
Remelia definitely heard her, but she didn't react at all.
BOOM!
She let her flames loose, attacking Valerie as if nothing significant was happening.
She also saw the map. She also understood its implications, but she refused to leave a battle unfinished.
The only thing she learned from the map was that she needed to remove Valerie even faster than before.
"What the hell are you doing?!"
Valerie shouted while she blocked the fire and counterattacked.
Her forest blasted vitality into the blazing inferno it bordered. It vied for the space, extinguishing everything that couldn't incinerate it.
"We need to get to the center! Now isn't the time for us to fight!"
In case her opponent was an idiot, she said it out loud to get it through her skull.
Remelia, however, was more stubborn than Valerie expected.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
It was as if she made her attacks stronger and louder so that she wouldn't have to hear Valerie's voice.
'Right now, training isn't as important as winning.'
She'd gotten everything she could out of her fight with Remelia. From now on, everything she did would just be practice.
Valerie could practice her newly discovered techniques whenever she wanted. Now that she had access to them, the rest of the road was a lot simpler to traverse.
Points didn't come so easily. The people who placed at the top of the leaderboard would blow the competition out of the water. They'd get further and further away every single time their competitors contently received a single point, and in the end, only they would be participating in the final rounds.
Valerie wanted to see this competition to the end, which meant she had to get to the center before those two other geniuses did.
She yelled and screamed at Remelia until she could hardly stand it anymore.
"Listen to me, bitch!"
Valerie was mad. She wanted to fight this fight at first, but the emergence of the position tracker completely offset her plans.
Every second she spent fighting Remelia was destroying her chance to vie for the top spot in this round.
"We don't have…"
BOOM!
"...time for this!"
There was no way around Remelia. She was too good at spatial control. Even if Valerie was able to distance herself from Remelia, the woman would chase her to the ends of the earth.
She still had to find a way through the maze after this battle ended. She couldn't make those kinds of decisions while she was being assailed from behind by a mad genius.
Valerie wantedthirdplace at the very least.
But, with one uninhibited dot moving towards the center on the other side of the two she was most concerned about, she didn't know if she would have a chance.
'Either I destroy this bitch and make it there…'
Valerie's eyes sharpened.
'...or we both go down here.'
It was down to the wire.
None of them realized that they were the last remaining talents in the labyrinth until the map appeared. Now that they knew, all of their plans had severely changed.
A rat race for the center, a true desperate struggle for first place…
Now that it had come to this, the labyrinth challenge returned to its most basic essence. The geniuses dropped their schemes and planning. They dropped their curiosity and ambition. They purely focused on the labyrinth, so they could find a path to the finish.
Still, those two dots that made Valerie so wary were scarily close to the middle already.
Who were they?
What were they doing?
And how had they managed to form an alliance in this free-for-
all environment?
Well, it was a funny story, actually…
***
It happened just under half an hour ago.
August was doing as he did, entertaining the crowd with his various tricks as he traversed the labyrinth at a speed faster than anyone else.
He'd practically understood its entire structure at this point. With the knowledge he'd accumulated, finding his way to the center was simple.
He was responsible for the defeat of yet another genius, this time one from the Karmic Dragon Clan.
His power was esoteric and hard to predict, but at the end of the day, that kind of genius was more skilled in intellectual challenges.
If it came to who could reach the center fastest without any obstacles inhibiting them, then that genius would have been a top contender for first place.
Unfortunately for him, he met August.
His end wasn't even met valiantly in battle.
August used him as a test subject to see if he could properly exploit the labyrinth when he needed to, and he'd found exactly the results he'd wanted.
Regardless, it was a small hiccup in his otherwise unimpeded journey. He continued on his way without thinking much of it.
But, his fortune was also riddled with some chaos.
His relatively simple labyrinth challenge ended with a single encounter.
He rushed through a straight corridor and took a left turn. He took the first right after that, then continued straight for a while longer.
In the end, August found himself at the exact dead end that he was expecting to find, and as it moved to show him what stood on the other side…
He froze.
He'd run into the only person he wanted to avoid in this entire labyrinth, the person nobody wanted to see.
Their meeting made the crowd go wild in anticipation.
August Void, a newcomer from a common background who'd surprised them over and over…
…and Eris Noct, an indomitable force that had shown herself to be invincible among her peers.
Were they going to fight?
Was August going to be defeated casually like everyone else who ran into Eris?
Or…would he show them another surprise and find a way out?
The crowd was dying to know.
But as the two's eyes met, there was only silence between them.
There were only five geniuses remaining in the competition.
August, Valerie, Remelia, Eris Noct, and a man named Mikael from the Dawn Dragon Clan.
Now, less than half of them were left in the arena. The rest had been eliminated in some way, shape, or form.
Mikael just took down the last one, leaving the five of them as the only remaining competitors.
He was nowhere near any of the others, but his actions had a profound impact on them all.
Suddenly, a map appeared in front of each of the geniuses.
Its contents were simple.
A rough picture of the maze that showed them the relative structure of the labyrinth without revealing its actual paths and patterns.
And, on it, five red dots.
Not a single one of them misunderstood what those dots were.
Their positions had just been revealed to each other, as had their progress.
Valerie had just created a territory for herself which allowed her to fight Remelia evenly, so she now had the freedom to look at the map.
There were two groups and an individual.
One group was her and Remelia, but the other…
Two dots were moving closer and closer to the labyrinth's center with every passing second. She and Remelia weren't moving, so it was obvious that those were two other geniuses.
Somehow, in the small amount of time that had passed, two people had made an alliance that allowed them to see the finish line.
Which meant that everyone else was falling behind.
"Hey, let's stop!" She yelled, getting Remelia's attention.
They needed to rush towards the center before continuing this battle if either of them wanted a chance to score more than a single point.
Remelia definitely heard her, but she didn't react at all.
BOOM!
She let her flames loose, attacking Valerie as if nothing significant was happening.
She also saw the map. She also understood its implications, but she refused to leave a battle unfinished.
The only thing she learned from the map was that she needed to remove Valerie even faster than before.
"What the hell are you doing?!"
Valerie shouted while she blocked the fire and counterattacked.
Her forest blasted vitality into the blazing inferno it bordered. It vied for the space, extinguishing everything that couldn't incinerate it.
"We need to get to the center! Now isn't the time for us to fight!"
In case her opponent was an idiot, she said it out loud to get it through her skull.
Remelia, however, was more stubborn than Valerie expected.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
It was as if she made her attacks stronger and louder so that she wouldn't have to hear Valerie's voice.
'Right now, training isn't as important as winning.'
She'd gotten everything she could out of her fight with Remelia. From now on, everything she did would just be practice.
Valerie could practice her newly discovered techniques whenever she wanted. Now that she had access to them, the rest of the road was a lot simpler to traverse.
Points didn't come so easily. The people who placed at the top of the leaderboard would blow the competition out of the water. They'd get further and further away every single time their competitors contently received a single point, and in the end, only they would be participating in the final rounds.
Valerie wanted to see this competition to the end, which meant she had to get to the center before those two other geniuses did.
She yelled and screamed at Remelia until she could hardly stand it anymore.
"Listen to me, bitch!"
Valerie was mad. She wanted to fight this fight at first, but the emergence of the position tracker completely offset her plans.
Every second she spent fighting Remelia was destroying her chance to vie for the top spot in this round.
"We don't have…"
BOOM!
"...time for this!"
There was no way around Remelia. She was too good at spatial control. Even if Valerie was able to distance herself from Remelia, the woman would chase her to the ends of the earth.
She still had to find a way through the maze after this battle ended. She couldn't make those kinds of decisions while she was being assailed from behind by a mad genius.
Valerie wantedthirdplace at the very least.
But, with one uninhibited dot moving towards the center on the other side of the two she was most concerned about, she didn't know if she would have a chance.
'Either I destroy this bitch and make it there…'
Valerie's eyes sharpened.
'...or we both go down here.'
It was down to the wire.
None of them realized that they were the last remaining talents in the labyrinth until the map appeared. Now that they knew, all of their plans had severely changed.
A rat race for the center, a true desperate struggle for first place…
Now that it had come to this, the labyrinth challenge returned to its most basic essence. The geniuses dropped their schemes and planning. They dropped their curiosity and ambition. They purely focused on the labyrinth, so they could find a path to the finish.
Still, those two dots that made Valerie so wary were scarily close to the middle already.
Who were they?
What were they doing?
And how had they managed to form an alliance in this free-for-
all environment?
Well, it was a funny story, actually…
***
It happened just under half an hour ago.
August was doing as he did, entertaining the crowd with his various tricks as he traversed the labyrinth at a speed faster than anyone else.
He'd practically understood its entire structure at this point. With the knowledge he'd accumulated, finding his way to the center was simple.
He was responsible for the defeat of yet another genius, this time one from the Karmic Dragon Clan.
His power was esoteric and hard to predict, but at the end of the day, that kind of genius was more skilled in intellectual challenges.
If it came to who could reach the center fastest without any obstacles inhibiting them, then that genius would have been a top contender for first place.
Unfortunately for him, he met August.
His end wasn't even met valiantly in battle.
August used him as a test subject to see if he could properly exploit the labyrinth when he needed to, and he'd found exactly the results he'd wanted.
Regardless, it was a small hiccup in his otherwise unimpeded journey. He continued on his way without thinking much of it.
But, his fortune was also riddled with some chaos.
His relatively simple labyrinth challenge ended with a single encounter.
He rushed through a straight corridor and took a left turn. He took the first right after that, then continued straight for a while longer.
In the end, August found himself at the exact dead end that he was expecting to find, and as it moved to show him what stood on the other side…
He froze.
He'd run into the only person he wanted to avoid in this entire labyrinth, the person nobody wanted to see.
Their meeting made the crowd go wild in anticipation.
August Void, a newcomer from a common background who'd surprised them over and over…
…and Eris Noct, an indomitable force that had shown herself to be invincible among her peers.
Were they going to fight?
Was August going to be defeated casually like everyone else who ran into Eris?
Or…would he show them another surprise and find a way out?
The crowd was dying to know.
But as the two's eyes met, there was only silence between them.
