Having collected his thoughts, Nem decided to follow Neko’s advice and start on his solo missions. The first mission he received was a survival quest. What’s a survival quest? Simple, the player will be placed into an area where mobs will continuously spawn. Different survival quests lead to different mobs. As the survival quest continues, it will constantly upgrade it’’s tier depending on how long you’ve stayed alive. You can stay in the area until you die and once you do die, there will be no penalties and your score will be recorded.

For the game developers, this was a way to teach players dodging skills and mechanics they’ll need later on in higher levels. For players in Tomer’s Village, however, it was the second test for newcomers. Since all your scores are recorded, it’s very simple for a guild to check up on what score you got to see how strong your overall mechanics are. With a little bit of research and plot convenience, Nem already knew what the survival quests were.

After accepting the quest, he was instantly teleported into the colosseum. Looking around him, there were no other players and no signs of any other life forms. There was only a huge number on the middle of the stage that read “30” and was constantly counting down.

*In the real Colosseum*

A huge uproar sounded out from the crowd as another heated battle between noobs was taking place. As spells launched through the air and weapons clashed, the climax of the battle was soon approaching. The 2 noobs flung away from each other and landed on opposite sides of the ring. Both fighters were panting heavily. Their battle was not simple at all. It was by far one of the most intense matches to take place that day.

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Just as the two fighters were about to re-engage onto each other, a huge commotion rose as a huge screen popping into existence above the stage. At first, no one could recognize the figure in the screen. The only thing the audience recognized was the big “24” that was counting down. Seeing the number, many of the veteran players already knew what was going on. The new players, however, didn’t understand until one of the observers yelled, “A survival quest is starting!”

By this point, the two fighters had awkwardly stopped fighted and opted to stand in silence, as the audience’s focus was no longer on them. As the two fighters started to leave the stage, the audience was pondering who this mysterious figure on the screen can be. Suddenly, an onlooker seemed to remember a shadow in a deep corner of his mind. This shadow belonged to a man who had fought a Batteur without using any skills. Although he had lost, his skills left an imprint on this person’s mind. As he remembered this image, the onlooker yelled, “Hey! Isn’t that the kid who fought the Batteur earlier?”

Batteur was a fairly rare class, and because of that, there was only 1 fight with a batteur that took place that day. As the crowd recalled this event, they started to remember Nem, who had shown great skill during his fight. The crowd’s whispering got louder as they discussed how well they thought Nem would do. Although his skills looked promising on the ring, he had eventually lost the fight and his reputation in front of all the guild recruiters present that day. Due to that, not many of the people had a positive opinion of him.

Even though they didn’t view him as that important, they couldn’t dismiss the fact that for a moment it seemed that Nem could’ve won the fight against Gurion. Not knowing what to think about Nem, the crowd’s anticipation grew and they quickly forgot about the intense battle that was in the midst just moments ago. Their anticipation only grew once the numbers reached “5”.

It started with one person who said “5” out loud but soon after many followed and the audience started to count along.

“4”

“3”

“2”

“1”