"Five minutes before the connection!"

A building-wide announcement filled the halls and rooms, alerting everyone inside.

The players now knew they had to hurry up and log in. The technicians leaned over their screens, watching out for any kind of possible bugs that would delay the tournament. The service women stood guard by the rooms of their assigned players, ready to intervene were their participants late to join.

The entire compound filled up with noises of people busying around with their jobs. And in this crucial moment, only a single room within the entire building remained perfectly calm.

"Two minutes before the connection!"

The speaker mounted right above the doors to the secret room sounded the announcement.

"My lady, it's time," one of the servants announced, turning their eyes towards the visitor from another world.

"I understand," a roughly two-and-a-half meter lady with surprisingly delicate features and pointy ears stood up from her chair and approached the doors.

Yet, rather than pushing through, she looked over her shoulder.

"The hall is clear," the servant announced after a short moment once a notification appeared on the tablet in his hands.

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"Then let's get this done," the lady decided, pressing her palm against a special panel to the side of the doors. And as soon as the doors slid to the sides, the lady walked out into the massive hall.

Just like her servant reported, not a soul was left in this place. With all the players locked in their rooms and the servants going to the other parts of the building, the massive hall emptied out.

A group of servants followed the holy lady to the hall. And by the time the lady reached the very middle of the room, some of them started to open up hidden panels to the side of each player room, pulling out thick cables from a compartment hidden in the walls.

'The great rune is still intact,' the lady thought, watching how the second group of her servants uncovered a complicated drawing hidden underneath the floor panels.

Soon, all the cables were brought up to the center of the hall where the lady stood. And then, one of the servants approached her with a small knife on top of his extended palm.

"It's time, my lady," he reported, lowering his head when the woman reached out for the blade.

"It's time indeed," she said before raising her head and throwing a glance at the room.

Now that the work was all done, all the servants hurried to leave the place. For but a moment, they swarmed the hidden door, only for it to slide back and separate them from the hall a moment later.

"May my sacrifice bright forth the salvation," the woman whispered, now all alone in the hall.

And then, she cut her right palm open, before swinging her hand and throwing the drops of blood all over the rune.

The drawing suddenly started to shine as the holy blood sank into it. The sparks appeared in fifty parts of the rune where the thick cables connected it to the complicated machinery within each of the player's rooms.

Second by second, the rune continued to brighten up, soon illuminating an entire hall on its own. And right when the light was about to fry the lady's eyes, she brought her hands up and shouted.

"Gate, open!"