The person that had caught Alex followed him the moment he sensed him running away. He sped up, trying to catch up to Alex, but he couldn't exactly catch up.
Alex flew in a random direction, with his spiritual sense constantly shifting through the debris around him, paying attention to everything since any of those could be another human. He couldn't miss them.
At the same time, he was also looking for anything that could help him stay in the secret realm for a bit longer.
At first, he panicked due to the sudden arrival of a threat, but once he started running away, he realized that the threat wasn't as big of a threat as he might have expected it to be.
To his relief, the person following him wasn't strong at all. If they were strong, they would have already caught up to him with the speed he was flying at.
Alex had deliberately slowed down after realizing this and had concluded that this person could not be stronger than the early Saint Core realm.
At the same time, this person's spiritual sense wasn't that large either. With only a dozen or so meters, it would take them a significant risk to grab onto Alex's numbers.
Alex flew around, letting the person tail him just enough that he didn't get close enough and get him. As he flew, his main concern was to not come into another person's domain.
This was difficult with over 40 thousand people being sent into the secret realm.
Alex wasn't sure how large this place was as no one who had come here before had ever managed to completely map the location. However, he knew that meeting a person every 5 minutes was a common thing here.
So, he was careful. His spiritual sense slightly increased around him, slowly moving from 15 to 20 meters in radius. One thing he didn't want was for the person following him suddenly increase his spiritual sense by forcing it to the extreme and getting his number.
As he was doing that, Alex came across another person in front of him and their spiritual senses collided at the same time.
For a moment, the both of them panicked and prepared to run in the other direction. However, when both of them noticed the object that was flying in between them, they knew that they had to run toward it.
A small dagger with runes carved all over the blade floated in between them, with a spirit stone attached to its hilt. Even without looking at it closely, anyone could tell that this was one of the artifacts that they were supposed to find.
"A Dagger?" Alex's face somewhat brightened when he saw that with his senses. It wasn't the best thing he could find, but it was something alright.
The other person ran for it, but Alex was faster. He teleported, arriving next to it in an instant, and grabbed onto the dagger.
At the same time, his spiritual sense landed on the girl that was coming for the dagger and he focused on the number in the back. Without hesitation, he wrote the number onto the dagger with his spiritual sense.
There were 3 slots to put the numbers inside the dagger, and one of them had just been used.
"Dammit!" the girl cried out, but even as she did, Alex sensed the familiar aura of teleportation gather around her as it sent her back outside into the island.
It hadn't even been half an hour since the competition began, and she was already out.
Alex felt somewhat bad for her, but this was not the time to lose focus. He immediately turned around and dashed toward the person that had been previously following him.
He saw a man's surprised face when he sensed Alex's spiritual sense reach him, but his spiritual sense hadn't reached Alex at all. It was then he realized that he had been following someone way stronger than he could manage.
He panicked, but he kept his wits and rushed forward to find Alex and see his number. However, by the time he did that, Alex had already seen his.
He wrote the number into the dagger and in the next moment the man was teleported away, leaving behind a simple bracer.
"Ugh!" Alex frowned the moment he saw it. "A bracer."
"What? Why do you sound so dejected?" Godslayer couldn't help but ask as it was looking at everything that was happening outside.
"A bracer is the worst thing you can find in this place," Alex answered. "Well, I guess finding something is better than nothing though."
"A bracer is bad?" Godslayer asked. "What about the dagger you found?"
"It's better than the bracer, but only slightly. It's still considered one of the worst 3 artifacts to find in this place," he explained.
He wore the bracer on his arm and started making a pile of debris around him to mark the place he had been to.
"The 3 worst? What do you mean?" Godslayer asked.
"Well, there are 7 types of artifacts that you can find in this place. 3 are bad, 3 are good, and 1 is just… godly."
"This bracer for example allows me to write just 1 person's number on it. When I do, it becomes useless, and get taken out of this place. This dagger allows for 3 numbers, and it will also be taken away when I'm done with it."
"Finally, there is I believe a Hat that can be used to write 5 different numbers on it. The hat, along with the bracer and the dagger is considered as the 3 bad artifacts to find in this place."
"Which is quite funny as they are the only ones you can find in massive numbers. There should be hundreds, if not thousands of them floating around in this space, and are the ones that can be easily found," Alex explained.
"What? That old man outside didn't say that," Godslayer said.
"He didn't, and he won't," Alex said. "They leave it all for you to find on your own and come in with that information. If you fail, you can always try again next year after all."
"Hmm," Godslayer mulled. "If those three are the bad ones, then what is considered the good ones?"
"A shield, a mirror, and a necklace," Alex said. "Those are the good ones, with each one being increasingly better."
"The shield has 50 different slots, over 8 times better than the 3 bad ones combined. That's good and all, but then the Mirror has 200 slots, which is just… a lot."
"And finally, the necklace has a thousand different slots. If I'm not wrong, there should only be 5 of those hovering around in this place."
"Woah!" Godslayer couldn't help but react. "That's… that escalation is almost unfair to the unlucky ones."
"I suppose," Alex said. "But luck is a skill as well. Cultivators can rarely make it far in their journey without luck."
"You're not… wrong," Godslayer said. "So, if something with 1000 different slots is considered good, then what's godly?"
"A one-of-a-kind black, nameless book," Alex said. "It technically only has one slot from what I remember reading."
"One slot?" Godslayer asked. "Then how is it good?"
"It has a single slot, but every time you use the slot, it empties again. In a way, it has endless slots, making it the greatest artifact to find in this secret realm."
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