"This time, the challenge will be done in doubles, that is why there are 26 teams competing in the challenge this time," Drayce said with grandeur as everybody looked at him with a weird expressions.
"No?" Drayce asked, "alright, well, as I said, the challenge this time will need two teams working together in order to be completed, of course, if any of you do anything inappropriate to the team you are competing with, you will be disqualified and punished."
Murmurs could be heard as Drayce finished his words, this was the first time that two teams were forced to cooperate in order to take part in the challenge.
"Also, teams from the same region will not be able to join together." The second comment from Drayce made Elijah and the others turn from being incredibly happy to being annoyed. They had thought that finally, they would be able to get the number 1 spot as however Reign and the others who chose to join would definitely have an easy time during the challenge, only for cold water to be poured on them by Drayce.
Drayce had immediately smiled at Reign and the others after finishing his sentence, the rule was probably made because of them. After all, even though the teams that were taking part in the challenge had improved and were much stronger compared to before, Reign highly doubted that he and the others would lose against any of them.
"The challenge this time will be a fairly simple one, also, you will be delighted to hear that you will be resurrected upon death, something that will be of course not present in most challenges," Drayce said as everybody turned happy, there were some teams that had lost some members in the previous challenge and they had previously even considered not joining this challenge at all.
"So, the challenge this time is perhaps the simplest and easiest one ever, survive," Drayce said as he suddenly looked around him.
"You will be put in this desert, and not only will you have to survive the many powerful monsters that roam it, some even Tier II, but you will also need to find shelter and supplies, no inventory or spatial ring usage is allowed during the challenge."
"What?!" Everybody shouted in disbelief, if they couldn't access their spatial rings, then simply surviving was definitely going to be a huge problem.
"Well of course not, the challenge is to survive, if I let you use it, most of you could go on for days without starving since you definitely packed a lot of food and water, so no, spatial rings and such are not allowed."
"Now, you may find a team to team up with, those that didn't manage to find another team to team up with will be automatically teamed up with another team after a period of time has passed," Drayce said as he simply continued levitating above them while a timer had appeared above him.
The timer above Drayce showed 10 minutes and the countdown started. Reign and the others were simply standing in place as they didn't really care that much about who they would be teamed up with, as long as the team wasn't just dead weight, which none of the teams present are, they would be able to work together.
Multiple teams had approached and called Elijah and the others over in order to team up with them. Nobody had approached Reign and the others because nobody dared to do it, those that were new had found out from the other teams about who Reign and the others were and how overwhelming they had been in the first challenge.
Their auras as well spoke for themselves as they were leaking a small portion of their mana out, enough to make others sense of how powerful they were. Even though everybody wanted to team up with them, they were afraid that they would not only get denied by Reign but that they would be humiliated for asking something like that as well.
"So, we're not gonna approach anybody?" Shadow asked Reign as the latter simply nodded.
"These guys don't even have the guts to come to us and ask us to team up with them, why would we go to them?" Wolf asked Shadow as he took a look around them.
Even the teams that had been in the top 5 didn't approach them, the Gamers had teamed up with the Dark Scythe while the Blood Angels tried to approach the Ice Angels, only to be declined by the leader.
Suddenly, an unexpected situation occurred as the leader of the Ice Angels walked toward Reign and the others.
"Hey, maybe you waving at her worked, look man, she's smitten," Shadow said before Reign punched him in the side Shadow continued smiling whilst enduring the pain.
"We'd like to team up with you." The girl said without any emotion. Her blue eyes stared at Reign as he smiled slightly.
"Well, I don't think anyone here is against that." Everybody nodded at Reign upon his words, they knew how powerful the Ice Angels were and her frost ability would definitely be incredibly helpful in the desert.
Of course, they didn't think it would be that helpful during battles, but as a walking AC that would cool down their surroundings and make the heat much more tolerable during the day. As for the night when the temperature became much lower, they had Wolf and his flames to warm everybody up.
"My ability will be weakened in the desert, I won't be as powerful as I normally am, but I can still help out during fights and also make the high heat tolerable during the day." Reign and the others were surprised to hear her say such words.
That was pretty much her admitting her weakness and volunteering to be a walking AC, something that none of them had expected.
"Why say that?"
"Why not?"
"Well, you just told us that you won't be as useful, what makes you think that we will accept in the end?" Reign asked the woman who simply shrugged her shoulders.
"If we team up then you will naturally find this out, I don't want to start off the challenge with you not trusting us, also, the flame guy will be useful for keeping everybody warm during the night while my ability will be stronger thanks to the low temperature." The girl said as she glanced at Wolf before switching her sight back to Reign.
"Well, to be honest, we don't really have high requirements for teams to team up with us, so we accept, but, why choose us?"
"Because I want to win." The girl said before turning around and calling her team over. The thirteen people that made up her team together with her arrived and carefully looked at Reign and the others.
Even though they were all Tier I combatants and 3 of them had managed to reach level 70 and above, when faced with Reign and the others, they were simply far too weak, weaker than the team of ash demons that were killed by Reign and the others before.
The Ice Angels simply stayed near Reign and the others while the other teams looked at them in shock. With the strongest two teams teaming up, the chances of anyone else winning the challenge were incredibly low.
Not all had the same mindset, however. The challenge this time was to survive and even though the strength of the teams played a big role, it wasn't everything. As long as one was able to stay clear of the monsters and find supplies, they could survive for a long time, perhaps even longer than them.
Luck would play a major role in this challenge as whoever managed to find an oasis early on would win, there was the question of whether or not there were such things to be found, but most were certain that there were, how else would they find water in the desert, after all.
The two new teams that Reign had sensed before had joined two other teams that were not as powerful, even though he wondered about their decision, he wasn't that interested as he was still quite certain that they posed no threat.
The teams were of course allowed to attack others, something that everyone had to be wary about since there were teams that were much weaker compared to the top ones and would quickly get destroyed if attacked.
There were even teams that barely had Tier I combatants as most of them decided to not do the challenges that were a bit hard to do and simply continued leveling, only to regret it after finding out just how much they had missed out on.
There were even players that were close to reaching level 100 thanks to not being Tier I. If one discarded the first evolution and continued leveling, the exp they needed was much lower compared to how much Tier I combatants like Reign and the others needed in order to level up.
Still, their powers were minuscule and they would get killed by any Tier I monster that was their level or even those that were 10 levels below them.
As the timer ran out, all the teams were put in pairs and the challenge started, Drayce wished them all good luck before they were all teleported out of the safe zone.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢