GREED: ALL FOR WHAT?

contemporary romance



To win the 2nd challenge, one has to reach the 1st ring by the end of the 6th day and be the last one on the central ring by the end of the 7th day. Hiding to ensure survival will not work. You will be eliminated when sections of the arena get destroyed so you have to continue moving forward. Some will be lucky to have been teleported straight into the 1st ring so they won't have to face the challenges that come with crossing the map.

He met one such challenge soon after he started walking. He would have loved to fly but a no-flight ban has been hardwired into the law matrix so he can't fly. He also doesn't have the empowerment of the world in his brand so can't do something like making himself a rank 10 immediately. 

There are no steps of power in this challenge so no one will have any augmentation of the world. So he is back to being suppressed by 99% to the same level as others. These are all limitations of being in control of just the law matrix. He can only manipulate what is allowed in the law matrix. He can't change anything fundamental at all unless he gets access to the core.

He can't complain about these limitations since he isn't supposed to be in control of the law matrix at all. The only edge he is supposed to have is his skill just like every other competition in this challenge. So he should be equally stumped by the loot box that he came across. The empowerment of his body by momentum will not be able to help him in making up his mind about the loot box.

"To open or not to open." He muttered as he examined the large cube made of fragile black wood.

The loot box is a large cubic box with sides of 1 meter. It can contain good things like weapons, armor, healing pills, and storage rings. It can also contain a monster. You can't know. You can only break the box and hope for the best. It is called a loot box even though it might be containing a monster that will enlarge and hound you after the box has been broken because if you kill the monster, you will get your loot inside it. So either way, you will get loot. It will either be easy and immediate after you break the loot box or after engaging and winning a fight with a difficult monster that popped out of the loot in the box.

He knocked on the box as he crooned, "What do we have here? What do the arena spirits have in store for me?"

His question is meant to tease and annoy the arena spirits. He already knows what's inside the loot box. It is a monster. He just asked that question to mock the arena spirits. His control over the law matrix enables him to know and see through what's around him. He knows there is a monster in the loot box just like knows that there are 10,452 people in a 10-kilometer radius around him with the closest person being someone hiding within a burrow in the ground some 473 meters away. 

He knows all of these and the arena spirits know that he knows it so his question was to mock the futility of their efforts. The rules of the competition and the limits they enforce might have robbed him of power but they can't rob him of information. Information is powerful. In the right hands, information is good enough.

He left the loot box and headed for the nearest one. He knows that there is a monster within the loot box so he won't be caught unprepared for it. He can easily kill the monster so he is not leaving because he is afraid of it. He is leaving because even though he can see the monster within the loot box, he doesn't know what the monster will give him after he kills it. The only thing he is sure about is that the loot will not be something worthwhile. That's why left the loot box.

The things contained within the loot box are set when the world was created but what they will drop is not set. That is up to the arena spirits. They decide what will drop. If there's uncertainty, then it is not worth the effort for him to kill the monster because the odds are literally against him. 

He is also leaving the smart fellow that hid within the burrow in the ground when he saw Soverick. It takes some applaudable self-awareness to decide to dig into the ground and hide at the first sight of a predator. He is not letting the person go because he cares but because killing the person will be a waste of time too since that person doesn't have any feats. The person is worth the same to him as the loot box, almost nothing.

The need for feats is the driving force of conflict within this challenge. Their use has not been stated but the arena spirit said they will be needed for the 3rd challenge. Winning the 2nd challenge is a fanciful dream for a lot of competitors. Many are smart enough to not think of themselves as powerful or lucky enough to be the last man standing among thousands of competitors. So the bulk of the competitors will hunt others for feats. It is a more realistic goal and it is very achievable.

The return for killing someone with a feat is very high. You get to take half of their feats as long as they have more than 1 feats or almost half in the case of an odd number of feats. But there's a catch. You can't know who has feats and who doesn't. You have to kill someone to be sure. So the quest will cause most of the conflicts within the competition.

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