Chapter 2299: More New entries
Sam looked at the young man who came from the other side of the hall.
He didn"t look good. His armor is broken, and there are several wounds of various kinds all over his body.
He is panting heavily, with blood seeping out his mouth with every breath.
It is safe to say that he has a really rough time.
He stood on the neutral tile, similar to the one Sam stood when he just entered the room, as he checked the room out.
The first thing that caught his attention was of course the the large formation of barriers that are blocking the huge puppets. The puppets are banging and attacking the formations continuously creating a lot of noise.
So, they are hard to miss.
The next thing he saw were the golden pillars and the eye-catching lotuses.
He only noticed Sam after that. His eyes lit up for a moment, but it was immediately gone and was replaced with a frown.
Sam took his hand off the energy core and stood up.
"What is this place? What is the problem here?" The young man asked Sam.
Sam didn"t answer immediately and looked at him up and down. Because he is one of the few people who was after Sam in the Norse city, he is from the Hel academy and to maintain this guy"s ranking the people outside have been trying to kill Sam for the past few days.
Sam didn"t answer his question and replied with something else instead.
"If you want to leave this place alive. Don"t move from that spot. That is all you need to do.
If you interfere in my work, you will be dead. That"s all I am going to say."
Sam didn"t bother anymore and turned to examine the core once again.
"You f.u.c.king little..."
"I would hold that tongue if I were you. With all the annoyance you guys created in the past few days, I am not in a good mood. I might just do something to relieve that annoyance a bit. So, shut the f.u.c.k up and stand there."
He then closed his eyes, trying to get a more accurate picture of the energy network. It took an awful lot of time for him to understand it.
This is very troublesome.
Just like he expected, the formations created by the lotus petals are not just there to unlock the puppets. In fact, that is just the tip of the iceberg. An auxiliary task at best.
The real deal is the formations themselves. Individually, they are not such a big deal, they are just channeling the energy in a certain way. However, judging from the pattern each formation is creating and extrapolating from there, there are a bunch of possibilities that he could imagine and speculate and all of them are dangerous to him.
All these formations will be layered together and then create a killing formation.
Sam thought for a moment and turned to the other guy.
"How many stages did you go through while you came here?"
"Huh?" The young man looked at Sam in surprise, then he looked angry.
"You dare ask me something like that after all the nonsense you spewed?"
"Just answer the d.a.m.n question. Do you want to get out of here or not? I am the only one who understands what is happening in this room and I don"t believe a guy like you who wants to use the academy"s power to secure a rank in the top ten is capable of understanding this in a short time.
And I dare say that even if you understand it, I can sabotage it before you can form a thought. So, answer the d.a.m.n question quickly."
The young man gritted his teeth and said.
"I completed four stages. After I found a door through the initial room, I went through two more mazes before I entered the circular corridor. I took an entrance and got trapped in the energy beam tunnel.
From there, I came here."
"Which side did you find the door open in the starting room?"
"On the right side?"
"Did you encounter anyone else in the middle?"
"Two people. One of them was trapped in the energy beam tunnel along with me. He quit after he got his arm cut off.
Another one, I met in the maze, I don"t know where he went."
Sam nodded in understanding.
It seems like he has skipped past a few stages. Maybe because he blasted open the ceiling in the first challenge and just entered the corridor directly.
Then, more people might have encountered each other and some more might have been eliminated.
Sam without even knowing has come to the core area, which is also the final stage of the compet.i.tion.
As he thought up to this point...
*GRRR*
The rumbling sound came again. He turned to the right and saw another door open. Another came out of there. He is a candidate from Viswa Karma Academy. One of the seeds and the person who stayed as second place right after Sam.
However, he is not the only one that came. There is another man who came from the same side.
He is someone Sam is a bit more familiar with. A person from the Hephaestus Academy.
He is one of the few who is suffering from paying the weekly payments in the hub. "Sam?" The Hephaestus-student looked at Sam in surprise which didn"t take long to turn into
anger.
After all, every single of the Olympian students hold a grudge against Sam at some level. Even the ones that are not out to get him, hold that grudge against him to some extent.
He was about to step forward when Viswa-Student stopped him.
"Don"t step forward. The tiles are odd. We need to understand the situation first." With that, he turned to Sam and observed the golden pillar.
Only the golden pillar next to Sam has its surfaces open. So, he guessed Sam is the first one here and the one with the most knowledge.
"What is the situation here?"
Sam thought for a moment before explaining briefly.
"My first step triggered the twenty-eight golden pillars and the lotuses. The formations created by lotus petals are bringing those puppets out. Just like that..."
Sam said as he pointed at the tile on a wall.
*SWOOSH*
It slid open because the fifth formation had been completed and the puppet came out.
*THUD*
It is another beast-type puppet, but this time it is modeled after a vulture.
He must say that it looked quite vicious.
Sam observed the puppet from afar. The puppet didn"t attack him directly like its
predecessors. Instead, it looked around. After some observation, it went straight towards the
Hel-Student.
"f.u.c.k"
The student cursed and immediately decided to run. His direction was straight ahead,
towards Sam.
However, as soon as he took a step forward.
*GRRR*
A pillar came out of that tile and it pushed him up.
"WOAH..."
He exclaimed, with just one foot on the pillar as it rose up while he tried to balance himself.
Sam"s face turned cold as he looked at the pillar that came out. It is golden in color and there are grooves, pins, and an energy core on the surfaces that he could see from there.
"f.u.c.k. DON"T RUN BLINDLY YOU IDIOT"
Sam screamed at the Hel-Student who was about to get off the golden pillar and run on the floor. At the moment another twenty-eight golden pillars in different locations are coming out along with the golden lotuses on top.
Sam knew the puppet count is going to increase because of this. If the red pillars are blindly activated they will have fewer chances to trap the puppets and defend themselves.
The Hel-student couldn"t care less and just jumped off the golden pillar.
He activated the immediate adjacent tile which turned into a red pillar. Sam wanted to kill that guy immediately, because the red pillar almost blocked the othe
surface. There is only a gap as big as a couple of fingers in between.
Sam couldn"t hold back anymore and activated light fusion.
*SWOOSH*
He jumped off from the golden pillar and landed in the middle, activating a red pillar. From there, he jumped again to reach the red pillar on which the Hel-student is standing.
*CAW*
As the vulture closed in on them, he caught a hold of him and jumped back to the middle pillar along with him. While holding that guy like a sack on his shoulders, Sam started jumping around luring the vulture and trapping it in the middle with a formation.
He took a lot more pillars than he wanted.
"What a waste"
He thought to himself and ran back to the golden pillar. On his way back, he left the hel-
student on the nearest red pillar.
That guy is still in shock about what is happening.
After clinging to the golden pillar, Sam looked at the new set of golden pillars. He addressed
the Viswa-Student.
"I think you are the only other guy that has some brain cells left. You want to cooperate?"