THIRD TEST: The Hunting Game.
OBJECTIVE: Get as many performance points as possible through hunting.
RULE 1: This test is a test of power, ability to adapt, and luck. Examinees are to use their brain, brawn, and luck to acquire as many performance points in one hour. The test begins as soon as you arrive at the arena, so you're currently running out of time to hunt.
RULE 2: The sea is full of aquatic monsters. They will attack if you enter the sea. Kill them to earn points. The stronger the monster, the more points will be earned for killing it.
RULE 3: Every being in the arena possesses rings of light above their heads. These rings represent how many performance points will be earned for killing a beast or eliminating an examinee.
RULE 4: The rings of light represent 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, and so on and so FORTH. They correlate to the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh transformations of beasts, and so on.
RULE 5: 100% of the points of a beast will be earned when it is killed, while only 30% of the total points of an examinee will be earned by the person who eliminates them.
RULE 6: To quit Just say, "I surrender." Saying this will make the end of your test. You will also be eliminated and returned to the teleportation platform if you faint or become unconscious. As long as you don't surrender or faint, your participation in the test will continue, and when the test ends, all your injuries will be healed.
RULE 7: The points you earn in this test will be relevant in your evaluation for the entire examination. You can also use your points to exchange for cultivation techniques after the examination if you fail to gain admission into a sect.
They were simple rules. He understood their implications as soon as he read them. And when he looked around him, he saw that the other examinees understood them too.
Everyone on the island had become uneasy. They were looking at each other with wariness and were trying to distance themselves from each other.
Unfortunately, the island was small. The island was about 100 meters across. It was circular and completely bare.
The island was sandy, so it looked like a portion of a beach was carved out and placed in the middle of the water.
No one was fighting each other yet because there was nothing to gain from eliminating each other yet. The matter at hand was to decide on how to hunt.
Arthur thought to himself, "Currently, the only way to earn points is to hunt beasts. That will require entering the water. That will be dangerous."
The water is where the beasts are. To kill them, one must enter the water. If they can't swim, then they are already doomed.
But being able to swim or not is not the major problem. The major problem is that there is no way to determine what kind of beast one will encounter when they enter the water.
According to the rules, the weakest monster that they can encounter in the monster is a monster at the seventh transformation. It reminded him of what his first teacher in the training center of the Dyson family had said about the need to possess a minimum of cultivation at the seventh transformation if they want to achieve anything worthwhile in the regional exams.
His mother had also said the same thing. But the seventh transformation is just the minimum. The examinees can encounter beasts at the tenth transformation and the artificial eleventh transformation.
Apart from the quality of the beast in the water, there is also the matter of the quantity of enemies. After all, there is nothing in the rules that says that the beasts will only attack the examinees one by one. So it is possible for them to be ganged up on as soon as they enter the water.
What they will encounter in the water is a matter of luck. But regardless of luck, one will still face the same problem of how to fight in the water.
Humans are land creatures, so they can only exert the limit of their paper on the ground. They need their feet to be stable on the ground, and they need air to use their breathing techniques.
Fighting in the water is something that most of the examinees have never done in their lives. It is also something that they never thought that they would have to do. Yet, they are being forced to do it for this test.
This is where the ability to adapt becomes a quality that is tested. Without the ability to adapt, an examinee at the tenth transformation will find it very difficult to kill a fish at the seventh transformation in the water. They might even be toyed around with or dragged down to the depths of the sea where they will drown.
Unfortunately, the problems they will face don't end there. Even if an examinee manages to kill a beast, they will have to make the choice between staying in the water and continuing to fight or going over to an island to catch their breath.
Both options represent danger. Staying in the water means that the beasts will continue to attack them, and they can be easily surrounded and overwhelmed by enemies. But going onto land is not a good option either.
Going to an island means that one will be open to being attacked by other examinees. Not that there is no possibility of that happening in the water. But it is more likely to happen on the island since there will be people waiting to take advantage of those coming out of the water who have just escaped with their lives.
The more Arthur thought about these issues, the more he chuckled. He thought to himself, "This is a test of power. Either I am strong alone, or I work together with others and gain power in unity."