MMORPG : Ancient WORLD - C.530 A Tough Choice

"Haha, Haa-ha-HAHAHAHAHA...."

The dimly lit chamber echoed with growing laughter as Alex stood to his feet, staring at the system screen with a smile stretched across his face.

'This is it. This is my chance to earn a breakthrough,' Alex thought, his mind analyzing all the information he received from the realm ruler.

As Alex understood the information, his smile faded, replaced with a grim look of understanding and thoughtfulness.

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Name: The Great Battlefield

Objective: Kill the Chained One.

Participants: 92/300

Reward: ??? Number of law tokens depending on the role played by the Adventurer and ??? Grade wish from the Realm Ruler for the winner and ??? A single artifact from the Realm Treasury ??? section for the winner.

Info: The Conquest will take place inside a realm pocket of the Great Battlefield, in the area of the inverted pyramid.

?- The battlefield is a vast expanse, scattered with remnants of the Great Battle and home to various clans, each with its own unique strengths and secrets.

?- The adventurers will need to collect any of the three key shards from the six clans inhabiting the inside and the surroundings of the inverted pyramid.

?- Once the key is completed, the adventurer can use it to open the locked chamber located at the pyramid's tip.

?- The ultimate winner of the Conquest will be the one who kills the Chained One, but every participant has the chance to earn great rewards both from their contributions and by exploring the vast battlefield.

Accept / Decline

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'So this is the infamous ultimate Apex Conquest,' Alex thought, feeling anger welling up in his mind, only to be suppressed by reason.

It was true that only a single individual would win in an Apex Conquest, but that did not mean that many, if not all, of the participants could not benefit from a game.

However, the more a game offered, the worse the price it took from the participant, and the game before Alex and his first champions game perfectly described it.

The greatest value for adventurers was not law tokens, opportunities, or anything else the ancestral realm had to offer, but it was solely time because everything else could be earned from the realm and their origin world in different forms, yet time was the only thing that could not be earned in the way the realm could offer it.

It was true that all adventurers came to the ancestral realm for the great opportunities it could offer them, but the true desire of everyone was accelerated time.

Time was of most value to all adventurers because they had exchanged ten years of it for one year time of their world, and this deal only held value if they returned to their world because staying meant cutting their road to the cosmos.

So, where the first game was low grade with decent rewards for the winner, it offered nothing to the other two hundred and ninety-nine participants who lost not only a law token at their death but also a day's worth of time, but that was an unspoken price to pay to participate.

The game offered to Alex now was much different, of much higher worth, offering rewards to almost every participant, so the price to participate this time would not just be a law token and a few hours or days, but it would be much more.

Alex did not know the details of how rich the location would be, but he comprehended that even at its worst, the game would take close to two to three weeks to end because the participants were directed to work together. 𝒻𝑟𝑒𝓮𝔀ℯ𝓫𝓃𝑜𝓋𝑒𝘭.𝑐𝓸𝓶

But if the location was too rich with opportunities for the worthy and the inhabitants and participants they needed to deal with were tough, the game could stretch to more than a month or two, if not longer.

If it had been a normal time, Alex would have jumped on this opportunity like any other because of the experience he could gain, but times were not normal, and he could not spare a week or two on a wild goose chase, let alone a few months.

'The objective is to kill the chained one, but if it's a battle of strength below Ruler Rank, then I am confident of winning even if the said battle takes place with ten other individuals aiming to kill the same target,'

'The concerning point is that nowhere does it say that the chamber will be accessible only to the adventurers who opened it or, more precisely, solely to the adventurers.'

'If they will be involved, then how strong are the inhabitants of this inverted pyramid, and how strong will this chained one be?' Alex thought, a chain of questions and answers flooding his mind.

After some thinking, Alex concluded that both possibilities could play out, as it was uncommon but entirely possible for the inhabitants of the enclosed realm to be involved in the game.

The more Alex thought, the more he sensed that he should not join this game since it could be a massive waste of time. But, on the other hand, if he secured a victory, his problem would be solved, and he would get a massive boost to the rate at which he grew.

Alex comprehended the value of having independent clones physically as strong as him, capable of learning and growing, and giving all their experience to him whenever he desired.

If Alex could just use the two clones he was capable of creating, then he could grow at an exceptionally fast rate by tackling two completely different situations while he himself worked on something entirely different.

While Alex has yet to find out if his clones will be able to use his elemental manipulations and skills, even without all of them, they will have all his stats and his ability to wield his battle arts and other self-created skills, and these alone would make them one of the strongest below the rank of an Elemental Ruler.

'Now who is here to disturb me?' Alex thought, annoyed by the loud banging on the door of his chamber.

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"Outside the Chamber"

"I am telling you to leave my senior brother alone, or he will deal with you accordingly, and your status as core disciples will not help," A young girl spoke aloud to the three men banging their fists on the circular door of the spherical chamber.

All three men were tall, well-built, and handsome, with two of them adorned in silvery white robes, while the last wore pitch-dark robes with the skull of a wolf imprinted on his back, simmering like stars under the moonlight and making him stand out.

The man who was clearly the leader, as he was standing back with his hands clasped behind his back while the other two hammered at the door, looked the girl dead in the eyes as a palpable silvery aura began to emanate from his body, cloaking the immediate surroundings in mere moments.

"Junior Qin, you should leave this place before you get hurt," The man said, his voice laced with an icy edge.

The young girl, as if she'd seen a ghost, instantly fell silent, her mouth clamped shut despite her efforts to speak, and for a moment, her eyes were cloaked with panic as she gazed at the door.

The door creaked open, and darkness seeped out, engulfing any moonlight that touched it, and seeing this, the two hammering the door quickly leaped back before drawing their swords.

For a moment, there was only a pair of inky black dots suspended in the shadows, set against the backdrop of a dimly lit chamber, before the dots moved, and a man came into view.

"Aeon, I warned you to stay away from my Yue, but you have to ignore it because you think that we can't harm you—" The sentence of the golden-haired man was cut short as darkness engulfed him and the surroundings.