The tenth obstacle was a swarm of giant bees. Each bee was weak and easy to kill. But they had the same speed as the players, and their stinger was deadly.
Their stingers were as powerful as armor-piercing rounds from an anti-material rifle. So they possessed a strong penetrating power.
After stinging someone, the bees would then inject venom that causes intense pain and paralysis.
There are exactly 10 of them. If just one of them succeeds in stinging the player, the player will become unable to resist the others and would be stung to death.
Evil Eye saw Augustus handle these bees and shook her head.
She knew she couldn't continue. She was injured, and she couldn't attack the bees all at once because they would surround her. Once she is surrounded, she will die.
She didn't want to die, so she decided to surrender now that she had the chance. But before she surrenders, she contemplates using the game points that she has earned to increase the difficulty of the obstacle in front of Augustus.
If she does that and wins, she will be able to eliminate him and also earn a lot of game points. That is truly killing two birds with one stone.
It is a gamble. If she wins, she will gain a lot of game points. She already has 135 game points. If she could double it, she would be able to improve her ability better.
But if she loses, it is likely that she will fall from the first 20 positions. Then she would fail the advancement game and have to start the professional league again.
She shook her head and said, "I am already in the first 20. I shouldn't tempt fate."
She chose to surrender then. Her decision caused Augustus to feel the pain of losing game points because of gambling.
4 more people chose to surrender, so the number of players became 7.
Mecha Man didn't surrender. Instead, he swapped his rocket launcher for a flamethrower. Then he rushed at the bees.
The tenth obstacle was ten bees. The eleventh obstacle was 20 bees that were faster than the players. The twelfth were 20 bees that were not only faster than the players but could also create illusions.
The illusions made them look like a hundred bees to the players. But there were really only 20 bees.
If the players couldn't tell the real bees apart from the fake bees, they would be tricked and stung to death.
The difficulty had spiked exponentially. What was odd was that of the 7 players that remained, none of them surrendered because of the bees or were eliminated.
These 7 players were able to survive the acid of the giant slime and the stings of the bees. They had incredible defense that kept them sage regardless of the number of bees.
All 7 of them were either able to destroy the bees or bypass them. Someone like Mecha Man, who didn't have incredible defense, was able to pass the obstacles using his powerful flamethrower.
His flamethrower was able to clear out all the bees. But it soon became obsolete when he reached the thirteenth obstacle.
The thirteenth obstacle was a hallway created with three pairs of pillars standing on opposite sides of the track.
The pillars were black, and they looked carved out of rock. They had many holes all over them, from which a very irritating sound was made.
The sound was like the cry of a cat whose tail had been stepped on. It was high pitched and irritated.
When Mecha Man first heard the sound, he became nauseous. But as he moved closer to the pillars, the sound became louder, and its effects on his body became worse.
His skin began to split. The sound was damaging both his internal and external organs. So his intestines, lungs, stomach, liver, heart, and brain were being damaged simultaneously.
To say that the sound was deadly would be an understatement. It couldn't be dodged, and most defense was useless against it.
Physical defense was completely useless. The sound would bypass it and attack everything indiscriminately, including muscles, bones, tendons, ligaments, and blood vessels.
As for the defense of force field, it only had partial usefulness in blocking the sound. The damage was varying, but anyone that could still hear beneath the defense of their force field couldn't escape completely from the sound.
Force fields were also quickly depleted. The closer it is to the source of the sound, the faster force fields crash, and their wielder dies.
Those who were hit by the sound and didn't retreat quickly died bleeding all over. Once they became too injured to retreat, they would die and be turned to mush by the terrible sound.
Mecha Man didn't die because he was able to retreat quickly. But he was shocked and shaken by the power of the sound.
He asked himself in shock, "How did he do it?"
He had seen Augustus pass through the pillars and destroy them easily. He hadn't seen any reaction from Augustus, so he had thought the pillars were easy obstacles to destroy.
But now that he has personally experienced the sound, he can't believe that Augustus had passed through this obstacle without so much as a pause.
He asked himself again, "Just how strong is he?"
He is sure that he would be able to pass this obstacle. He even has two options.
The first option is to summon a protective armor. It is a more complicated piece of weaponry, so it will take some time to summon.
The problem is that he is not sure that it will be able to protect him. If he spends all that time to summon it and it doesn't work, not only would he have wasted his time, but he might actually lose his life.
His second option is to summon his rocket launcher. He will be able to use this to attack the pillars from afar.
He can also summon a rifle. It is part of the second option, which is to summon something that he can use to destroy the pillars from a distance.
He is inclined to the protective armor since the next set of obstacles after these pillars has something to do with fire. The protective armor might be able to help him pass six obstacles without wasting time.
He is inclined to this because Augustus is already 9 obstacles ahead of him and everyone else. What's more, Augustus seemed to have become faster. It is a clear display of the disparity between him and everyone else.
This display made Mecha Man anxious. But he didn't want to risk his life for speed. He said to himself, "Slow and steady will help me keep my life."
He didn't dare say slow and steady will help him win the race. He is not sure of that anymore after seeing Augustus's performance.
Even so, slow and steady has always been his motto. He doesn't rush, yet he was able to win all of his previous 19 games and even earn MVP many times.
It is all because his ability is versatile and he is always careful. Right now, he would rather prioritize his life over speed. So he summoned the sniper rifle.
He didn't summon the rocket launcher because he was afraid that the sound waves would make it explode before reaching its target.
While he was doing this, some other players had quit and died. Their number reduced from 7 to 4.
The crow said, "If only Evil Eye was still here, she would have been able to pass this obstacle easily. It is too bad that she quit earlier."
"But I have to give it to Augustus. It seems he is in a league of his own. It is someone like him that is worthy of being in the Expert League."
"Even with this kind of power, he will be able to hold his own with players in the Expert League. If he is promoted, his power will gain a boost, and he will grow stronger."
"I wonder what exactly he went through on the foreign battlefield for him to gain this kind of power."
A lot of people were wondering the same thing. But they were mostly the audience. The players had too much on their hands to worry about that right now.
The thirteenth obstacle was three pairs of pillars. All six had to be destroyed for the obstacle to be considered complete.
The fourteenth obstacle was four pairs of pillars. The range of the sound had also increased by 30%.
So those who sprinted past the pillars of the thirteenth obstacle in order to avoid damage would have to be faster in order to survive passing through the eight obstacles.
As for the fifteenth obstacle, it was still the pillars, but they have become six pairs. There were six pillars on both sides of the track for a total of twelve.
The range and power of the sound had been increased by 50%. Also, whenever a pillar is destroyed, the other pillars become stronger.