208 Here We Go Again!
"So use them at your own risk." Not wanting to clarify what he meant, Meliodas pressed another button, and a Golden Crown, embodied with colorful gems was displayed on the screen.
"This is your key to victory! Hold it until the game ends and you will be crowned as the champion." He looked at his bracelet and said, "I need to go back to my bunnies, so be quick with your questions."
After receiving a confirmation to start the Q&A, the players started raising their hands above their heads.
They still had a lot of doubts about the rules.
"You, the pretty boy, fire away your question." With an enthralled expression, Meliodas pointed his finger at a burly handsome man, making him tighten his ass cheeks at that invading gaze.
"Cough, May I know the range of the small distance teleportation after we get hold of the Crown?" The Burly man asked while looking at his feet.
"Good question darling!"
Agitated, the burly men trembled after getting praised in such f*cked up manner.
However, he still didn't raise his head, as he listened to Meliodas answer, "500 meters in any direction. So just pick up the Crown and try your best to survive the first 5 seconds."
"No one else?" Disappointed, Meliodas asked after seeing that all of the men in the hall lowered their hands the moment they saw how the burly man was treated.
After seeing that only the girls had their hands in the air, Meliodas pouted and pointed at one randomly, making her ask, "If the Crown holder used a teleportation circle and got teleported to the other, can he use the one he was teleported to again?"
"Of course not!" He clarified, "The moment you get out of a teleportation circle it gets locked for 30 minutes."
"Thank you."
"Next!"
"Can you clarify the 11th rule in detail please?"
"Every 15 minutes passes with Crown in your possession you earn an extra 1000 GP!" Meliodas answered.
'Oh?' Felix raised his eyebrows in surprise at hearing this, as he noticed that an extra 5 minutes increased from what he knew of. However, the number of points also doubled. So, he wasn't really complaining.
"Next!"
"Are we allowed to mark positions inside the tunnel Labyrinth?"
"Yes! This is not a puzzle game. You can mark the entrance or the exit, or even share your position with others. Do what you want."
"Next!"
"May I know What's the name of this game's unique title, and how can we get it?"
"I am too lazy to create one, so I will just use this." Meliodas pressed a button, displaying a specific time on the screen, and told them that anyone who could hold the Crown longer than the current known record, will get the title >Record Breaker!<
'59 minutes and 30 seconds, hmm, hard but doable.' Felix looked at the record with a thoughtful expression.
If only the rest of the players shared his confidence, the hall wouldn't have descended into a deafening silence.
Felix believed that he might pull it off, but for them, they honestly weren't confident in even holding the Crown for 5 minutes before getting caught and barraged by tens of abilities.
This game had only two sides playing it, the Crown Holder vs everyone else. Thus, unless one was completely certain in his chances of escaping with Crown, it was better to just give up in this game and wait two months to start another.
Heck, they knew that even the current record holder was caught eventually and got killed. So he might have gotten the record, but he traded his life for it.
"That got you quiet huh." Meliodas giggled for a second before adding, "As for the MVP title! Sadly, I already gave it away a year ago."
No one reacted to such saddening news, as to whether the MVP title was there or not, they were not going to get it anyway.
Meliodas clapped his hand twice and said, "The Q&A is over! I will see you my lovely players on the island."
"Oh, I remember!" Meliodas suddenly waved his hand at Felix, who was at the far end of the hall, and said with a grateful expression, "Thank you love for kicking down that b*tch Zoe from her high horse."
Displeased, he huffed through his nose while breaking down to small particles, "She was stealing all the attention from m..."
'What the...' At loss for words, Felix kept gazing at the empty stage with a parted lips, not knowing how to respond.
'Pffff! Must be nice being called love.' Asna said, laughing.
Unbothered by her and the mocking looks he was getting from the players, Felix's eyes kept roaming in the hall, searching for the players that he marked five days before.
Every time his head faced a player, he forces him to lower his head, not daring to meet the darkness in place of his eyes.
"Biohunter, Rosanna, Cyber Sky, Frosty Lance...Brutallight, all here." He kept murmuring each name until 8 players on his list were all checked out.
After so, he closed his eyes, waiting patiently until they get teleported to the island one hour later.
He had no plans on proposing a wager as he knew that the moment he gets on stage, the players would start throwing shoes at him for trying to scam them out of their points as he did to Solar Mist and the rest.
....
"Landlord!"..."Landlord!"..."Landlord!"...
For the first time ever, Felix opened his eyes to the sound of his name getting chanted all around the stadium, making the players in his sight give him envious and jealous looks.
They couldn't fathom how much his popularity had grown to such a state and in such a short amount of time.
For god's sake, it wasn't even a year and Felix's fans were already crowding the stadium! Just the fat tickets' revenue he would be getting from them was enough to make this game worth playing without even bothering with the championship.
'Not bad at all. I could get used to this.'
Content by the attention he was getting, Felix smiled faintly while waving his hand, giving the spectators the response they wanted.
"Kyaaaa! I love you, my Lord!"
"KILL THEM ALL LANDLORD!"
"I BET MY ENTIRE FORTUNE ON YOU TO WIN!"
The crowd went bonkers, each screaming at their own expense, making Meliodas's expression to turn a bit unsightly. The more attention Felix got, the harder his job got.
'So Zoe was dealing with this in her game.'
In the end, Meliodas just sighed dejectedly at the notion of his inability to interview Felix when he was clearly the most popular player in the game.
Though he felt terrible about it, he didn't bother attempting to use the loophole that Zoe utilized against Felix.
Zoe's fate was more than enough to show him that using tricks on Felix only had a bad ending. Thus, he completely ignored Felix and interviewed the rest of the players, showering them with usual genetic questions.
That being said, he was smart enough to include Felix's name in some questions, such as, "How confident are you to try and take the Crown from Landlord's hands if you met with him?" Or, "Do you have countermeasures for his pitch-black inducement?"
He might not be able to interview Felix but asking questions related to him was harmless to anyone...except for the players getting asked.
But, who gave a shit about them?
Apparently, no one as the spectators were loving those questions.
...
Before long, the 30 minutes allocated to the interview segment finished in a jiffy, making the players exhale in relief.
They were really about to lose their shit if they heard Felix's name one more time.
"Good luck to you all!" Meliodas said as he flew in the air, returning to his commentary table.
The moment he sat on his armchair, he snapped his finger, making the players teleport into the sky, thousands of meters above the island.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
Felix's clothes kept flailing by the raging wind of being at such a high altitude, but he didn't show any sign of fluster, as he kept looking at the rainy forest underneath him from the small openings of the grey clouds.
He lifted his head and saw that the 100 players were spread 50 above the rain forest and 50 above the volcanic zone.
Those who were near him all had different expressions clouding their faces as they kept looking underneath them.
Some were displaying signs of joy and relief at being placed in their best environment while some were frowning their eyes eyebrows in irritation for the opposite reason.
"Turn up the lights!" Meliodas shouted in pure delight as he pressed on a small screen, making the center of the two zones to release a towering beacon of colored light into space!
Immediately after seeing that everything was in place, Meliodas displayed the 30 seconds countdown on the large screen and requested from the spectators to do the count down after it reached ten seconds.
"THREE! TWOO! ONEE!....BEGIN!" Stirred and excited, everyone shouted with their hands raised above their heads!
'Here we go again.' Felix smirked while being pulled down by the gravity, making him feel like he was skydiving...Without a parachute of course!