Chapter 494 - Aiming For A Higher Goal.
When Felix opened his eyes again, he found himself sitting in exactly the same room as he was in before.
Wide enough to hold battles and also impossible to engulf it entirely with poison or sand.
'Now that everyone has been teleported to a new room, my previous scouting information isn't that useful.' Felix thought while bringing out the two keys in his possession.
The moment he eliminated Baguga, the keys to his apartment and for his target had been given to Felix.
Since Felix didn't know the target's identity, he requested in his mind, 'Queen, I want to replace both keys with 4000 game points.'
'Are you certain?'
'Yes.'
Ti-ring!
>4000 GP had been successfully deposited in your account.<
After the emergence of the notification, the keys in Felix's hand had disappeared. A second later, another key had shaped up in his palm.
"It seems like all the winners from the last hunt didn't want to miss out on free game points." Luna chuckled while showing Blood Merchant and the rest transforming their keys to points.
Based on the rules, after each shuffle, the hunters without a second key would be given another.
But, since they had found one in possession of their prey, they weren't going to get the third key.
That's to stop the hunters from actually going for two targets in one cycle.
So, if they didn't trade their 2nd game, it would be the same as wasting an extra 2k GP.
'Sir Felix, there is 1 minute remaining before the daylight cycle start.' The Queen informed diligently.
The previous data was useless and he knew that it was impossible to repeat the same strategy.
After all, he had lost all of the stored lightning and he couldn't store more because it requires him to keep focusing on his mental energy.
Having his focus split up in the middle of battles wasn't an option against those experienced fighters.
He knew that he could totally spend this minute of free time releasing the electrical field again to absorb it. But it truly wasn't worth the elemental energy loss.
After all, It wasn't like he had 100% lightning energy stored in his body.
It was actually just 45% lightning energy while another 45% for poison energy and the remaining 10% was for sand energy.
Just in case he required to use the remaining two sand actives, *Sand Burial* and *Sand Domain*.
'The number of the apartments had been reduced. Don't know by how much but it should be by 10 to 15 based on how many players had been eliminated in the 1st cycle.' Felix thought, 'Since all of the players have no clue about the death list, I believe that some of them will take advantage of that and remain still in his apartment for this cycle.'
'Isn't it too risky?' Asna interjected with a mouth filled with popcorn, 'They...They might get their apartment found and during the night cycle, they will be penalized with a 10% debuff and that would put them at a disadvantage in their battle.'
'But, what if they didn't get found out?' Felix said calmly, 'Sure, they will still get penalized but don't forget that players will not come out of fights unscratched like I did.'
'Oh, so those players' strategy is to give up on this cycle and let others fight and injure themselves. During 3rd cycle, they might have 10% debuff, but it wouldn't be worse than injuries taken from a life or death battle.' Asna said with a muffled voice.
"Exactly.' Felix added, 'I believe the injured hunters from the previous cycle might do it as well to give themselves time to recover...Of course, that's if they didn't have a way to heal themselves.'
'So you are still going with your original plan of fooling Blood Merchant?' Asna inquired.
'Tsk, if you read my mind and saw my plans why annoy me with questions?' Felix clicked his tongue in annoyance.
'The usual.' Asna smiled beautifully, 'Just to irritate you.'
'I am ignoring you.' Felix's eyelids twitched as he went to sit on the armchair.
"Hmm? It looks like Landlord had no intentions of scouting in the cycle?" Luna commentated.
She said so because the players had already been given the right to leave their apartments. Currently, the floors were somewhat half-filled with more than 16 players.
Luna gave Felix a minute to see if he was going to move or not. After she saw that he was hell-bent on staying, she replaced him with the others.
'Found him yet?' Blood Merchant inquired while looking around under that veil of blood.
'No.' Vanlord replied, 'I will search from top to bottom, try to mirror me.'
'Alright.'
Both of them kept trying to find out their newest target while at the same time look for Felix.
Alas, minutes went by and they had almost inspected 9 floors out of 10, yet Felix had still not shown himself.
'Do you think that he went hunting and failed?' Vanlord inquired with a bitter expression.
He wanted to deal with Felix personally for that fat bounty. But, the odds of that happening were looking grim.
'There is a high possibility of that being the case.' Blood Merchant didn't make it any better by his agreement.
'If that's the case will the Ancestor punish me for not doing his bids?' Blood Merchant's composed expression broke slightly at such horrifying thought.
But soon, he got his shit together and thought positively, 'It's not my fault that trash ended up failing to kill his first pray while having his strength buffed by 10%...Really, why is he even a champion?'
Blood Merchant wasn't a stranger to the champion's games as he had knowledge of them from the moment he was born due to his extensive training to become one.
His vampire prestige family had a long-hidden heritage of fostering and tutoring vampire children to serve their duties as their Ancestor's champions.
Thus, he understood that he was merely the weakest of the bunch when compared to the real champions who bring the most profit for the primogenitor.
Yet, he never thought before that not one primogenitor but two of them would take a lowly human as their champion.
In his mind, that was the same as spitting at such prestigious games that were only meant for the strong and nobility.
'He is lucky he didn't end up meeting with me.'
After thinking so, Blood Merchant let out a long exhale to regain his composure and continued to wander from a floor to another, seeking his next prey.
Meanwhile, Felix kept tapping on his elbow while zooming at the doorknob, concentrating on it for more than 25 minutes now.
Throughout the entire duration, he saw many keys entering the keyhole but not one managed to unlock it.
Felix actually wanted his hunter to find him since that was included in his master plan to deal with Blood Merchant.
You see, he didn't want to just fight and win against him but demonstrate that he was a league apart from him in everything.
That's his own method of humiliating him and getting a win to J?rmungandr in these times.
Alas, he waited and waited yet still no one had unlocked his room.
'Only 1 minute remaining, I guess my target is hiding just like...Uhmm??'
Felix narrowed his eye closely at the doorknob after spotting a new key entering.
He believed that it would be a failed attempt just like the previous ones. However, to his own surprise, the key actually turned left!
"Landlord's apartment had been discovered!" Luna proclaimed out loud immediately after getting notified.
Before the viewers could react, she switched the camera to his apartment's door.
"It's actually Hell's Crow!" Luna exclaimed in delight, "The maestro of fire against that abnormal freak, this is going to be a fun ride, don't you think?"
Whoaaah!!!
The viewers all clamored at once, following those two idol's club in their cheers. They didn't care if they weren't their idols as long as they entertain them with an epic battle.
Hell's Crow didn't bother leaving since he was going to be teleported to his apartment in a few seconds.
He might be a half-ling from the Crows species but he didn't have wings at all.
Instead, his upper body was almost too human-like with his smooth long orange hair and crow tattoos all over his tanned skin, appearing like a tribe aboriginal.
On other hand, his lower half was an exact copy of dark crow's legs with talons, dark feathers, and everything else.
A few moments later, the half-hour of daylight cycle had been concluded. In this cycle, eight players had located their targets from a total of 21 players.
This entailed that it was highly likely that the next cycle would include only 14 or 13 players.
Whoosh! Whoosh!...
The moment the night cycle began and the Blood Moon emerged, every player in the corridor had been taken to their apartments.
'Hopefully, this is not Anisa's apartment.' Hell's Gate wished in his mind while breaking off into light particles.
Anisa was a female from the Fishermen's race who was obviously capable of manipulating water to her wishes.
Hence, Hell's Crows feared meeting with her greatly in this game.
He hoped dearly that she would get eliminated. In his eyes, she was actually the only potential threat to his promotion!
Alas, he was soon going to learn about the existence of another threat that was far more deadly than Anisa.
Currently, that threat was cracking his knuckles while walking slowly to the corner of the room with a trail of a poisonous greenish mist behind him.