GREED: ALL FOR WHAT?



The cores of the other arena hoped to overwhelm his mind with data from their law matrix while they remove his hold over his own law matrix. It took less than the time for him to blink an eye to process the new information. He doe not have a weak mind so they failed to overwhelm him. 

Next, he had to fight their combined effort to remove him. He can't beat them so he didn't bother to fight them. He dug his mind into his own law matrix and stayed on the defensive. They have the advantage of numbers. Unfortunately for them, he is not some virus or an outsider. He has inside information that granted him access to the law matrix in the first place. 

He knows how to manipulate the law matrix thanks to the snippet of the law of order of the sage that he got from their first meeting. Knowledge is power and he has in-depth knowledge of the law matrix of arena 28 so they couldn't purge him. He managed to secure his position in his law matrix. Then he turned on them.

The situation turned against them when he began hacking the law matrix of the other arenas. He might as well take their law matrix since it has become interwoven with his. So they turned their efforts into pushing him out of the core of Arena 28. That didn't work out either because he has one foot in the crack in the defense of the core. They can't purge him unless he is eliminated from this challenge. His death will make him lose his hold of the crack in the core and enable them to successfully push him out.

It is all good news and bad news. His brute force intrusion into the core of Arena 28 ground to a halt due to the reinforcement. He stopped making any progress whatsoever. He will need a good vulnerability such as the one he will get if he wins this challenge to continue making any progress. 

The bad news is that if he is eliminated in this challenge, then he will lose all his progress with the core of Arena 28 and the law matrix of the others. The world spirits know that and will try to eliminate him by making things difficult for him. He has angered the world and it will be out to get him.

He said smugly, "It is a good thing that I have the law matrix then."

He could have thought of it and kept his thought to himself but he said it out loud so that the arena spirits can bear him. It must grate on them to know what he plans to do and yet be unable to do anything directly to foil his plan. He can almost see their frowning faces and it brings him joy to frustrate them. 

The arena spirits are powerful and they have vast mental prowess but their wisdom is childlike. He finds it fun to bully them. Their attitude towards his intrusion is making an otherwise boring process to be interesting.

He stopped smiling smugly and began examining his environment. His only chance of success is to leverage the privileges that having control of the law matrixes will give him. Everyone is supposed to be on an equal playing field with equal power but the element of luck will favor some and doom others. He is certainly one of those that will be doomed. 

The world spirits are in charge of spawning monsters and loots for the competitors. It is obvious that they will target him to eliminate him. There's a limit to what they can do but he will get the largest monster attacks possible and the smallest loot possible in return for his effort.

So he didn't rush forward immediately. He spent a few hours assimilating the law matrixes of the other arenas before he started moving. It was easier to do since he already had control of one. Each law matrix should be different since they are different derivatives of the same law. Fortunately for them, they stopped being different.

It would have been difficult but possible for him to assimilate them had they stayed different. They are made from the same law of order after all so cracking them is still possible. But they became similar to each other in order to facilitate the merging of arenas for the 2nd challenge. So he didn't have to try and crack all of them all over again the way he cracked Arena 28.

He checked the map on his brand and his location on it to figure out which direction he should take.

"Typical." He scoffed. "They put me at the very edge of the plane in the first ring."

The map was sent with the guidelines of the challenge by the world spirit to his brand. He noticed that he was teleported to the very edge of the circular map. In fact, he is very close to the barrier that surrounds the entire arena. They could have teleported him to anywhere within the 7 rings of the combined arenas but they put him in the outermost ring. So he has to make his way to the Zeroth ring at the center of the map if he wants to win. No doubt that they will produce enemies to fight him along the way.

"Nothing can stop me from winning this challenge. I will have the key." He said as started walking towards the central ring.

The last man standing challenge is taking place in a large area with various environments. The map is circular and cut into 7 rings. A ring and everything on it will be destroyed every day of the competition. The destruction will start from the outermost ring and those on it will be eliminated if they still haven't made their way to the 6th ring by the end of the first day. This will funnel the competitors into smaller areas where conflicts will eliminate more of them.