Hikari: Rise Of The Weapons Master

'So this is the place huh.' Emma thought while looking at the gigantic walls in front of her.

She then turned to look at the people standing beside her. Four girls and five boys. The number was mostly even.

'Why are they grinning at me like that.' For some reason, Emma was weirded out by the looks she was getting.

Due to that, she was the first to enter the maze.

After being teleported to a dark corner of the maze, the first thing Emma did was to check her surroundings.

Just like Johnny had said, there were no players closer to her.

[ You have been chosen to become a hunter. ]

However, the notification in front made her narrow her eyes. If she remembered correctly, Johnny had said that the three hunters would be chosen differently from the 10 players.

[ Hunter perks: you can pass through walls and look through walls every 5 seconds.

Hunter drawbacks: after catching a player, you can't move for ten seconds. ]

After looking at the notification, Emma slowly started her journey across the maze.

Her gaze immediately passed through the walls as she managed to see a player running in the distance.

She immediately jumped through the walls and managed to cross half the distance between her and the player.

Her powers then went on cooldown for five seconds so Emna decided to run in the north direction.

'One down.' She thought with a smile before passing through the walls and chasing behind the player.

"EEK!" A scream escaped the female player's mouth as she saw Emma appear behind her. "But he said that you will be a played!"

Before she could say anything else, Emma's right hand touched her shoulder and captured her.

The hunter's body then went still as she waited for something for the cooldown to be over.

'I wonder what she meant by that.' After hearing the girl's words, Emma decided to capture the next player.

However, it was going to be a difficult thing considering how her touch made players vanish.

'I need to be careful of the traps too...' Emma has seen the lakes of water as well as the other traps that had been set around the entire place.

If what she thought was correct, players would get eliminated as soon as they stepped on the traps.

However, she didn't know whether they would work on hunters.

'Time to hunt again.' Just as she was freed again, Emma saw a notification above her head.

3 of the ten players had been eliminated while the 1 had already cleared the maze.

This meant that only 6 players remained and she had to go ahead and eliminate two of them.

Despite her powers, Emma was not able to see another player was three minutes.

Due to the size of the maze and less number of players, it was becoming extremely difficult for her to navigate through.

To make things fair, decoy players would also run around to confuse the hunters. This made sure that both parties had a chance at winning.

'Two down.' Suddenly, Emma saw a figure darting across and she managed to catch the figure's face.

It belonged to one of the men she had seen outside.

Instead of saying anything, she ran parallel to him until the man reached in front of the door.

Her abilities activated at that time as she passed right through the wall and touched the man's shoulder.

He had no time to understand what happened as his avatar vanished.

Now, only 4 players remained in the entire dungeon and only ten minutes remained.

Emma started running around plainly on instinct. After running around wildly for four more minutes, Emma finally found her last target.

And this time, she had another hunter to compete with.

Unlike the players, she couldn't see the hunter's face. She also couldn't see the hunter through the walls which meant that the same was true for him or her.

'This is going to be quite the chase.' As expected, Emma's match had been much more difficult as compared to Zack's.

But then, she didn't like easy things.

While sprinting behind the player, Emma used her Hunter job class's passive traits that allowed her to hear things more easily than normal players as well as sprint faster when chasing prey.

"Sorry, but he is mine." Emma suddenly said with a smile on her face as she jumped through three maze walls and landed on top of the player.

As his body vanished below her, a pillar of light surrounded her.

The last thing he heard was the other hunter's sigh before she moved on to the second waiting room alongside Zack.

***

'They actually thought that I was giving them a freebie,' John chuckled silently while standing on the stage.

He had told the ten players that if they worked together to get Emma captured, he would directly allow them to go to the third round.

The players he had chosen were very far below in the rankings and had been enticed by the things they could get

After agreeing to his demands, they had entered the maze thinking that they will be getting a ticket to the finals.

However, Johnny had done them dirty by making Emma a hunter and giving the game developers a good chuckle.

Now, the game would be back to randomly chosen players and hunters.

'I wonder how Zack managed to clear the entire thing solely based on luck. He even had two hunters chasing him.' Johnny had a smile on his face as he looked at the gathered players below him.

They only thought of him as a fellow player and a moderator yet they had no idea how much power he held.

Johnny however didn't mind it. His attention was now focused on a few individuals in the crowd.

All the top players from the light side were currently in the crowd too.

'All of them will play a big role in the future.' Johnny grinned like an evil mastermind before he sat down on the stage.

Now, he just had to wait for the second round to start.