The Arena Challenge..., the final and most grueling trial of the 3.
Challengers must step into the arena and engage in a gauntlet of 100 consecutive fights against fellow players who have also reached this stage without a single defeat.
It was the most difficult of the 3 trials of the Heavenly Domain Challenge.
Each opponent scales in difficulty, ensuring that only those with endurance, adaptability, and sheer willpower survive.
And there were also so crazy rules that accompanied it.
The first rule is that there is no rest between matches. The mont a battle ends, the next begins imdiately unless there is no opponent in the Arena lobby.
The second rule and second most cruel is that there are no second chances. Lose once, and you are eliminated. You have to restart from zero.
The final and most cruel rule is the final duel rule.
The 100th match is against an Elite Challenger, another player who have also amassed 99 straight wins in the Heavenly Domain Challenge.
It was cruel but it was the reality of the ga, and it was why the Heavenly Domain Challenge was so notorious among Warstar communities.
Only the best of the best gets to play in the Heavenly Domain.
Not everyone had the skill to complete the challenge, which ant limited players could actually make the great leap.
But trust player communities. When there is a will, there is a way.
In recent years, a new job among elite players was the Heavenly Domain Challenge farming. By helping other players control their Avatars, play and complete the challenge for them, players with great skill could earn a lot of money.
The developers knew about this, but there was nothing they could do about it and so they let it be.
Noah didn’t need anybody’s help for this though, he was good enough.
Besides, even for those who engage in Heavenly Domain Challenge farming, to complete a single Avatar domain challenge, they needed to make a lot of preparations and planning since challenges were different for each Avatar.
Not just preparations, a lot of trial and error is also involved which ant the challenge that was ant for 1 week could quickly extend to weeks and even months.
Noah had no intention of spending so much ti though.
’Let’s complete it in 1 week!’ He thought to himself.
This was going to be a very busy week for him.
He started imdiately.
...
Noah started by taking on Trial 1 and its 15 missions.
Since the system did not indicate that he must complete each mission in chronological order, aning he could skip the order, Noah set his eyes on all the combat missions first.
If there was one thing that he was best at in Warstar, it was combat.
To others, the combat missions of the random quests challenge was the difficult part but to him, it was the easy part.
Noah quickly rounded the combat missions up, writing them in a to-do list.
[Combat Quests:]
*Demon’s Gambit.
*A Duel with Death.
*Arena of Beasts.
*The Invisible Assassin.
*The Reverse Battle.
*Tower of Echoes.
*The Symphony of Blades.
*The Unseen Duel.
Out of the 15 quests, 8 were pure combat quests.
And so Noah started.
Completing Demon’s Gambit wasn’t too hard for him. Defeating a cursed warlord who revives stronger after every death until you discover his true weakness may seem like a daunting challenge.
But it wasn’t so daunting anymore if you refuse to play to the whims of the system and not kill the warlord till you discover the true weakness.
With Noah’s experience, finding the weakness was easy.
He completed Demon’s Gambit in less than a dozen minutes.
A Duel with Death was much more daunting, since just one strike from the legendary swordsman ant instant kill which was directly proportional to failure.
For this quest, Noah had to be extra careful.
It took him a long ti, but he finally managed to put down the swordsman, winning the duel after an insane flawless victory display.
For the Arena of Beasts quest, Noah lasted through 20 waves of mutated war creatures, each stronger than the last for hours. Only after the 20th wave did the system finally notify him of completing the quest.
On the first day, Noah only managed to complete these 3 quests.
The next day, he continued.
For the Invisible Assassin quest, it was easy for Noah. He simply waited for the deadly rogue lurking in the shadows to strike and when he did, he retaliated, quickly gunning down the paper-class boss.
To casual players, the Reverse Battle may seem like another daunting challenge but as a pro player, one of the basics that Noah had a good grasp of was learning to play in multiple scenarios, including in a reverse battlefield.
Completing this quest was even faster than the others.
And then again, another quest that took a long ti to complete. Climbing the 100 floors of the Tower of Echoes was incredibly grueling, but Noah persevered, killing every last monster that he encountered and completing the quest.
And then ca the Symphony of Blades quest.
This ti, Noah had to defeat a squad of elite swordsn while synchronizing attacks to an evolving battle rhythm.
The quest was not as straightforward as Noah expected though, there was a twist.
The enemy’s attack patters follow a musical tempo that speeds up over ti. Missing the beat weakens the player’s attacks and defense.
But once again, Noah adapted.
He defeated all the enemies without falling out of sync for more than five seconds, eventually completing the quest.
’Nightingale would love this quest’. He thought at the end.
And lastly, the Unseen Duel.
This ti, it was a combat/perception challenge since he was supposed to win a duel against an invisible swordsman.
It was complete invisibility. The swordsman can only be tracked through sound, environntal shifts, and subtle air disturbances.
And yet once again, Noah’s experience prevailed.
Another of the basics that every pro player must learn was the ability to discern and accurately judge and attack just from sound.
Afterall, this was how pro players learned to counter the blind ability of Brawlers that is an effect of their Sand Toss skill.
The quest was made a bit harder by the fact that the player cannot use any direct detection skills, only pure instinct and reaction speed.
Even at that, Noah won a crushing victory against the invisible swordsman.
In 2 days, he managed to complete all the combat quests that he selected.
The next day, Noah moved on to the last 7 quests of the random quests challenge, where he expected to et the most difficulty.
He was up for the challenge though.
’Bring it on!’
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