Is this really a Game?!

Beast had his eyes opened wide as he never expected to tame the lion so easily, it seemed to be exactly like he previously said, Blackie and the lion had a similar bloodline, and Blackie's was the superior one.

Beast had immediately learned everything he needed to learn when it came to the lion. As its name suggests, the lion could truly shallow light, well, not just swallow, it had the ability to absorb light and make itself less visible to enemies. But when swallowing light, one would be able to see a small vortex appear above the lion's mouth, the light would get drawn to him and he would be able to store it in its body. With that light the lion could do many things, one of them being the bright balls of light that exploded upon contact, which was exactly what the lion was doing during its fight against the tiger.

Of course, there were more attacks that it could do, the light that was stored in the body could be used differently, of course, the lion could choose to strengthen its claws with the light and attack the enemy that way, it could also choose to launch many smaller light missiles from its mouth and annoy the opponent that way.

Of course, there was also an ultimate attack that the lion could perform, by using all of the light that it had absorbed, the lion could unleash a devastating light beam that would deal a tremendous amount of damage. There was a drawback however after the lion used its strongest skill, it would be weakened a bit and it would, of course, have no more light in its body, rendering its power almost useless at that moment.

The tiger on the other hand was still as aggressive as ever. It seemed that it had only become even more aggressive after seeing that its opponent actually submitted to Beast. The monster was seemingly unafraid of the many beasts surrounding it as it stared at Beast with a furious gaze, even after being beaten up and tired it still tried its best to shake off Fluffy and the others and attack him.

Beast shakes his head in disappointment as he observes the tiger, the beast had already gone completely crazy with its hatred towards him. No matter what he tried to do, the result was the same, there was no way to calm the tiger down. Beast turned around and faced Reign and the others, upon seeing his face they already knew that taming the tiger was a failure, well, at least he managed to tame the lion, by itself, the lion was stronger than the two wolves, and as such Beast had once again powered up.

Before the tiger could even do anything a sword had suddenly pierced through its head, its brain was fried from the powerful lightning that erupted inside. Reign swiftly takes the sword out before leaving with the others, they had spent a lot of time so far, luckily for them, they had one and a half-day until the end of the challenge, and the tiger had even dropped a red jewel for them.

Right now the party was quite close to the mountain and they were able to even hear some explosions happening from their left, the sound, however, was very low so it was evident that whoever was fighting, they were far away from them.

The mountain, on the other hand, was right in front of Reign and the others, they had already fought against some of the monsters here, and most dropped a red jewel, was it because of Beast's luck or because that was simply how it went, they didn't know. One thing was for certain though, even though a couple of squads had arrived here, it would take them quite a lot of time to defeat the monsters as they were all level 40 here.

For Reign and the others, it wasn't a big deal, as long as the monsters weren't a particularly strong variant or elite, they would be fine. Between the two, however, Reign would prefer to fight an elite, the reason was of course simple, elites were monsters that had hit a dead end, their potential was dried up and they could no longer evolve, simply becoming an elite monster of their species took them a lot.

Of course, there were some elites that had been at that level for years, those were powerful as they had a lot of experience, but the difference with variants was that they could be as strong as mini-bosses, not to mention that a variant could also become an elite, a mini-boss or boss as well. Those were incredibly rare, but they did exist, and their power was terrifying to imagine.

After spending a couple of hours fighting in the forest Reign and the others stopped for a minute, it was starting to get a bit dark and they needed to figure out what they wanted to do, should they try to climb the mountain, or should they stay here until the morning and then climb it?

Since they had only come across red jewels so far, they were certain that there were stronger monsters that could be found, and where else would they be except for high on the mountain. Since it was already dark they decided against it, they already had a bunch of jewels so there was no need to hurry for more.

On the other hand, their sleeping last night was going to pay off now, the other squads had run with all they had to get to the base of the mountain yesterday, and now they were exhausted. The monsters that were roaming here were incredibly powerful and some of the weaker squads had already been disqualified after the monsters had killed them, since this was a challenge however the death wasn't real and they found themselves back on the mountain with the blonde guy waving at them.

Since they had experienced death, all of them were terrified, some were even on the edge of having a mental breakdown. Some were holding their heads as they remembered the monsters grabbing their bodies and eating them, to experience something like being eaten alive was by far the worst thing that could have happened to them during this challenge.

The blonde man sighed a bit before turning his sight back down, the people that were already back were weaklings, most of them would probably never again even reach the top 25 in the area rankings. Some of them managed to level up and become a bit stronger after constantly hunting low-level enemies before the system changed. Even with that change however there were a lot of them that continued doing so, compared to the average player of the same level these guys were weaker, their fighting capabilities, their skills, and abilities were all lower than average, and would struggle to defeat even lower leveled opponents.

For example, there were some players here that were even above level 40. Compared to Reign and the others, however, most of them either had no ability or their ability was simply too low of a level to be useful. Their gear was trash as the best items they had were rank C, their fighting capabilities were even worse, they only had a couple of skills, and their proficiencies were low…

The only reason they managed to come here was because of the high levels. Of course, the system already took that into consideration, this challenge was something like a final test for those players, had they tried their best then maybe there was a chance for them in the future, but they failed miserably and players like these would no longer be invited to the challenges.

Still, all of them were able to defeat monsters that were level 30 at least. The only reason why they died was either because they became too overconfident and went deeper inside the forest, or they became unlucky and got targeted by a powerful variant monster.

There were in total 5 teams that got eliminated, there were a couple more teams that had some of their members out but were still in the challenge. Those teams however were already goners, their motivation was at an all-time low and their strength had suffered after losing members.

As night approached they were visibly upset, a big number of them had to go back to a safer area in order to be safe. It wasn't only a matter of sleeping, they were tired and their strength was down, not to mention that if they came across a predator during the night, it would be as good as over for them.

Predators were incredibly powerful at night, their eyes had adapted to the dark a long time ago and they didn't fear it, on the contrary, they couldn't wait for night to fall so that they can hunt.

When it came to Reign and the others, however, they had found a cave and some tunnels, after going through them and fighting off some nasty monsters they managed to get to a huge area that was under the mountain. Many monsters were currently charging at them as they all used their skills and abilities to slaughter them.