[A/N: Three Chapters incoming]
As the tournament progressed, the craze grew as more people flooded the Cafe, having learned about the event. The Cafe was growing in renown in the areas local to its operations and globally.
People began discussing it on forums and through chat groups, and it wouldn't take long before all of the major powers of the world learned of the Cafe.
In this modern age, where aliens have become more fact than myth, people with strange and mysterious abilities have begun to appear across the globe, and bizarre creatures have emerged, causing chaos worldwide. The Cafe didn't shine too brightly, but that was changing. People were noticing this strange cafe more and more with each passing day, and its services, as evidenced by those who entered for an hour, could leave them looking at the world differently, having undergone years, if not decades, of life experience in this level of cafe.
Ordinary men and women emerged from the Cafe with knowledge they had not previously possessed, some transitioning from simple laborers or cashiers to possessing the technical skills to become competent engineers, doctors, scientists, or skilled soldiers. Still, while some saw this as an advantage to be taken, others saw it as a manifestation of 'Hell' or corruption.
Some, more than others, as a man who heard whispers from the world hidden from the mundane arrived at the steps of one of the 'Cafes,' his signature trench coat, short beard, and blond hair.
John Constantine, the magician and scammer extraordinaire, was on the case.
…
As the tournament continued to advance, Players started to die left and right as the sandstorm pushed further and further into the Desert, forcing the Players to fight one another and defend themselves against the 'natural' inhabitants of the Desert.
However, among the players, one could be seen riding a Wyvern. The crazy bastard had a plan in mind: grinding levels until they could craft a saddle for a Pteranodon, a fast-flying dinosaur with weak strength and stamina.
This player, Validia, one previously unknown due to dying off relatively early on in the first round, pulled off a crazy move. After dropping his gear off, drinking plenty of water, leveling the Pteranodon to increase its carry weight and stamina, he flew high above the Wyvern Den near the dangerous dunes filled with all manner of dangerous, venomous, and deadly creatures, such as the Giant Praying Mantis, Centipedes, Snakes, T-Wrexs, and even the most dangerous of all, the Giganotosaurus.
From thousands of feet in the air, high above the Wyvern den where dozens of fully grown Wyverns could be seen flying around hunting for food, flying within the den, and even the Alpha Wyvern, which sat in the middle of the den, seemingly asleep, he dived down into the Wyvern den before any of the Wyverns could react, find a nest with an egg, and yoinked it, before getting the hell out of dodge with a bunch of pissed off Wyverns on his tail, chasing him for most of the day until the player managed to lose them and get to work on hatching the egg.
It took the man over a day of constant micro-management to keep the standing torches and campfires hot and burning. Still, the Player, Validia, managed to successfully hatch the Wyvern egg, revealing an ashy gray Fire Wyvern.
For the next two days, Validia raised the hatchling and fed it, watching as the baby Wyvern grew at a rapid pace. On the first day, it grew to be the size of a Trike, bigger than that of a small car; on the second day, it fully matured, rivaling the size of a school bus.
On the fifth day of the tournament, Validia and his Wyvern had hunted down most of the participants in their subsection, leaving only the more skilled, such as 'Tyke,' 'The Best Clown,' and 'Whisky.'
With the second round of the tournament ending within a week in-game, by the sixth day, their subsection had only six remaining participants.
Meanwhile, in the other two subsections, the round was going very differently.
In the second subsection, the two participants, 'Lucky' and 'Archer,' who were teaming up, were proving to be exceptionally skilled, especially 'Archer,' who, even with a basic bow, was capable and deadly. Lucky, who managed to get themselves a gun, proved to be very dangerous in close quarters, making the duo a formidable threat to the others in their subsection. It was the sixth day, and still, 18 participants remained.
As for the third and last subsection, figures like 'Beautiful Flower,' 'Captain America,' 'Crazy Steve,' and 'Neko' were the most notable.
Beautiful Flower, for her notorious reputation as the Gotham villain, Poison Ivy, and her seeming overspecialization in taming nearly every dinosaur they encountered, creating a sort of dinosaur army at her disposal.
'Captain America,' for his skill with a pistol and seeming luck rivaling the previous round winner, 'Neko.'
'Crazy Steve' once again came out with his unique strategy of building bases and fortifying them, somehow building his base near the eye of the Samd Storm once again, giving him an advantage that the other participants struggled to combat.
'Neko,' the seemingly ordinary woman who was even luckier than the fanboy, 'Captain America,' the people who decided to spectate 'Neko,' could only watch as literal miracle after miracle saved 'Neko' over and over again. First, she found an already unconscious Raptor to tame, which gave her a free and easy tamed creature that would serve as an early-game tool and protection.
Then, she had an encounter with a praying mantis that lunged from out of nowhere, striking her Raptor and cutting its head off in one strike. She would have died too if not for a pack of Terror birds of all things charging into the praying mantis, giving her ample time to escape. Situations where she should have died happened over and over. Some of the viewers even began to suspect that they must have been cheating somehow, if not for Zerrif informing those who asked that she was not cheating.
So now, people have begun to wonder, how? How was she doing this? Was it just luck, or was it an exploit? Zerref had not forbidden exploits, allowing the Participants to level up faster than usual. Outside of a sparse few exploits, none of the others worked.
On the final day of the second round? That's when things started getting...crazy.