---
"What is it you want from us?" the girl asked Arya.
"Nothing much. All you have to do is run," Arya replied after a moment of thought.
"Huh? Run?" The leader and her teammate, the guy, didn't understand what Arya meant by that.
And Arya didn't bother to clear their confusion. "When we reach our destination, all you have to do is run in a single direction," he said, walking towards the inner part of the underground area.
Still confused, both the boy and girl started following Arya. While walking, they introduced themselves, when Arya asked their names. The girl, the party leader, was named Mina, while the boy was Robin.
After walking for around ten minutes, they finally reached their destination. It was a staircase that was leading to a floor down, It was the same place where Arya had previously found the hidden dungeon.
Now, it was just an area filled with monsters, as Arya had already cleared the dungeon. In the previous round, many monsters spawned here in this round.
Arya went underground and stopped in the middle of the place. Seeing Arya stop, both Mina and Robin who were silently following him also stopped.
"Now I want you, Mina, to run in that direction," Arya pointed to the right, "and Robin, in the opposite direction. While you run, make as much noise as possible using your weapon or your mouth."
Listening to this, both their faces lost all color. They understood that Arya wanted to use them as bait to attract the monsters.
"Wh-why though? We can work together and kill the monsters easily and fast, right?" Mina suggested.
"Yeah! She's right, we can do it," Robin supported her.
"Not happening. Just do what you are asked to do, no ifs or buts."
Under the strong pressure Arya exuded, they had no choice but to comply. They started running in the directions assigned to them.
"Come and eat me, oh! Ugly monsters. I am very tasty," Robin chanted loudly while running.
And This worked wonders. Before he even reached the 100-meter mark, more than 30 monsters were near him. Seeing so many monsters, he sprinted back to Arya as fast as he could.
Just as he reached Arya, Arya attacked the monsters and soon killed them all. As he finished with the monsters Robin brought, Mina returned. She was too embarrassed to shout like Robin, so she just made noise with her weapon, taking a bit longer to attract the monsters.
As Mina reached Arya, he attacked and killed the monsters. It didn't take long to finish them. He then asked both Mina and Robin to head back and attract more monsters while he stored the essence dropped by the monsters in his inventory.
Though unhappy, both Mina and Robin once again sprinted in opposite directions to attract more monsters. Similarly, Arya hunted the monsters. During this hunting session, both Mina and Robin also killed a few monsters, leveling up and earning essence.
---
*Last Ten Hours of the Third Tutorial.*
At the center of the sector, there were only 200 players. The rest were scattered all around the city, hunting monsters. Over the past sixty or so hours, everyone had leveled up quite a lot and wasn't as scared of monsters as before.
With only ten hours remaining, everyone was hunting like madmen. Not all monsters dropped essences, so even though people killed many monsters, collecting the required 50 essences wasn't easy. This situation led to people stealing from each other by any means possible, except killing. If a person died, everything inside their inventory disappeared with them.
Max was one of these bullies. Though he was at level 15 and had quite a lot of essence, his gang didn't. His gang, now had around 100 people, so they needed 5000 essences in total for everyone to clear the trial, so they were looting others to ensure everyone reached the 50 essence mark.
Currently, Max was talking to a person named Adam, he was one of the strongest in the central area and was also at level 15.
During the trial, Adam made a group of 20 people. So for the whole group to clear the trial they needed 1000 essences. But even after hunting so much, they only had 750 essences combined. They decided to rest before going on the hunt for the final 250 essences.
"You see Adam, I have quite a large group of people, and we need a large number of essences. So, give me 800 essences," Max demanded.
"W-what are you talking about? How can I give you our essence when we don't even have that much?" Adam replied, knowing Max's nature.
'They have around a hundred, and we are only twenty. I have to think of a solution before they start attacking us,' Adam thought.
"So, how many essences do you have?" Max inquired.
"We only have 300. We are about to go hunt more monsters to collect more essence," Adam lied, knowing if he told the real number, Max would take them all. His party members understood that and stayed quiet.
"Hmmm... Let's see. Yeah! Give me all those 300 essences," Max demanded.
"B-but that's all we have! Please show mercy," Adam begged.
"Do you take me for a fool? If you don't want to die, hand over those 300 quietly before I change my mind and kill you all."
Adam knew any further discussion would lead to their downfall. He transferred 300 essences to Max. With a gloomy face, he and his men started heading back to hunt.
Max, grinning, started walking back to his people and began distributing the essence.
'Well, we now have 4000 essences, we need 1000 more.
Hmm...let's see! Yeah! I should send them in 8 groups of 10 people each to collect essences for the next few hours. While the remaining loot the people here.' Max thought of a way to collect the remaining essences.
As more time passed, many people started arriving near the safe zone, where the gate would materialize. Only around six hundred people remained in the sector; the rest had died in the tutorial trial.