"What is he doing there? Mingming, you idiot, just run. Don't stand there," Fan Ruogang was the most enthusiastic of the competition viewers when it came to being Alex's fan. So, when she saw him move through the final end of the maze at a very slow pace, she got angry.
"Don't get so agitated Fanfan, he must have a reason. Look, he seems to be getting something from those walls," Zhou Mei said as she pointed to the huge screen that showed the entire maze from start to finish.
The participants knew it was big, but only the audience could really see the true scale of the maze. The maze was about 500 to 600 meters in width and nearly 3 kilometers in length.
With so many normal mazes and obstacles, this was truly a grand scenery to behold. The space inside the stage was so big now that it was impossible for the audience to truly see what was going on inside the maze.
So, they could only rely on the large projection in the sky.
"But Meimei, I bet 400 spirit stones in Mingming's name. If he doesn't win, I am going to lose 4 true spirit stones in this bid," Fan Ruogang said, revealing the true reason for her agitation.
"Don't worry Fanfan, brother Yu knows that delaying is a bad idea, so he must know something. Look, those 4 are doing the same thing brother Yu is doing. There must be something to those walls," Wan Li said while pointing to the screen overhead.
Indeed, about 4 people had stopped by the final maze and were checking through the wooden walls.
"Sect leader, you think disciple Yu noticed something?" the first elder asked.
"Must have, otherwise he wouldn't have stopped in the final maze for this long. It's been nearly 20 minutes since he entered, and he is not one to waste time," Ma Rong said.
******
"What was Yang Ma's time?" Luo Mei asked.
"They should announce it all together, but from what I estimate, it should be around 2 hours and 10 minutes, without the reduction," Wen Cheng said.
"And the others were much late right?" she asked.
"Yes, they were around 30 minutes later. Their time is around 2 hours 40 minutes," Wen Cheng.
"So, junior brother is going to take more time than that, right?" Luo Mei asked. "Just what is he doing there?" she was getting a little annoyed.
"I don't know. Hopefully, he isn't stalling for no reason. Although, a few of the others are doing so too," Wen Cheng said.
Of the original 170 people in the competition, around 80 people had been disqualified due to not moving, around 10 due to attacking another participant, 30 due to having all of their talisman stolen.
There were only 50 people remaining, and of them, 43 had already passed the maze. Of the remaining 7, 5 were in the last maze, while the other 2 were still someone in the catacombs, lost due to the lack of light.
"Oh look, one of the guys gave up on his own. He touched his own talismans," an elder said from the side.
Indeed, there was 1 less participant in the maze. A guy in the catacombs had given up.
Slowly, one after another, the 5 people in the final maze started making their way out as well. During that time, the second person lost in the catacombs finally made his way out and flew to the wooden walls as well.
Even that person made it outside before Alex and one other person. The other person made it out about 5 minutes after that, and around 10 minutes after that, Alex finally got out.
With the last person out of the maze, the Maze run was finally over.
DING
A large ranking board appeared in the sky. It showed the maze clear time of everyone. The person that left first was the winner and the person that came last, Alex, was the worst of all.
Fu Zhen then started speaking. "These are the raw results of the game today. As you can see, the fastest time was 1 hour, 34 minutes, and 46 seconds, while the lowest time was 3 hours, 22 minutes, and 33 seconds long."
"However, we have yet to add the time reduction talisman they might have gathered. Let us start with the first person," Fu Zhen said and called forth the first person on the list.
The person walked forth and provided 6 talismans to a staff. The staff put them in a box and the time on the ranking board started dropping.
The final score was reduced by a minute and 24 seconds, to make it 1 hour, 33 minutes, and 12 seconds.
The second person was called forth, and then the third and the fourth. There were really only 52 people in total that passed and it wouldn't take a long time for their numbers to be rechecked.
The rankings never really changed a lot. The most reduction one got was as of yet was Yang Ma who managed to get a 5 minutes reduction in the result time and got about 2 hours as the actual result.
However, that all changed when the last of the 5 people went forward. The first person gave nearly 50 talismans to the staff, garnering a lot of attention from the others.
His result was originally 2 hours, 58 minutes, and 55 seconds. After submitting the talismans, his result went down to 2 hours, 23 minutes, and 34 seconds. That was a whopping 35-minute reduction in finishing time.
Everyone was shocked at how much reduced, however, that wasn't able to get him anywhere. The next 3 people also managed to reduce anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour in their result, but that wasn't enough to get them even in the top 10.
The second last person was the guy lost in the catacombs, so he really didn't have much and only reduced his time by 3 minutes at most.
Finally, it was time for the final person in the ranking, Alex to give him talismans.
