As they walked through the tunnel, Alex was a little curious about Meiya's strategy for winning the fight.
"Miss Meiya, can I ask how are you going to defeat that archmage?"
"I can't tell you that. All you guys have to know is there is only a 10% chance of this working."
After hearing the odds, all four of them did not like their chances at all.
At the same time, they were relieved that they were at least still alive and waiting for a higher replacement.
Eventually, the five of them came to a stop after calculating where the closest to the center of the barrier was.
All they had to do now was wait it out, sitting on the ledge in boredom as outside was too risky.
They could hear echoes of mass explosions from a nearby exit above, much more intense than before.
It was almost as if there was an all-out war outside, with the nonstop explosions shaking the ground.
Fortunately, only a small bit of dust fell from the ceiling, with the tunnel still fully intact.
"Um, Miss Meiya... Sorry if this is rude, but how did you lose Luqing?" Mary curiously asked out of boredom.
Meiya seemingly froze for a second before looking over to Luqing, who didn't seem to care how it happened.
"My best friend was helping me take care of Luqing while I was on a mission sent by the elder.
But when I came back, the entire sect was wiped out by an enemy sect... Everyone was dead except me."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Sophia said, and the other two kids and Luqing said the same.
"It's okay. It's been years now. I had already moved on from it... Anyway, I had planted a small bit of Qi inside Qingqing before I left.
I could feel she was still alive somewhere, so I started searching for her based on that trail.
But one day, the Qi suddenly disconnected. I thought all hope was lost at that point."
As Meiya looked down to the floor, she continued.
"I started training nonstop, with the only goal in life to get revenge for everyone that died.
Years went past quickly, and I was able to kill the entire enemy sect one by one until there was no one left."
A chill traveled down the kid's spine as they realized the person they were sitting next to was practically a serial killer. Find new chapters on m-vl-em-pyr
But the fear was subdued after realizing Meiya was on their side, not as an enemy, as long as Luqing was with them.
"After I killed their sect leader, there was nothing much for me to do... Until I saved a monk who decided to make a Hexagram prediction about me.
That's when I learned my daughter was still alive somewhere. But after searching the entirety of the East, I couldn't find her."
As the kids listened to Meiya's story, they seemingly forgot that they were in the middle of a competition.
Even Luqing herself was fully listening in, waiting for her to continue the next part.
Sophia immediately looked over to Alex, who looked over to Meiya as if she was the decider.
"We are in the dark, and our enemy is in the light. We can afford to wait for a few more minutes."
The four of them were a little confused by the phrase, but they could understand the second part.
As parts of the tunnel began to collapse, they all immediately moved next to the ladder.
Seeing more and more collapse, Meiya finally leads the charge as she draws her swords out.
Within a blink of an eye, the cap was busted open into the air as she vanished from the ladder.
The other four quickly followed, climbing up until they stood above the ground.
However, they were immediately stunned by their surroundings as everything had turned into rubble.
All of the buildings had collapsed and ground into dust.
Everything was destroyed, with the ground they stood being the only part mostly unaffected due to being an intersection.
It almost felt like they were in some sort of apocalypse in a movie. At least, that's how Alex felt.
Meanwhile, just a few hundred steps away, two groups of people were seemingly fighting each other in the distance.
Even though it was 'two' groups, it was a few people seemingly fighting against hundreds of mages together.
"Follow me, don't make any sound."
The four slowly followed Meiya right next to a nearby collapsed building before getting a closer look at the fight.
"The emperor!" Mary whispered as she immediately reconganized one of the groups.
It was the archmage and the emperor himself trying to fight off groups of mages who were lower level than them.
The number's advantage was clearly giving the two a hard time, as their barriers started to break under all the nonstop attacks.
All the kids near the archmage were long gone as if they had been eliminated during the fight.
"Everyone! Just a few more minutes, and we'll show them archmage isn't everything!"
One of them yelled as the spell being thrown at those two got even stronger.
"Holy shit... There are so many spells." Alex murmured as spells were being thrown at those two all over the skies.
The two's barriers began to weaken, and the ground near them was heavily damaged, albeit not too far deep, as if there were limits.
If it wasn't for the fact that this world was a simulation, he could already imagine the world record for creating the deepest hole in the ground.
"Should we do something?" Sophia asked.
"When the snipe and the clam fight, the fisherman gains. And we're that fisherman."
The four of them looked a little confused by Meiya's phrase, but they could roughly understand what she was implying.
They were just the third party waiting for the perfect time to strike at the people down below.