Preparations

The portal we entered brought us back the Fortress, where the same man who had hosted this preliminary was waiting at the exact same location we had entered the snowy biome from.

"Looks like we have a winner," he chuckled. "I didn't expect one to show up so soon, though."

"… So, we got first?" Feng Mian asked, just to confirm.

The man nodded. "Now, follow me."

As the man walked away, the girls cheered happily.

"We did it, Big Brother Xuan Kai!"

I smiled and patted Qing Yue's head. "Yeah… we did."

"It doesn't seem like you were even trying all that hard, though," Xiang Peng laughed with a sinister smirk.

"What do you mean… that last fight against Ling Xin really took a lot out of me," I sighed. "If it weren't for Mei Gui injuring her beforehand, we would've lost. Hard."

"Still, to think she ran out of mana…" Yu An Yan murmured thoughtfully.

"Yeah, hard to believe, isn't it?" Lan Xiao Su added, frowning slightly.