The countdown reached zero, and more tiles dropped.

The silence that followed lasted exactly one second before the fiery numbers blazed back to life above them.

More tiles began to flash, and in the eyes of everyone, it seemed as if there would not be enough tiles to hold them all.

And in that moment, skills began activating all around the carriage.

Barriers snapped into existence, with bursts of speed carrying people across the shrinking floor.

There was one particular player who generated a shockwave that cleared three tiles around them at the cost of sending two other players stumbling.

The orderly repositioning of the previous rounds collapsed into something less civilized.

Lukas looked down to see that his tile was still glowing.

He looked up to find Trent looking back at him from a flashing tile, the man’s expression carrying the particular brightness of someone who found their own bad luck genuinely funny.

They stared at each other for a few seconds, tension filling the air.

Then Trent chuckled, giving him a small wave. "I guess I’ll see you later."

Then he turned and moved into the chaos, hunting for a free tile.

A figure leapt into the air with aggression, coming towards Lukas from the left side, intent on claiming his tile.

Without even looking, Lukas activated [Hex Shield].

The barrier appeared in the air and the player’s eyes widened.

Before he could even stop himself, he slammed into the barrier.

There was a low thunk of meat slapping into something solid and a groan filled the air.

The man fell to the floor, one foot finding nothing but darkness behind him, and the tile took him before he’d even realized what had happened.

Lukas dismissed the shield and turned his attention back to the room.

There seemed to be people fighting wherever he looked, with battles flaring up and dying down in clusters across the carriage.

Some contestants were clearly more experienced, claiming their spaces with ease, while others were burning through skills in panic.

A few were simply watching carefully and moving only when they had to.

After roughly thirty seconds, the chaos finally stopped. Everyone had found a tile. The countdown ran its remaining time to zero.

As everyone expected, the flashing tiles became yawning darkness, and before long, the overhead numbers reappeared and began counting down.

And this time, as the flashing tiles lit up, the scale of the problem became immediately apparent.

There were almost no safe paths left.

The dark gaps had multiplied until the surviving tiles were isolated, becoming small islands of color separated from each other by stretches of pure darkness, with most of them already occupied.

Lukas looked down.

His tile was blinking.

He assessed the floor around him quickly.

The nearest solid tile to his left had someone standing on it, watching him with a wary expression. It was clear the person was prepared to defend their position by the way their hands kept twitching.

The nearest safe tile to his right was separated by two meters of darkness, while the one behind him was also unoccupied but required crossing a gap that was wider than the others.

He glanced at the countdown once again, before looking at the gaps. A smile appeared on his face.

He had enough strength to jump wherever he wanted, but there was no reason not to pick the nearest tile.

After a second to measure the distance, he jumped.

He was already in the air, committed, when he saw the other person.

They’d been moving from the opposite direction, aiming for the same unoccupied tile, and they’d seen him a fraction of a second before he saw them.

And because of that, they had enough time to launch their attack.

A pillar of fire roared through the air toward him, and so Lukas activated [Hex Shield].

The barrier materialized in front of him and blocked the fire, the flame roaring over it for half a second before dissipating,

He kept moving, the shield traveling with him through the air. The attack hadn’t even affected the momentum of his jump.

A second later, he slammed into the other contestant with the shield still active.

With a higher strength than the opponent, he sent the person backwards, the player dropping into the darkness below with no tile to catch them.

Lukas landed on the safe tile.

The moment his feet touched the tile, he found himself off balance with one heel hanging over nothing.

He threw his arms out, windmilling to stay balanced, aware that if he stumbled, all that waited for him was death.

He struggled, his balance shifting this way and that before he stabilized himself.

He stood there, breathing hard.

He looked up to see that several contestants hadn’t made their jumps. Some hadn’t been able to clear the distance required, and others had met others in the air just like him.

Every remaining safe tile now had exactly one person standing on it, the surviving contestants spread across the shrinking floor like pieces on a board, each one watching the others.

The countdown reached zero, and the blinking tiles vanished.

The darkness spread further across the floor, and the fiery numbers reappeared above them.

The room was now emptier than it had been sixty seconds ago.

The countdown reappeared, and flashing tiles lit up across the floor almost immediately.

Lukas looked down to see that his tile was blinking. He checked the nearest unoccupied tile and it was also blinking.

He looked further to see that every unoccupied tile within jumping distance was flashing. Which meant his only options were tiles that already had someone standing on them.

He turned, reading the room, and found a glowing tile with a single occupant, close enough for him to jump to without having to cross the entire carriage.

The person on it had already seen him looking and could tell what he wanted to do.

They moved immediately, one hand coming up and an arrow materialized from nothing, a bow made of the same purple energy clenched in their other hand.

The bow was already drawn and the arrow nocked, the whole thing assembled in under a second.

A [Construct] class, or something adjacent to it.

The arrow released.

Lukas activated [Hex Shield].

The barrier appeared between them, and as the purple arrow reached the shield, it passed through it as if it wasn’t there, continuing towards him at the same speed.

Lukas’s eyes went wide.