The venue for this competition was a deserted island in the Southern Ocean.
This small island had an area of one hundred thousand square kilometers.
To Shirley's surprise, the area of this island was not small either.
Yet, despite its size, no country had claimed it, nor were there any shipping routes leading to it.
Seeing Shirley's bewildered expression, the navigator chuckled and said,
"The outside world barely knows about this place, and it doesn't appear on any maps."
"On all map indications, this location is just vast open sea!"
"This is a consensus reached by the International Federation to seal it off!"
Shirley looked towards the black island not far away, covered in strange, colorful plants, and asked with surprise,
"What's here? Why is it sealed off so that no one else knows about it?"
"But if the competition is held here, then through live broadcast, won't the audience know about this island's existence?"
The navigator waved his hand gently and said with a smile,
"Don't worry about that. For the public, we'll say it was filmed in a studio, and the monsters here are just props and robots..."
"Monsters?" Shirley's heart stirred at the word.
She hadn't heard this word in a long time since leaving the apocalypse.
"Ah? Did I say monsters? Actually... well... they are just some abnormal creatures... We've reached the parachute drop point. Let's chat after the mission. Nice to meet you, Shirley. Goodbye!"
After a moment of stammering, the navigator unhesitatingly pulled open the cabin door.
"Hey... you haven't told me how to use this parachute yet!"
Shirley's voice grew fainter and fainter, eventually disappearing into the air.
"Oh dear... I was too engrossed in conversation and forgot about that..."
The navigator looked down in horror at the open cabin door.
Shirley's body was plummeting rapidly through the air, gradually disappearing from view.
A few seconds later.
Boom!
A loud noise came from the ground behind the plane.
Faintly, a rolling cloud of dust could be seen, along with vegetation being blown about by the shockwave.
Shirley patted the dust off her body and slowly stood up.
"This navigator is really outrageous. If he had forgotten to brief other ability users, this competition would probably be over already!"
Shirley looked at her surroundings.
The ground was covered in black rocks, as if formed by cooled lava.
The surrounding plants grew tenaciously from the cracks in the rocks, their leaves shaped like sharp triangles, with many barbs along each edge.
Shirley casually plucked a leaf and drew it across her palm.
It was quite sharp, comparable to Thorn Woman's thorns.
However, to pierce Shirley's skin, it was still quite far off.
Shirley looked up at the sky.
The sky here wasn't blue, but rather resembled a laser, with colorful light intertwined. The background was black, like nighttime.
But the view from the plane earlier wasn't like this.
"There are monsters here? What a strange place!"
Shirley muttered to herself.
At this moment, she saw that in other directions, some people had already opened their parachutes and were gracefully descending from mid-air.
"These guys are so late, but that's good. I can give them a surprise when they land!"
With that thought, Shirley quickly rushed towards the landing spot of the nearest parachute.
This was the final match of the Ability King competition.
Shirley's odds of winning were 40 to 1.
Qian Xinxin had already made a fortune, with no suspense involved.
And to improve her less-than-stellar reputation as a "pretty vase," Qian Xinxin had specifically instructed Shirley:
"You don't need to pretend in this match. Just play freely, have fun however you like!"
With Qian Xinxin's words, Shirley was ready to let loose in this match.
At this moment, in the live broadcast room.
Due to the harsh environment on the island, camera positions weren't set up beforehand. All camera feeds came from six rescue helicopters hovering in the air and the pinhole cameras on the clothes of the four ability users.
Simultaneously, the broadcast room also featured a top-down map of the battlefield, with its shape deliberately avoiding the island's outline.
There were four small bright spots on it, representing the four participating ability users.
In the center of the battlefield was a red circle, representing death.
If an ability user approached it, their chances of survival would be slim.
Green glowing dots represented monsters.
This allowed viewers to have an intuitive overview of the entire battlefield situation, while also being able to switch to any camera feed at any time to get specific combat information.
The audience showed immense enthusiasm for this "battle royale" style of competition.
As soon as the match began, gifts poured in, and the organizers had already received over ten million in gift revenue.
"The competition has started. We can see that because Shirley's position is close to the edge of the island, she is also the first to land!"
"At this time, the other three ability users have just left the aircraft and are floating in mid-air, giving Shirley an extremely brief first-mover advantage."
"Let's see what Shirley will do!"
The commentator excitedly exclaimed.
"If I were this person who took a shortcut, I would find a place that's hard to be discovered and hide until the very end. If I were lucky, I might even get a decent ranking!"
"After all, ability users who reach the top four, regardless of their strength, have extraordinary backing!"
The ability user commentator said sarcastically.
In his opinion, the withdrawal of "Little Apocalypse" in the previous match was definitely related to Shirley's backer.
He disdained such a despicable way of achieving victory.
"But... we can see that Shirley hasn't chosen to hide. Instead, she's started moving at high speed... Wait, do we have cars on the competition grounds? How is she moving so fast?"
The commentator said with a look of shock.
According to the map, the movement of all monsters was slower than a snail's crawl.
It wasn't that their speed was slow, but because the map was so vast, even the fastest speeds would appear slow when applied to such a large area.
However, the bright spot representing Shirley was charging forward at an incredible speed.
This speed, let alone a car, was probably comparable to a high-speed train.
What was even more terrifying was that there were no wide roads here. Not only was the terrain complex and overgrown with thorns, but there were also various monsters. How could she maintain such high speed?!
"Could it be... Shirley has been hiding her strength all along? Is her real ability a level 5 physique-type ability?"
Seeing this, the ability user commentator said in great shock.