Chapter 1
"Greetings, everyone. Welcome to this year's Lost World tournament broadcast, hosted by the Arena Game, co-organized by the Global Supernatural Alliance and various official institutions, and assisted by the Watcher Society and many other entities."

A dark-skinned, well-built man in a suit spoke into the camera with a slight Egyptian accent, "I am your commentator, Abdel."

The blond man sitting next to him said, "I am your commentator, Speedwagon."

A beautiful young office lady with long brown hair said, "I am your commentator, Katherine."

Players of the Arena Game were no strangers to the two gentlemen on the left side of the commentary desk.

They were members of the Watcher Society and had appeared on the commentary desk of the Sky Arena many times. They were also invited to serve as the number one commentary team for the Global Supernatural Alliance's official channel this time.

The beautiful girl sitting on the far right of the commentary desk, however, was a well-known American television star. She was an ordinary person, not a player.

She was here to increase the show's appeal to the general public—after all, the two strongmen on the left had arms thicker than an average person's thighs.

Secondly, she was responsible for taking and passing the conversation, and when necessary, she would ask questions to allow the two professional commentators to explain.

"I believe the viewers in front of the screen already know the background of this event. You can tune into the three official Lost World live broadcast channels to watch the event, or you can go to third-party platforms such as Twitch and YTB to watch."

Abdel looked at the electronic teleprompter off-camera and said at a moderate pace, "Because this Lost World event has a long duration and many participants,

various platforms have prepared multilingual, multi-channel, multi-room, 24-hour continuous live broadcasts to ensure that viewers will not miss any of the events.

You can make guesses based on the analysis of the situation by the commentators and the SMS notifications from various official institutions."

The various forces pushed forward this live broadcast, regardless of past grudges and at great cost, naturally hoping to get some benefits from the Arena Game.

With so many viewers around the world, even if only 0.01% of them could get a reward, that would still be seven hundred thousand bottles of miniature life potions.

Not to mention the possibility of obtaining a large number of player qualifications and perfect-grade sets.

To this end, official institutions in various regions have specially formed a think tank team, preparing to quickly analyze the win rate between two players if they encounter each other in the broadcast footage.

Then, the predicted results would be sent to the public's mobile phones in the form of text messages, so as to increase the probability of winning as much as possible—

Of course, this was based on the Arena Game providing only two options for guessing: win or lose.

In order to get benefits from the Arena Game, the major forces wisely chose to temporarily put aside their disputes, and the man-made local disturbances in Africa, South America, India and other places subsided.

The people of West Asia, who had been ravaged by war, unexpectedly gained long-awaited peace against the backdrop of players entering the Lost World to fight to the death, which was quite ironic.

"..."

In a room in Wanhe Community, Chai Chai rubbed her palms back and forth, not paying attention to the commentators' idle chatter on the screen.

The player transmission time had indeed passed just now, and the live broadcast footage was probably set with a few minutes of delay.

"...Okay, we just received a notification from the Arena Game."

Abdel reached out and pressed his Bluetooth headset, stopped chatting with his colleagues, and said seriously to the camera, "The rules for this event broadcast have been determined.

The live broadcast perspective of [Lost World] will appear inside [Lost World] in the form of a suspended semi-transparent detector.

The number of detectors is more than 10. Whenever a battle occurs, the detector will teleport and warp to the location where the battle occurs, in a position that will not affect the battle,

which is the observer perspective, to record the battle footage."

Speedwagon continued, "If multiple battles occur at the same time, the detectors will split themselves and go to different battlefields.

Players in [Lost World] will receive a notification when a detector approaches. Players cannot interfere with the detector.

If a battle stops, the detector will automatically go to the next battlefield.

If no battle occurs, the number of detectors will be reduced to 10, randomly displaying the footage of 10 players.

All footage will be transmitted to our Watcher's information processing center, and then distributed to various platforms after being统筹规划."

"Due to system rule restrictions, we cannot deliberately hide battle footage."

"Oh, oh."

Katherine, the vase and mascot sitting on the far right, nodded, "This will ensure the fairness, justice, and openness of the event."

"That's right,"

Abdel nodded, his eyes suddenly lit up—at this moment, all intelligent creatures around the world heard the system's cold and mechanical prompt.

[All detectors have been deployed]

[Betting has been enabled]

Here it comes!

Chai Chai's heart trembled. A line of semi-transparent words [Lost World Event] appeared in front of her eyes. After clicking on the words, a panel similar to that of a player appeared.

Inside, the Arena ID of the three hundred contestants in the Gate Seizing Battle, as well as a large number of rule explanations, appeared with a swish.

Sure enough, just as some think tanks had worried before the game, the Arena Game did not provide a simple ten-game win-loss betting, but a dynamic, extremely cumbersome and complex betting question bank.

There were a staggering number of options inside.

For example, which players would meet, whether they would engage in battle after meeting, which side would win after the battle, which player would be eliminated within 24 hours, and what would be the reason for the elimination...

Pulling down these options would never end.

"Each intelligent life with the right to bet receives one chip every 16.8 hours, for a total of ten, and can only bet a maximum of ten times.

Bettors must participate in betting within 16.8 hours of obtaining a chip, otherwise the chip will be invalidated.

All options will change dynamically. If the result of an option has occurred, the option disappears and the bettor cannot bet on it again. If the option does not occur, it will be considered a failed bet."

Chai Chai quickly read all the rule explanations, took a deep breath, and said to herself, "That is to say, you can't hoard chips, you have to use them up on the same day, and you have to use them up as soon as possible.

Judging from the number of these options, the probability of guessing correctly is very low.

If you want to satisfy multiple consecutive correct guesses, the probability is even more infinitesimal.

Sure enough, it's not so easy to get benefits from the system..."

Chai Chai paused for a moment, looked at her right arm, and asked in a deep voice, "Did you receive the system prompt?"

"Reporting to the Holy Maiden, we have received it."

Twin-Blade Turkey opened the eyes on his right arm and said respectfully, "All two hundred and thirteen brainworms remaining in the real world have received the system prompt.

However, the Guard-level and Escort-level insect hive units, whose intelligence is not high, have not received the prompt."

"Well, as expected."

Chai Chai nodded. It seemed that the basis for the Arena Game's distribution of chips was indeed independent consciousness and intelligence, and was not limited to race.

She glanced at the computer screen. The three commentators in the picture had obviously received the analysis results from the think tank and were telling the speculations to the global audience.

And official institutions in various regions were also using emergency text messages to remind the public.

"Deduce the possibilities of the current options."

While Chai Chai instructed the brainworms to analyze the current situation, she pulled down the betting options and indeed found Li Ang's extremely long Arena-specific name, and her heart suddenly relaxed.

"Hoo..."

She slowly exhaled a breath of turbid air and looked at the screen.

The commentators finished their analysis and officially entered the live broadcast footage—ten detectors had already selected ten players.

————

"...So fast?"

In a dark and empty space, a black-haired youth with a somewhat dull expression scratched his head as he looked at the semi-transparent suspended detector that suddenly appeared in the void.

He had just heard the system prompt and knew the specific function of the detector, so he did not attack.

"There are many people watching me now, right?"

The black-haired youth looked at the detector, which remained motionless, quietly suspended in mid-air without any reaction.

"Okay then."

The youth sighed, cheered himself up, and said to the camera, "Hello everyone, I am Ash, a sworn-in agent of the Fourth Mobile Task Force of the Special Affairs Bureau in Yin City, Lv20.

I am honored to be one of the three hundred players participating in the Gate Seizing Battle this time."

The black-haired youth [True Damage Ash], who had met Li Ang during the Mirage Dragon mission, also participated in the [Lost World] event this time—his own strength was not a great advantage compared to other colleagues in the Special Affairs Bureau,

but his power system was very compatible with a magical item provided by the Ithaqua Society (Ash's [Cinder and Ashes] skill allows him to elementalize his body and create weapons and equipment),

plus he was lucky and did not encounter particularly strong opponents in the [Mirror Corridor], and he progressed all the way to the present.

"As you can see, the place where I am seems to be an abandoned and extremely vast enclosed landfill, filled with the wreckage of crushed engineering machinery."

Ash stepped on a giant abandoned machine under his feet and said softly, "The architectural style here is completely different from the real world.

The interior space of the buildings is vast and dead silent, with only emergency lights as a light source.

Everywhere there are complex, dense, stacked and staggered pipes of unknown function. Some pipes are suspended in mid-air, seemingly established as traffic roads.

Although I haven't seen the native residents of this world, I personally believe that they are not pure humans—the shape of the cockpits of some engineering machinery does not conform to human ergonomics."

As an agent of the Special Affairs Bureau's Mobile Task Force, Ash had just released a drone to侦查 the surrounding environment.

He was now speaking to the detector mainly to help his colleagues in the real world collect intelligence and make better judgments.

"...In addition to that, there is a very important point."

Ash rubbed his fingers, the [Cinder and Ashes] skill activated, his index finger and thumb turned into gray embers, reconfiguring into the shape of a flashlight,

releasing light, illuminating the white belt tied around his waist.

"This device, called [Safety Guard Identity Verification Dedicated Particle Half-Life Radiation Device], was tied around my waist when I teleported in. It seems that it can be disassembled."

Ash pressed the buckle of the belt and said softly, "I don't know the situation of other players.

If the other 9 players in your perspective also have the same belt, then the situation is very bad...

The box next to the belt shows a countdown of 24 hours.

Combining the name of the belt device,

I think it may be a means of protection.

In the first 24 hours, it protects players from certain elements of the Lost World.

If it exceeds 24 hours, and the light blue crystal powder in the rhomboid container of the device is not replenished, the protection disappears.

This also means that players may not be able to stay in one place all the time and huddle up to survive for seven days.

They must act quickly to find light blue crystal powder within a limited time,

and even actively seek out and attack other players for this purpose.

It is equivalent to the speed limiter set by the Arena Game."

Ash paused and said slowly, "Although I don't know exactly what the threat in [Lost World] is, since it can act as a speed limiter,

it proves that the Arena Game believes it is enough to pose a threat to most participating players..."

His words stopped abruptly. Ash seemed to feel something, his expression changed drastically, and the light on his fingers suddenly went out.

The vast space fell into darkness and silence again.

In the real world, some of the viewers who were watching Ash's perspective had not yet recovered from Ash's analysis of "players being forced to hunt each other", when they saw the screen suddenly turn black,

嗡——

The detector suspended in mid-air made an imperceptible sound.

The original color picture also turned into a green night vision perspective.

!!

Viewers watching the live broadcast on different devices such as televisions, computers, tablets, and mobile phones issued surprised, even horrified, exclamations.

In the green night vision perspective,

strange mechanical creations were constantly crawling out of a giant broken pipe above the enclosed landfill where Ash was located.

Those things were similar in shape and size to ordinary pet dogs.

Their bodies were all covered with a layer of white cloth, and they had four limbs, but no head or tail.

Where the head should be, there was only a square LCD electronic screen, with red alien characters displayed on the screen.

Each "mechanical dog" had different characters.

Tens of thousands of mechanical headless dogs crawled out of the broken pipe.

The tips of their four limbs were forked, allowing them to firmly hook onto the pipes on the wall, and they moved silently.

Viewers could only see the light spots on the heads of the mechanical headless dogs, densely packed,

like ants, crawling towards Ash below, from slow to fast, faster and faster.

What's going on?!

Wasn't it said that the identity verification particle radiation device could protect players from attacks in the first 24 hours?

Was the推测 wrong?

Or did Ash do something wrong that attracted these monsters?

The same questions appeared in the minds of the commentators, viewers, and Ash.

Bang!

The broken pipe burst open, and almost endless mechanical headless dogs fell like a rainstorm, submerging and burying the entire landfill.