Can the sadness that magic cannot take away be offset by love?

In short, the rankings in this round determine the winners and losers. The top 10,000 will advance to the next round, and the top three will participate in the bonus round... It's unclear what the prizes will be for this round; it seems the organizing committee will only reveal them after the top three are determined.

The more points the better, and the contestants who participated in the previous round of the reward competition currently have a significant advantage. After all, based on the experience from the previous round, a B-level mission rewards about 100 points, an A-level mission rewards about 300 to 500 points, and an S-level mission can reward as many as 2000 points. The tower in the previous reward competition had ninety-nine floors, and contestants automatically gained 100 points for each floor they climbed. Although these points seem insignificant in the face of the final reward, the contestants who made it into the reward competition already had a base of 2,000 points from the S-level mission of Miss Witch, plus the points gained while climbing the tower, so their total points would not be small.

Iris noticed four icons in the upper right corner of her field of vision. The leftmost one was a camera icon, labeled "Live Stream Status," which was currently off. The rightmost one was a small leaderboard icon; expanding it with her mind would display the current scores and rankings of all players.

The moment she clicked on the leaderboard, a notification popped up in front of her:

The leaderboard updates every 12 hours; the next update will be in 11 hours and 59 minutes.

At a glance, almost all the players at the top of the leaderboard are those who entered the previous round of the bonus tournament, and their points have reached several thousand, including Iris herself.

After closing the leaderboard, a new notification popped up in front of her:

Starting from this match, the points earned by players can be used to redeem items within the dungeon (only valid within the dungeon)

After mentally closing the notification box, a bright circle reappeared in my field of vision. The circle disappeared only after I clicked on it. Inside the circle was the icon for the points mall, located to the left of the leaderboard icon.

...It really feels like playing a game.

The points mall has two main functional areas: an item exchange area and an item usage area.

The item exchange area lists different items of four levels: S, A, B, and C, each with a different price. The item usage area displays items that the player has already acquired that require points to use. Iris currently only has one such item, which is her only S-level item.

[S-Rank Item: Eraser]

[Item Description: Remember, this is a virtual world—you can use points to erase designated virtual content in the arena. The number of points consumed varies depending on what is being erased.]

The erasure effect lasts indefinitely.

This item has no cooldown period.

To the left of the points mall icon, there is a backpack icon labeled "Backpack," which contains all the items the player has currently acquired.

Iris noticed that some icons had turned gray, meaning they were unusable. For example, one of her C-rank items, "A Cute Bone Whistle," had the effect of "When blown, it can lock the location of the bone whistle no matter where the witch is. Cooldown time: twelve hours."

This item can probably only be used in dungeons where witches are present. Once you get to this dungeon, it's like it's "expired".

After roughly taking stock of her current props, potions, moves, and magical artifacts, Iris removed the peace lock necklace from her neck.

The peace lock lying in her palm is now in a melted and twisted state, as if it had been scorched by fire, and the magical aura that briefly appeared before entering the arena has completely disappeared.

It only began to transform after Alex was hit by the fireball.

It was only then that Iris discovered a small black bead inside the safety lock, engraved with the Ramirez family crest.

She paused for a moment, then took out the bead and stored it separately from the safety lock.

She looked up, parted the bushes in front of her, and let the sunlight stream in from the cave entrance—

As soon as she landed, she found herself in an empty cave, which gave her the time to check her belongings.

The cave entrance was completely hidden by bushes. Iris slowly stepped over the bushes, leaving the dark and gloomy cave and coming out into the outside world.

The bright sunshine enveloped her for a moment. Looking up, her vision was filled with a vast expanse of blue sky and layers of greenery. Turning around, she realized that the cave was located in the cliff face. Looking down, she saw that the platform beneath her feet led to an unfathomable abyss.

The fresh, natural scent of herbs and plants filled her nostrils, and Iris remembered the name of this instance—"Fireside Chat: Thirteen Spices".

She remembered that the copy of her entrance exam to St. Ferguson College was called "Fireside Chat: Twelve Acts".

Then he remembered that the space sphere technology used in this exchange competition came from St. Ferguson Academy, or more precisely, the Ramirez family—although there is no public information indicating who the researcher of the technology was, everyone knows that the heir of this family is a rare space mage.

Iris thought again, perhaps this heir would soon no longer be the heir. After all, the sudden deaths of the two patriarchs forced him to even abandon the competition to deal with the unexpected situation—it might only be a matter of time before Ernest inherited the position of patriarch.

Speaking of which, this round of the competition uses a points-based advancement system. If Ernest's ranking drops below 10,000th in this round, he won't have to worry about any of the remaining matches.

Therefore, Iris glanced at the leaderboard again and saw that his name was indeed still at the top of the list, but compared with others, it was grayed out, which meant that he was not in the arena.

She quickly shifted her attention to the current situation.

Behind her and opposite her, on the cliff face where she couldn't see any upper, lower, left, or right ends, there were countless caves like a honeycomb. People appeared one after another from the entrance of each cave, some looking around like her, some communicating with people in the caves next to them, and some trying to use magic such as flying.

...500,000 people, could they all be here?

Iris couldn't be sure.