The Dungeon Conquerors: Journey to the Peak

That made a lot of sense though as this place was completely open so it was possible for someone to see very far here. So if any monsters were outside in plain view, then that monster would just be an easy prey for others to feast on. So to survive here, most of the monsters were experts in the art hiding themselves and ambushing their prey.

The hiding spots that these monsters chose were extremely well hidden and most of them even had various abilities related to hiding. So without his Eye of Truth, even Rein was having a hard time detecting the monsters here.

Obviously if he got closer to one he would be able to sense it but this way his hunting efficiency would be very low. This was not desirable here. If Rein used his Eye of Truth, then this would become quite easy but for this championship, he wanted to avoid using his inherent special abilities as much as he could. Rein wanted to do his best with only his symbol and the abilities that it granted him.

So Rein started to think of a method to use his ability for searching and scouting. It was not like he had not tried doing that before but his success in this matter was questionable. He did manage to invent a technique in which he covered his surroundings in a thin sheet of fire and used that to detect things around.

But the range of this ability was quite short and at the same time, the fire itself also alerted the monsters about his presence. So even though this ability was quite useful in finding inanimate traps, in finding monsters, it was not very useful.

He also had thought of several techniques to hide his presence. The manipulation of heat and cool was an effective way but this technique was only useful on monsters, people and animals who used other entities body heat to detect.

But from what Rein was able to observe, even though quite a few monsters here used the heat detecting method, most of them had other skills for detection against which Rein had no solution.

While Rein was in a troubling situation, Sophia was in a very good mood. From what she had observed, as if this place was custom made for her. If she did not get the first position even with so many advantages in her side, then it would only prove her to be incompetent.

The amount and power of the monsters was also satisfactory. As this place had not been invaded by the humans for many many years, the monster population here had grown tremendously. Even though it had only been just a few hours, Sophia had managed to detect several powerful monsters who were more than enough to match a UR grade Blessed. Some of these powerful monsters were even in groups.

So it was clear that for a normal regular UR grade Blessed, this place was extremely dangerous and fatal.

Sophia immediately started to create a map of this area. Even with drones flying around, she found that this place was hard to map without visiting it in person. The main reason for that was the presence of various underground areas and the flying monsters.

Now Sophia finally understood why the instructions told her to protect the drone assigned to her. When she and Rein were leaving the temporary base, one of the people working there had given her a leaflet with new and modified rules written on it.

According to that all the people participating in the second round needed to protect the drone assigned to them while finding and killing monsters. If the drone broke a new one would be provided but in that case, before the arrival of the new drone any monsters that, that person killed in the meantime would not be counted toward the total points.

So trying to protect the drone all the time was the best thing to do.

This did make Sophia\'s job a bit harder but it was still not a big deal. Then she continued mapping the whole area carefully which included the places where monsters gathered, the hidden underground entrances and the location where the super powerful monsters were.

This detailed map was so valuable that many people who would be participating in the second round would pay billions to get their hands on it.

...

While Sophia continued to map the Ashen Barrens, Rein started to experiment with many ideas that he came up with. Without a reliable detection method, even with Sophia\'s map, Rein\'s efficiency in getting points would go down.

During the main competition, those monsters would definitely not stay in the same location. So if Rein just blindly followed the map, then he would be able to find many monsters. So it was very important that Rein had a way to detect them on his own.

An easy solution for Rein would be to team up with Sophia. Teaming up was something that was not uncommon in a competition like this. In that case they first needed to discuss the point distribution method with the super computer. But Rein was unwilling to do that as he might slow Sophia down. So Rein was determined to find a way to solve this problem on his own.

After a lot of experiments, he came up with a decent method. Instead of fire, ice, heat or cool concepts, Rein used the concept of cheerfulness and depression. They were basically emotions that Rein was able to sense. And even when these monsters were hiding, they were releasing some of their emotions in this manner.

If a monster felt that Rein was powerful then it would become depressed and it felt that Rein was an easy prey, it would become cheerful. So by boosting his ability to sense these little emotions, Rein became able to detect the location of monsters.

Rein tested it out and it was quite a successful method. So with this Rein was also prepared for the second round to begin. Many more participants started appearing soon afterwards and the time for the second round of the World Blessed Championship came.