"Sylvia, are you seeing this?" Caelus asked his trusted companion, Sylvia.

"I am." Sylvia nodded helplessly, looking at the global chat interface.

[Vaelin: Hahaha, bottom dwellers of A1, get ready to have all your resource points taken from you. AHHAHAHAHHAA. You will never win against our manpower. You all are absolute losers.]

[Elara: Vaelin, if you win this, then you can take me to bed tonight.]

[Vaelin: What are you saying, Elara? Aren’t you already mine?] 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

[Throne: How envious! Leader Vaelin, you are a lucky man. Extremely talented and you even got yourself a girl. I wish I could find a partner soon.]

[Throne: Does anyone from A1 want to become my partner? I will pay you generously. I’m five foot eleven, six foot on a good day, and have an extremely handsome figure. Add me.]

[Draven: Damn, Throne, do you think this is an e-dating app? Go hunt more beasts. I saw you playing around with the NPC women in the town. They got a soul and you instantly jumped right into them. Literally.]

[Sarah: Ew... you won’t even leave behind digital women? That is so nasty.]

[Lily: We cannot let this disgusting beast win! Sisters and brothers of A1, we must win!]

[Sebastian: Player 555, I am coming for you. I will sabotage you!!]

[Sebastian: You better get ready to lose everything.]

[Kaiser: Sebastian, you cannot win against Player 555. He is way too powerful. Just give up.]

[Marcus: Damn dude, pick a side. Yesterday you were glazing Sebastian, but now you are glazing Player 555.]

[Alex: I know, right?]

[Rohan: I hate glazers. Seeing your messages fills me with pure hatred, @Kaiser.]

[Kaiser: Okay, okay. I am not that bad. I just go with the flow of the strong. You cannot blame me.]

[Arlo: Guys, did you forget something important? We still need to eliminate beasts. We are lagging way behind. What are the players of A1 doing fighting with the people of A2 in chat? They are leisurely typing away in the global chat because they are far ahead of us. We need to take this opportunity to overtake them!]

[Vaelin: In your dreams, B***.]

[Vaelin: The losers of A1 will never overtake us. We got several perpetual motion machines with unlimited stamina with us that can continuously shred through beasts.]

[Elara: Stop chatting in the global chat and focus on me, Vaelin.]

[Vaelin: I am just letting these nobodies from A1 know that they can never win against us.]

[Vaelin: Especially Player 555. You are absolutely nothing, Player 555! You might be slightly stronger than us and even have more talent in blacksmithery, but we still have overall better manpower.]

[Vaelin: You are going down.]

[Sarah: Hey, do not insult the Boss like that!]

[Lily: Yeah! Us, the Player 555 Fans Association, will not let this slide. We will find your IP address.]

[Emma: A2, you are going down. Those who insulted Boss 555 never saw the sunlight after that.]

[Lucy: I really wonder, why do these people keep taunting Player 555? They clearly know they cannot win against him.]

[Player 555: Ego, I guess. When you start doing slightly better than someone else, you naturally gain a false sense of arrogance. Only happens to some people, though.]

[Liam: Boss 555 is so wise.]

[Sarah: Yeah~!]

[Alex: By the way, Boss, we are currently behind schedule. Do you think we will actually be able to win against them?]

[Player 555: Easy.]

[Player 555: They aren’t worth anything. Even if we are behind by several thousand points, we will still win effortlessly.]

Everyone was thrilled seeing Caelus’s confident words. A lot of people were quietly lurking in the chat, and seeing his message made all of them look forward to the incoming drama.

[Vaelin: Hmph, such arrogance. You were just talking about ego, and now you are the one being an egoist.]

[Player 555: It is not ego. I am just stating exactly what will happen in the future. I am very good at predicting the future, you see.]

[Throne: Big talk, Boss 555... I mean Player 555. If you can really see the future, then you would know we are the ones winning this gamble.]

[Player 555: 1 hour.]

[Elara: One hour what?]

[Player 555: I am closing this gamble in 1 hour.]

[Vaelin: Hmph, boastful idiot.]

Caelus looked at the chat and laughed out loud. Sylvia was also having a lot of fun reading the messages.

Just then, two bright lights flashed in the town square, and two people appeared before them.

It was Kevin and Mia.

"Oh? You are here?" Caelus looked at Mia and smiled. "The last time I checked for you in the domain’s friend list, you were offline."

"Yes. Since I am Bronze now, I wanted to go to the Endless Expanse and grind more. It is much faster than dungeon raiding."

"Also, you are Player 555?" Mia asked speechlessly. She had private DMs with him from before, so she could properly identify his system tag.

"Miss Mia, you did not know Boss Caelus was Player 555?" Kevin, who was standing by the side, said with a proud, small smile.

"I am one of the earliest people to know about that fact," he added confidently.

"No, it was me." Sylvia immediately spoke up with a vicious glare. "I knew about it first."

"Nope. It was neither of you. It was my best friend, Albert," Caelus said with an amused chuckle.

"Anyways. There is no time to waste. Mia, you are also part of A1 and are under the jurisdiction of Kevin’s town, right?"

"Yes." Kevin nodded. "But now my town is no more and has been fully assimilated into your server. Hence, she is part of your server now."

Caelus nodded in understanding.

"Right. Since you are all in A1, go hunt beasts. We need to completely clear this gamble in an hour and get ready to upgrade to a Tier 2 town."

"Alright." They both nodded firmly.

"Then, my lady. I will leave one side of the map entirely to you while I go deal with the other," Caelus turned to Sylvia and said with a small, challenging smile.

"Leave it to me~" Sylvia gave a cheerful thumbs-up as her figure blurred and she left.

"I will kill absolutely everything in the Newbie Plains for starters," Caelus grinned sharply.

His plan was incredibly simple. There should be more than 5,000 beasts scattered all around the immediate premises. With his current speed, he could cover the entire second and first areas of the Newbie Plains in less than ten minutes.

He was completely confident in clearing it. The "1 hour" timeframe he gave the chat was just him being excessively safe.

With that thought, he activated Projection Frame.

Boom!

His figure violently blurred out of the town, shooting straight into the first area of the Newbie Plains. Immediately, he saw a massive pack of wild boars. With just a single, concentrated thought, he activated his Telekinesis and crushed them all into bloody paste.

Boom!

[A1: 4,822 -> 4,845]

But this was just the warm-up. He used his immense mind power to stretch his Telekinesis out to its absolute limit. Soon, he sensed several dozen venomous serpents lurking in the tall grass.

His Origin Light Longsword materialized directly into his hands as he swung it in a wide arc.

Boom!

A terrifying, razor-sharp wind shot out from the blade, directly cutting toward the serpents who were merely at the Iron I level. The air pressure alone completely bisected them.

[A1: 4,822 -> 4,874]

His figure was like a visual blur. He aggressively circled around the entire first area of the Newbie Plains, and wherever he went, beasts would violently erupt into a thick blood mist. There was absolutely no stopping him; the beasts didn’t even have time to register the threat, let alone struggle.

Soon, he had completely, systematically cleared the first area of the Newbie Plains.

[A1: 4,874 -> 6,904]

[Elara: Huh? How did A1’s numbers suddenly jump so fast?]

[Sarah: Omg, I just checked. It really did jump massively. Could it be Boss 555?]

[Sarah: Brb. We just found a pack of wolves.]

[Marcus: Of course it is him. Who else would it be?]

The people of A1 immediately became incredibly excited seeing the sudden, violent jump in numbers. A 2,000-point increase in just 5 minutes!

What kind of terrifying speed was this?

[Throne: No, this has to be hacks. How else can something like this even be possible?]

[Player 555: Nanomachines, son!]

[Vaelin: Fuck, we need to win. Get more people! We need more people to go hunt down beasts right now!]

In the second area of the Newbie Plains, Sarah, Emma, Lily, Alex, and Marcus were grouped together, desperately fighting off a large pack of dire wolves. But the following moment, a terrifying, divine power descended right onto them.

The following instant, they saw a terrifying beam of pure, holy light stretching high into the sky.

[Skill Activated: Holy Disintegration]

Boom!

The wolves, which amounted to more than a hundred, immediately disintegrated into fine ash.

Caelus’s lightning donned figure stood in the center of the smoking crater for a split second. He briefly glanced at the stunned group and spoke. "Good work."

"Boss 555!" they all exclaimed in awe.

Then, they saw Caelus’s figure violently blurring back into the dense forest. Within the next ten seconds, several more massive beams of light shot out from various points across the Newbie Plains.

There was seemingly no air resistance for him. Caelus’s figure was like a glitch in reality as he continuously sped up, zooming around the world map. By the time he passed through a group of beasts, they would have already been turned into literal mincemeat.

[A2: 9,842 / 10,000]

[A1: 8,383 / 10,000]

[Elias: Shit, A2 is really close to winning. They only need less than 200 beasts to complete the quota. We are going to lose at this rate.]

[Liam: I am trying my best, but I literally cannot find any monsters in the second area of the Newbie Plains anymore. It is completely empty!]

[Throne: Get ready to lose. Even with Player 555, it is statistically impossible to overtake our efficiency now.]

However, as soon as his arrogant words fell into the chat, the leaderboard updated one final time.

[A2: 9,931 / 10,000]

[A1: 9,999 / 10,000]

Instantly, every single person in the global chat became completely stunned.

[Vaelin: What?! How is that even possible? How did it increase so much at once? What the fuck?]

[Throne: Cheating! This is blatantly cheating. This cannot be anything else.]

[Elara: ...]

[Player 555: I deliberately kept it at 9,999 so I could chat here for a second. It only took me 15 minutes to get over 6,000 points by myself.]

[Player 555: All I want to say is: GET GOOD.]

[Player 555 posted a selfie.]

It was a perfectly framed selfie with Caelus standing in the Divine Nation of Fire’s desert region. He had his arm casually slung over the shoulder of a clearly terrified, high-level Red Lizard boss, throwing up a cheerful peace sign to the camera.

[Ding!]

Across the entire Region Cluster, a blinding golden light erupted from everywhere.

[Region Cluster A1 has successfully reached the required 10,000 Points of the gamble.]

[The winner of the Gamble is Region Cluster A1.]