As the Scavenger Hunt progressed, the various contestants would scour the forest in search of one of the star-marked monsters where they could harvest the star runes from. Although they had a map that told them the general area where each monster should be, it didn’t tell them the exact location of that particular monster so finding what they’re looking for still required a decent amount of tracking skills. That or a whole lot of luck.

  So far, the common strategy for most of the monster-hunting contestants was to aim for a monster with the appropriate star-level to fit their needs.

  For example, if a contestant were to go about it completely solo, they’d only need to go after the 1-star monsters, which would earn them one star rune each when killed. Fighting monsters with higher star-levels—which were more powerful but also provided more runes—would essentially be pointless as each solo contestant only needed one rune to pass the first trial. Why bother taking the risk of facing a stronger enemy if the reward was basically redundant?

  With that said, even just acquiring star runes from 1-star monsters was tricky enough as there was only a limited number of them. Additionally, a solo contestant who’d acquired a star rune would immediately have a target painted on their back for other solo contestants, some of whom would not hesitate to kill just to steal the star rune off of them. In a sense, one could say that the real enemy in obtaining runes from 1-star monsters were other solo contestants—each vying to snatch a star rune by any means necessary and get to the edge of the barrier as soon as possible in order to pass the first trial.

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  Because of how the faux-health runes were set up, contestants who were killed within the trial won’t actually die but were instead magically transported to a special area upon death and be immediately eliminated from the trial. Even so, the damage on their pride could nonetheless be felt.

  As for contestants who were in teams, either pre-planned or improvised, their chances in getting star runes weren’t all that much better either. In order for a monster hunt to be worth it, the number of members on each team should ideally match with the star level of each monster they hunt. For example, a 2-person team should go after a 2-star monster, a 3-person team should go after a 3-star monster, etc.

  If a team went after a monster with a lower star-level, there would be less star runes to distribute evenly among all members. If a team went after a monster with a higher star-level, the monster might be too strong for them to handle and some of the members might end up faux-dying and get eliminated because of it.

  Sometimes, the members within a team would try to work it out by agreeing to hunt multiple monsters until each member got exactly one rune. However, more often than not, these disputes ended in violence, with whoever’s left standing claiming all the star runes for themselves once the dust had settled.

  Whether it’s the solo route or the cooperative route, competing in a trial such as this was not without its unique set of challenges. While some were only able to survive, others were able to thrive. It all depended on either how strong you were or how well you could cooperate with others in a team.