The third round began immediately the very next day. For the third round the participating mages needed to do a simple quest, which was to explore a dungeon called the "Resting Ground of Great Hero". This was technically a S rank Dungeon but S rank monsters did not appear before the very last floor. So it was safe for lower rankers to explore it if they made sure that they did not go to the last floor.

There were a few A rank monsters here and there but all of them were mostly staying in one area and did not roam around. The magic guild was giving everyone a map of the dungeon so that the weaker participants would be able to stay clear of that area.

This Dungeon was actually excellent for this test as it had many traps that needed the expertise of a mage to solve. Thieves were not very useful here because of those traps. So all the mages would need to do their very best to explore it. They were also not allowed to make teams.

Now there were two main questions that someone unfamiliar with this Dungeon might be having. Would the dungeon not be too crowded with so many mages going in. And the answer to that is no as this dungeon was super big. At least as big as a small town. So even if thousands of people went in it would still be fine, let alone with only a few hundreds of mages.

And the second question would be how the audience were going to see the performance of the mages if they were going to enter the dungeon. The answer to that was also very simple. This "Resting Ground of Great Hero" was one of the few rare dungeons that were fully explored and cleared by the magic guild. So they had spent a lot of money and time to set up a surveillance network in the whole place except the final floor which had powerful S rank monsters. So they were able to see every nook and cranny of this Dungeon and were able to broadcast it.

This dungeon exploration was happening for the first time in the history of this tournament so everyone was very hyped to see the new event. All of them were speculating what would happen in this round. Then the organisers started to explain what the mages needed to do inside.

This dungeon had a gimmick that gave lots of treasure chests as rewards. Defeating a powerful monster would be guaranteed to give a treasure chest corresponding to its difficulty level but there were also a lot of random treasure chests scattered all around the dungeon. So the participants needed to open as many chests as possible within a time limit of 16 hours. There would be a device with them that would give the participants a score depending on the quality of the chest that they had opened.

This way A and B rankers would not be able to gain too much advantage as even with their lower combat prowess, the C rankers would also have a decent chance of going to the next round if they did well with the traps and had the support of their luck. So it would not be unfair to them. So with a lot of excitement, the third round started.

...

From the beginning, the A rankers went straight to challenge the A rank bosses as they gave high quality chests as the reward for beating them. That would be an easy and surefire way for them to get high scores and they did not need to depend on their luck.

As for the B and C rank participants who were weaker, they started to search the whole place thoroughly to find as many chests as they could. The magic item on their kept track of everyone's scores and showed the current ranking to the audience. This ranking was not available to the participants as to stop them from being too rushed.

Unsurprisingly, almost all the mages in the top 20 were the A rankers. The only big surprise was Benshui, the genius girl who had magic abilities comparable to an A ranker had managed to rank in the top 25 even when there were more than 30 A rank mages participating. Her luck had obviously been good but that was not all. Her speed in solving the puzzles and disarming the magic traps was phenomenal to say the least.

The other boy named Alma who had also managed to impress Elena did not do very well. His lack of strength was really holding him back and his luck was also on the bad side. But still he somehow managed to stay within the top 100 by absolutely pushing himself to the limit. His perseverance was so impressive that Elena decided to help him out with his problem with his low potential.

...

16 hours were almost up and the people who would be able to advance to the next stage became very clear. Surprisingly everyone, two C rankers were able to get into the top 100 to advance to the second round. Normally that would be the most astonishing thing but that was not the case here.

What made everyone extremely surprised was the elimination of not one but two A rankers. That was something unbelievable. One of the A rankers was way too confident and went to challenge one A rank boss who was extremely powerful. That mage was not a match for it and almost died in that boss' hands. Fortunately other A rank mages among the organisers were able to arrive in time to save his life.

As for the other A ranker, he was just way too unlucky. Even Elena was surprised to see how unlucky he was. Whenever he went to fight a boss, it turned out that another A ranker had already taken care of it. When he switched to just exploring the dungeon to find traps and chests, it turned out that the area he chose was just completely searched by many other mages and there was nothing left for him. So he ran around the whole dungeon for 16 hours straight without showing any results. It was actually quite sad watching him.

There were unfortunately a few deaths. One of the B rank mages came across a rare roaming A rank monster who was also one of the strongest among these monsters. Immediately the organisers went to that location and killed that monster but that B ranker was already dead. Two more C rankers also died by activating dangerous magic traps by mistake.

When the final result was out, it turned out that Benshui had actually managed to rank 19th which was truly astonishing for everyone. Alma also qualified with his ranking being 97th. He really did his best and most probably the next round would be his last. But his performance would definitely be remembered as legendary.

With that the third round came to an end and it was time for the fourth round to start.

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