The meditation had brought no peace. It had only brought clarity.
Alex sat with his back against a craggy rock while the wind carried the faint scent of ozone and blood across the battlefield. Somewhere in the distance, a creature screamed, and the sound cut off abruptly, as though it had been swallowed by something larger. The hunting period had not yet begun, but the predators were already restless.
He opened his eyes.
The ranking board glowed against the darkening sky, and its numbers served as a constant reminder of what he faced. Five million points. Four point five million. Four million. The top three existed in a realm that seemed almost mythical from where he sat. Below them stretched a pyramid of killers that descended into the tens of thousands, the thousands, and the hundreds.
He had less than twenty four hours to prepare for a system that had been designed to kill people like him.
