Two days later, in a world of ice and snow, a beastly, enormous off-road vehicle tore across an endless, pale snowfield, kicking up a blinding flurry of snow.

"The cold wind cuts like a blade, with the earth as its chopping block and all life as its meat. The endless snow falls, turning the sky into a great furnace that melts the world into silver. The snow begins to cease, but the wind has yet to settle. A horse-drawn carriage approaches from the north. Its rolling wheels crush the ice and snow on the ground, but they cannot crush the loneliness that fills the world..."

From the driver’s seat, Zhou Chen narrated dramatically as he drove, adding a splash of color to the otherwise dull and tedious journey.

The four of them had sprung into action after forming an alliance yesterday, and the first item they crafted was a vehicle.

The map was huge, so they certainly couldn’t travel on foot. They quickly agreed on a plan: first, build a snow-ready off-road vehicle to get around.

With the four Blacksmiths working in concert, they used their collected resources to build an off-road vehicle from scratch that very night. Then, with the leftover materials, they crafted four well-made firearms, a roof-mounted machine gun for the vehicle, and over three hundred rounds of ammunition.

After scavenging all the nearby resources, the group changed their strategy. They abandoned the patch of woods and started driving all over the map, going on the offensive to find resource-rich areas and other contestants.

Anyone who’s played a video game knows the best way to get geared up is to kill other players and loot their stuff.

—The four of them were ranked in the top twenty of the preliminary matches, so there was no doubting their strength. Now that they were allied, most other contestants were little more than sitting ducks. Going on the offensive was their best option.

"Hey, wait. Look up ahead. Is that someone in the snow?"

Chengzi, in the passenger seat, pointed toward the distant horizon. On the boundless, flat snowfield, a contestant with a backpack was struggling through the knee-high snow.

"Let me see what his name is..."

Chengzi squinted into the distance. After a moment, they made out the ID floating above the player’s head and let out a snort of laughter. "[KilledForMyLooks]?"

"What a cocky name," Zhou Chen said, raising an eyebrow. "Watch me run him over!"

"Run him over!" Li Yiliang boomed in agreement from the back seat.

Zhou Chen slammed his foot on the gas. The massive vehicle let out a soul-shaking roar, its speed skyrocketing as it hurtled toward the distant figure.

When [KilledForMyLooks] heard the roar of an engine behind him, he instinctively glanced back. His face went pale with fright, and he immediately bolted.

He was on the verge of tears. All around him was an endless snowfield, with not a shred of cover in sight. In a place like this, how could two legs ever outrun four wheels?

"Eat my Isekai truck!"

Zhou Chen cheered, flooring the accelerator as the cold, merciless steel behemoth howled toward its prey.

Just as the death-dealing truck was about to slam into him, [KilledForMyLooks] dove to the left and rolled, narrowly escaping. But Zhou Chen’s driving skills had already advanced by leaps and bounds. He executed a beautiful powerslide, whipping the vehicle around in a spray of snow and roaring back for another pass.

Thinking on his feet, [KilledForMyLooks] stopped running in a straight line. Instead, he tried to bait the vehicle into running in circles, hoping to use its wide turning radius to buy himself some time.

But Zhou Chen had teammates.

In the back, Ding Yuan and Li Yiliang grabbed automatic rifles, aimed at [KilledForMyLooks], and pulled the triggers without hesitation.

’I’m screwed...’ The thought barely had time to flash through the mind of [KilledForMyLooks] as he watched helplessly, seeing flames erupt from the gun barrels before his vision went black.

On the live stream, countless bullets tore through the body of [KilledForMyLooks], turning him into a bloody sieve that stained the surrounding snow crimson.

[KilledForMyLooks] collapsed to the ground. A second later, his body vanished into thin air. He had been eliminated, leaving only a pile of resources behind.

"What a poor bastard." Zhou Chen poked his head out to inspect the drops. It was just a few scattered pieces of metal—not much of a haul, but better than nothing.

"There’s a Snow Forest two kilometers away with a small river next to it. Looks like a decent potential stronghold. Might be someone there. Wanna go check it out?" Chengzi suggested, looking at the system map.

"Let’s roll!"

Zhou Chen hit the gas, and the vehicle sped off, disappearing into the blizzard of snow it kicked up.

"That contestant, [KilledForMyLooks], was truly unlucky. Let’s all have a moment of silence for him. Two seconds should do."

In the commentary booth, Colonel Guan’s gloating voice rang out. He watched the screen and continued his play-by-play. "Judging by their route, the four-man squad is likely heading for that Snow Forest two kilometers out. And as luck would have it, there are currently three squads—ten contestants in total—engaged in a massive brawl there...

Ladies and gentlemen, we’re in for a real show!"

The camera immediately cut to the Snow Forest, where ten Ascenders were locked in a fierce battle, the air filled with an unending series of explosions.

"We can see a truly star-studded lineup here! We’ve got [First Ah Bin], ranked eighteenth in the preliminaries; [All Kinds of Licking Dogs], ranked forty-first; and... in total, there are six contestants here who ranked in the top one hundred of the preliminaries. The other four are formidable opponents as well."

"They’re split into three squads. If [Joyful Sawman]’s team joins in, it’ll be a four-way brawl. And that would mean a total of ten contestants from the top one hundred of the preliminaries! This ought to be the first large-scale battle since the competition began!" Colonel Guan’s voice was filled with anticipation.

The other commentator chimed in, "That’s right. Because this competition’s map is so enormous, the probability of contestants encountering one another and breaking into a fight has been only 7% so far. Let’s see if the contestants can deliver a spectacular battle for us all... The contestant voting function has now been enabled in the live stream. Viewers, you can now vote to support your favorite contestants."