The race entered its fifth day.
Prison Rock was ultimately unable to turn the tide.
As the countdown for the speedrun phase was about to reach zero,
Nine Provinces' lead in the [Dark Souls] first-clear speedrun battle had become impossible to erase.
Even if the devastated Prison Rock players managed to pull themselves together, they simply could not recover their usual clearing pace in such a short time, much less after changing their strategy.
And as the dust settled on the speedrun battle,
Apparently having confirmed their victory, the Coordination Bureau swiftly changed its strategy as well. They no longer rushed to send more second- and third-tier players to forcibly clear the main storyline.
Since there was no longer any need to race against time, there was no reason to send everyone to the Kiln of the First Flame to be used as firewood.
Instead, they split off a large number of elites and immediately turned toward Oolacile and the Painted World.
Since they no longer had to fear wasting time, they could take advantage of the fact that the all-out melee had yet to erupt and familiarize themselves with the mechanics, terrain, and bosses of those two separate maps first, lest they go in completely blind.
There was just not much time left.
And with both separate maps being so punishing, they could only take a cursory look around.
Their familiarity with them still could not compare to Prison Rock's.
Meanwhile,
Lu Xiu had not been idle during this time either.
Besides constructing Sister Friede and Father, Lu Xiu planned to make another heavyweight boss and place it somewhere outside the main instance's separate areas, adding another fierce ingredient to the coming large-scale battle.
But after thinking it over, she could not come up with a suitable boss.
She