The one who ran into trouble was Lei Kaiming.
Having performed exceptionally well in the first two rounds, he had been the third to set off in the third round. By now, however, he had fallen behind overall.
If everyone had not struggled to tell directions underwater, taking rather different routes as a result, he would probably have been swearing in frustration as one Champion after another sped past him.
But since that had not happened, Lei Kaiming was still feeling rather pleased with himself. He had not caught up with the leaders, but at least those behind him had not caught up with him either, right?
Before he could enjoy that feeling for long, though, he saw a change in the water ahead. Clearly, something was approaching from a distance.
Lei Kaiming's first reaction was to wonder whether another Champion had gone the wrong way and doubled back. Or had he himself gone the wrong way, turned back, and run into someone behind him?
But then he decided that was very unlikely.
Quite apart from how unlikely it was for any of the dozen or so Champions to run into each other in the vast Black Lake even if they had become completely disoriented, there simply did not seem to have been enough time for anyone to stray so far off course.
Then was it a magical creature from the Black Lake?
As a student of Nanyang Magic School, a magic school right beside the ocean, Lei Kaiming did know something about aquatic magical creatures. But just as different lands nurtured different people, the same held true for magical creatures.
There were considerable differences between the magical creatures of different regions.
Nanyang Magic School was a school in Asia, so most of the magical creatures Lei Kaiming knew about