I am an Eldritch Entity

He wiped his hands and weapon's handle on his pants and continued deeper.

The fact that the number of Ice Oxen had risen was a good indicator that he was in the right direction.

He was fully alert, scanning the land with utmost seriousness, not willing to miss out on anything.

It helped that he was in the tundra region, so there weren't as many obstacles for him to scan.

He walked for approximately an hour, and found groups of two, three, two, four, three, two, and one Ice Oxen respectively.

There is some pattern.

There was a definite increase in the number of Ice Oxen before it began decreasing. As if to confirm this fact, he proceeded to encounter groups of two, two and one Ice Oxen.

Wait, maybe I am in the wrong direction.

He returned the way he came, till the area where he felt the 'density' of the Ice Oxen was highest. This took another hour, during which he encountered a lot of groups as well.

Of course, he killed all of them. They were an easy bundle of points after all.

Eryndor then changed direction once again, instead of going deeper into tundra, he began walking in the same belt.

Imagine this.

There was a small circle, where their camp lay. It was the innermost circle.

Then came a bigger circle which circled around the previous small circle, with the smaller one being in the center.

Big circle minus small circle? A belt. This belt was a safezone, where there were no beasts.

Beyond this belt was another belt, where Eryndor began encountering the Ice Oxen.

Beyond this belt were multiple belts where the density of Ice Oxen began increasing. At a certain belt, it reached the highest density, beyond which it began decreasing once again.

So, Eryndor was currently walking along this belt with the highest density of Ice Oxen.

Approximately two hours later, Eryndor was panting heavily as he leaned against a tree.

He just had a fight with a group of five Ixe Oxen, three at peak stage of Latent realm and two at mid stage.

It was difficult, but he managed to win without any serious injuries.

The entire credit went to Sovereign's Cloak, which even disappeared near the end of the battle.

Before moving any further, he wanted to recover his Sovereign's Cloak.

I might be close, no other reason for the beasts to grow both in quantity and quality.

He was more and more sure of his guess.

There might be a large group of Ice Oxen nearby. One where their team could farm a lot of points if they utilized it well.

Eryndor didn't hold much hope though, the sky was already starting to brighten.

He had a guess that they only appeared at night. It might be a hidden feature of the tournament.

Eryndor could already guess some of the conditions.

One, they will only appear at night.

Two, they would only appear near a complete team.

Three, the beasts wouldn't enter a certain area around the camp of the team.

I can think of two reasons for the third point.

One, the tournament didn't need to be too difficult for students.

Two, the tournament also doesn't need to be too easy. They won't be able to find this oddity if the students don't leave the safety net of the camp.

They would need to face the danger and go deep to scan the area, only then would they be able to find this.

As he concluded the points, Eryndor could only appreciate the design of this setup.

He wouldn't have taken the risk if not for his absurdly large range.

The only reason he always felt safe going out like this was because he could always start escaping wayyy earlier if he spotted any kind of danger.

His range simply gave him that huge of a buffer distance, or buffer time.

If he hadn't taken this risk, he would've never found out about this.

But just taking the risk wasn't enough, one also needed to be strong enough to grasp the opportunity within the said risk.

Just like now, if Eryndor weren't strong enough, he wouldn't even be able to get close to the big group of Ice Oxen which were just a bit further away from his current location.

The same could be said for his team.

Fortunately, they were strong enough.

A few minutes later, Eryndor sighed.

As expected, I was correct, this hidden feature would only appear at night.

There were no longer any Ice Oxen in his extended vision, but a lot of different ones which suddenly began filling in from beyond his range.

I should return to my team.

Eryndor popped a food pill in his mouth and retreated back to where his team was.

Throughout the night, he kept messaging whoever was on the watch rotation of his situation and location as a backup, so they might have already made the same guess as him.

As he regrouped with his group, Edward was the first to laugh and speak.

"I think we should follow the same setup as today.

"Eryndor with his absurd sensing range is good for finding hidden stuff like this. He can be awake at night and search for things like this which would normally be hard to find.

"It is also not dangerous since his range is just that high, and he himself is also strong enough. Eryndor definitely counts among the upper bracket of combat prowess in this secret realm."

Valentina chuckled.

"I don't think we'll get such good things everyday though. There should be a limit."

Eryndor nodded, speaking about another point which he just thought of.

"Yea, it was our first night together as a team.

"For all we know, this situation might only occur on the first night and we might've already missed it.

"But still, I reckon we should start making preparations immediately so we can capitalize upon this opportunity if the situation occurs again tonight."

As everyone nodded, Drakarion's focus was on a different thing.

His eyes wide with surprise as he gazed at Eryndor's points.