“...Should we do something?”

“He’s been staring at you for like ten minutes straight.”

“I—I think he might be blind? It doesn’t feel like he’s exactly looking at me… And that eye is giving me the creeps… Like, seriously, why does it look like that?”

“Is it moving? I think I can see it moving.”

“If you try to wake him up, tell me five minutes earlier so I can leave. We’re in agreement that he’s the guy, right? He matches the description exactly!”

“We can’t know for sure that he’s the PrissyKittyPrincess. There are plenty of people in the tutorial with long black hair, pale complexion and a brand on their chest. Do you really think someone who could do that would be sitting here, talking like a normal human person? Going by the latest on what he’s supposed to have done, the obvious assumption would be that he’d kill us all to make a teamwork trial impossible to complete, thereby excusing him from the ante-purgatory trials completely.”

I turn my eye to look at him. “Not a bad idea.” He, alongside the other three in his party, go shock-still. Stiff as marble statues, they turn to me. “However,” I say, “I’m way too lazy to do that. Besides, I’m sure Hunter… the god of hunting would just force me to stick around until the next attempt. Or he’d give me an F. Or, even more realistically…” I smile at them. “He’d stop me. No one’s supposed to die during these trials, remember?”

I’m surprised they’re brave enough to glance at each other instead of continuing to keep their eyes on me. That means they didn’t do their homework well enough.

…Not that they need to keep their eyes on me. It’s not like I’m going to hurt them. There’s no need to. If anything, things will get more difficult if I hurt them.

Still, I’m a bit curious…

Simon?

{::w::}?

Do you think you could show me his stats?

{::w::}!

Searching divine framework…>

Come on, little guy, I know you got this!

Europe Server

Username: FlamingoFountain

Soul Progress: 9,7%

Agility: 19 (+27%)

Strength: 27 (+38%)

Stamina: 23 (+33%)

Magic Power: 4 (+25%)>

…What the heck is this?

Hang on, I need to… Right, so… Uhh… What the hell?

Let me think here for a moment. Clearly, by what I can tell, his level and general soul progress—whatever that is—is so low that whatever increases his stats were supposed to grant have been reduced to less than plus forty per cent for each stat. However… Because his body is in such good condition… He’s still really strong. I mean, his strength is… What’s that, around 30 in total?

…What’s my strength like?

Base body strength: 2

Stat modifier: +422%

Skill modifier: +340%

Soul progress modifier: -21,6%

Total strength: 22,497664>

…Huh. I’m… weaker than him? Purely strength-wise? Sure, I’m eleven times stronger than I’d be without the stats, but… He’s fifteen times stronger than I am. And, sure, if I wanted to be petty I could whine about how my agility and stamina are much higher than his, but… That’s still only because of the stat increases.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

But this guy… He’s strong. I can tell. He isn’t ripped or anything, but it’s clear that he’s got a body that fits what he’s been doing so far, and even if the system were to randomly abandon him, he’d still be able to stand on two legs.

That’s… honestly pretty impressive.

To show my appreciation, I give him a manly upwards-nod. He visibly shivers.

“Well, since everyone seems to be getting along so well—” Hunter says, prompting me to look at him, which reminds me of the fact that he actually looks like a deer demon, in turn causing me to leap from my seat and fall into a crouching position, ready to attack. His multiple eyes blink at me. “That startled me! Is everything alright, Kitty?”

Ah. They’re looking at me. B—bad. Like that. All of them, they’re all—

But not her. She’s looking at me, worried. Curious. Uncertain.

Wavering.

I stand up straight again. “Y—yeah, I’m okay. I got startled, too. Sorry. What were you about to say?”

“Hm? Oh! Right, everyone seems to have finished eating, so I think it might be time to get started with the first trial. Since the test for teamwork requires at least four to execute properly, you two,” he nods at me and Gecko, “will unfortunately have to wait until the rest of those at the table finish the combat trial. No worries, I’m sure you’ll find their trial more than entertaining.”

The other people at the table don’t seem too excited to hear their trial be described as such, but they’re also too tense to care. Looking at Gecko, it seems even she’s a bit nervous about what’s to come.

…As though I’m any different. This is all nerve-wracking.

Hunter stands up, stretching his five-ish pairs of wings and flicking his multiple tails. “Alright, then! Let’s get going.” And then, before anyone can muster the courage to object, he claps his hand-paws, and off we are.

This place is… A colosseum? But a small one, closer in size to those operation theaters. It only seems big enough for one or two people to be fighting at once, with the gallery too small to fit more than thirty people. We’re all standing around the pit, and now that I’m looking at it, a few of the other people here seem a bit, well… Queasy?

“Alright! Once you’ve reeled from the teleportation nausea, I’ll explain the rules. As for you two…” He hums at me and Gecko. “—You can just sit over there.”

I look over at her. She meets my gaze and shrugs. Without exchanging any more words, we head over to the seats he pointed out. They aren’t especially comfortable, but with a tush like mine, I’d need three layers of pillow to sit without being in pain.

“So, um…” She looks over at me, frowning lightly. “What’s with the eye?”

I frown back at her. “What about it?”

“Well, it’s… I assumed there was some story behind the eyepatch, like you were half-blind before joining the tutorial, but…”

“Ah, no, no, it’s nothing serious like that,” I say, waving it off. “It’s just that there’s a spider in my eye.”

“There’s a spider in your eye?”

“There’s a spider in my eye.”

“Ah. I see. Okay, well…” She taps the metal claws of her left hand against her chin, grinning. “It looks sick.”

“Sick as in good?”

“Sick as in really cool.”

I chuckle bashfully, fighting the urge to say ‘Oh, this old thing? It was a gift!’ or mention how little I gave for it—that being nothing.

You hear that, Simon? She thinks you’re cool!

{::o::}!

/{>>//w//<<};;

Ah, you’re so alike your father. Shy to a fault.

At my side, I notice her expression shifting, and she hunches down slightly, steeping her fingers. Oh. That’s not good. She presses her lips into a thin line. “Yeah. It’s just… there was another thing I wanted to ask about, and if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. I’ve done plenty of things I’ve come to regret in the past, so if you don’t want to talk about it, then…”

“If it’s about what I’ve done to deserve being wanted,” I say, “then whatever the other guys said I did is probably true.”

“Probably? You don’t care if some of it was fabricated, or exaggerated, or…”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say blandly. “What I’ve done doesn’t need to be exaggerated.”

“Oh,” she says, and I can tell some little piece of her trust has broken. She’s still sitting next to me, but emotionally, she’s at least two seats over. Her back is hunched. Since I’m sitting mostly straight, I can no longer see her face, as it’s hidden by the wide brim of her hat. “Did you really eat…”

“Whatever it is you’re about to say,” I reply, “the answer is ‘yes.’”

She twitches. Right. This is it, then. Less than a day and I’ll have lost another friend. Maybe there really is no getting past what I’ve done? That wouldn’t entirely surprise me. The death penalty exists for a reason. Then again, maybe I don’t need to make new friends. I can probably get better on my own. Heck, considering that I hurt everyone who gets close to me, making new friends is just sadistic. I really am a horrible—

“Do you regret it?” she asks. She’s turned her face now to look at me, her pale face torn between hope and despair.

For once, I’m the one who looks away. “Yeah. Every day.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Something bubbles up within me. Some little vestige of the rage I used to hold, clawing up to the surface of my inner lake, unfreezing the black ice, and emerging, snarling and with teeth all gnashing, laughing at her naivete and her folly, and it speaks through my mouth, with my voice, saying, “What’s that supposed to—”

I look at her. She’s smiling. Seeing the expression on my face, her eyes widen slightly. “Oh! Sorry, no, what I meant is… I’m glad to hear that. If you regret it, then it’s fine if I become your friend.”

The little angry thing inside me bristles. “It’s fine? Despite everything I’ve done, it’s fine to become my friend? I hurt my friends. Even the people I love the most… I hurt. Do you really want to become like that? Another in my long line of victims? It won’t be funny. You’ll be sure to regret this down the line. Once you’ve seen me being myself… Once you get a taste of what I do… You’ll regret it.”

She blinks at me. Pulling one leg onto her chair, she presses her chin against her knee, smiling childishly. “Thanks for the warning! I think I’ll ignore it.”

“It’s not a warning!” I say, but my voice cracks pathetically, like a teenager—like the teenager I still am, deep inside. “It’s not…” And I know what the angry voice wants to say next. It wants to laugh at her, and tell her ‘Suit yourself! But when I kill your friends and eat your face, blame no one but yourself!’ before cackling maniacally, because then the possible becomes inevitable, and I can blame it all on her. But… The angry little thing inside me is wrong. That’s not what’s going to happen. Not this time. And… Trying to convince her that it will… It only reinforces my own self-image. The bad one, that says everything will go poorly anyways, so why not give up?

But I won’t do that. Not anymore. The little angry voice… within my mind’s eye, I turn to it. It’s red, and spiky, and has little crooked claws and little crooked teeth. I take its little red claws in mind. ‘It might happen,’ I think to it. ‘There’s a possibility. But if it does… We can’t blame her for trusting us. The only one to blame is us. And that’s why we have to trust her. If we trust her for believing in us, then maybe, just maybe, we can believe in us, too.’ I let myself hold the little angry thing, and when it calms down, I can tell that it wants to try, too. It’s been scared for so long. Now, it’s just tired.

“Thank you,” I mutter to her, all the way from inside my heart, where the little red thing called love resides. “That means a lot to hear.”

She smiles back at me. “Don’t mention it, Kitty.”