The group silently moved through the hallways of the building. While Avelina hadn’t fully appreciated it on their way towards Jacob’s little hideout, this building was far bigger than she had given it credit for whenever she looked at it from the outside. In total the building had thirteen different floors, but according to Jacob, no one could leave the first three floors. There supposedly also was a basement, but that was also locked off.

Jacob’s group was situated on the third floor, as she should have expected from the man. She hadn’t even needed to ask why he had chosen for it to be there. It was the room furthest in the back of the building with only one entrance into it, given that the windows that connected it to the outside world could no longer be opened.

This meant that it was as far away from Craig’s group, who were squatting on the ground floor of the building, as possible.

A tactical choice, but one that she was somewhat regretting now. After all, it was draining her nerves and concentration how she had to pass through the myriad of different hallways and staircases simply to get to their target and do all of that while making as little noise as possible, as Jacob considered Craig to be an idiot, but not incompetent or did he consider him incompetent, but not an idiot?

Avelina shook her head silently to get her mind of the matter, it wasn’t important now.

Now, she wasn’t a stranger to prowling around in buildings like these after dark, having done it a few times with a group of her friends, although that was because they very much weren’t allowed on the properties they went to go play on in their teenage years. The fact that all of her group was armed, herself included, did put a rather heavy weight on her. After all, this wasn’t like the other ones.

This was premeditated.

When she had killed Adrian, she had done as such in self-defence, to a degree. They both had been forced into the situation and she hadn’t sat down, planned to kill and then volunteered to do it as she had now.

It was a source of great guilt, but one that she would have to bear.

Jacob hadn’t forced her to come along, sure, he had hinted at her presence being a boon and wanting her there, but she had also been very willing to come along. She needed the experience, to become stronger. She didn’t thrust Jacob as far as she could throw him, but just because she hated the man didn’t mean that she couldn’t make use of him. He had more information about the system, due to having friends here he could share information with, so learning what he had told her, such as the amount of stats one gained per level, the way that skills were earned and the wrong information about the backfire of stats were all invaluable.

It was why she was willing to confirm the knowledge he already had. Naturally, she had remained silent about the fact that she believed the backfire happened based on percentage increases and not based on full set numerical values. He didn’t need to know and keeping it hiding couldn’t backfire on her.

She had weighed up all the pros and cons about going along with this plan and in the end, it was clear that it was better for her to simply play along, help as much as possible and hope to level.

It was such an easy decision, rationally, that it disgusted her to her core and she had wished with all her heart that she would have been able to make the ethical and moral choice. Yet as was clear by her crawling and sneaking through the night akin to some pathetic criminal-

She hadn’t been able to.

The fear in the back of her mind was just too much. The urge to stay alive. She didn’t know if she could stab someone if they hadn’t attacked her, but she knew that she had to try. She hated it so much.

Honestly, she thought that she wouldn’t ever be able to look Monica in the eyes again.

Perhaps some would call it the ‘weak’ choice, to avoid combat and stay behind. To not want to grasp the ability to grow in levels with your own two hands, but she wished that she had been brave and moral enough to make that choice.

There was nothing grand that she was doing this for. No direct threat to her life.

It was just pure fear of what could happen.

Every time that Jacob suddenly wrapped his hands around her shoulders or gave her one of his damned smiles, she couldn’t help but shudder in fear about what would have happened to her if Jacob had been just a little bit more of a madman, a little bit less of a human being. The fear of that is what drove her to become just like him.

As she was busy having the same thoughts that had been clouding her mind for the entire trip, the group arrived at the stairs to the final floor. This is where things finally got tricky.

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She had her sword on her back, as it would hit the ground if she let it hang from her waist and instead was holding on to the knife she had picked during the first Culling as her secondary weapon. As she inspected the blade one final time, she saw Jacob moving towards the exit of the staircase before making a single gesture, signalling that the coast was clear.

The biggest issue was the fact that Craig could have posted guards at the staircase itself, even if their group was camping a bit further away from it on the ground floor, but it seemed that it wasn’t the case.

As fell in line and followed the group into the hallway on the ground floor, she realized that she wished that there had been guards, to show that everyone would think of violence like this instantly, but no, it was just Jacob who was deranged enough to be able to thrive and instantly plan for the most optimal route to his own survival, no matter the inhumanities he had to commit.

The group slowly approached one of the bigger rooms, a cafeteria which the company apparently had installed a few years back in a failed HR attempt to boost the workplace efficiency by serving hot and good food at work.

It was only when they were right around the corner that they could hear light coming from the doorway and a hushed conversation.

From the way the light flickered and the faint crackling of wood, Avelina realized that they were burning some furniture to create an indoor fireplace. Instantly her eyes shot up, trying to see if they had just walked into some kind of CO hotbox that would choke them out, only to realize that there wasn’t even a hint of smoke.

Guess that the same thing that made it so the air never got thinner in a room, despite multiple people breathing it without there being any open windows also stopped the smoke of the fire from choking everyone in the building out.

Now came the hard part.

if there hadn’t been any guards outside of the room, they’d have just snuck inside under the cover of the night and stolen as much food as they could carry in a peaceful way, now that there were, well-

“Hello?”, Avelina called out to them, almost weeping, “I need to talk to Craig, Jacob he-”

The two people sitting at the fire, exhausted from having to do a night shift on the first day of this shitshow suddenly jumped up. Avelina didn’t want to look at them but still did. One was a bald middle-aged man who was in surprisingly good shape, while the guy next to him was younger and in equally fit. It seemed that this group had been more chivalrous and the stronger men had offered to take this burden on themselves.

“Jacob?”, the younger guy called out, voice a bit strained, “What do you mean? Who are you even-”

“She is his Niece”, the older guy said. His voice was on edge and clearly weary, “What are you doing here girl, don’t know if your ‘uncle’ told you this, but he had an arrangement-”

“I know.”, she spat out, white as snow, “I know. There was something strange and he, well, he said I had to give something-”

She reached into her pocket and held out a piece of paper, offering it to the older man as he was the more on guard of the two. A look of hesitation flickered on his face, but in the end, he saw a distraught young lady coming here in the middle of the night and simply assumed the worst. That something had happened on the third floor or was happening.

He took a step closer and-

A knife impacted him in the throat, thrown by Jennifer. The man’s eyes widened in panic as he tried to scream out, yet with his punctured airway, he couldn’t get a proper noise out. Jennifer had been given a knife-throwing skill with her scout class.

The younger man was caught off guard by this, but he was no fool. He attempted to quickly run away and warn the others by rushing into the room, but Avelina grabbed and tackled him to the ground, not having it in herself to actually follow the plan that Jacob had set up. In his plan, she should have knifed him the moment that Jennifer’s knife hit the other guard. She had been chosen as the one to ‘get close’ to any potential guards as she was a young woman and not known as a security guard or a ‘fighter’.

She knew that she was a fool and endangering everyone, but she just couldn’t stab someone who hadn’t done anything to her.

The pair fell down to the ground with a loud thud, which must have woken up at least one or two people as the rest of the group rushed over, one of them holding the door shut so that no one who had been accidentally woken up could wander in and properly raise the alarm and the others to back up Avelina.

As they ended up on the ground, it seemed that the guard’s fighting instincts kicked in and he quickly started to struggle, rolling over the physically weaker Avelina and pinning her down underneath him, his elbow slamming down on her throat as he slowly began to choke the life out of her in his own panic.

The two eyes as the world seemed to slow down.

Avelina desperately reached for the knife on her belt, trying to unseat it, but couldn’t do so properly as the man’s body was between her and the fireplace, meaning that he was casting a shadow over her. While one of her hands was busy trying to grab her weapon, the other was desperately clawing at his arm.

“Shit. Shit. SH-”, just as Avelina was starting to lose consciousness and the young man was about to scream out, alerting everyone and ruining their shot at securing the food, a muscular arm wrapped around his neck, choking him out and dragging him off Avelina with quite a bit of force.

The moment that Avelina could breathe again, she greedily sucked in as much air as she could, to then cough it up again. Her throat was sore and bruised and her heart was beating in her head. She couldn’t even stop shaking at having almost been killed again for the second day in a row and felt hot tears running down the corners of her eyes as she held back sobs, not wanting to make noise.

“Get up”, Jacob suddenly called out to her, still pinning the guy down and keeping his mouth shut, “We can’t have you freezing up again.”

Gone where the usual smiles of the cocky and arrogant man who threatened all of this as a game. it had been replaced with the fierce look of a madman willing to do whatever it takes to get what he wanted. Slowly he pulled the man back as Jay slowly averted his gaze, seemingly knowing what was going to happen now.

He held out his knife, by the handle, offering it to Avelina-

"Come on, finish him off and we'll get going."