During the next few hours, as we watch the challenges, Tacita and I play a game.

As she sits on the chimney, rooted within her barrier, her skill, trait, or whatever it is, keeps changing. She alters it rapidly as she figures out my methods for detecting her.

Sometimes it takes me a few seconds to pierce through, sometimes it takes thirty minutes. She’s really good at it, and it's intriguing to observe. She’s not like Savant or Tess, with their genius level use of skills, they’re both quick to learn and grasp new concepts. She’s not even like me with my abuse of skills to push myself further than others while trying to scam the system.

What Tacita is doing is mostly based on wild instinct. Like a bird thrown out of the nest, forced to learn to fly by instinct rather than rote learning.

And damn, does she seem to be getting annoyed. Her penchant for stealth seems to be an important part of her identity. The way she gets twitchy when people get too close, it's no surprise.

Yet I refuse to take that into consideration. No, I even resort to using my eye trait when I have trouble piercing through her hidey barrier.

The longer this goes on, the more dangerous she feels. The playful mood is gone, and her eyes are glued to the back of my head. I can nearly feel that gaze burning me.

I also keep my body strengthened, while preparing to empty my Vortex Core, and funneling a large amount of mana to my Mana Regulator for Reinforcement.

It's a clear challenge to her, and I might be playing with fire, but I can’t bring myself to care. I don’t like having her sneaking around and appearing out of nowhere. I’ve had a deep hatred for such tactics ever since my experiences on the 1st floor. It's not to the point of trauma anymore, but I still find it deeply unsettling.

So we either set some rules about that or we will fight. That's my message to her.

Meanwhile, the remaining Hell difficulty Avatars go through their third challenges.

After being beaten by me and Gareth, they challenge a few of the weaker-looking ones. Just like before, they continue in groups of anywhere from a few hundred to one thousand. I turned out to be the exception with close to two thousand. They even win some of them.

BenDover gets tired out and hunted down once he runs out of mana. Brainiac fails to reposition quickly enough and gets surrounded, as they use the forest to their advantage, limiting his ranged attacks.

Lootenant is more defense based, so he finds himself lacking in means of attack.

Aaron and Dennis get tired out, neither of them capable of sustaining long combat against that many people who are getting better and better organized. They are also weaker on their own and separated from their twin.

The murderer from Easy difficulty is also joining a lot of these fights, often getting in a few nasty attacks during the challenge only to be pulled away once he reappears in the common area.

At this point, around 150 people from Hard difficulty create a core that goes around challenging Avatars one after another. They are the main forces the others join and follow their lead. That group of 150 people has gotten quite efficient at this point. There's a ranged unit, a melee unit, a unit of scouts, defenders, and a few really weak healers.

They protect each other, their members switching places to keep their mana topped up and stamina fresh. Once again, they’re being led by Samuel and the other soldiers from his group. Once they’ve seen how well they do, the others seem to have an easier time trusting his lead and following orders.

They defeat another Avatar from WhiteWing and another from BenDover’s group.

“Would be nice to see them beat your Avatar, Tess, especially given the way you’ve been putting Samuel down,” I note.

Tess doesn't flinch, her bearing confident and carefree. “If anyone from Beyond lost, I would be deeply disappointed,” she says.

“I still want to see them beat Savant,” I sigh while looking on as they make preparations in the common area. The next Avatar is Tess, restricted to the 4th Floor.

“Maybe if he went for a 2nd Floor [Restriction],” Tess states, watching the proceedings with interest as they split into groups, having received final orders. “I regret not going for 3rd. I was too careful.”

“Scared.”

“Careful.”

“Sure.”

“Has anyone told you that they would like to punch you?”

“Yup, I heard it constantly on the 5th floor. He was a handsome lad with a very punchable face himself.”

“I see. By the way, can you stop playing with Tacita? You’re starting to scare people.”

“Hell no.”

“Sometimes I forget how stubborn you can be once you’ve made a decision. Anyway, I spoke to Miwa. How did you make her so angry?”

“He wanted to steal her arm,” Maya says, nomming on snacks that she shares with Biscuit sitting next to her.

“It's still an achievement. Miwa is an extremely polite, patient, and reasonable person. Anyway, she’ll still prepare a pizza, salami with some extra cheese. A few of the ingredients are old, but they should be fine. The price is an epic item and a single mid-sized piece of voidsteel.”

“What? We said epic item only.”

“That was before you decided you wanted to steal her arm and kept pestering her for it.”

“Okay, okay, but the pizza had better be good.”

Tess shakes her head, “You know you could find a better use for an epic item, right?”

Ha! Better than feeding my ESM? No way. I already have plans to take plenty of pictures of the little half demon.

Now that I think about it, demons are indeed dangerous. Just a few weeks and she’s got me acting like this. Am I really so weak or are the people around me just scary?

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“I still have a few and I should be able to make them on my own soon. So I wouldn’t worry about it,” I tell Tess.

“Truly you are the sugar daddy of group 4.” Maya says, turning to me, “When you summon your disciple, I fully intend to watch and learn from her. Then I’ll be your minion and you’ll make epic items for me,” she jokes.

“What? I can't hear words of people with a [Focus] below level 40.”

“It’s starting,” Sophie says, interrupting us and nodding at the screen.

Tess's avatar stands alone, with a shine in her eyes as she activates her skill, she quickly spots the challengers. Her crown forms above her head in an instant, white and red lightning cracking in a halo of energy. Then her avatar moves away from the groups attempting to locate her.

While her Avatar runs, stones lift from the ground, floating after her. She imbues the stones with lightning and leaps through the trees, cutting a few branches loose with her bare hand before shaping them into javelins.

In a few minutes, she has a decent number of projectiles floating around her, lightning crackling through the airborne arsenal. The Avatar does all of this while keeping the challengers in her line of sight, and collecting information.

So when she attacks, it's no surprise that she kills Samuel first.

The man dies in the middle of a sentence, a stone the size of my fist tearing through him from over a mile away.

Before the challengers can even react, five more die, each one the leader of their respective units, and none are able to endure the attacks. The Avatar made sure they were strong enough. With her eyes, Tess can see really far away and she can see a little bit of mana too. Not enough to use for detailed analysis like my eyes, but it's more than enough to detect mana signatures and large surges of mana.

The challengers start repositioning and strengthening the barriers. A few seconds later ten more attacks kill ten more people. And this time the attacks are coming from the opposite side, the Avatar moving quicker than they could ever have expected.

There are 196 people from Hard difficulty and each of them dies before the Avatar touches anyone else. Not a single Hard difficulty challenger endures the attack. They are all perfectly timed and unexpected, hitting weak spots with enough force to kill. Each with just the right amount of lightning.

Once she’s taken care of them, she changes her strategy. She uproots trees from the earth and flings them into the remaining groups, before following up the attack with a barrage of stones the size of motorcycles.

And the entire time they can’t even locate her precisely enough to attack.

“Why are you so cool, Tess,” Maya asks, sighing with her eyes glued to the screen.

I mean it might be cool, but all she’s doing is flinging junk at them from a distance. It must be boring as hell. Let's ignore the fact my Avatar did the exact same thing.

Anyway, to no one’s surprise, Tess's Avatar wipes out the challengers and Tess scrolls through a window to see how many shards she got. It won't be as much as I did, but it’s a nice amount for sure. Probably enough for her to buy an epic javelin.

The epic items start at 4 thousand shards, but some of them cost multiple times that. There is definitely a difference between low, mid, and upper, even if the difference isn’t as noticeable as it would be for an arcane item.

When the challengers return brainstorming starts and most of the challengers don’t really seem all that disappointed. As if they got the result they were expecting and they’ve chosen to take it as a learning lesson. Though I mostly get that sense from Hard difficulty.

That makes me reconsider a few things. Lately, I’ve been thinking of them as weak, how could I not? Even restricted members of Hell difficulty can wipe them out with ease, but maybe I’ve just been lacking perspective.

It's not like Easy has a power level of 1, Normal has a power level of 2, Hard of 3, and Hell of 4. It's more like Hell difficulty is a few stages above.

Yet, Hard difficulty isn't that bad. Logically they shouldn't even be, the tutorial must be… well, hard, for them as well. They’ve shown me a hunger for improvement that’s a cut above the people in Easy and Normal who seem to take things at a more relaxed pace, more like a hobby.

When the tutorial ends, I can certainly imagine a few people from Hard growing strong enough to destroy a small city on their own. Maybe even a bit more when it comes to the stronger ones. But for the moment that’s mostly speculation on my part.

It's fun to think of the differences between us.

Oh and now that I think about it, don’t the strongest people tend to be loners? Actually, it might be half and half.

Currently, we have 6 people from Beyond here. Tess, Gareth, and Lily are on the more sociable side while Tacita, Savant, and I seem to be more introverted. Though I'm sure our trio of introverts would win. Yup, screw those extroverted weirdos. I bet they’re fine talking to people, even the moment after they wake up. Creepy.

I also decide to ignore the fact that we three introverts are certainly weirder and bigger assholes than our counterparts. But it's not like they’re normal either. Everyone in Beyond is a bit twisted.

When I finally crack through the change Tacita made in her field, I turn back to the screen. That one was difficult, it took me the longest time yet to pierce. Tacita can be surprisingly stubborn, it seems. Ever since we started, she hasn't moved from her spot or stopped staring at me.

The next avatar they challenge is Min-Jae. They don’t even go in with that many people, below 500 even.

I already suspect the result, but Min-Jae gets defeated. He takes out a bit more than half of them and they have trouble catching up to him. The Avatar even uses the eye he got on the 4th floor as it precedes the restriction.

In the end, it's not enough and his attacks gradually weaken as they catch up to him. Current Min-Jae would wipe them out easily, yet the [Restriction] he chose is too severe. The young boy is too proud to go higher than 4th.

The result is a celebration among those excitedly discussing the fight. The one who did the most walks away with the better part of the two thousand shards Min-Jae offered as an additional reward and an epic item he got from the 5th floor. He did set it up after he saw me creating my Avatar and the result is what it is.

If Tess knew, she would’ve probably stopped him. Even the twins would’ve done that. But Min-Jae did it all on his own.

Even before his Avatar was defeated, he disappeared from the roof.

When Lily's Avatar appears on the screen, I stand up and detect where Min-Jae went. I don't even have to watch this challenge as I'm sure Lily will wipe the floor with them with her surprisingly low [Restriction], the 5th Floor. But that's just her. I'm sure she would be able to do it with the 4th Floor one but she doesn't seem to have the confidence.

I stop in front of Tacita, “I have to go now. But let me tell you one thing. I’ve humored you sneaking up on me for a good while, but I don't appreciate it.”

Even back on Earth I had bullies trying to ambush me in groups. I spent three days fighting for my life, being hunted by Phantom Goblins only to be stabbed every time I faltered.

It's not something I can help, even if there’s no malice in it, even if it’s just playful teasing. I don’t trust Tacita the same way I trust group 4. And even though I can't die here, I can’t bring myself to allow it.

Just for once, I’m going to be nice and try to solve things by talking instead of fighting, “Do you know what I mean by that?” I ask.

Her eyes shine below her messy bangs, giving me a long appraising look. Her expression changes a few times until it lands on one of understanding.

A few seconds later, she nods.

The field around her changes but this time it's more akin to a playful attempt to hide and catch someone off guard to laugh at them later. Like a game.

She looks at me with a question and tilts her head. Her own warning to me, to avoid pushing her any further.

“This much is okay.” I also change the way I detect her to match her change.

From now on, it's a fun way to keep ourselves sharp rather than anything more sinister.

A bright smile appears on Tacita's face and she waves as I use one of my anchors to follow Min-Jae.