Jun Kai sat in contemplation as chaos ensued around him. Kai Len looked at Jun Kai with a perplexion about his face. He didn’t understand why Jun Kai sat idly by as the clock ticked by. It had already been an hour since the trial started, and Kai Len had thought several times about ditching Jun Kai to find a group to work with. After all, there was power in numbers.

A group of muscular men and fit women were crowded together at the base of the wall. A man tried to approach the group and was kicked in the face. After that, no one was willing to approach the group, and they got to work. The group took off their robes and intertwined them together, creating a rope to scale the wall.

It was then that a beautiful blonde with an incredibly fit body came into view. She was holding the rope and nodding as they discussed their plans.

“That’s impossible.” Kai Len’s eyes widened.

Jun Kai looked over. It should be impossible for anyone to scale the wall. He watched in mild interest as the woman took a few steps back and charged at the wall. She leapt and used the friction of her feet against the wall to scale a large distance. With the rope between her teeth she reached nearly twenty feet before falling back to the ground in a heap of dust.

Jun Kai’s anxiety in his chest rose watching this. Several groups had clung to the wall, adopting the same plan as the one with the most athletic bodies. But what could they hope to accomplish if the most qualified couldn’t even get close? Jun Kai thought this was relatively short-sighted.

Maybe it had something to do with the reincarnation? He was reincarnated with his memories intact. Was there an inherent lack of wisdom for people born in these test tubes? Jun Kai wondered about the test tubes. He left this in the back of his mind. Knowing that the nature of these people was extremely suspicious.

Several hours passed and Jun Kai had started walking around for the past hour. Kai Len followed beside him not knowing what to do himself. They found a group trying to build a tower of people to climb up the wall, and even combinations using rope, but none of these methods worked. The weight became too much for most.

No matter what Jun Kai did he couldn’t find a method that allowed for people to escape this valley. If one existed, it was obscure.

Kai Len was starting to boil with his own anxiety. He bit his lip and his eyes shook. It had been over twelve hours and to his knowledge no one had escaped the Northern Komm Valley.

He turned to Jun Kai. “Jun Kai, I think we should look for ways out. If we stay here for too long we will be terminated! Terminated, I say!” His eyebrows revealed the fear in his heart.

Jun Kai grinned, “Kai Len. We have known each other for only a short period of time. You are free to find a method of escape, but as far as I’m concerned there is no way out.”

Jun Kai locked his hands together as he looked down at the ground in acceptance. Kai Len’s chest was rising and falling as his hands flickered toward Jun Kai. “Jun Kai! You bastard. You’ve wasted twelve of my precious hours diddling about in this valley!”

Kai Len wrapped his small hands around Jun Kai’s skinny throat. Jun Kai was not well built, with short brown hair and green eyes. He gritted his teeth as he fell to the ground in a cloud of dust. It was apparent that Kai Len had lost his bearing and was taking it out on him.

“Get a grip! How would you plan to survive in a world like this, let alone the Northern Komm’s if you’re just going to spurt your anger out on your only friend?” He tried to pry Kai Len’s hands from his throat as he struggled for air.

With a drop, and then a shower, rain started to fall from the sky. Kai Len’s rage was reduced and the tension in his shoulders dropped as he looked up to the clouds. Jun Kai gasped for air as he slipped out from underneath Kai Len.

“I-It’s raining!” A person shouted from the side.

Many people held out their mouths, desperate for water. The scalding heat of the Northern Komms left them severely dehydrated. A speck of water was like divine light in this instance.

Kai Len smiled with this blessing as he cupped the rainwater into his mouth. He drank as if it were a fountain of youth in his despairing situation.

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Jun Kai didn’t have time to drink the rain water. He only noticed that people were dropping like flies, puking everywhere and vomiting blood when they drank from the rain. Kai Len was no exception. He was hunched over vomiting his stomach up. “T-The rain is poisonous!” They cried.

Jun Kai frowned, realizing that if he ingested the rain water he would be entrusted to the same fate. Kai Len’s body went limp and his body was cold. Jun Kai froze. It was lethal?

How many people had just died? Would Jun Kai have tasted the rain water if he hadn’t been nearly strangled into unconsciousness? A thought struck him. If the rain was so lethal that only a few droplets were able to kill someone, just some indecent exposure could cause him serious detriment. There was no cover in this large valley. The walls were not cliffs with varying rock formations. They were walls of straight height.

Jun Kai’s only cover could be considered Kai Len’s corpse, but the very thought of that made him puke inside.

“I don’t have a choice.” he said, carrying Kai Len’s body over his shoulder to the wall. He slid his back against the wall and held Kai Len above him to block most of the rain water. Jun Kai watched as some people stood aimlessly or took similar cover under the corpses of those who had fallen victim to the trap.

The lesson was simple. Don’t trust anything that comes without a cost.

At least that was how Jun Kai saw it. He fell asleep until the rain teetered away and the morning rays of the sun began to shine over the high walls of the Northern Komm Valley. Kai Len’s body had fallen off of him and many of the people who had been bunkered down were back to looking for a way out.

Jun Kai walked up to a noticeably large crowd. They were paying attention to the athletic group from before. They were on top of a mound of bodies that they had gathered from the rain genocide. A man with long flowing red hair and protruding muscles began to speak. His voice beckoned across the valley and struck fear through those with weak wills.

“People of the Northern Komm. There are only two methods of escape.” Everyone listened to his words with reverence.

He had a solution? Jun Kai was skeptical, but he didn’t have any better ideas. So he listened as intently as the others. He wasn’t immune to this man’s disposition, he was slowly drawn in.

“One, we dig a hole underneath the wall and find a way out. There’s no guarantee this will work because we don’t know the lay of the land outside of the valley, nor how thick the wall is. Secondly, we kill everyone and stack the bodies as high as we can so that the strongest can climb out. Assuming most of you don’t want to die. We will obviously go with the first method. Those who die for whatever reason will be stacked.”

He turned and pointed to where a group of men and women were already digging out a hole opposite of where he was standing. “Go there and start digging, that is all.”

Many of the people shrieked with excitement and ran over to the digging site and began digging with their hands like rabid creatures. Jun Kai did not do this. He stood there in place with a few others who were uncertain.

The lion-like man turned back around and saw Jun Kai and the others who were hesitant, “You who hesitate will not pass this trial.”

Jun Kai did not speak words to the arrogant red-haired man. He didn’t have the courage to fight back against someone so muscular after being nearly choked into submission by Kai Len earlier. He accepted that he was hesitant about the idea and slowly walked over toward the digging site.

He didn’t trust it. Something was suspicious about the entire thing.

Back at the body pile, the leader of the athletic group had his arms crossed when a lanky man came over. “Boris, you truly are a cunning leader.” A man with dried blood wiped all over his face came over. He was tall and lanky. He held a sharp bone in his hand.

“They fail to realize how quickly they will die without water. Moving their bodies like that. Truly, we’ll have a way out before the forty-eight hours is reached.” he laughed.

Boris nodded, “Relimon, you’re one bloodthirsty bastard I’ll give you that, but I’m only doing this for me. If I can’t pass this stage then what am I?”

Relimon grinned, “I get it. I really don’t care whether or not I get out. This is a lot of fun! Even though we’re approaching twenty-four hours, I can’t even wait to see how the other twenty-four play out.”

Jun Kai sighed, he silently dug away at the dirt. His body was tired from everything that had already transpired. He needed food and water. Everyone else had already slowed down even though they were making a large headway in the hole. Large mounds of dirt were piling up around the hole.

The ground was starting to get hard and many people scraped their nails away to try and pry the very earth from the ground. For several hours, they clawed away at the earth and made decent progress.

Jun Kai could see the truth. Everyone kept digging even though many of them knew it. This wall was not only tall. It was deep. How deep below the ground was it? Well, it was deep enough that it couldn’t easily be dug under. How many trials in this valley had happened? This wasn’t the first rodeo for the director or anyone else in charge of this prefecture.

A man by Jun Kai dropped, falling to the ground as his body went limp. “Carry him over to the pile. Unconscious or dead, it doesn’t matter. Anyone who isn’t digging might as well be a stepping stone for those of us who are.” One of the women from the athletic group said loudly. It was the woman who had tried to scale the wall before. She was obscenely beautiful, but she kept order with the malice of a prison warden.

The mound of bodies grew larger, as did the hole to escape. The people digging grew fewer. Anyone who tried to quit was beaten to death and thrown on the mound. It had become quite the commotion. Anxiety amongst the digger group rose as the realization of their subjugation became obvious.

Many of them were whispering to each other about throwing themselves against the athletic group who were conserving their strength and energy. It was obvious to everyone now that they had been duped! How could the ones giving orders and instructions not be helping in the process?

Things were going to escalate, and Jun Kai wanted no part in it.