“Come on, Don’t be like that, Phillip!”

If there was anything inside Sidwell that was genuine, it would be his persistence. Phillip had clearly shown his disinterest — multiple times, even — but he never stopped pestering the living hell out of him. With no fear or hesitancy in his eyes, plus, the way he ignored me and honed in on Phillip meant that he was only interested in the top 10.

Is that why he talked to me before, since I knew him? While that fact did upset me, seeing this hopeless interaction between them alleviated my grievances by just a bit.

“I can show you around here!” He exclaimed, excited, “I’ve been around, so I bet I can answer anything related to these grand, fantastic living quarters.” His hand gestured towards the Desk with the inanimate concierge, “Just talk to those… things and you’d be assigned a room that you can teleport to at any time as long as you’re in the lobby.”

I found it interesting that he straight out just spouted all of this stuff without any request or prompt from us. I wonder what kind of intention he had behind this ‘help’ of his.

“Leave us alone,” Phillip said, annoyance now turned into frustration, evident from his expression. There was hostility in the air, and Phillip wasn’t one to shy away from it. In the meantime, I watched their interaction and prepared myself for a... fight? Verbal fight.

I mean, are we allowed to fight here in the first place?

Sidwell’s eyes remained half-smiling, unchanging. “Alright, alright… I won’t disturb you and your… friend anymore. Have a good day, you two.”

Raising his arms and waving goodbye, he walked off into the distance and vanished.

Phillip sighed, then turned to me. “He reminds me of one of my friends from before. I wished I trusted this th-” I watched his head turned downcast, his eyes shut tight. “-Nevermind. The point is, You shouldn’t involve yourself with him, if possible.”

“Got it,” I said, smiling, attempting to alleviate the tension in his shoulders. I believed he was about to talk about his past, but he decided against it halfway. “Standing around here won’t do us any favor, so…”

I directed my gaze at the concierge.

“Agreed.”

As we approached the white, marbled desk, the dormant, inanimate figure sprang to life. It didn’t speak, nor did it look us in the eyes, but instead, a message screen popped up in my view while it tilted its head. Creepy.

There was an uncanniness in their design that irked me so. They were too alive and too dead at the same time.

[You are assigned to room #1503]

What? The message came out of nowhere, catching me and Phillip by surprise.

“Mine’s room #1504, what about you?” He asked, pointing at the screen that only he could see.

1504… 1503… We must be beside each other. But that only made sense if we lived in a typical hotel of some kind. Yet, the whole structure of the hall and the obelisk was anything but normal.

[You obtained 1x #1503 Room key.]

A card made out of sheer black metal appeared in front of my eyes. I reached out and grabbed it, feeling the cold steel heating up from my warm hand, and when that happened, another message appeared.

[#1503 Room key: Use to access your assigned room and other features available in the Trial Nexus.]

Fair enough… I opted to hold back on using it and turned my head toward Phillip. He was holding the same card in his hands — Scratch that, it wasn’t the same card, the card he held had a gold trim that formed a neat line at the center — Well, He was one of the top 10, so I’d assume that it was a privilege that he had. Nice.

“I like the pure black one better…” He said, pointing at my card. “This one’s too gaudy for me. By the way, I’ve tried using it, have you seen the options?”

“Huh?”

I used the card and a list of places appeared.

[Canteen]

[Your room]

[Training ground - inaccessible]

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Inaccessible? The training grounds?

Now that, was the most unfair advantage the strong ones had above everyone else. Scratch the bonus points, scratch the secret rewards, but this…

I ruffled my head, frustrated. Such was the life in the Trials, I suppose.

My eyes scanned the other options, and there it was the canteen. Basically, food.

When I thought of that word, I pictured a nice, juicy steak and the condiments that followed it. Or perhaps sushi? Or Burgers? Let’s not get our hopes up. Knowing this place, I wouldn’t be surprised if we ended up eating army rations. Those were where real men were born.

“Sweet! I really could go for a big meal right now…” Phillip’s eyes radiated in desire, showing the type of hunger I’d never seen in someone’s eyes. It made sense, from his size, he must’ve been a big eater. “You’re starving too, right?”

Starving…

Well, I had to be honest; after those deaths and all that vomiting…

“Hell yeah.”

[You selected: Canteen.]

With a blink, we entered the canteen, and what we saw blew our minds.

Rows and rows and rows, and rows of food of each possible type were displayed on well-organized tables. Every type of food I could ever think about, eastern, western, middle-east, china, japan, you name it, was shown in such an appetizing manner that I couldn’t help but drool after laying my eyes on them.

They look so fucking delicious.

Not only that, oh, the smell. How could I even describe it? This... Gigantic hall was a heaven made of food. The best chefs in the world couldn’t even imagine producing such a vast quantity of foods with such a high level of taste and quality.

Well, I’ve not eaten any of it, so I might’ve spoken too soon.

The size of the canteen was enormous. With a ballpark estimate, I could see this place fitting about ten thousand people at once, which was just… unbelievable. That being said, the canteen was rather crowded at this moment, which made this place look more impressive than it actually was.

“Philli-“ Wait, where is he?

I scanned the canteen for signs of him, and he was already chomping down on a chicken thigh down in the western section.

Picturing him munching down a chicken thigh so sloppily looked so funny to me that I couldn’t stop giggling as I approached him. This… tiny moment of levity was such a welcome surprise, I couldn’t help but think that I’d broken through hell and was sent to heaven for a short break.

“Oghh, Ghrey.” He called out to me as I picked up a plate under the table beside him.

“Just focus on eating. We’ll talk later.” I replied, failing to hide the smugness from my voice.

He nodded, the skin of a chicken dangling down his lips.

The next few ten minutes or so were spent hunting down the foods that I liked. There were no fears of running out of any of the food since they’d just materialize out of nowhere once someone had grabbed it.

And so, the number of people in the canteen grew over time, as more and more people had finished their business in the Nexus, and for the first time since I got here, the atmosphere was cheery. I witnessed all the smiles and laughter, all the shed tears and utter joy. It was radiant, heartwarming, even.

At this point, a lot of us had formed a circle of friends, separating ourselves into groups apart from each other.

It was here that I saw the blind man again. He was alone, ignored by the vast majority of people, standing behind the large gathering of people, chewing on tropical fruits. He had a teeny grin on his lips, perhaps the fruit was just that good.

Phillip, on the other hand, munched non-stop after devouring that chicken.

I took in the atmosphere, knowing well that it wouldn’t last, and closed my eyes as I walked. In the midst of the crowd, I slammed into another person when my focus wasn’t on the path ahead of me.

“Sorry, I-“

A set of ice-cold eyes froze my speech during my apology. The woman wasn’t upset by my clumsiness — at least, on the surface — but she wasn’t happy about it either. No, to be precise, she wasn’t showing much — if any — emotion at all.

Her dark, sleek hair contrasted with her completely white, pale skin. Her eyes were just… alien. It wasn’t blue, nor was it green, in fact, the closest color I could associate it with was white. Her irises had this dark coloring at the edges, and in the center, a tiny, blueish dot could be seen. It appeared to glow.

Cold. Her eyes are so cold.

The entirety of her face was frankly, sublime, but it wasn’t the sexy or pretty sort of beauty, it was more like I was staring at a perfect specimen of a female face. Her body proportions were normal, but to be honest, I didn’t think that would matter. Both her eyes and face were more than enough for any woman to kill for.

She didn’t speak nor did she bother to respond, and simply walked away. I had to snap myself back to reality or else I’d be drawn into her presence forever.

Whatever, food comes first.

###

Burp.

“Wow… That was… too good.”

Phillip and I sat and hung out at the corner of the canteen, observing the droves of people consuming the best food they’d ever eaten in their lives. The both of us had splurged on food way too much at this moment, so much so that we could barely walk.

He nudged his head at the sight, “Look at them, having the time of their lives.” He said, “All of this happened in a day, too.” I followed his hand pointing at a group of individuals eating and enjoying their merry time nearby. “It’s almost as if what they went through never happened.”

This atmosphere reminded me of the time I was in the army; to be more specific, the first year I was enlisted in it. Back then, I didn’t know a lot of friends yet which resulted in me being left alone during lunch or dinner most of the time. Never once was I offended nor discouraged by it; I wasn’t someone I’d love to be friends with during those days in the first place.

It was natural for us, humans, in this case, to form a band of friends together. At the end of the day, we are social creatures after all.

And to be frank, good food always brought the best out of humanity.

“You don’t want to mingle with the others?” I asked Phillip, who was watching their interactions with a set of attentive eyes. “They looked like fine people to me.”

“-A pain in the ass to do.” He said, starting his sentence in the middle, instead of the start. “I’m not a fan of crowds.”

Me too. But sometimes, mingling with others was the right thing to do. It was even more imperative when I took into account the fact that the Trial itself involved more than just an individual, unlike the missions from today. But someone as strong as he was wouldn’t care much about banding with others.

Patting his knee, he rose from where he sat, “I… ngh- I think I’m gonna end the day here.”

Then, he yawned, leading me to do the same too. “Yep… I’m exhausted.” The combination of overeating and the time of day was enough to urge my body to demand some damn sleep.

We parted ways and teleported to each of our rooms. And when I regained my vision, my jaw dropped at the sight I was given. Am I dreaming?