Chapter 4: Customer Feedback

What came next was a lengthy discussion on his thoughts and actions throughout the trial. During all of this Tide was compelled to tell the truth and answer all their questions. As this discussion progressed, he slowly learned the rest of names of the other members around the table. The sickly man’s name was Lucian, the half snake woman was Lissandra, and the mysterious old man’s name was Merdon.

Dredge questions him revolved around defeating the monster and seemed to be trying to gauge the difficulty of each. Tide went through each monster that proved to be the biggest challenges throughout his time in the trial.

Lucian asked questions about how his body physically adapted to the mana rich environment, and how it was affected by Tide’s stat increases. A decent amount of that conversation was out of Tide’s comprehension. Lucian appeared to have a great deal of knowledge regarding physiology.

Merdon set was based more around Tide's comprehension of magic and mana. Despite the circumstances, Tide almost enjoyed this conversation. Tide and James would often pass time discussing the difference between their sources of power. Remembering his friend who died to save him deflated his mood once again.

Merdon also seemed to enjoy the conversation. Clearly, Tide's views on mana and spell constructs were an interesting and fresh point of view for the old man. He had grown up with mana and understood it naturally, so Tide's comprehension, that was guided by the system, was more unique.

After the conversations regarding his body and his comprehension, Lissandra asked questions that were much harder to answer. She was more interested in how Tide mentally developed. Whether it was how Tide dealt with the stress of the trial, or how he reacted to extreme stimuli.

Lastly Alianda brought up the last topic to talk about. Most of her questions were focused on Tide’s adaptation to the trial and what motivated him to keep going. She explained that they were dissatisfied with the fact that over fifty percent of the participants had died without even leveling up once.

Tide blatantly told them that was due the suddenness of the situation, humans from Earth weren’t used to fighting and would normally avoid it. They were suddenly thrusted into a new world and expected to immediately go out and start to fight monsters that they never thought could exist. Of course, most of them chose to hide out in the starter town.

There was a wide variety of people brought into the trial even the young and elderly were less likely to survive. They were either too physically weak to fight monsters or were too afraid. This led to a large amount of people just holing up in the starter town and slowly starving. Some of the people that hunted monsters would give away copper pieces to them so they could buy food, but most just slowly starved getting more and more desperate as time passed.

Some hunters that went out and collected food and coins from the monsters took advantage of the situation and began to treat the noncombatants poorly. They used food as leverage to get them to do whatever they wanted. Often a hunter would pay women for their services. They had to agree, or they’d starve. Tide even saw a young boy offering to let the hunters slap him one time for five copper coins. At the end of the day there were just too many people to feed.

After two days people began getting desperate. Some chose to take the risk and tried hunting monsters. Only a couple would return, the two days with no food made them even weaker. Others took their own lives rather than starve to death. The worst of them made an awful discovery. On the second day two scumbags fought over a bag of rations that a hunter gave him. One of them ended up being killed by the other. The victor was elated to find out that he leveled up and coins drop from the dead man just like a monster. This reveal caused the main reason for the low survival rate.

The starving desperate people quickly turned on each other. The third day was a massacre. The kids and elderly folk were the first to be killed. Even some of those who could hunt monsters were tempted to collect the easy exp and coinage. Of course, there was those who tried to defend the helpless, but this just led to more casualties. Tide and his group were out hunting that day. When they returned later that night, he thought the town was burning down as smoke billowed out above it, but when getting closer he saw that it was just multiple pyres burning the bodies of the dead. That day he realized that the goblins, slimes and other creatures weren’t the only monsters he would have to face in the trials.

After this people quickly formed groups and factions splitting up the town and hunting ground. Some were people attempting to regain control of the situation and restore order. Others were glorified gangs where the strongest ruled. Over the next couple of weeks these groups would occasionally have skirmishes, but a weird balance was created, and it was generally peaceful.

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Tide also brought up the fact that most people ended up having a mismatch with the classes they chose. After the very plain introduction they were given by Alianda, they were asked to pick their class. Most selected an option not really knowing what it would mean and only the lucky would receive a higher ranked one. Tide himself had the choices of tracker, spearman or geomancer. If he picked either of the other options, he wouldn’t have made it as far.

His rare magic based class was greatly sought after by the various groups in town and Tide was able to choose one of the better ones. Those with less optimal classes or weaker ones were treated as meat shields to block the monsters. Their fatality rate was much higher than the more powerful or ranged classes.

Hearing about these issues Alianda asked what Tide thought could be done to help the situation. Tide gave a decent amount of suggestions and the other members of the table chipped in with their own ideas.

At the end discussion Merdon gave a brief summary of some of the better ideas presented throughout the meeting.

* A more thorough explanation for the participants reducing their confusion and disorder in the beginning.

* A grace period where no monsters would spawn, and food was available. This way there was more time for people grasp the situation and prepare themselves.

* During the grace period everyone would get an increase in growth. This way those that weren’t prepared physically could have a fighting chance.

* Instead of receiving classes on the first day they would be handed out after the grace period. The options give to each person would be based on the actions they took during the grace period to prepare.

* A vague idea about incentivizing those who achieved challenging feats.

* Creating a gradient of difficulty for the monsters, easier ones could spawn closer to the starting town and more difficult ones would pop up the further you went away from it.

Tide tried to convince them that they should remove the rewards that were gained from murdering a fellow human, but the idea was quickly squashed. At the end of the day the goal of this trial was to separate out the strong from the weak.

After this summary it seemed like they were done with him.

“Thank you for the cooperation, Tide this was one of the most enlightening interviews we’ve had yet. Merdon go ahead and take him to the next holding room and wipe him” Alianda said signifying the end of it all.

Tide who calmed down over the duration of the questioning began to panic at this mention of getting wiped.

Perhaps it meant that he would be killed. Part of him sought that release after struggling so hard. A different part was a deeply ingrained feeling of desperation to survive still despite the circumstance. What was the point of all the pain if it just ended now. He might as well have been one of the people who killed themselves if he resigned himself to his fate.

Merdon let out a sigh as he stood up from the table.

“Let’s go lad.” He said motioning to a new door that appeared a couple feet away from the table. Tide’s body still being puppeted, stood up and made its way towards the door with him.

He wanted to scream out in protest, but once again he found his voice gone. Instead, he just quietly walked through the door that Merdon opened for him. As he stepped through, he found himself in another plan hallway just. Merdon followed behind him and they both began waked down it.

As they walked down it Tide noticed that as they walked it seemed that they weren’t making any progress walking to the next door that looked to be only twenty feet away. As this weird phenomenon continued Merdon next to him stopped walking began to speak.

“You were one of my favorites you know. You’re understanding and ability to really understand the spells you used was truly the best in your test group. I even wagered that you would survive all the way.”

Merdon let out sigh before letting out a small chuckle.

“I was against using the undead Lucian prepared for the monster wave by the way. I argued it was to soon to pit you all against an enemy that could strategize and didn’t feel pain or fear.” Merdon said looking over to Tide who stopped as well.

“If I released you from your restraints, you wouldn’t do anything dumb like before, would you?” He asked.

This confused Tide, what was his reason for all of this. There was no benefit to what he was doing. Tides value to him should have been all gone now that he isn’t a precious data point in their experiment. He was on his way to get ‘wiped’ whatever that meant. Not willing to miss this chance, Tide did the only thing he could which was nod. Perhaps he could still escape if an opportunity appeared.

Merdon made another motion with his hands and Tide was back in control of his body and he began to keep walking. He had to motion to Tide to follow and they continued to walk.

They kept walking for another decent amount of time and eventually Tides curiosity made him speak.

“So um, what’s up with this hallway?” Tide asked hoping the innocent question would help him figure out what the man was mulling over.

“Oh, I made this hallway infinite. It’s a part of my magic, I am if reduced to my basics a very strong spatial mage. I have the power to create spaces and modify some of the laws of physics in it.” Merdon said casually like it was a given.

“Okay, but why did you make it infinite? Aren’t you supposed to go and wipe me like Alianda said?” Tide asked hoping the man would give an explanation on what was about to happen.

Another chuckle escaped the man as he once again looked at Tide.

“I was hoping to get a chance to talk to you like this and I do my best thinking while walking.” A strange smile blossomed on Merdon face.

“Plus wiping you would be such a loss. Wouldn’t it be more interesting if I didn’t?” Merdon said as his smile broadened.