Lea slowly pushed Jin forward. All of the students were looking at them, some with a sort of hatred. They must be mad that someone already did something worth a punishment. Jin could feel the little vibrations Lea’s hands were sending throughout the wheelchair.
“Calm down,” Jin whispered, “you need to stay calm. We’ll be fine.” The words seemed to help as she stopped shivering. They reached the huge double door that opened slowly. Inside it revealed a very modern and long hallway with metal doors on both sides. The walls and floor were made from the same light-gray stone tiles. The doors were numbered from one to a hundred with a golden plate on each one.
A guide brought Lea and Jin to their room, at the very back of the hallway. The man had an empty black mask on to hide his face. “Inside you’ll find capsules, enter them as soon as possible. Once inside make sure to close your eyes. Do you two understand?” Lea looked at him with a studying look. “Yes, sir!” she answered him.
Lea and Jin arrived at their room and opened the door. The inside was cold and boring. There was nothing there except for twenty-five capsules lined up on two different levels with a little ladder between them. “Can you help me inside one of those before you go in your own?” Jin asked Lea. “Sure,” she said. Without much effort, Lea picked him up and laid him down in the black capsule. “Goodnight,” she said with a wide smile on her face before closing the thing. Jin could hear her footsteps going towards the capsule next to him. He closed his eyes and started to count.
When he reached 543, the machine started to work. As the connection established, the boundaries between the physical world and the digital realm began to blur. Colors swirled and shifted, forming intricate patterns that danced before their eyes. A sense of weightlessness enveloped them, as if they were being drawn into an unseen vortex of energy.
The surroundings began to shape itself, an old wooden hut. Plank by plank, each one rotted to their core, the walls and floor were made. After the entire hut was built, which only took the system a single second, Lea and Jin were loaded in. Jin got up from the floor where he found himself laying on and looked around. A single lantern hanging from the ceiling lit the room.
Lea also got up and looked at Jin who was standing on his feet. “Wow, you’re actually quite tall, I couldn’t see that when you were in the wheelchair,” she said. It took Jin a while to realize she had told him anything at all because he was in a state of amazement. He had never seen or felt anything like this, it truly seemed real. The feeling of his clothes on his skin, the sounds of birds outside, the way the light was reflected on the metal knot of the door. If Jin hadn’t been placed into the capsule while conscious he wouldn’t have been able to know if it was reality or not.
“That’s not what we should worry about right now. I’m just happy they did it in a virtual reality and that I can move around. Remember that this is the hardest possible test in a school that only allows geniuses. I’m pretty sure there are already enemies on the way here.” Lea nodded and asked the question that had been on her mind ever since she woke up in the hut: “You’re right but we don’t have any weapons. I thought they would give us the option to select the one you liked. How are we supposed to fight without it?” She looked on the verge of panicking.
“They told us, didn’t they? Twisted behind their words. Don’t fear dying, if you fail you get wooden weapons and that there will be better rewards if you completed a harder path. It means that we’ll have to earn our weapons and only get them after the trial. It’s also a great move for the viewers. The spectators always love a plot-twist or some cruel scenes filled with fear and blood.” She looked disgusted at him, as if he had just killed her entire family. Jin smiled at her in pain. Then she started to realize how the trial would go. “So you mean that this is all filmed for the public? They’re all just watching how we suffer with some snacks in their hands? Fuck, this is messed up.” Lea kept on murmuring things to herself.
As Jin peered through the window of the hut, the darkness beyond seemed to swallow the surrounding woods. A veil of mist draped over the trees, blurring their outlines into ghostly silhouettes against the night sky. Moonlight filtered through the dense canopy, casting eerie shadows that flickered and danced across the forest floor. The air outside was heavy and still, filled with the earthy scent of damp foliage.
After scanning the outside, Jin looked for things that could be used as weapons. There had been a few floors in the first tower where you didn’t get to use your own equipment. The climbers always hated those, especially rich ones. The hut was miserable and not very useful. Almost everything was made from rotten wood which wasn’t durable or sharp at all. The lantern was shaped like a ball from glass, probably done with the intend of making it unusable for combat.
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His eyes fell on the rusted nails that were used in the planks of the floor. Those were also almost unusable. Jin thought about how he could use the fire as it was the only thing he knew would be useful. He started to pull out the planks one by one, putting the nails on his left and the planks on the right.
“What are you doing?” Lea asked who had noticed him. She was done talking to herself and stared at him with wonder. “Preparing, could you help me by doing the same?” Jin said while pulling a nail from one of the planks. After studying him for a while, she understood what he did and began doing the same. Lost in the stress and pressure, time passed by.
“Do you also see the message?” Lea asked all of a sudden. “What message?” Jin asked. “The test will start in 4:46 minutes, good luck. It’s counting down.” Now Jin saw it. A little text at the top right of his vision. When he focused on it, it became more clear.
“Alright, can you start covering the three window frames with the wood. Try to use as few nails as possible and leave the door open.” She was about to ask him about the plan but remembered her promise to not question him if she wanted to finish the test. “Fine, I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said. Lea grabbed a few planks and started to do as she was ordered to.
In the meantime, Jin was quickly sharpening one of the planks. With clean and masterful movements, he refined the plank to something close to a knife. At last, he started to cut off plucks of his hair and spread them over the floor. Jin’s plan was simple but cruel. It wasn’t something a teenager would come up with. 0:59.
Lea finished all of the windows to a decent extent. She gathered the remaining nails, rusted from top to bottom and handed them over to Jin. He looked up and spoke with a calm and encouraging voice: “I want you to trust me, alright? I want you to completely do what I’m about to tell you. Of course, you’ll have doubts but I swear that if you do as I ask it will work. Alright?”
A little nod showed Jin that she had understood. “What do you want me to do?” she asked, there was a hint of concern in her tone. “I want you to burn down this hut when I shout your name. Take the lantern with you and climb into a nearby tree. Use my shirt to cover the light and use it as a fire starter. It’s not very hard is it?” He made sure to ask her questions to keep her involved. “Yeah, I should be able to do that.” 0:21.
Jin pulled off his shirt and handed it over to Lea. She wrapped it around the lantern and ran off into the dark woods around them. 0:09. Jin grabbed the wooden knife he had carved and cut himself in his left forearm. He smeared the blood on the hair and floor close to the entrance. At last, he surrounded the house with droplets of blood. 0:00.
The clock reached zero and a dark mist started to shroud the woods. It didn’t take long for eerie shadows to dance around the hut. Jin quickly went inside the hut and left the door open. Lea, who had climbed in a high tree next to the hut, positioned herself in the best manner possible. She was sitting on a thick branch that was right above the hut Jin was in. She had dropped some dry wood on the roof and other flammable items. When he gave her the signal, she would just drop the lantern down.
The attack started. A message appeared at where the timer had been. “Wave 1/10,” it said. That bothered Jin, 10 different waves would make his plan harder to complete. From the mist, three wolves appeared. They weren’t even mutated like you’d find in the tower. Just regular wolves. They circled around the little building, smelling the blood. It took them a while before the first one charged at the door opening.
Jin tightened the grip on his wooden tool, ready for a strike. The beast jumped at him with its mouth wide open. The two parts of the jaw were about to close and rip off Jin’s entire neck when a wooden stick was visible between the beast’s eyes. A spot of blood drained the fur on its head. Jin had pierced its palate with his weapon. Its eyes had turned blank as its muscles relaxed. With a forceful push Jin threw the body to the side.
The other two wolves wanted revenge and charged in together, a dumb move. They had a clean gray pattern with little black circles around their ears. When the first one opened his mouth, Jin pushed the dagger down its throat and cut open as much as he could. The beast would die in a few seconds from internal bleeding, in that time Jin had to move fast. He picked up one of the leftover planks and made a big swing with it as if he was playing baseball. The second wolf who was now at the door frame took the swing full on and fell on the ground, knocked out. He pushed back the first wolf for a bit until it fell to the ground as he had expected. He retrieved his dagger from its throat and killed the unconscious one with it. “Wave 1 completed. 1:00 time remaining for wave 2/10 to start.” There was wolf blood all over Jin.
“That was amazing Jin! You’re amazing!” Lea shouted from up the tree high above. He couldn’t even see her because of the thick mist. “Thanks, stay concentrated up there! I think we’ll use the fire somewhere in the last five waves,” he shouted. There wasn’t a lot of time left so he looted what he could. It was the most basic thing you had to do inside the tower. Only the so-called “items” were dropped like a game. What most climbers didn’t think about was that the parts of the enemy’s body were also usable. From teeth to venom, they always had at least one thing. He cut out the biggest teeth of the wolves and laid them next to the nails. 0:03, 0:02, 0:01, 0:00. The second wave began.