The morning and the afternoon passed in a blur. Since his objective for this floor hadn’t appeared yet, Lucas decided it would be better to engage with everyone present, expecting one of them to be the trigger for the floor’s objective. However, after hours of idle conversation, nothing of the sort happened.
That’s not to say Lucas didn’t get anything out of the time spent getting to know his fellow NPC’s. Apparently, all of them were in the same college and had decided to take this trip on the weekend to relax together.
Lucas had been invited by John, whom he had known since middle school and who had grown up in the same neighborhood as him. Despite having grown apart over the years due to simply having different interests, John still considered him one of his best friends.
After accepting the invitation, Lucas apparently went on to invite Richie, whom he was closer to nowadays due to their shared interest in RPGs, amongst other things. Michael was on the same team as John in college, in a sport Lucas had never heard of. The girls were there because they were friends with Cindy.
Lucas tried to gather information about their universe whenever he could without raising suspicion. As far as he could tell, they didn’t seem aware of anything resembling a system, which greatly surprised Lucas. This meant the system could reproduce events and people from planets where it wasn’t even present.
The thought of the system being capable of overlooking all sides of the galaxy disturbed him quite a bit, but he decided to focus on other things. For instance, how, despite them not being in a system world, Lucas could still see their levels?
John was the highest level, along with Michael at 16, Cindy and Richie were at 12, and Maria, Sasha, and Lucas were at level 13. How they had reached such high levels without a system, Lucas had no idea.
Apart from talking, Lucas searched the house for weapons he could use in case he needed them and managed to swipe a big knife when no one was looking and hide it in his boot.
Later that day, John decided it would be a good idea to have a barbecue. Since the house was already packed with food, thanks to John’s cousin, they left the house and started making their preparations, while Lucas decided to take a look around. After rambling around the house for about twenty minutes and finding nothing out of the ordinary, he joined the others.
Lucas didn’t hear any useful information after that; it was just random chat about people they knew, teachers, the university, and life. Despite dreading the social interaction before and contrary to his previous thoughts that the floor would be boring, he quite enjoyed not having to think about anything serious for a while. Against his better judgment, his guard lowered more and more as time went by.
He had strained himself pretty hard with work, studies, and training over the past several weeks, his only actual free time being used to sleep. So when this opportunity to relax appeared, he felt himself give in, even against his will. Accompanied by good food and, more specifically, towards the end—when he started to get closer to Maria—good company, Lucas’ concerns were pretty much washed away.
However, when John went inside the house and came back with a plastic container, announcing to the world that the drugs had arrived, Lucas began to grow concerned again. How could he get out of this? Before he could think of an answer, a blue mushroom was pushed into his hands.
Should he fake fainting? That was always something that helped get people out of uncomfortable situations, even if a bit ridiculous. Looking at Maria clinging to his arm, however, he knew his pride wouldn’t allow this level of shamelessness. For similar reasons, he discarded saying he had a stomachache.
He was just about to throw a random excuse for why he couldn’t take the mushroom when they started the countdown, and at the count of three, everyone took theirs, with the single exception of Sasha. For religious reasons, she vehemently refused to take part in this and also advised against it for anyone who bothered to listen.
Naturally, after all of them had taken their mushrooms, all eyes turned toward Lucas, who was still holding his with a stupid look on his face. The thought of throwing his away when no one was looking occurred to him much too late, thanks to the suddenness of the events.
Now he was caught in a tough spot. He either completely broke character and said he simply wasn’t in the mood, raising others’ suspicions, or… At the moment of indecision, Maria whispered something in his ear that made his eyes shoot wide open, and the next thing he knew, he was chewing a very tasty mushroom.
He couldn’t help it; he was human after all, and she was pretty much his type, not to mention way above his league. So, when the night came and the mushroom started to take effect—making everything look a bit surreal—things sort of happened.
In one minute, they were talking amongst the others, and the next, they were making out in one of the rooms. Lucas had no idea if that was scripted to happen or not, but with the mushroom clouding his mind, at that moment, he frankly didn’t care.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Apart from his high school girlfriend, his experience with the other gender wasn’t great, and that seemed like ages ago, so there was no way he was going to miss this… a loud shrill scream separated them suddenly. It had come from outside, and with his heart beating fast, Lucas immediately remembered where he was and that he wasn’t out on holiday like the others.
After separating from Maria, Lucas looked at her, feeling nervous. He had been too caught up in the moment—he didn’t know these people; she could be some sort of assassin, for all he knew. Shaking his head, Lucas pulled himself together and exited the room with her to see what was going on.
The environment was chaotic in the living room, Sasha had just opened the door to the cottage, and her white dress was red with blood. She had been crying and looked scared out of her mind.
“He killed… he killed Richie!” she yelled hysterically.
After a quick glance around, Lucas noticed Richie seemed to be the only one missing.
“What are you talking about?” John asked, nervous.
“Who killed him?” Michael interjected, giving a quick look outside the cottage before closing the door.
“There was a thing out there, it was very tall… I couldn’t see his face clearly, it was dark. He attacked us, he stabbed Richie, and I ran…” She stopped talking and continued crying, that’s when Lucas’ objective appeared.
*Objective: Survive the night.*
A cabin in the woods, a group of stupid teenagers, and a maniac running around, that looked more like the plot of a bad horror movie than anything else. Lucas searched for the knife he had stored in his boot and made sure it was still there.
After confirming he still had his knife, he headed to the bathroom and splashed some water in his face, trying to regain a bit of his bearings. After hearing Sasha speak and seeing a faintly ghastly figure behind her the entire time while she did so—without anyone else apart from him noticing it—he needed to make sure that the whole thing wasn’t some sort of weird hallucination induced by the blue mushroom.
Not satisfied with the cold water, Lucas opened a small cut in his arm with his knife, hoping the pain would help him sober up. He even considered throwing up, but he knew there would be no point in doing that—quite a few hours had passed since he had ingested the mushroom, and its substance was well within his system.
After cursing himself internally, Lucas took some comfort in the fact that the mushroom supposedly wasn’t too strong and only gave some mild hallucinations coupled with a few side effects. If the tower really wanted to screw with him, it could be way worse, and after leaving the bathroom, it was with great relief that he realized the ghastly figure behind Sasha had disappeared.
Assessing the unfolding situation, Lucas concluded that thanks to his stupidity—not only taking drugs but also entering the room with Maria—he had failed to keep an eye on the others. Now, he had no way to know if it wasn’t one of them who had killed Richie, and the objective didn’t help clarify that either.
When he exited the room before, he was pretty sure everyone was already inside when Sasha arrived, but afterward, she told them the incident happened about five yards away from the cottage, meaning the killer could have just outpaced her and arrived before from the back door. Worse yet, she could have killed him—taking advantage of being the only one with a clear mind—ran away afterward, and told them her sad story.
Lucas wasn’t the only one who connected the dots. An air of suspicion enveloped the entire room, probably prompted by the paranoia that wasn’t so uncommon with those sorts of mushrooms. Each one immediately stated that they were inside the house when it happened, John and Cindy were in their room when they heard the scream, and Michael was in the bathroom.
Everyone was clearly shocked by the news, coming from the only person whose testimony held water, as absurd as it seemed. Lucas made sure his acting wasn’t subpar at that moment, pretending he was also devastated by it since he was supposedly the closest to Richie out of the entire group. Despite him actually thinking the guy was kind of dull after talking to him during the barbecue.
After noticing how people started looking at each other differently and asking questions, Lucas began to fear that the objective wasn’t as simple as it initially seemed. The fact that they could turn on him if he acted too out of character didn’t go unnoticed by him. And the absence of his skills didn’t let him feel confident in fighting both Michael and John if needed.
“We should go out there,” John said suddenly. “Michael, Lucas, you guys come with me, girls you stay here.”
“Don’t go out there, it’s dangerous!” Cindy yelled, frightened.
“Chill, babe, we’ll be careful. Maybe he’s still alive out there, and we can help him out,” he said, surprisingly calm, although Lucas suspected he had taken more than a single mushroom.
“We don’t know what’s out there. What if it’s a bear? Sasha said she couldn’t see him clearly,” Maria argued.
“Well, if it’s a bear, all the more reason to go out there. We can scare it away and retrieve Richie. Don’t worry.” John replied confidently.
Lucas, on the other hand, wasn’t so sure about that plan. He didn’t want to leave Maria unprotected. He was aware that she was just as suspect as the others, if not more so, considering how she had induced him to accept the mushroom and also dragged him into a room. Still, it didn’t feel right to assume his suspicions as certainties and leave with the two highest levels of their group. Besides, what if John and Michael were together in this and had set him up?
However, he also felt like he needed to know if there was something out there. If he could identify whatever it was, he would have a better chance of surviving throughout the night.
Ultimately, Lucas decided to remain silent and just go along with their plans. After some convincing from John and Michael, the three of them left the house, each carrying a flashlight. In addition, John had something similar to a baseball bat—why he brought a baseball bat on a holiday, Lucas had no idea—and Michael was carrying a big knife, quite similar to the one Lucas had in his boot.
Not wanting to give it away that he had hid a knife prior to the incident that had transpired, to avoid raising unnecessary suspicion, Lucas accepted a broken broom with a sharp end as his weapon since there were no more big knives left. He didn’t mind it, however; it reminded him of when he first arrived in Ponos and used to fight with a wooden spear.
Cautiously, the three of them started walking towards where Sasha said she left Richie, and not long after they found him. His pale face and multiple stab wounds on his back and chest left no doubts about his condition: he was well and truly dead. Not by a bear or any other animal, but by a person.