The place I found myself in was an enormous, rectangle-shaped white room that contained everything one needed. In the middle of the room, there was a pristine, extremely long dining table that had huge amounts of food and drinks on it. On the sides, there were clothing racks that had hundreds of sets of plain black clothes and furniture like couches and armchairs. In addition, there were a couple of white box-shaped structures with doors that were wide open, revealing the things inside, which were a shower and a bathroom.

However, the thing that stood out the most in the entire space was a large tunnel that was too dark to see into. I and many others had expected to be faced with the first trial straight after being transported, but seemingly we were now in some kind of preparation room. Once the food ran out, though, we would have to face what was in the tunnel.

"Thank god you're still here, Faris," a woman's voice drew my attention as I was observing my surroundings.

I turned and saw a familiar figure just a few meters from me. It was the guy with curly brown hair from before. He was the only one who had stood up at the same time as me, besides Calvin and the pale, crazy guy.

We were about the same height, but weirdly, his dark-brown eyes seemed to be looking down on me.

I didn't like it. No. I hated it.

I relaxed my jaw that I had tightened subconsciously and greeted the man I was faced with, "Hey, you're the one who stood up at the same time as me, right?"

The man raised his brows. "I think I was a bit earlier than you, but yeah."

"Nice to meet you. I'm Akir," I said, outstretching my hand with a forced smile on my face.

"Faris," the man stated his name bluntly and shook my hand.

After we shook hands, his gaze traveled down as he assessed me. That was when his expression changed for just a moment.

The cause was obvious.

Despite my physical prowess, my physique seemed like nothing too special when wearing clothes, so I could easily tell that the reason for Faris' shock was the text on my black sweatshirt.

I looked down at my black sweatshirt with the words "Stalebridge University" on it and scoffed inwardly.

'This guy still thinks we're on Earth? Sure, this whole situation is hard to process, but come on.'

Making theories like being in a TV show was understandable at first, but at this point, it would have been best for everyone to accept the situation in some way and focus on survival instead of making theories.

I had decided to do so from the very beginning and stuck to it. After all, a person who couldn't control his focus would never amount to anything.

"Hey, Faris, I was talking to you," the woman whose voice I had heard before said, prompting me and Faris to turn our attentions to her. "And who are you?" she asked with a displeased voice as she looked at me and threw her blond hair over her shoulder. "You're not in our group, are you?

"Windy, this is Akir," Faris introduced me. "He's not in our group, but it seems that doesn't matter. We've been separated from the others," Faris said, looking around.

"Well, what now?" the woman named Windy asked.

"I see no other group leader here, so..." Faris paused and took a deep breath. "Excuse me, could I have your attention, please?!" he yelled, and silence fell upon the large white room. "Thank you... It seems that we've been separated from our groups and have to repeat the process again. However, there are only about one hundred of us here, so I ask you all to join me. If we're all under the same roof, I'm sure we can survive the trials to come with minimal losses. Of course, I don't have to be our leader, and if there is anyone who is confident in their leadership, the matter can be discussed. However, we have limited time since the food will eventually run out, so I recommend we get organized as fast as possible."

'Establishing a need for a leader, presenting good reasoning for everyone to be united, convincing others he isn't necessarily seeking the role himself, and announcing a time limit based on outside factors in order to hurry people's decisions. All so that he can gain absolute leadership. He's no idiot,' I remarked as I watched the crowd keep silent even after Faris had finished.

"Well, is there anyone who wants to be the leader? Raise your hand if you do," Faris said.

Nobody raised their hand.

"Okay, then, I will be the leader," Faris stated confidently, and there was no objection. "You can all go eat now. I'll think of a strategy on how to proceed in the meantime."

Immediately, people headed to the dining table wordlessly, relieved they could leave their burden to someone else.

I was also going to head to the dining table when Faris stopped me.

"Hey, Akir, you seem like a reliable guy. I'd like for you to be second in command of this group, if that's okay with you."

I could barely maintain a normal facial expression, as I had suddenly reached the ideal hierarchical position without any effort. "Yeah, I'll try my best."

***

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The preparations took a few hours, and afterward, we headed down the dark tunnel with our weapons tightly in our grips. I had my dagger, Faris had his thin sword, and the others were carrying all sorts of weapons you would catch glimpses of in textbooks about the history of warfare.

It had taken some time to convince everyone that it was best to head towards the first trial right away since our energy levels were at their highest, but Faris had made the whole thing go over quickly. In the meantime, I had gotten used to my dagger and the new black clothes.

Getting used to the dagger was surely easier than many others because of its short length, which made its movements easy to control and get used to. I had some worries about the clothing at first and had some trouble deciding whether to keep my original clothes or change, but upon testing them out, I discovered that the black clothes were almost unnaturally stretchy and comfortable.

"Do you think this is the actual trial?" Faris woke me up from my thoughts with a nonchalant question.

I looked around the tunnel a bit. It wasn't pitch black in the tunnel like it seemed when looking from the outside, and you could surprisingly make out everything fairly well.

"No, this is probably just a path leading to the actual trial. Still, only an idiot would let their guard down in a place like this," I answered with a similarly nonchalant tone.

I was sure he didn't really care about my input one way or another. He just wanted to get closer to me. That was the reason he made me second in command in the first place. After seeing my sweatshirt, it seemed like an insatiable greed was triggered.

It was a fairly natural reaction. Outside these circumstances, that is. Just seeing the name "Stalebridge University" got everybody from my region excited.

After all, the sweatshirts were impossible to get outside the university, and every single person there was born into financial freedom. Every single person except for one.

In other words, Faris had only money on his mind when interacting with me, but even if we could return to our normal lives after getting out of this place, he would come to find out that all his efforts had been in vain.

"So, what do you think the trials will be like?" Faris continued asking me questions.

"No idea. Probably something to do with fighting, I guess," I answered unenthusiastically without making eye contact.

"Then you'll probably do well," Faris said with a pleasant tone of voice.

"What makes you think that?"

"The calluses on your knuckles."

I looked down at my hands. Indeed, there were some faint calluses on them. But that was something one wouldn't notice if they didn't look closely. I couldn't judge Faris about that, though. I had also looked at his hands and found them to be rough. They were like those of a climber.

Seeing as I didn't answer immediately, Faris asked another question, "Are you a boxer or something?"

"I'm not a boxer. I just train in martial arts from time to time. I'm not sure if that'll benefit me here, though." I answered. "What about you? What are your hobbies?" I asked with the intention of gaining something useful.

"I practice swordsmanship. I've been doing it for 10 years now."

I pursed my lips subconsciously after hearing his answer, and some gears started turning in the back of my mind. However, I couldn't focus on any of those things at the moment, as we had just arrived in front of a thick stone door that was at least 10 meters in height.

Everybody stopped in their tracks to gaze upon the humongous door, but despite the door's size, everyone's eyes were directed to the symbol on the door. The symbol was that of a dagger pointed downward, its tip covered by a substance darker than the rest of the blade.

The silence continued for a while but was eventually broken by our leader.

"If you didn't already have your guard up on our way here, then make sure to raise it when this door opens. We are about to enter the first ruin," Faris said before walking to the door and pushing it slightly.

I wasn't sure what he expected, but he sure looked surprised when it moved with no difficulty and practically opened itself to reveal an empty space.

Faris was the first to enter, and all of us followed soon after with heavy footsteps. Then a multitude of gasps could be heard as we suddenly discovered ourselves to be in the midst of a slightly foggy desert of light gray sand.

Immediately, the door closed behind us and disappeared, leaving us with no escape. I inhaled and noticed an uncomfortable heat and dryness in the air despite the fog. The circumstances were puzzling, to say the least.

I then looked around and observed my mostly empty surroundings before looking up and discovering something interesting. There was a long golden line above that started from where we stood, and it was slowly moving away from us at a slow walking pace.

My mind was still processing all the information that the new environment presented, but even without having fully figured anything out, I could guess that our very lives depended on that golden line.