———————————————————————————————————————————————————

My eyes were wide agape as I watched Paul’s head in the air right after he lost his life to Reghan’s blade.

The whole thing happened in an instant. I, like the others, was completely on edge when Reghan was confronting Paul for his absolute maniacal deed right at the last minute. It wasn’t until I saw Reghan reaching for his blade that I surmised what was about to happen.

Paul was going to die today, one way or another.

The blade was drawn and… the rest was history.

[Paul Holden has died. Switching the Administrator role to : Reghan Morris.]

In a way, I understood Reghan’s dilemma. Paul had been a thorn in everyone’s side throughout this defense and the election was the last straw on top of a shit pile that he’d built up since we met.

I observed the faces of all that were present on the field. There was no doubt that everyone around the podium witnessed what he did, but no one bothered to utter a single word. Except for Julie.

“Reghan…” Her eyes, which were normally cold, now reflected disbelief for the first time. She possessed the same set of expression that we had. It wasn’t rage or disgust, no…

It was relief.

The field which once was filled with confusion was now in silent contemplation.

“That will be it. We’ll use the next hour to rest. I have a few things to talk about with his group of people outside.” Slight quivering was present in the intonation of his voice, a sign that Reghan himself was shaken from what he did. His brows remained deeply furrowed as he walked to the other masses outside that witnessed the murder with horror in their eyes.

And then, everyone left the field and the pylon to gather their own thoughts.

I looked to the side, watching Julie expression normalized once she recovered from the shock. The both of us remained on the stage, staring at Paul’s headless torso gushing blood on the dirt beneath him.

There was close to no hesitation when Reghan swung his sword. I didn’t know enough about human psychology to measure how difficult it was to kill another human being, but even I would show at least some doubt before I decided to kill him.

A short sigh was heard as Julie massaged her temples with her palm, “I need to take care of that body. I admit that what he did was necessary, but wow, it was a headache-inducing mess.”

She stepped off the stage and walked towards the corpse while all her other party members gathered. They all shared a troubled look as they exchanged a few words, mostly discussing about what Reghan did.

With that, I was left alone on the podium, left to gather my thoughts and figure out what to do next.

I need something to distract me… Oh wait, the talent point and my level up.

Opening my stats, I put another point into the physical attribute and dexterity respectively. The werewolves were fast enough to almost escape me last night, so the speed might be necessary tomorrow.

Then, The talents…

[Natural recovery - epic : Passively regenerate 3% of your health every minute. Increases your constitution by 7%, rounded up.]

[Improved muscular fibers - Uncommon : Increases your strength and constitution attribute by 5%, rounded up. Decreases any physical damage taken by 5%.]

[Mana Cells - epic : Passively regenerates 10% of your mana every minute. Increases your capacity attribute by 5%, rounded up. If you had full mana, you can save 20% of your max mana as stockpile to be used later.]

Mana cells. That’s a crazy good talent.

Although, even if it was only uncommon, Improved muscular strength gives passive points to the attributes that I needed. Strength and Constitution are necessary to use repeated empowered throws. The passive damage reduction, while only at 5%, was a godsend too.

But does that beat Mana cells in terms of usefulness? I… don’t think so? Frankly, I don’t really know for sure.

[You selected Mana cells - epic.]

“Okay…” Once I selected my talents, my gaze drifted to Julie’s party once more.

She raised her arms to her chest and conjured a tiny flame between her fingertips, shooting it towards Paul’s unmoving corpse and burned it into ashes. It was a quick process, not lasting more than a few seconds.

Once the flames died down, I approached their group. I didn’t know Julie was delegated with this role, but with her flames, she was the only one who could do it. It must’ve been tough to cremate those who you used to know.

The group returned my wave with a gentle nod. None of us were in the mood to talk, so we simply stared at the charred ground where Paul was killed.

“I couldn’t believe what happened.” Karl said, “I wasn’t here to see it, but man, nobody could stop talking about it.”

The others didn’t bother to respond to his statement. We were all stuck in our own thoughts, trying to eke out a reason to make sense of what had just happened.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I knew that it was necessary, and had the choice been left in my hands, I would’ve done the same thing, too. At the end of the day, Paul’s death was just one of the many that had occured, and one of the many that would come later.

Reghan’s yelling was heard from the distance. We didn’t need to hear him to know what he was saying, as his expression and gestures were clear enough about the things he talked about.

You fight, or you leave. It’s that simple.

Once that was over with, he returned to the pylon with a heavy sigh.

“You’re here… That’s good. We have more things to talk about. But before that…” Reghan scratched his head. “I’m sorry you had to see that. I… hope this doesn’t change things.”

I never expected the genuine regret in his gaze. Reghan couldn’t look at any of us in the eyes, so he resorted to glaring at the charred corpse instead. “Thank you for that, Julie.” It took him a while, but Reghan eventually dared to lift his eyes towards the red-haired woman.

“You did what you had to do. It was imperative that we root out the weeds before dealing with the defense tonight.” Julie’s cold demeanor returned, but there were hints of empathy from the way she looked at him.

“Now, Reghan, How do we use this pylon?” Julie snapped our focus back on the things that mattered, the survival of humanity. “The system didn’t show any prompts when I approached this… thing.”

“Right… about that…” Reghan slid past Richard, standing just a few inches away from the pylon. “There it is. I need to grant you access to the features in here… Give me a second.”

We followed Reghan’s arms as he tinkered with the invisible system menu in front of his eyes. It just dawned on me that players couldn’t see the system menu of others.

“Done.” With a clap of his hands, a new prompt appeared in my vision.

[Tutorial Pylon]

[Your contribution points : 5312]

[Your sector strength ranking : 154 / 23,598]

[#1 ranked player : Aria White]

[#2 ranked player : Theodore Hogan]

[#3 ranked player : Johannes Hunter]

[#4 ranked player : Bryan Ghoulbourne]

[#5 ranked player : Trevor Mount]

[#6 ranked player : Nicky Zhang]

[#7 ranked player : Victor Walter]

[#8 ranked player : Eun Jeong ]

[#9 ranked player : Athel Jones ]

[#10 ranked player : Felix Winters ]

[Your sector is not eligible for extra features. Reach top 100 to access the bonus features.]

[Shop]

[Enhancement]

[Evolution - locked]

[Crafting - locked]

We’re ranked at 154?

Does that mean that there are 153 more sectors filled with people that are stronger than us? The ranked list was an eye opener for me too.

I never once considered that I will be the strongest amongst all players, but to not even crack the top 10 was a sobering revelation. I genuinely thought that I’d been extremely lucky with my own progression, but this…

And the top 1… Aria white? Who is- wait, this name sounded like it belonged to a woman…

“Did you all see that? We were way weaker than I thought…” Julie’s eyes were fixated on the invisible screen ahead of her, expressing the same concerns that I had.

I could tell from a glance that Reghan was worried like the rest of us. For the past week, the three of us had fully believed that we were the top dogs among the others. But it turned out that none of us ever were.

If that was the case, how strong were those at the top 10?

Frustrated, I opened the shop menu.

[Warning! Tutorial store only contained limited set of items and equipment.]

[Armors]

[Weapons]

[Class stones]

Class stones? It could be bought here too?

Looking up, I smirked when I saw Reghan’s eyes glinting under the light ray of sunlight from above. The system store allowed us to get items and equipments that massively expanded our skill-set. “If everyone had a class… We can deal with the next wave significantly easier.”

I opened the class stone menu, curious about the selections within.

And… well, they were mostly filled with boringly named classes, none of them were above common rarity either, I guess it’s better than nothing? There were the typical knight and archer classes amongst the selection with a few more exotic names littered in between, like the lancer, or woodsman, but none of them compared to the cool class names like [The coveted shadow].

However, the same couldn’t be said for Reghan.

“I see.. This could be amazing for us.” I watched Reghan’s excited face as he glared at the others who were gathering around the pylon. If everyone had a class and a skill, that would make the defense a hell lot easier for use to deal with.

The armors and weapons available were underwhelming too. None of them gave good enough stats to merit their cost.

I closed the shop menu, then switched the category to [enhancement]

[Enhancement : Select a weapon from your inventory, then select a boss gem of your choice. Enhancement costs 10 000 contributions points. Crafting is disabled unless your sector reached top ten.]

10 k? That’s an exorbitant amount of points.

“Haa….” Perhaps I could do this once the next wave was over. I earned more than 5000 points from the second wave alone, so gaining more than 10k by tomorrow won’t be an impossibility. Hell, I’d be surprised if I couldn’t get past that number.

Speaking of gems, I had a fire attuned one that was dropped from the prime ape. Should I hand it over to Julie? There’s little to no chance that it’ll be of use to me in the future, right?

“Julie…”, My voice roused her attention away from the Pylon. She gave me an annoyed look as I approached her. “I have something that might be of interest to you.”

I reached out to my backpack and revealed the red gem that has been sitting in my backpack for days. The glint of the red gem garnered a few eyes from her party members, but they shrugged it off as they were more interested in what the pylon offered.

[Beast core of the prime ape : A component that can be forged into an F-rank fire elemental stone. One use only.]

Julie’s eyes went wide when she inspected the gem. “Are you sure? This could be worth a lot…” Her gaze then switched on to my eyes, trying to determine whether I was genuine with my gift.

“Fire and my skillset don’t mix all that well. So, I don’t see myself using this in the future. It’s better to give it to you than having it sit around inside of my backpack the entire time. Here…”

I handed the gem to her open arms. Her eyes were carefully watching the glint that was reflected on the gem’s surface as she held it tightly in her hands. “Thanks… I guess? I hope you’re not expecting something in return…”, despite her best efforts to hold her smile back, I could see the edges of her lips curling upwards.

I’d reckon that Julie owned at least three times the amount of contribution that I had. She should be able to make something out of this gem before the next wave…

Speaking of which, I had an unfinished business outside. There was a flower that I’d put off for too long near where the apes were found. I have a feeling that with my Deathborne talent, I could survive whatever that thing would bring to me.

It’s time to deal with the Onyx hyacinth.