“Whew… That looks cool. I wonder what kind of effects it had.” Richard said as he dropped off the log onto the few guys near the podium. “You gave that gem to her, right? Where did you get it from?”
“An elite. You know, from the apes.” Following his lead, I let go of the log at the same spot while keenly watching Julie’s staff. I was just as curious as he was, and if the staff had the same kind of effects the Prime Ape had, that meant that we were in for waves of explosions tonight.
“An elite? Wow… Was it… difficult?”
“Yeah it was. I nearly died a couple of times. Luckily, it couldn’t see all that well in the dark, so I used that to my advantage.” I described the fight to Richard, whose eyes were staring at me as he was incredibly interested about the method that I used to finish the ape off. He laughed when I told him about its suicidal attack towards the end of the fight.
Our conversation continued until Julie approached us. Her eyes remained on the staff in her hands while she swung it around and got a good feel for it. It didn’t seem too heavy on her, but the unbalanced build of the staff made it an unruly weapon to use in melee.
“I can’t thank you enough for this.” She said. “The skills on this staff was- well, actually, I wanted to test it outside. And since you’re the one who gave it to me, I suppose I should at least let you see what it does.” Then she pointed the staff at me, “I owe you one, Zane. I don’t like being in debt to others, and I knew that you’re not giving this gem away for free either.”
I shrugged, feigning interest. Honestly, if that staff could ensure the gate’s survival, I was more than happy enough to pay for it. I didn’t give it away for her specifically.
“Can I come too?” Richard hollered from the back. “It won’t take long, right?”
“I don’t care.” She shrugged as we tagged along with her to the outside of the newly built walls.
“The description said that it’ll cause an explosion on a point within 50 meters, aside from the buffs to my mind attributes and fire spells.” Raising her staff, she pointed towards the furthest spot away from us. As her red gem glowed, a tiny spark was seen in the distance.
Then a massive explosion erupted on that exact same spot. Size-wise, it was between the radius of the Prime ape’s explosion to its regular counterparts, leaning slightly towards the Elite’s explosions.
Richard whistled, “That’s sick. Wish I could have one of those.”
“It costs a lot of mana. Way more than I expected. I couldn’t cast this more than 3 times within 15 minutes, that’s if I don’t mix in other spells in-between.”
I watched the smoke emanating from the blackened floor. A crater was made from the explosion, extending a few meters deep. The explosion had drawn the attention of others that were nearby, but they looked away when they noticed Julie’s glare on them.
There was rift between our group and - let’s name them Paul’s group for now- in the camp. The furious and jealous glare were one thing, but what annoyed me the most was the fact that none of us could do much about it. Unless someone went on a killing spree, or worse, the forces of nature took their lives away, this situation would last until one side either went crazy, or they died.
“Alright. That’s enough. Let’s go back to work.” Stretching, Richard returned to where he dropped the log off, leaving me and Julie behind.
The sun was about to set. Soon, we’ll be fighting with our lives on the line again. We watched the empty sky as it grew redder by the minute in quiet contemplation.
“Once this wave is over… What do you plan to do?” Julie asked.
“Me? I don’t know… I’ll look for the other dungeons. It’s best if we clear them right away.” Watching her solid gaze remaining on the sky, I wondered about the reason she bothered to ask, “What about you?”
“Same as you, probably. I hope I could reach 20 once the defense is over.”
She extended her staff towards me. “You killed the elite by yourself, didn’t you? I won’t even consider doing that on my own. And yet, someone like you was not even on the top list. How strong do you think we have to be for the system to consider us on there?”
It felt like everyone was asking that same question.
“I’m afraid no one in this sector could answer that. Honestly, I thought I would be up there too.”
Her hair was blown by a light breeze, covering her dimly glowing eyes. She brushed them away, then turned back to the camp. “Thank you again, Zane. I won’t forget this.”
With her leaving, I was left alone in the vacant part of the camp.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The night came once the walls were mostly finished. It wasn’t much to look at, since they were made in haste, but it should be good enough to fend off the lower leveled wolves for a good few minutes.
Most of the vanguard squad were huddled up around the stage, watching the night sky with unease in their hearts. There were only a few more hours left before the wolf mother will make her presence known.
Reghan sat near the edge of the podium with his fists clenched and his eyes furrowed as deeply as they could get. The lull in the moment seemed to have caused his recent murder to resurface in his mind again. But I could say the same about everyone else, they were all anxious about the incoming wave.
At this point, with the help of the pylon, everyone capable was given a common rarity class to boost their fighting prowess. The relatively low prices allowed this to happen, and they were able to buy armors and weapons to help boost their survivability in battles.
Julie’s group were gathered amongst the crowd, garnering the attention from those nearby. Julie’s strength were recognized fairly well by most of the people in here, even from those who were vehemently against joining the fight.
With nothing else to do, I sat down beside Reghan.
He didn’t react at first. His eyes remained on his clenched fist. It wasn’t until I cleared my throat before he turned his head towards me.
“Long day.” I said, trying to break the ice. “I couldn’t believe we pulled this all off within a few hours.”
No words left his mouth. He simply scanned his surroundings with a tense smile.
“You alright? I hope I’m not intruding on you too much.”
“I’m fine.” Finally, he replied. It wasn’t a long one, but there was this appreciative look from the way his eyes loosening their tension. “You’re right. It’s been a long day.”
As the silence between us grew, he lowered his gaze back to the floor. “That wasn’t my first time killing someone. I’ve done it before. It was… like what happened with Paul, necessary.”
His confession bared little reaction from me. In a way, I’d expected that he went through this before. And so did Reghan, he didn’t seem to be shocked by my lack of reaction.
“Have you ever killed someone, Zane?”
“I got close… but no. But I know that I’d go through the same thing you did one day. Maybe not now, maybe not tomorrow, but it is inevitable.”
A slight rush of air left his mouth as he chuckled. “Close, huh? For me… it was a long story.”
His eyelids twitched and he blinked for a few times. “Before the wave began, I was so worried about my own strength and maintaining my spot as the strongest. And that ego of mine had led to what happened today. Now…”
Another pause came. I waited him to gather his thoughts, to let at least some of his demons out. I wasn’t a psychologist by any means, so I was just doing what my sister had always been before, to be a safe place to vent.
“Now, I’ll just do what I can. For the best of what’s left of us.”
His eyes then hovered towards Julie’s group. “They’re getting along so well now. What do you think of them?”
“I don’t know… They all seemed to be dependable.”
“Right? That’s the kind of people we need during these times. God knows how many of those types of people are present in this field.”
They didn’t use to be that way, though.
“Julie’s strong, and so are you.”, He said. “But witnessing the rankings worried me.”
“I know, None of us were in-“
“No, that’s not what I meant. Since I was the administrator, I was given access to the information that wasn’t displayed to the public.”
I gaped at his revelation, “What did you see?”
“There were 597 sectors aside from who had gathered one of the four keys. Five of them, and I would assume that includes the one led by Aria White, gathered two of them in less than ten days.”
Aria… The number one. The strongest amongst all humankind…
My shoulders slumped from the new information. Acquiring the keys to the dungeon needed more than just strength, You needed coordination and teamwork to defend the gates too.
“Have you ever thought about how the system carefully hides information from you?” He continued, “About how the level up system works, about the items, equipments, and skills that you see? You noticed that it didn’t give you all the information that should be available?”
I stared at the masses on the field, taking in the things that he’d said.
There were 2 skills of my own that had their information purposefully cut off. The shadow-step and Death siphon. I opened up the description of the Death Siphon :
[Death Siphon. Drains a selected corpse or death haze. Upon usage, recovers 10% of health and mana. If you own the Death affinity at a certain level, you will also drain a percentage of their attributes. The attribute drain only works on bosses, elite, or higher tiered tagged entities. You can also drain any form of death haze. Doing it this way, however, will not gain you any attributes.]
First off, there was no mention about its cooldown. But the other passage was also unclear; The [If you own the Death affinity at a certain level] line didn’t say anything about which level it should be at before I could get attributes from the usage of the skill.
“The way I see it, the system isn’t a robotic entity that only operates from its programming. It has its own will. It wants to direct you in a certain direction, it wants you to do what it wants you to do, sometimes, even without you knowing its intentions.”
I sat and listened to him explaining his ideas about what the system truly was. While what he said was definitely interesting, and while there were hints of truth in his speech, they were just hypotheses at best.
I’ve had the courtesy of meeting Ezekiel and Yael. Each of them apparently had their own ideas about how the system operated, and honestly, their blabber about the system only made things even more confusing.
But one thing was sure. And this, we both agreed on.
The system didn’t care about our survival. The whole tutorial was designed to cull the masses and only allowed the truly special and gifted ones to live. While some of us were lucky to be here - including those who were weak, it was likely that hundreds of thousands of people were spawned on this sector at once, and the people who’d survived today were the only ones left, through sheer luck or will. If that was true, then the survival rate of humankind fell below one percent, which was… sobering.
[The third wave has begun.]
Here she comes.