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*Second Day of the 3rd Tutorial.*
"Did we come too deep?"
"Yeah... It's kinda eerie."
In an underground area, three people were talking to each other as they moved around. Among them were two boys and one girl.
"Nothing we can do about it. We started with around 1400 people in the safe zone; now less than six hundred are alive."
As 24 hours had passed since the start of the trial, the capacity of the safe zone had decreased by 1200.
"Can't we just go back to the central area, to the safe zone?" one of the boys asked his two teammates.
"Only two hundred can stay inside the zone at the moment, and that must have become 150 since we left. With all those people there, can you guarantee our safety?" the girl replied.
"Ah! That! So, what should we do? He needs a place to hide." The boy, remembering the scene from the safe zone, quickly backed off from his suggestion of going back.
"Yeah, I know we need to find a better place to hide and slowly hunt. But this place is kinda... How do I say this, dangerous!" the girl said, focusing on the path ahead.
"Well, we don't have a choice. We need to hide wherever we can," the third guy said.
"Isn't this subway pretty big?" the first guy pointed out.
Yes, they were in the same subway where Arya first hunted and even found the hidden dungeon.
As this stage of the tutorial was about hunting and earning essence, everyone was hunting monsters, leveling up, and the average level of people was around 8-9. This group was one of the above-average ones; though their group had only these three people, their level was 9. The leader of the group, the girl, was about to reach Level 10.
*...Tk...*
As they walked and chatted, they were interrupted by a sudden noise.
"Wait, guys, did you hear that too?!"
"Yeah...!"
"Hey! Look, it's a convenience store!"
Though startled by the noise, the convenience store caught their attention.
"Thank God! We can now fill our inventory with food."
"Let's go! I'm starving."
"Yeah! Let's g-ahhhhh!"
As they celebrated finding the store, they didn't notice the looming danger. Just as one of their members sprinted towards the convenience store, a spider monster hiding onto the ceiling, which had made the previous sound, attacked and bit his neck.
Before the other two members could react, they found themselves surrounded by monsters from all sides—zombies, rodents, spiders. Everywhere they looked, they saw only monsters.
"Shit! There's too many of them!"
The leader readied her sword while the second guy prepared his big hammer.
'Can we win? I tried so hard to survive, and my level was higher than the rest. But is this how I will die?'
The monsters lunged at them from all sides. They fought back and killed a few monsters, but more wounds appeared on them as time passed.
"I don't want to die like this," the girl shouted in frustration.
*Smash*
"Die, you bastard!" The guy smashed the head of one of the many monsters.
But it seemed endless. No matter how many they killed, more monsters kept coming.
*Huff*
"Ahh!" The sword user, the party leader, screamed as a rodent monster bit her hand, causing her sword to fall.
"So, is this how I will die?" she said, losing the will to fight.
"No, leader! Dammit!" the second member shouted as he saw his team leader about to die.
During the fight, the monsters instinctively knew the girl was more dangerous than the boy, so most targeted her. Now that she had lost the will to fight, they jumped to gobble her.
While many monsters focused on the team leader, the boy was also attacked by numerous zombies. Seeing the girl's condition, he tried to help her.
"Guooh...!"
"Keuk... Damn these zombies."
The zombies didn't allow him to reach her. He could only watch as the monsters lunged at the girl.
As the lady was about to die, his will to fight also waned. If someone stronger than him was already defeated, he knew he would soon be killed.
When the lady was about to be killed, he closed his eyes, unable to watch. Suddenly, he felt the zombies attacking him stop. No attack hit him, and he didn't hear the scream he anticipated.
He opened his eyes.
Massacre. Total massacre.
The monsters they thought were endless and unbeatable were now all corpses. All the monsters they had been fighting were now dead.
It took him a moment to recover from his shock. He noticed his team leader was alive, on all fours, breathing heavily, and looking in a certain direction. Following her gaze, he saw a boy in plain, blood-splattered clothing. In his hand was a blood-dripping sword.
"Y-You are that guy who killed that worm in the last round," the girl said.
The boy turned towards her.
"Yeah? So?"
That's all he muttered before starting to walk away.
"Wait! Please, at least listen to us," the leader shouted. The boy stopped, thought for a moment, and then walked towards the pair he had just saved.
While this happened, the second member was already with the girl, asking what happened. But she didn't reply; she was just staring at the boy with the sword.
"Th-thank you... You saved us," the pair thanked him.
"Hey, what's your agility and constitution?" the boy asked an unexpected question. Stats were personal information, and no one usually shared them with others.
"W-why? I don't think it's good to ask someone's stats," the leader replied.
"So, you want to die? The wound on your hand has poison. If your constitution is low, you'll die."
"I-it's 22," replied the boy.
"Mine is 19," replied the girl.
"Here, apply this. It's quite effective." The person threw a cylindrical box at the pair. It was a healing cream from the store. Arya had a few, so he gave one to the pair.
"Quick! Rub it in!"
"Wait, I'm doing it!"
The pair whispered to each other and, after applying the cream, got up and thanked Arya again.
"Thank you very much. If not for you, we would have died. I will never forget this fav-"
"Who said it's a favor?" Arya cut the leader off mid-thanks.
This put both members on guard.
'He's already strong, so he must have hunted many monsters by now. He doesn't want our essence! What does he want then?'
The leader thought for a moment and asked, "What is it that you want from us?"
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