a

Amy slowly opened her eyes, squinting as she adjusted to the bright light. To her side was Isabella. She also seemed to have just woken up.

Before Amy could say anything, a screen appeared before them.

After she had read the instructions, Amy's body stiffened. She turned her head and saw Isabella also staring at her.

"Isa-"

Before Amy could say anything else, Isabella got up and made a dash for the red button.

"!" Amy leaped up and ran after her, shoving her away from the button. Isabella thought it was the end for her, and braced for her death.

However, Amy didn't press the button, she just stood there, panting.

"Are you crazy?! Don't just blindly follow it's instructions! You have to remember we're going up against something not from this world! If that guy could kill everyone around the world so easily, then it would be no matter if you died!" Amy angrily shouted at Isabella. She couldn't believe how quick Isabella was to try and throw her under the bus.

Isabella simply looked away and clicked her tongue. Her green eyes lowering.

"Instead of grouching and being useless, help me look for loopholes." Amy hissed. "If you try one more time to throw me under, I'll make sure you don't end up with just a shove."

"Whatever." Isabella clicked her tongue and also tried searching for any clues in the instructions.

....

"...This is relatively easy. We can just wait..." Riley tried to start up a conversation to pass his boredom.

The boy didn't reply.

"Look, if you want to die, then go die. Just don't drag down people who want to live." Riley sighed.

After the boy heard Riley, he raised his head, revealing beautiful blue eyes. Though, they were slightly annoyed.

"What a sh** thing to say." He hissed.

Surprised, Riley looked back at the boy. "Oh whatever, thought you were still mourning."

A few veins appeared on the boy's forehead. He sullenly looked away and went back to his usual self.

"Hahh..." Riley sighed, whatever. As he idly waited for the timer to tick down, he noticed another screen to his side.

[A God has taken an interest to you!]

"What...?"

______

"Active participants...It said parties before...." Amy pondered.

"..Parties should mean us, and I think we automatically become participants when we come here. But active means..." Isabella continued.

"Those who try to press the button!" They both said at the same time.

"That means I have to press the button, since I tried to press it before." Isabella said. "And you said it before, that because of how that guy has some otherworldly power, that it wouldn't matter if I died. What would be the point of lying to us anyways?"

"Huh, that's right." Amy hadn't thought about that, as she was too suspicious of the whole thing in general. "Good thing I didn't try to press the button, else one of us would have had to die." She sighed in relief.

There was now 3 minutes left, so Isabella went ahead and decided to press the button first. As her hand hit the button, Amy sighed in relief when she didn't die. It seems her and Isabella's guess was right.

Isabella's screen was filled with notifications the moment she pressed the button.

[You are the first person to complete a sub scenario! Special rewards: "Explorer (title)", +15 exp, charmer's necklace. Your title "Explorer" yawns and happily accepts you, +5 charisma]

[A Goddess has taken an interest in you!]

[A God has taken an interest in you!]

[A Goddess has taken an interest in you!]

[A Goddess has taken an interest in you!]

"...?????!"

-----

"Aha, Munchers, I told you that they would fail-" Naoi turned back to the screen and saw the big words, "Isabella Redkins has completed the first sub scenario!"

"HAHHHHHHHH?!!!!" Naoi spit out the coffee he had been drinking and stared at the screen. "What. The. Fu-AAAAAAAAAAAA!" Munchers dug his claws into Naoi, as if to brag about his victory.

"Eughhh... this doesn't mean anything okay! It was just...a slight miscalculation." Naoi laughed nervously. Munchers rolled his eyes.

"What?! All the sub scenarios that I had put out all involved monsters that normal humans couldn't kill. There was only one sub scenario that didn't have....ah." After coming to the realization, Naoi laughed. "What lucky fools. Though that luck won't last for long." He put down his cup.

Maybe it was because Naoi was too distracted by what was happening on the screen, or he was simply too vulnerable to his cat to realize that...Munchers seemed to have gained intelligence.

____

Eventually, 5 minutes passed, and the rest of the group found themselves back inside the musty subway station.

The moment Luke saw that Isabella was safe, he happily jumped into her arms. Isabella scoffed and comforted him embarrassedly.

The young boy simply got up and walked back to Amy, who smiled gently and ruffled her hand in his hair a bit.

"It seems you guys also figured out the loophole." Evan contently looked over at the group.

"..Yeah, though it almost wasn't like that." Amy wasn't trying to throw shade at Isabella, but was still abit sour about it. Isabella heard this and rolled her eyes and turned away.

Evan turned towards Riley, "Good job. I was half expecting to see only you emerge from there." He didn't expect that Riley would actually take time to figure out the loophole, instead of just overpowering the kid and leaving the sub scenario.

Riley just shrugged and walked off, leaving Evan awkwardly standing there.

"Back on task." Evan coughed, making the group's attention on him. "Isabella, I got the notification that you were the first one to complete the sub scenario. Did you get any extra rewards?"

Isabella gripped the necklace in her pocket. She had checked out what it did, and it could temporarily paralyze any monsters D rank or lower, or whatever that meant. All she knew was that it was a powerful item that could save her life.

"Mmm, not really. I only got a title, like Amy." She said disappointedly.

Evan paused for a second. He sensed that Isabella was lying, but he didn't push further. "Let's go back to finding a suitable place, and then we can talk about this later.