Trial 10 "Battle Royale" (7) - 26

The reeds and grasses on islands were parted and ripples could be seen appearing on top of bodies of water, almost magically, all in a straight line towards a certain point.

"Fuck! I'm actually walking on water!"

I mean, I had experienced this multiple times when beta testing already, but still, doing it in real life was a whole different experience.

But I couldn't think about this right now as something way more important was waiting for me at the finish line.

I watched as a man lifted his sword into the air, getting ready to strike down.

Only seeing red, I increased my pace to my limits, and before the man knew it, he was already hundreds of meters away from his prey, with an arm in his chest.

Then, subsequently, he imploded on my arm, as all of the kinetic energy that I had accumulated had nowhere else to go, splattering me in bits and pieces of flesh and blood.

After picking up his dropped sword, I immediately rushed back to my little sister.

She was on the ground, fainted, so all I could do was wait for Onee-sama to come here and pick her up, or I would seem even more suspicious than I already was from rushing here that quickly, even though I had no apparent connection to the sisters.

It was only 5 minutes later that Onee-sama finally arrived.

She immediately rushed towards little sis on the ground and checked her body, examining it to see if there was anything wrong with it.

"Don't worry, she's fine, I got here in time. She probably only fainted due to the fear of almost being killed."

'Or, she might have fainted from gory scene that she watched, but I don't have to tell Onee-sama that.'

"And how about the other player." She asked, although already knowing the answer as the evidence was apparent all over my clothes, hair, and face.

"Dead."

And with that, the matter resolved.

I went a little whiles away and cleaned my body and clothes in a random river, drying it all with some cleaning magic before I returned.

We decided to set up camp here for tonight so that little sis could get some rest, as she still hadn't woken up yet.

They were confined in their tent, so I went out and started "fishing", although if any real fisherman saw this, he would probably inherently get mad.

All I did was I just teleported my hand through my shadow using "Figureless Shadow" and then set the "out" destination as the fish's shadow, and then pierced its head with a finger, taking the fish back to me through its own shadow.

With the amount of mana and intelligence that I had now, I could only teleport small things through shadows, and I could only use it 5 times a day, but that was enough as 5 fish was more than enough to feed 3 people.

Coming back with the fish, I immediately set about grilling them.

10 minutes later, with the smell of cooking meat and fat drawing them out, my sisters left the tent.

Signaling for them to help themselves, we then proceeded to eat, an awkward silence filling the atmosphere around us.

"Sigh... Your sister probably already explained to you what our circumstances are, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask."

"Then, if you insist, I want to ask why you saved me?"

Not even sugarcoating it, I put it out bluntly for them.

"Because you two will be useful in the future to me if you owe me a favor."

Of course, this was only a secondary reason why I had saved her, the first obviously being that she was the only person that hadn't pushed me away in my darkest times, and that was all due to our "special" relationship, but nobody needed to know about that right now.

Not fazed by my answer, she immediately asked a second question.

"Well then, how do you know that we will be strong in the future?"

I kept my answer short and concise, "I just do."

"Fine, last question... how do you eat with that mask on?"

She asked this while looking down at her hands and fiddling with them.

I didn't even hide my amusement and guffawed at the cute question that my sister asked, although I guess she wasn't as cute as her young self anymore. But shit, that laugh sounded a lot more evil than I had intended it to as the voice changing spell that I kept on me made it sound really weird.

"I'm just quickly putting it into my mouth, but my movements are just too fast for you to see."

"A-Are you really that fast?"

"Yes, I am."

Of course, this was just a complete lie. I mean, who would waste their energy on just eating, which was supposed to replenish your energy. I had just turned a few unnecessary parts of my body into shadows and I was using those shadows to ferry food into my mouth.

(A/N: If you forgot, one of the abilities of figureless shadow was to turn the user into a shadow that could move freely.)

This way of eating food was actually incredibly efficient, just taking 1/10th of a stat point of mana to carry one piece of food to my mouth.

After that, we continued to eat in silence, well, it was a little less awkward now as both me and Onee-sama were inwardly laughing, although I kept this hidden by acting stoic, as little sis stared intently at me, moving around to try to catch it at different angles, trying to "see" my arm as it brought food to my mouth.

And with that, our little fiasco was resolved today and on top of that, another competitor was taken out.

<Little Hope's POV>

"FUCK THIS DAMN PLACE!"

I was aggressively scratching at my skin in multiple places, all over my body, to the point were blood came out every time my fingers touched my skin, as my strength was unfortunately way higher than my stamina.

(A/N: If you didn't read the auxiliary chapter, then just know that stamina also increases the hardness of your skin.)

At first, when we were traveling through the jungle, we hadn't noticed anything strange or any monsters and had kept pushing forward. It was only after we woke up the next day that we realized what the real monsters of this biome were.

Fortunately, we had Feng, so we now traveled around enveloped in a cocoon of thin fire that was transparent.

But, this still didn't get rid of the mosquito bites that we had already acquired during our first night, so both mine and Liu's skin where riddled with tiny bumps and blood, which had accumulated as our scratching became fiercer.

A while back, we had even come across the corpse of someone that looked as if they had committed suicide. It looked almost like a normal suicide, except for the fact that the guy's skin had so many tiny bumps on it, everywhere including his nether regions, that he looked like a jackfruit.

Immediately after we found out the cause of his suicide, Liu told Feng to burn up his body, not even letting ashes remain as we were both horrible disgusted by the sight.

Back in the present, we were still trekking through the jungle, trying to find other players.

'I'm honestly surprised that nobody has united the flags yet. Well, I guess that means that Brother Shin is doing his job well.'

A/N: I have decided to have her refer to the MC as "Brother Shin" to show their closeness after spending all that time together and to show that he views her like a little sister and that she views him as an older brother, also to make sure that they won't have romantic feeling for each other, at least not yet, as that would be child pornography (she's just 13).

It was then that we got another notification from the system.

[As there are only 6 players left, we will now be shrinking the zone even further. The second safe zone "Jungle" will now no longer be a safe zone. The biome "Jungle" will be deleted off the map in 30 minutes, so get to the other safe zone "Wetlands" by then.]

"Fuck! We have to get out of here now!" I shouted.

Nodding his head, we immediately burst into a desperate sprint in the direction that we had been going, in hopes that it was the right direction.

This time, I didn't need to slow down as Liu was able to keep up with me, probably due to his fear of dying.

But, it seemed like luck wasn't on our side. When we arrived at the border, all we could see was a crumbling edge that led to an abyss.

[10 minutes are left.]

'Fuck!'

We both immediately turned right and then sprinted along the border.

[5 minutes.]

Our legs went into overdrive.

[3 minutes.]

Beside me, Liu started borrowing some power from Feng, letting me pick up the pace even more.

[2 minutes.]

We finally saw some green on the horizon.

[1 minute.]

'Come on, come on, come on, comeon, comeon, cumon, cumon, cmn, cmn.'

[10 seconds.]

'We're almost there, just a little bit more!'

[5]

[4]

[3]

[2]

And with that, we crossed the border.

[1]

Turning around, we watched as the jungle just fell, right where our feet had been, straight out of the sky.

That being the last thing we saw, we both collapsed, our consciousness fading into the void.

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A/N: Sorry for not uploading yesterday. I was just hit by a sudden inspiration that helped me finalize the ending of the "Tutorial Tower" arc, so I wrote the final chapter of the arc yesterday instead of uploading anything.