A Choice... (1) - 52

We had to wait a week before another player showed up.

You see, this was one of those trials where there had to be a certain number of players for it to start.

So we just waited, me and Lili, in that cold metal room, as time passed slowly.

...

"Who are you?"

The black figure that had just appeared in front of us turned around at the sound of my voice.

Not answering, they just acknowledged us before going to the opposite side of the room, and sitting down there.

Figuring that I should find out some information about our fellow "inmate" I pulled up the leaderboards.

[Player Leaderboard:

1. Anonymous - 11th floor | Lv. 96

2. Void - 11th floor | Lv. 54

3. Anonymous - 11th floor | Lv. 23

4. Zero - 10th floor | Lv. 68

5. Anonymous - 10th floor | Lv. 62

6. Liu Zhang - 10th floor | Lv. 60

7. Insurgent - 9th floor | Lv. 57

8. Bam25 - 9th floor | Lv. 55

9. 876 - 9th floor | Lv. 54

10. Enigma - 9th floor | Lv. 54

...]

(A/N: I'm not putting the TC counts anymore cause it's too hard to keep track of all that.)

[Guild Leaderboard:

1. Unknown - 3 Members | 1,200 FP (A/N: Fame Points)

2. Iron Blood - 23 Members | 300 FP

3. Empty

4. Empty

5. Empty

...]

'Iron Blood huh, cool name. Void too...'

I was seriously starting to question my naming sense now. I mean, really? Who the heck would name themselves "Shinubwa" when there were all these other cool names to choose from?

'Sigh, I really am a sis-con.' (A/N: If you don't remember, this name was what his little sister called him back when she was a baby.)

...

Another week had passed by, and no other players had been able to get to the 11th floor.

During this whole time, we had just sat on our side of the room, and Void had sat on their side of the room, both sides unmoving and quiet for the whole time.

Honestly, due to the long wait times that we had been forced to face before, and the often week long grinding sprees that I went on just to climb the tower quicker, this wasn't really that hard, but I was starting to get sick of it now.

So, I pulled up the stream of the 2nd generation highlights, and started watching the most interesting player, my favorite to be the winner after seeing her completely destroy a whole lobby mercilessly.

She was cold, brutal, and even looked cool during her "performances", and was a player that I knew could reach the top, even with the disadvantage of being from the second generation.

And finally, on top of all of this, she was a Sniper, a good one at that. So, she was at the top of my recruitment list.

'Let's see how you perform on the 10th floor, Player "GFishe".' I said, whilst rubbing my hands together.

<Kagami's POV>

The 10th floor.

It was supposedly the hardest ordeal that we would ever face in the Tutorial Tower.

The 1st generation's population had been whittled to a flimsy 500 survivors with it, a steep death rate of 99.95%.

And, for this generation, it was expected to be a lot worse.

After all, we had been faced with killing trial after killing trial after killing trial, so nobody expected the 10th floor to be nice and breezy like the "Stamina" trial of the previous generation.

Right now, we were standing in a dark, arid landscape, flashes of lightning letting themselves be known in the distance, the thunder that followed shaking the ground with its intensity.

Dark stains covered my body, wetting my matted hair, whilst my "partner" elegantly wiped off the dripping liquid covering her hands, the only place where it seemed to have gotten on her.

"Are we done?"

"Yeah, this area is now completely empty except for us.

"Caw! Caw!"

We both looked up to see a huge bird of prey circling around us, before it descended and landed on Lacida's shoulder.

Taking out a piece of flesh from her inventory, she fed it to the bird whilst I watched on.

"You lookin at somthin girl? Oh, maybe ya just jelly? Yeah, you just jelly o ya sista." (A/N: American slang, jelly = jealous)

"I'm not, I'm just waiting for my own egg to start cracking. Once it does, then I bet it'll be way stronger than that old bird."

"Bet! Sista? You think ya can beat this thic ass?"

"Whatever, let's just go, we still have more people to demolish."

"Whateva you say sista, whateva ya say."

We continued on to the next location.

(A/N: Okay, y'all, I'm trying my best to recreate talk here, but, I know it might be offensive, so if one y'all wanna correct me on portraying an aspect of it wrong, then please, feel free to do so.)

...

[Ding! You have completed the 9th floor trial! Teleporting Players "GFishe" and "Lacida" to the setting of the 10th floor trial.]

Looking over at Lacida's ebony skin, I couldn't help but sigh, thinking about all that had happened between us.

At the beginning of our "partnership", we had just been "acquaintances", but, after going through so much death together, we were now more like sisters in arms.

We had protected each other's back, had fed each other when the other was too injured, had slept in shifts to protect each other, and had laid our lives down just to keep the other from experiencing the least bit of pain.

I mean, I was now able to understand her speech! And I regarded that as one of my greatest accomplishments.

At first, I had thought that it wasn't even english, but after so much nights talking to each other with only the moon as our witness, I couldn't help but appreciate the beauty of that way of speaking, it was straightforward, and didn't care about other's feelings, you just said what you thought straight up, and I really respected that.

'Learning about different cultures really is eye opening.'

With that as my last thought, the white light that I had gotten familiar to engulfed us and took us to where we knew more death and destruction awaited us.

<Shinobu's POV>

Looking at the two figures getting teleported, I couldn't help but sigh.

Looking at the other screen I had pulled up, I already knew what was about to happen, and I knew that everything that they had built up would all come falling down once they stepped their feet on the tenth floor.

I sighed, the other screen was already red, as more blood than should be available in the human body started spewing everywhere.

[Trial: A Choice

Objective: Choose...

Difficulty: Easy - Impossible

Rewards: 10 stat points

Punishment for Failure: Death]

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Cause, well, you know, I missed 2 chapters yesterday, the make up one and the daily one, so I'll be writing 3 chaps today. The next two chapters will follow in the coming hours.