Chapter 7

We followed Dave as he led us through a small maintenance door and down a cramped service tunnel. The lighting was dim and I had to squint to make out his outline even though he walked only a few steps in front of me.

“It’s just a little further. I found a concierge’s room with some useful things.”

My breathing sped up as I squeezed Allie’s hand to get her attention. Even in the gloom, her sapphire eyes blazed like stars as she met my eyes without a word. She just nodded once, and slipped her hand inside her pocket.

I returned her nod and palmed my swiss army knife, using both hands to quietly pry it open, then pushed it up the inside of my sleeve so that it would drop into my hand with a quick flip.

“So, why don’t you start telling us about the trials?” I said in a casual tone.

“Impatient, aren’t ya?”

“Time is a luxury we don’t have, don’t you think?”

“Ah, that’s the right attitude. Pretty rare among rookies, too. Fine, let me tell you about the trial, but don’t be too shocked.”

“My first trial was held a little under a month ago. It was a rank D trial with 150 participants,” Dave continued, his voice taking on a haunted quality. “It was a fucking bloodbath. People were dropping like flies, left and right without rhyme or reason. It felt like a game of Russian roulette, only most of the chambers were loaded and you had to watch everybody blow their own brains out.”

A shudder ran through Dave’s figure as he paused for a moment, and I almost opened my mouth to ask why he would come back to these damn trials then, but Allie gave me a look and I just kept walking. Dave soon resumed his tale.

“The trials are divided into stages, each harder than the last. The first stage was a swarm of wasps. They started attacking everyone, scattering the crowd while the slowest ones died first, leaving in their wake disfigured corpses with features swollen like rotten tomatoes.”

“After that came the spiders. Damn things were bigger around than my chest. Quick too, lightning fast. They’d crawl up on you through the wall or the ceiling, then pounce down and inject you with their venom. Only empty skins were left after they were done sucking out all your insides.”

“It just kept going like that, stage after stage. It didn’t matter how strong or smart you were, if you made one wrong move, you were dead, just like that.”

“But you made it. You survived. How?” I asked.

“Luck, I guess? I joined up with a group of good folk early on and we all stuck together, watched each others’ backs. One of us just happened to figure out the real secret to these trials,” Dave said cryptically, then his voice lowered to a growl. “But by that time, it was already too late. At the start, there were 14 of us. Only Doug and I made it in the end.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

Dave waved his hand. “Shit happens.”

“So, what’s the secret?” I asked, unable to hold back.

“Patience. I’ll show you in a moment. We’re here,” he said, pushing his shoulder against a barely visible crack on the wall. It widened into a door with a dim, flickering light.

“What’s this?” I asked as Dave walked through.

“Damn light seems busted, but it’s safe. Come on in.”

Allie’s hand tightened in mine ever so slightly, but after a brief moment of hesitation, I followed him in. Allie came in right behind me.

It was a spacious room but all the objects that filled it made it feel cramped. There were a couple of desks at the center of the room and a corridor to the left. The rest of the room was full of dusty shelves with a variety of boxes on them.

“Good. Now, let me share with you the secret of the trials,” Dave said, holding his hand out, palm up. Swirling in the palm of his hand was an orb of blue light that slowly spun in place.

“What is that?” I cried out, staring wide-eyed at something I’d only seen in fantasy movies.

“This is a mana orb. It’s the currency of this place, so to speak. Back in our trial, there were places scattered all over where you could purchase all sorts of cool shit with these things.”

“Like what?”

“Anything you could think of: guns, swords, armor, medicine-”

“Medicine? What type?” Allie blurted out.

“Oh, amazing stuff, the type you can’t find anywhere else. I watched a guy with his guts just about to spill out of a nasty gash on his side knock back one of those health recovery potions. His flesh started wriggling and knitting together right before my eyes. In a few seconds, the wound was gone without a scar.”

“How do we get those mana orbs?” Allie’s voice trembled with emotion.

“Ah, that’s the easy part. You already have one, you see?”

“We do?” I blurted out, then recalled that I had indeed seen one mana orb listed in my head.

“Yeah, sure you do. Each participant gets one at the beginning of the game. You’ve seen the menu in your head before, right? Just place your hand over your orb marking and go to the mana orb menu. Go ahead, you can check it out right now. I’ll show you how to use it.”

Both Allie and I nodded simultaneously, placing a hand over our left wrists.

“Tell me when you’re inside the menu,” Dave said.

“I am,” Allie replied.

“Me too,” I lied. “What’s next?”

“Good, good. Next, what you need to do is focus on the mana orb..”

Though I tried to keep my eyes unfocused, I was actually watching the reflection in the monitor on top of the desk in front of me. There, I saw a shadow approaching behind my back, even as Dave approached me from the front.

I guess they figured Allie didn’t pose as much of a threat as a 5’11 man with toned muscles like me.

Fools.

I waited until the shadow was almost on top of me. It was another man holding an object in his hand. He lifted it high over his head, and that’s when I made my move.

Whirling around, I whipped out my knife while lifting my other hand high to catch his descending arm. There was absolute disbelief in his eyes as I stabbed the knife in his throat three times in quick succession, using a sawing motion as I went for as many blood vessels as I could.

“Doug! No!” I heard Dave cry out behind me.

Doug was clutching at his throat with both hands as blood gushed like a river from the hideous gashes I’d inflicted on him. He tried to speak but only more blood gurgled out of his mouth.

I grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled as hard as I could, turning him around and shoving him into Dave, who had been rushing toward me. They crashed together as Dave instinctively tried to hold up his partner before he collapsed.

By then, Allie had already slid next to Dave and sprayed the small can of bug spray we’d found for her right into his face.

Dave screamed as he clutched at his eyes, and that was enough for the scrambling Doug to bring both of them down to the floor.

I didn’t have time to watch the dying man’s last throes as I quickly scanned the room for other threats. Satisfied that none were incoming, I stepped up to Dave and kicked a small knife from his hand away, then stepped on his throat until his face began to turn purple.

“Why would you try to kill us?” I snarled, letting up some of the pressure so he could speak.

“I-I’m sorry. P-Please, please don’t kill me,” Dave said, coughing roughly and squinting up at me blindly as tears and snot rolled down his face.

“I asked you a question. Why?” I growled.

“They were probably after me and our mana orbs,” Allie said coldly from the other side of the room.

“What?” I said, turning toward Allie, but she was already in the other room.

“I found two bodies here,” she said with the same wintry tone. “Girls. I recognize one from the group earlier. They’ve been.. Abused. Then they slit their throats.”

“You animals,” I said hoarsely, leaning down on my foot.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but it still made me sick to have my suspicions confirmed. Having stood by Allie’s side practically since childhood, I was very familiar with the sorts of ugly feelings a radiant beauty like hers could provoke in people of both sexes, but especially men. It usually didn’t go any further than hungry looks and lecherous thoughts, but there had been many incidents. Enough that Allie had grown increasingly cold and aggressive towards men, and I had become properly cautious of strangers.

I had caught this creep’s ill intent from the first time I saw him rolling his dirty eyeballs toward my Allie. When I shook his hand, it was all I could do not to snap his fucking wrist right away. Still, the words he had said about having survived a trial had made me cool my head and follow, even though I had a feeling I knew where it was all going. That is why I had never dropped my guard.

As for Allie, if even a dullard like me could tell their intentions, then Allie would have read them like a book from miles away.

“N-no, please, please,” Dave mouthed, spittle flying from his mouth as he clutched at my foot. “Info.. Information.”

I gnashed my teeth as I took my foot off his throat, but then a blue glow suddenly shot up into the air and flew toward me. I instinctively raised my hand up, and the blue glow was absorbed into the orb mark.

What had that been? Some sort of attack? I whirled on Dave and drew my foot back to land several vicious kicks to his head and chest.

By the time Allie returned to my side, Dave was curled up on the floor, clutching at his chest while spitting out mouthfuls of teeth and blood.

“Are you alright?” I asked her.

She nodded to me, but her attention was on Dave. She knelt before him, holding something in her hand. It was the hammer that had fallen from Doug’s nerveless hand.

“You’re gonna spill everything you know about the trials, right here, right now,” she said in a flat tone that sent shivers up my back. “Each time I think you’ve wasted my time, I’m going to break one of your bones.”

“P-Please,” Dave began, tears flooding from his eyes.

Allie didn’t say anything. She just lifted her arm and brought down the hammer on Dave’s right hand as hard as she could. Dave howled as something broke with a sickening crunch, much like rotten wood.

“Start talking,” Allie said, lifting her hammer once again. “Or else.”

I lifted my hand and placed it over her shoulder. “Allie, I don’t think-”

“Step back, Kai. I’m gonna see to it that this sack of shit gets what he deserves,” she said without looking at me.

“Still, he’s already been beaten up pretty bad.”

“Not badly enough. Not nearly. I mean to see this through, with or without you. So, either stand there and watch or go to the other room so you can see what these animals are capable of.”

I sighed and walked away, heading to the other room while Allie turned her attention back to Dave.

I found the two dead girls, and the sight nearly made me retch. They resembled each other enough that they were sisters or cousins. Their bodies were naked, the clothes flung carelessly to the corner. Their wrists had been tied with several strips of steel wire to the wall, where a series of pipes ran throughout. Their bindings gleamed wetly with blood where they had dug deep into delicate skin.

Until the very end, they hadn’t stopped struggling.

God, one of them looked young enough that she wouldn’t be able to buy a drink without showing her ID.

Their legs laid spread-eagled to the sides and at their crotches, skin drenched in sex glistened under the flickering light. A different kind of light was reflected from the pools of blood under each body, stemming no doubt, from the ghastly gash on each of their necks.

I shook my head sadly and covered their bodies as best I could using the clothes on the floor. There was nothing else I could do, so I returned to Allie.

“.. buy weapons, armor, supplies.. no, please - AAARG!”

That last howl of agony had been preceded by the heavy thud of smashed meat and the dull crack of splintered bone.

“You already said that, you stupid fuck. Tell me something I don’t know!” Allie said, lifting her hammer over her shoulder. The tip glistened with fresh blood, and a few drops fell on top of her hair.

“I don’t- Please, I told you everything, everything I know.. Please,” the crippled animal on the floor begged.

“Not good enough. There are 206 bones in the human body, and I will fucking wreck every single one of them until you spit out everything you know, you hear me? Everything!”

“I already told you, told you all I know. P-Please, Doug and I, we only survived the last trial because we.. we got mana orbs from others and used them to buy healing potions.”

“You mean you fucking butchered them like pigs while they weren’t looking,” Allie said, hefting the hammer in her hands.

“Y-Yes, we did. We did, god help us,” Dave sobbed, snot dribbling down his lips. “What else could we do? I watched my brother get his face melted off right in front of my eyes, and I could do nothing to help. Nothing!”

“You could have stopped killing innocent people, you sick fuck!” Allie said, the knuckles of the hand on the hammer’s handle going white.

“It’s kill or be killed out here, nothing in between. Don’t you see? They’ll just keep going until there’s no one left, no one. I thought I got away, but you have to come back within a month or you’re dead. There’s no turning back, no hope!”

“Shut the fuck up,” Allie said, smashing the hammer down on his forehead. It connected with a loud crack while Dave’s eyes rolled up in their sockets, and I wasn’t sure if he was dead or alive.

I moved up behind Allie and gently drew her into my arms, hugging her back without a word.

She dropped the hammer and it landed with a clang. Then she took hold of my hands and brought them up to her face, where I could feel tears trickling onto my skin.

“Is this really all we humans amount to? Lust and greed lurking beneath a thin veneer of civility that is only held in place because of fear of a higher authority?” Allie said, shivering uncontrollably.

“You know that’s not true,” I whispered.

“Oh, but it is. You wanna know why I could quit my job so easily? Sure, I’d do anything for you, but I also couldn’t stand to see the ugly truth of society any longer. Corrupt cops, dirty politicians, rampant crime. Is there truly no hope left in this world?”

“There is,” I said slowly. “We still have each other.”

Allie slowly turned around to look deep into my eyes, and the vulnerability there really shook me. It reminded me of a small boat being tossed about by furious waves, on the verge of capsizing.

Then her eyes slowly drifted close and she leaned in with her lips. Our kiss was rough and desperate, as though we were trying to forcibly suck precious warmth from each other’s bodies through our mouths.

“Don’t ever leave me, Kai.”

Those were her breathless words when we finally parted, and there was too much despair in her shimmering eyes for me to turn away.

“I won’t.”

“Promise?”

I could only cover her lips with mine once again, all the while suppressing the shudder at the ice running down my veins.

Because that was one promise I didn’t know if I could keep.

It was at this moment that a brilliant blue glow rose up into the air and streamed toward Allie’s wrist.

She looked as surprised as I had been. It was only then it finally dawned on me what the blue glow was.

“It’s the mana orbs,” I whispered.

“Shit, it’s started,” Allie said, her eyes going blank as she laid her hand on her mark.

“What?” I replied, using my own mark.

Orb User Tier F

Orb User Level: 0

Mana Orbs: 3

Skill Orbs: 0

Special Orbs: 0

Orb Keeper Charon’s Trial of the Ark is in progress.

Users 83/100

Current Objective: Prepare for Stage 1 (1h 12m 11s)

83 users left. That meant 16 people had already died in less than an hour, and the trials hadn’t even started yet.

I frowned as I recalled that there had been several people rushing off as soon as Charon was done with his explanation.

Dave had probably lured their victims then, but what about the others? There were more veterans of the trials on the loose, and they had already begun hunting down for more orbs.

Like Allie said, this was only the beginning.