Stanis awoke. His body felt fine, good even. He lay there dazed for a few seconds as his last few haunting memories came back to him, his leg being chopped off on the teleporter. His body slightly shook as he removed the blanket that was over him, finally breathing a sigh of relief once he saw his leg there and in-tact.

He looked around himself as he lay back into the comfy bed. He was in a very clean and fairly large room. It had a few typical furniture, such as a table and chairs, in it, but nothing else other than that. There weren’t many signs of use across the furniture, instead they were all dusty and stale.

After a few minutes of rest, with a weary sigh, Stanis got out of the bed. The blankets slipped off him like silk, revealing his naked, scarred body. He walked over to the door and grabbed his armour and clothes.

All his clothes were there alongside his equipment. They were ripped and dirty but this wasn’t something that discomforted him, after all, when weren’t they such? He slipped his clothes on and powered up his equipment, his maximum mana limit going down at this.

Then the thought struck him, had he levelled up? Considering the false humans’ strength, it only made sense that they gave an equally large amount of experience. But at the same time, the level system had been scrapped and he had ranks now.

Stanis Volkov

Age: 18 years

Mana capacity: 32.1 (Mana capacity is actually 48.1 but 16.0 points are currently in use) (regeneration is capacity/4 per hour)

Rank: Tyro Mosyte

Class: Origin

Strength: 15.9

Dexterity: 15.1

Constitution: 14.8

Intelligence: 16.4

Wisdom: 14.8+0.5

Tenacity: 16.4

Skills: Layman's Rush, Scout and Sense, Light Healing, Destructive Mana Recharge, Ice shot, Blueshot spitfire, Lightning seed, Darkness Manipulation

Not a single thing had changed… This meant that the only way to increase his stats was then via circulation. Now in a bad mood, Stanis opened the door and found himself in a fairly large hallway. There were many doors down the hallway and a staircase leading down from it.

He walked over to the doors and tried opening them to no avail as he discovered they were shut tight. So, he went towards the staircase and walked down it, holding onto his sword the whole time: just in case.

He reached the bottom and realised he now knew where he was. This was the way they had followed the nameless man into the basement. Stanis had already guessed such that but it felt good to have his ideas confirmed. He looked around and eventually walked into the room where the other 9 were sitting and circulating, the nameless man at the front sitting silently. As he walked in, the nameless man aroused:

“I’m surprised all ten of you survived that,”

Stanis walked over to Pete and sat beside.

“So, how did you find it?” the nameless man asked.

…

“Hard,” Pete eventually said, scratching his beard while saying so. From the fact that Pete’s beard was no longer groomed perfectly, it was clear as day that the test had taken quite the toll on him.

“Yeah,” the Asian man agreed. Stanis looked over at him and realised that he was now quieter and less confident than he had been. In truth, this made sense as dancing with death for as long as the other group had done for would take quite some time to recover from. But then again, considering the Asian man’s personality, it wouldn’t be surprising if he bounced back in a few minutes.

“Yes, it was meant to be hard. How did you all survive?”

…

One by one, heads turned towards Jen, who in turn aligned her head with everyone else’s so that she now looked at the wall past herself.

“You saved them?” the nameless man asked.

“I did,” admitted Jen, looking as placid as ever.

The words sounded thick and sticky in Stanis’s head: having a larger effect on him that should be. They sounded wrong to him, not to say that they weren’t the truth but rather that he wished they weren’t the truth. How weak he had been there; how he had been elated to see Jen at the portal; how he had been broken when he realised she wasn’t going to help…

The nameless man turned his head from Jen and looked at the other nine.

“You got lucky that you got saved by your teammate. I’ll be honest, it doesn’t get easier from here on and I don’t doubt a few of you won’t be here by the end.”

When the nameless man had told them to just survive last time, Stanis had felt no pressure on him. Now that he that said he thought a few of them would be dead by the end, Stanis felt more than enough pressure to accommodate two. This wasn’t because of the words themselves, or even the meaning behind, but rather because of the trust Stanis now had in the nameless man’s judgement.

Next time, what they needed to do was instantly find the teleporter and escape. This thought led to another, and the question finally struck Stanis.

“How do you activate the teleporter?” he asked.

The nameless man looked at him, and then at the others. “How did you open it?”

As he looked, the others turned their heads away, as if admitting they hadn’t a single clue about what he was asking.

“You pour a lot of mana into it,” Jen finally said.

Stanis slightly flushed at this. Of course it was mana, everything had something to do with mana, whether it be ranks or teleporters.

“Mmmm,” the nameless man agreed, “Anyway, you are here to train non-stop for one week. A few hours have already passed and I’m sure you now understand the difficulty. Since you were saved by each other instead of fighting for yourselves, this time you’ll go into the teleporter with only one group of five.”

He pointed at number two, the Asian man, Okoye, Vasile and Pete. He stood up and led the five out and into the basement. Stanis looked at Pete stumble away and realised that this very well could be his last time seeing him. He chuckled inside at that thought, before getting back to circulation. If the only way to increase stats was via circulation, then he was willing to spend every awake moment on it as long as it meant he wouldn’t have to depend on another for strength.

The man came back and gestured the remaining five to follow him. Stanis was at the back and thus got to have a good look at the rest. There was number one who was actually not the strongest, the short girl who he no longer believed to be 14, the pony-tailed man who no longer looked so relaxed and Jen. After focusing on Jen for a few seconds, Stanis came to the conclusion that the day he saw emotion on her face would be the day he would also die.

They were led back to the large field. The sky was now dark with cold air billowing through.

“While they are fighting for their lives, you will fight each other. Some of you are weaker than others. This is the chance to hone your skills without fear of death,”

He pointed towards Stanis and Jen, before standing back, gesturing the other 3 to join him.

“Begin,”

Stanis immediately flourished his sword in the hope that it would temporarily deter Jen. He was half-surprised, half-not when he saw that she was standing there expressionless, showing no interest in fighting him.

He gritted his teeth as he saw this. Around him formed several crystals, and he split his mind into two as he simultaneously activated Blueshot spitfire. The crystals followed and the dust-cloud grew, blocking Stanis’s vision.

Instead of backing away at this, Stanis instead moved into the dust-cloud and chased Jen, his sword crackling loudly, but not as loudly as when against the false-humans, as he widely slashed. He hit something hard and was immediately thrown back, landing on his feet a few metres back.

Around Jen was the mana-barrier that anyone could make after becoming tier-four. But instead of being weak and fragile, hers was thick and coloured dark. Inside of her barrier, she stood expressionless but also injury-less.

Stanis growled and circled her, his mind rapidly thinking of a way to beat her, touch her even. After a few seconds, the very idea was in his mind. He only had one-shot at it but it was worth a shot, anyway. He cast Blueshot spitfire into the ground, creating another dustcloud, before going in once more.

He cast Scout and sense and saw where the barrier was, using Destructive mana recharge on it. The barrier crumbled away and he cast Layman’s rush before leaping through the barrier. Just in time too as a dark bolt zapped across to where he had been standing.

He frontloaded his sword with 8 units of mana, the same amount he had used against the clothed false-human, and slashed, lightning roaring out as it struck against Jen. She stumbled back before casting a few more skills, the ground growing stickier, the air getting darker. But before she could cast enough to stop his advance, Stanis threw his sword, which was still drunk on his mana.

It caused Jen to leap away again, her face on the edge of expression as she landed. Stanis was already there and he stabbed her with his dagger.

“Ahh,” she moaned. Stanis looked up towards her face and saw her smiling. Her face was pretty but her smile definitely wasn’t.

He attempted to recoil back but failed as she latched onto him. The darkness from his dagger had sunk into Jen’s flesh, but out of it came strengthened darkness back his way. He loudly struggled but couldn’t escape her grip no matter how much he tried, eventually losing the energy to even try as her darkness entered his bloodstream.

It felt like multiple, venomous snakes with razors for teeth had just bit into him. He froze and crumbled, falling to the ground before violently shaking.

“That’s enough,” the nameless commander said.

Jen finally let go of him and stepped back. She didn’t, however, take her darkness back with her…