[Broadcast Chatroom]

[Hahaha, he ran right past the body without collecting the blood!]

[What a shame.]

[The blood of the first victim is necessary for the ritual, is it not?]

[Naturally.]

[Nobody has ever completed the ritual. It doesn’t matter.]

[You mean that nobody has completed it yet. The ritual will be completed this time around.]

[You’ve been saying that for the last five cycles, Zelligan.]

[It is true. Past examinees were just incompetent. There are more than enough clues scattered around to put together the ritual.]

[It’s not about the clues, it’s about time. The time limit makes it impossible for the ritual to be completed.]

[Nonsense.]

[All of you, shut up. Let’s just watch the show.]

Had Zack seen the chatter on the broadcast chatroom, he would’ve stopped in his tracks to collect blood from the woman’s corpse. Regrettably, he did not have access to the public chat rooms of the celestial beings. Nor did he have much time to do so, because at the moment if he stopped running, the collapsing roof was about to crush him to death.

Crash!

A piece of the roof fell right behind him, completely collapsing the section of the hallway he came from.

Zack ran for his dear life and swung back into the lecture hall, leaping out the window before landing on the grass of the inner courtyard with a thud, right as the entire southern wing of the school collapsed on itself. Any secrets that once lay there were now completely lost in time.

[Too bad he missed the pistol in the Academic Affairs room.]

[A pistol doesn’t do anything against the Hamagku anyway. He got the grand prize, so pipe down.]

[Still, a pistol would’ve been nice.]

[You just have a hard on for human technology. Shut up.]

The sponsors watching clamored noisily in their chatroom.

Luckily for Zack, he’d gotten out of there with the most prized items in the entire wing, and he knew it. He had zero regrets about not getting the chance to explore the office of Academic Affairs or the Student Council Room, because the Akashic diagram and candles were far more valuable.

Judging by the shattered window to his left in the inner courtyard, the demon Hamagku had also moved to the northern section of campus not too long ago. Following the countless shoe marks in the dirt left behind by other examinees, Zack entered into the north wing of the campus building by climbing through a window shattered by human fists and lunchboxes.

This time, he grabbed a piece of glass shard that had fallen to the floor, angling it behind him to test the reflective surface. No luck, it was too translucent.

Cursing and remembering his sister’s danger, Zack proceeded through the hallway cautiously knowing that he could not afford to die here, the hallways eerily quiet in contrast to the number of examinees that had gone through there already.

Any other examinee would be more interested in finding the gymnasium, but Zack had other plans in mind. He wanted to reach the second floor.

“Hey, psst!” a female voice whispered loudly from a faculty break room as he walked by, startling him. “Stop making so much noise and get in here!”

The door to the faculty break room slid open, and a hand grabbed him to pull him in. It wasn’t exactly the strongest grip and Zack could have broken free easily, but he allowed it to happen anyway.

He fell into the pitch dark faculty break room which had all its blinders tightly closed, and saw that the person who dragged him in had her index finger put up to her mouth in a shushing motion. The girl in her early twenties had shoulder length hair that was a vibrant pink, the kind of style that was popular at the moment among online streamers and influencers, but her face was surprisingly bland compared to how well maintained and fashionable her hair was. A piece of face mask was still stuck on the side of her chin, and Zack realized that she’d probably been transported right after coming out of the shower.

“The name’s Patricia. Why don’t we make a deal,” she said in a matter-of-fact tomboyish voice, in sharp contrast to her appearance and as if she’d been born and raised hustling on the streets. “Let’s take turns scouting.”

“I’m Zack, and what do you mean?”

Patricia’s thin eyebrows fluttered with irritation. “Are you dumb? You go out and check if that monster bitch is out there, and then we move rooms when the coast is clear. Then I check, and we alternate until we make it to the gymnasium. Got it?”

Zack frowned. This girl was surprisingly rude, and her strategy was a bit laughable, at least to someone like him who was quite a bit more experienced at survival situations. In addition, the fact that she was alone in the faculty break room while piloting this strategy made him a little suspicious of her.

“Listen,” he began. “You might’ve sold this strategy to someone else who’s dumb enough to follow you around, but not me. If you’re going to stay with me, you’re working with me, and not the other way around. Got it?”

“And why the hell should I listen to you?” Patricia began, but Zack dug into his pocket and fished out a golden origami square.

“Because I’m a gold mark.”

Her eyebrows raised in surprise. “You’re that dumbass that stayed in the lecture hall when everyone else left.” Her eyes traced his body, first checking his unkempt face, and then his body and equipment, none of which showed signs of combat. “How are you still alive?”

“I told you, because I’m actually good at this kind of thing,” Zack replied without disclosing any more details. What he said was fact. Back on the Royal Road, he may not have been the highest level or the strongest player, but he was the rank one in terms of survival instinct.

“Wait… what’s that?” Zack said, pointing at a vending machine that was sitting in the corner of the faculty break room. But unlike a regular vending machine which had rows of chips on display, this one had some strange items.

“A fancy vending machine,” Patricia replied. “I don’t know what any of the stuff does, and I only found four tokens to use.”

A scream came from somewhere further down the hall, and Patricia flinched with fear. Despite her tough attitude just a moment ago, she suddenly looked like a scared kitten. Zack on the other hand barely even flinched. He locked the door behind them nonchalantly and walked over to the closed blinders, popping one up ever so slightly as he knelt by the window and peered outside.

“Come,” he said, waving for Patricia to come over.

The two of them squinted through the tiny bar of visibility they had between the blinders, and Patricia’s eyes went wide with fear. The female demon was in clear view in the hallway perpendicular to the one they were currently on, its long neck hovering over the body of the victim who they’d just heard screaming, the victim's blood dripping down from its mouth.

“That’s terrible,” Patricia breathed.

But sitting right next to her was Zack, who was just wordlessly watching. Patricia looked on for a few minutes, curious about what he found so interesting about the gruesome scene, until she’d had enough.

“What are you even watching? This is just dreadful!” she whispered sharply in her tomboyish voice.

The scraggly brown haired former currency miner with weary eyes simply held a palm up, shushing her. “Don’t distract me.”

“Distract you from what? Watching someone get murdered?”

Zack shook his head without taking his eye off the Hamagku. Someone who hadn’t spent thousands of painstaking hours studying enemy patterns would never understand. Observation was key to understanding a new encounter’s attack patterns and habits. He already noticed that the Hamagku liked to drag her victims away from the kill site for some reason, and that the demon preferred to use her nails for the killing blow.

“Let’s go while it’s still distracted,” Patricia whispered heatedly to Zack.

“Go on ahead then. I’ll be staying here.”

The vibrantly pink haired girl groaned, pacing around clearly trying to figure out what to do in this current situation. But Zack didn’t pay her any mind. His attention was laser focused on the Hamagku’s every move, as all of his senses were completely submerged in a trance-like state of observational learning.

He watched every single movement that the ghastly ghoul with knotty long hair made, from the way it moved its head to survey its surroundings to the pace at which it crawled across the hallway.

Finally, the Hamagku exited out of his line of sight, and he lowered the blinds, deep in contemplation.

“Oh yeah,” he muttered. “There was a vending machine here.”

Patricia wore an angry look on her face as she stood in her sweatpants, her arms crossed. “Well, did you finish your stalking session?”

“Yeah,” he replied, not caring enough to explain what it was he just did. He walked over to the vending machine and tapped it, looking through all the wacky merchandise on sale.

[You have discovered a vending machine!]

[Please insert vending machine tokens in exchange for items.]

“Ah, that reminds me. You said you wanted to make a deal before. So let’s make a deal,” he said, a smile spreading on his face. “Give me all of your vending machine tokens, from now until the end of the examination. If you do that, I’ll consider keeping you safe. That’s the deal. Sound good?”

The look on Patricia’s face could only be described as astonished.