The first thing Avelina heard as she stepped into what looked to be a rather normal lobby was hushed whispers. Perhaps if she had been clearer of mind she would have fully realized what was going on, but burdened and distracted as she was she failed to notice the obvious signs that were ever-present.

As her piercing blue eyes met the eyes of the people in the room she saw the fear in them and assumed the worst. That this ‘Culling’ had only happened to her. That she had just stepped back into the real world, covered in blood and carrying a stained weapon, as good as offering herself up to the justice system.

It was only when she noticed the despair and brittleness in the gaze of the few people who stood around that she realized what she had missed.

Blood hung in the air, she could hear someone groaning and moaning in the background, most likely suffering from something serious and the weapons. Everyone was carrying some kind of weapon or sitting near one. She noticed one or two people who didn’t have any with them and who looked utterly shellshocked. It seemed that everyone had been throught the same trial as her.

She had been taught how to identify trauma patients and with a morbid sense of humour she felt that more than half the people in the room qualified, herself included.

From what she could see, most of the people here, both men and women, were rather formally dressed and from the ways that the desks stood around, she assumed that this was the office that she had been standing outside off. As she inspected everyone around her, her senses were suddenly alerted by the movement of one of the somewhat older men in the room.

As he was about to reach her, she narrowed her eyes and her fingers relatively flexed around the hilt of Adrian’s sword, knuckles going white. It seemed that the man also noticed her reaction and swiftly took a step back while raising his hands in the air before opening his mouth and speaking with a pleasant pitch, even if his voice had something slimy and unsettling, “Please calm down, young lady.”

“I’ll stay calm if you stay right there-”, Avelina hissed out, still in fight or flight mode and in no mood to deal with any of this at the moment.

“Naturally”, Annoyance slipped into his voice for a short moment, something that he could have easily hidden if he was calmer himself, “I merely wished to ask you a few questions.”

Quite a few people were looking at her, she realized. Most of them stood a bit behind the man, making her understand that he was their spokesperson. Most likely their boss before all of this and it seemed that this guy had taken swimmingly to the authority and situation. That on its own set of a red flag in her mind, but she was willing to set that aside for just a moment.

“You can ask the questions from over there.”, the weapon in her hand was pointed downwards as she nudged at the ground he was standing on. She was more standoffish than she had to be, but she didn’t know anyone here and she knew that people could turn extremely nasty when you didn’t belong to their group and could be a threat to them.

“Fair enough.” He relented upon looking at the red spots on the weapon, not willing to take the risk again. “I merely wanted to ask you what department you worked for so that we can catalogue everyone.”

For a moment, she fell silent as her eyes narrowed. She didn’t want to openly admit that she didn’t work here, nor did she want to lie given that such a thing would be easy to find out. She didn’t even know what the departments were in this place, even if she could make an educated guess and say something like cleaning. It would only require one cleaning lady to call her out on her lie and she’d be screwed.

As she stood there, frozen with indecision, a sudden loud voice rang out, “Oh thank goodness that you are alive!”

All heads, including Avelina’s, snapped and turned. She didn’t know what to expect but from her right, she could see a decently well-built man, a heavy and square jawline, short hair, in his late-twenties walking towards her, a smile on his face. The outfit he wore made it clear that he had been some kind of security for this place before everything had gone to hell, something which would also explain how he was one of the few people that she had seen who was without clear wounds.

“Thank you, Craig, for finding my niece.”, He added as he approached the pair, speaking confidently and without hesitation.

“Hey uncle.”, she meekly waved, a frail smile on her lips, “I knew you’d be fine.”

Her response caused the man’s smile to turn into an even more beaming one, while the spokesperson, who she now knew was called Craig, turned a little bit pale. She could see that there clearly was some bad blood between these two, but wasn’t going to look into the matter too much.

“You know me, I’m a fighter.”, He punched the air in front of him, causing a few people to grimace in the surroundings as they remembered what they had done to count as part of the ‘survivors’, “But Craig, I’ll be taking care of her now.”

“Jacob, do you think that you can just waltz in here and solve the situation by making a few clai-”, Craig’s voice suddenly wavered as Jacob’s hand reached for the heavy mace that slung from his side.

“Yes. I do think I can now. Now stop bothering my Niece.”, He added, his voice low and cold”, She isn’t one of the cleaning ladies you always harass.”

As Jacob waved to follow him and slowly strode off, avoiding touching Avelina as he was still eyeing the piece of metal in her hands wearily, the final piece of the puzzle clicked. The guy that she had just spoken to was Adrian’s dad. She already had felt that he seemed familiar and if she could believe Jacob’s worth he was every bit the dirtbag that Adrian had called him. It shouldn’t surprise her that someone like him would make use of this situation to set himself up as some kind of leader.

As they left she finally noticed the pile of dead bodies in the corner of the room. There weren’t that many corpses on it, maybe six or seven, but it was enough to stand out. Even from a casual glance, she could see what had happened. Haemorrhage. They had most likely won their fights, but sustained a heavy wound and bled out after arriving here.

Utterly terrifying.

Subconsciously, she became more aware of the cut on her own shoulder. She would need to patch that up as quickly as possible before it became infected. She hadn’t killed Adrian to just die from something as stupid as this, especially not after she had forbidden him from doing something that monumentally stupid if he had ended up killing her.

It was only when the pair entered into another room, away from the main group and the pile of bodies, that Avelina suddenly jumped back and pointed the blade in her hand towards Jacob, it was a clumsy action and her exhausted muscles could barely support the weight of the steel slab, but it was the intent and taught behind the action that counted.

“Alright,” She waved her weapon recklessly, “Who are you, Uncle.”

The man put both of his hands up and took a step back, still smiling. It was clear that he had already assessed her to be no threat to himself and kept letting her swing that sword around for his own amusement and her own peace of mind.

“Good that you ask, my dearest Niece, although I’m a bit bothered that you don’t remember me.”, he finally gently pushed the blade to the side, “And you can thank me first, you know? I just saved your ass from Shady McGee.”

“To do, who knows what yourself.”, Avelina bit back.

“Ouch.”, Jacob placed his hand on his chest, feigning pain. “I’m the guard who you talked to last month when I was about to remove you from the property for loitering and staring at the windows, remember.”

“Oh-”, was all Avelina could say for a short moment before recovering, “And? We talked once. No reason to do this for me.”

“Smart, I like you.”, He was unsettling. Everyone else she had seen had been downtrodden and burdened by the weight of what they had done, but not this guy and just that made a chill creep up her spine, “Well, I remember you telling me you were a medical student, correct right?”

For a moment, she hesitated to lie but then realized that the truth would do her more good. She could guess where he was going to take this conversation, but she still wanted to hear it from his mouth and thus simply nodded.

“Perfect.”, he clapped his hands together, his charming smile widening, “Now, what is your Class? I’m a level 4 [Fighter].”

Level 4. Avelina’s blood ran still for a short moment. She hadn’t been paying much attention, but she knew that she had only gotten level two from killing Adrian and that was with what the system had dubbed ‘Bonus Experience'. She felt that it was safe to assume that normally, everyone had to go through the same test and thus get roughly the same experience. The fact that this man in front of her was double that made it clear that something else had happened in the time that she had taken to do the test.

“Level 2”, Any desire to lie fled her body, “Medic class.”

She watched Jacob’s smile turn from one of curiosity and warmth into one of simple satisfaction as the danger that she had felt ebbed away.

“That is why.”, he finally replied while pointing at her chest, “Cause I knew you were gonna get something like that. One of us got a [Scout] class. So I assumed that there were even different ones out there.”

As he explained his reasoning he looked so damn smug about, seemingly happy with himself and his own ability to plan and prepare for such things. She wanted to say something about it, wanted to complain and rant at him for being so calm in a situation such as this, but there was something about her smile that shut him up and it wasn’t his perfect white teeth or strong jawline.

It was the way his lips curled. She didn’t know much about psychology, but she could feel it in her bones-

-That was a killer’s smile.

“As you can see, wounds don’t restore themselves after all this culling stuff, shame really, I always liked that in games.” *He winked at her and wrapped his hands around her shoulders, causing her breathing to hitch, “So that is why you are so valuable. I can only thank whatever gods are out there for letting you be here-”

“You know, I was worried about the wounds I’d and a few of my allies would take in the future. I’m good at fighting, but I’m no doc, but you-”, He slowly began pushing her towards one of the other rooms, through the empty hallways and as much as she wanted to run off, she didn’t dare to.

Besides, he did seem honest at the very least.

“So when I saw you, I knew I had to move fast and get you on our side-”, He finally added, causing another alarm bell to go off in her head.

“Side?”, She could have already guessed what happened, but she hadn’t expected something like this to happen this soon.

“Oh yeah, that twat, Craig, thought that he could order me and some of the other guards around cause he paid our paycheck.”, he shook his head with a smile on his lips, “We had a bit of a disagreement and got into a fight, Zeke got messed up pretty good from it, but know that you are here we’ll be able to patch him right up.”

She knew that she shouldn’t be helping this guy. For some reason, she could feel that he was in the wrong about the situation, that even if everyone had told her Craig was an asshole, that somehow this guy had caused that ‘disagreement’, she had seen the way everyone in that room had avoided his gaze. You didn’t inspire that much fear by just ‘having a little fight’. Still, he felt far more reliable.

“He was wounded?”, She finally spoke up, “Fine. Guide me to him. I’ll patch him up, as thanks for getting me out of that situation, but I’m not joining you yet. I want to talk to the other people in your group first.”

“Fair.”, His killer’s smile returned, as if he knew that in the end, Avelina would have no choice,” You’ll love them.”