"Come on, finish him off and we'll get going.”, Jacob's voice rang out as he glanced at Avelina. Unlike his usual self, his smile held a faint trace of anger and frustration in it.

Nervously, she bit down on her lower lip as she glanced at the pleading eyes of the poor guard that had ended up in this situation before glancing at the others in her own group. Jay was once more looking away, but it didn’t seem as if that he was going to actually speak up about anything while Jennifer wasn’t even looking and instead was busy looting the body of the man that she had just killed, a faint smile on her lips.

It was a heavy moment for the [Medic] and time seemed to slow to a crawl.

Sweat gathered on her forehead as her fingers reluctantly reached for the hilt of the dagger and grasped it nervously, her knuckles going white.

“Don’t worry about it.”, Jennifer called out, “Jacob expected you to freeze. You did pretty well with just tackling him.”

For a few moments, the lack of anger or disappointment from her ‘allies’ confused her. After all, she had royally fucked up when it came to the plan that Jacob made and almost ruined all of it. Hell, she didn’t even know if the people behind this door had actually heard it and were getting ready to defend themselves.

It was only when she looked closer at Jacob’s face and noticed the faint signs of amusement in them that she realized what was going on. The food has always been a secondary objective or a lie. Getting her in this situation had been his goal from the start, most likely to make her more useful or perhaps simply to bind her to him by the sheer fact that she’d have killed someone from the only other group of people around.

A sudden flare of anger overwhelmed her fear and reason as she fully stood tall again.

“Scum.”, she hissed.

“Hey-”, Jacob’s fake frustration melted away from his features, replaced with his usual cocky grin, “I’m just trying to help you out. Jay and Klaus also froze up like this during the conflict before this, so I expected you to do the same.”

He winked, seeing nothing wrong with his own actions, “And look, I was right like usual;”

“Then if you knew you should have just let someone else do this.”, her grip on the knife tightened and for a moment she could see herself charging forward. She could imagine the adrenaline rushing through her veins as all of her muscles bulged, using the newfound strength that this system had given her.

She’d lunge forward, make it seem as if she was going to stab the guard and then at the very last second switch her aim and strike at Jacob. Due to the abrupt change, he would be too slow and potentially fumble the drawing of his weapon and then she’d raise the knife high again and-

Get stabbed by Jennifer or Jay before she could finish the job.

Nothing would change, but she’d end up a corpse without a grave.

The idea left her head as abruptly as it came as she realized the fact that she could not do so.

“Come on, you know why I need you to do it, Ave-”, he replied as he slowly tightened his grip around the man in his arms, just to be safe. His muscles bulged out as the muffled crying and pleading got just a little bit louder.

After a few moments of hesitation, she raised the knife and took a step closer to the struggling guard, peering deep into his tear-stained eyes. With horror and fascination, she watched disgusting blobs of snot running down his nose, all the way to his mouth, without the man even trying to stop it or keep it in.

“Hey-”, her weak voice rang out as she spoke to the guard, “I’m really sorry for this, but I don’t have much of a choice.”

She could feel the bile on her lips the moment that the lie left her mouth. Yes, it would be easy to claim that she had no choice in the matter and push all of the blame off her and unto Jacob. Amusingly enough she felt that he would actually agree to that and blame himself as well, with a twisted sense of pride of course.

She really wanted to believe it.

But couldn’t.

After all, there always was another choice. She had already made her choice when she had joined up with Jacob right after leaving the Culling, having estimated that he was a safer bet. To his credit, she still believed that she had made the correct choice, but not the right one. Jacob might have higher survival chances, but if she hadn’t joined him then-

No. A soft sigh escaped her lips as she realized that he still would have raided this place, just for the Experience and food, even if he didn’t need to steal the resolve of a new join such as herself.

This guy was dead the moment he chose to stand guard. All she could do now was choose to not give Jacob the Experience and to make it as quick as possible. Not painless. It was never painless.

With trained dexterity, her knife danced through the air, the light of the little bonfire reflecting in it for the briefest of moments-

And then his breathing stopped.

It wasn’t that he was dead, but Avelina had dragged his knife across his throat with a surgeon’s skill, making a clean and deep cut. His windpipe had been exposed, which made it near impossible to properly breathe, although a disgusting bubbling sound filled the room as the oxygen that escaped through the hole mixed with the blood of the major artery that she had hit.

It wasn’t the cleanest that she could do, but her [Clean Cuts] had at the very least made the wound deep enough that he’d bleed out in a few moments. Finally, as the seconds were dragging on she heard a simple notification.

Defeated a [Fighter lv.2], standard experience awarded.

Not even a fucking level.

Suddenly a heavy had patted her on the back. As the blonde turned her head, a crestfallen look in her eyes she came face to face with a somewhat smiling Jennifer, “Good stuff, Ave. Mind if I check his stuff?”

“Come on, leave them girl be-”, Jacob intervened, sounding amused, “She’ll regret letting you take any ‘loot’ he had on him once her head clears up.”

As she listened to the pair’s conversation, she realized that these people were animals. She didn’t know much, but ‘loot’? That was a game term. Hesitantly she glanced at Jay, who was still looking away and let out a soft breath.

“I’ll take it.”, she finally replied, crouching down.

She wouldn’t let these vultures get any edge that she could deny them. As she started to feel through his pockets she found some simple things, another candy bar, a few mints and some other personal items. Certainly nothing worth stabbing a man over. Once she was done, she decided to also take his coat on the way back as she could probably make some make-shift bandages with it.

“Now what.”, she asked as she looked around, “I’m pretty sure that they heard us killing them.”

A confident Jacob walked towards the door and simply pushed them open, “Oh, I know. We never planned to sneak in.”

For a moment Avelina glanced at Jacob as she tilted her head slightly. The plan had already seemed well, somewhat silly. Sneaking past this many people in the hopes that not a single one of them would be awake? That was just stupid. If even a single thing went wrong they’d have died and, as much of an asshole as Jacob was, he didn’t seem like the type to take too many risks with his own life.

“What?”, Jacob shook his head as he slowly started to turn around, ready to leave back to the third floor, “Did you really think I left them with anything?”

It took a moment for Avelina to realize what Jacob meant. He was level four and she hadn’t levelled up after killing a person. So it would at the very least take one more kill to level up again. If she then just incorrectly assumed that it would take the same amount of people to go from level two to level three, then Jacob had killed at least four people. She assumed that Jennifer and Max weren't far behind them either and more importantly, she was pretty certain the number four was very wrong.

So those three alone, if she had to guess, had killed at least ten people, although she'd put the number closer to being in the upper teens. Given the fact that when she had arrived, a few hours after this had happened, there had only been about fifty at most and it painted a very ugly picture.

“They didn’t have to die!”, Avelina finally shouted at him, now shouting as she no longer even was thinking about stealth or the food.

“They didn’t.”, Jacob finally agreed, “But you got some nice experience and Experience from it and we took away two of their more eager fighters, so I’d say it helped us quite a bit, eh?”

“You-! You-! You-!, the [Medic] was at a true loss of words as she tried to put her horror and anger into words.

“Smart bastard?”, Jacob helpfully tried to give a suggestion.

“More like total Lunatic”, Jennifer cut in playfully.

Avelina clenched her teeth as she finally started to somewhat calm down again. She followed the rest of the group in silence as she shot the two corpses a final look, before shaking her head.

“You’re right.”, she murmured.

“Ah? What was that?”, Jacob put his hand against his ear as he leaned closer to the blond, seeming pleased with himself, “I did I hear someone admitting to my superiority. Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. Could you repeat it for me?”

“I said you’re right.”, Avelina repeated. Louder this time,” Killing them helped us. Fine, you win. You could have still told me beforehand.”

“Ah, no. You’d have bitched too much.”, He waved her suggestion off, “Just like Jay and Klaus did when I told them we’d needed to get them wet behind the ears.”

Avelina huffed as she crossed her hands, turning her head in annoyance causing Jennifer to let out a round of laughter as she clapped Jacob on his shoulder, “Told ya she had some proper spunk, unlike those other two.”

While the two of them fell into banter about how good of a job they had done, Avelina’s footstep slowed down for a bit, causing her to lag behind the group a little bit. The moment that she was convinced that the pair were too absorbed in their own conversation and that Jay was not looking, she finally dropped the annoyed look on her face, letting her features fall into a more neutral face.

Her features hardened as she bit down on her lower lip, the taste of iron filling her mouth. She couldn’t consider the two people in front of her, and most likely Max who had stayed behind as well, as human and neither could she put her faith in the ones who kept their decency, but just let it all happen like Klaus and Jay.

Her pale eyes dug into Jacob’s back.

Sometimes you just had to kill someone for your own safety with your own two hands.