Three days had passed since the disgusting test that Jacob had put Avelina through and the relation between the two had never been better. On the surface at least. Jacob, convinced of his own ability, had been more than willing to help Avelina improve on her basic combat abilities now that he felt that the young blonde couldn’t leave the group anymore as she had killed a member of the only other group.

Avelina, knowing that Jacob was slowly letting his guard down, had greedily accepted even the most basic of teachings, allowing her to improve to a somewhat acceptable level when it came to using proper techniques. Not only that, but the one on one sparring had even allowed her to level up to level 3, making it clear that anyone could level up outside of combat. Although she had never told the group and silently held on to her stats without investing them to keep the ruse up.

Just as Jacob said, she didn’t get a skill on level 3.

It seemed that Jacob hadn’t realized that levelling could be done via simple training due to the fact that he and his other friends had shot up too far and didn’t really have anyone around who could properly teach them.

In the end, the three days had passed rather swiftly and in a way, Avelina had enjoyed them, despite waking up with sore muscles each morning and passing out from exhaustion each night. There hadn’t been any major crises or even conflicts and when the group wasn’t doing something morally deplorable, they made for rather decent company.

Due to everything having gone so well, it didn’t surprise her the slightest when it suddenly didn’t-

Near the end of her training on the fourth day, the sudden clanking of cans echoed through the entire floor, causing everyone to stop what they were doing and reach for their weapons.

The clanking came from a little alarm system that Klaus had set up after they had returned from the raid using some empty soda bottles and thin metal wire. Then the group had installed it on the first and second floor and made it so that if someone touched one of them, they’d hear it on the third floor.

“Guess that they finally ran out of food”, Jacob, armed with his mace, remarked, “They held out longer than I expected.”

It took all the self-control that Avelina possessed to not shoot the nastiest glare that she could muster to Jacob and instead simply chose to join in the banter. She needed his guard down and that wouldn’t come from constantly judging his actions and being a generally moral person.

“They probably starved the weaker ones out.”, Avelina cut in, a fake and strained smile on her lips.

“If they were smart.”, Jennifer added as she reached for her own knives and moved towards the staircase.

As the group moved, Klaus and Jay gave each other a strange look, clearly uncomfortable about the fact that the ‘crazies’ in the group were being more and more outspoken, but in the end, they decided to simply swallow their issues. They didn’t consider defending those people worth potentially losing their spot.

Avelina watched the pair with a hint of disappointment, although she realized that she wasn’t much better even if she felt that she had a better reason than just survival to act like this.

“How many do you think there will be?”, She finally asked Jacob as the group arrived in front of the staircase. Jennifer opened the door and peered down the hallways, trying to see if someone was already there while Jacob shrugged.

“Hard to say, I’d assume at least like twenty-”, He stepped into the staircase and then stepped a step or two down, leaving the platform at the top of the staircase open for at least two other people to stand on, “It is why we are meeting them here-”

“Chokepoint.”, Avelina interrupted him, rolling her eyes, “I’m not dumb. Anyone with half a brain knows you fight a bigger group in a place they can’t use their numbers.”

“Yes, yes-”, He raised his arms defensively, “No need to bite my head off for trying to help.”

“Yeah, Ave-”, Max, the one of the group she had the most superficial relation with, spoke up, “Give poor Jacob some breathing room. He totally isn’t a fan of women being mean to him, that is why he keeps mild-mannered Jennifer around.”

Despite the deadpan delivery, everyone knew that it was a joke. Jennifer reacted with a swift middle finger being raised Max’ way as she drew one of her throwing knives while the rest of the group started laughing, half of them out of nervousness due to knowing what was about to happen.

Finally, after about a minute of waiting they could hear the hurried footsteps of people rushing up the stairwell. The group tensed, Jacob reached for his mace, Avelina drew her sword and Jennifer shifted her posture while the rest remained standing outside of the staircase, ready to tag in.

“JACOB!”, An unfamiliar voice called out, “Please man, you got to help!”

For a moment the group froze up as they saw a dishevelled man rush closer, only stopped once Jacob raised his mace and pointed it at him. The runner had a scratched-up face and torn clothing. He was bleeding from a few superficial scratch wounds and one of them looked to be somewhat infected.

“What happened to you, Zeke.”, their leader finally demanded, “You look like shit.”

“Fucking rats.”, He called out. “Rats. They were everywhere.”

“Rats?”, Avelina couldn’t help but call out in confusion, raising one of her eyebrows. She didn’t really see how just rats could do something like this. Those wounds were far bigger than the claws of any rodent could cause, at first glance at the very least.

“Shit. You got to believe me.”, He panted, “They were bigger than normal ones and some of them are freaks that walk on two legs, hunched over like some bad horror movie monsters.”

“Doesn’t sound like our problem, Zeke-”, Jennifer called out, leaning over the railing, “So go back to your motley little crew before I put a knife in your stomach.”

“No. No. You have to believe me, Jennifer! Please!”, He seemed to be on the brink of breaking down crying, “They started attacking us this morning out of nowhere and they keep coming-”

“We ran out of food and tried to force our way into the basement…”, he started to tell the story, without having been asked to causing a clear grunt of annoyance from Jennifer while Avelina and Jacob leaned a bit closer to hear the full story, “We don’t know how, but after some trying the barrier locking us out disappeared.”

“So we opened it, but fuck! We didn’t expect this!”, Tears streamed down his face, “Shit. They got Maya and Gabriel! Those beasts just suddenly rushed out of it and started to attack everyone!”

“We killed em, but they keep coming back.”, He nervously brought his hands to his face, rubbing it absentmindedly, “And we kept losing more and more people. We got barely any fighters left. So I ran. You need to help them! No! Just help me! Just let me stay and I’ll do anything-”

“Don’t worry, I got it.”, He stepped to the side gesturing for the man to pass him by, “Move along, we’ll talk more back in the base.”

Zeke let out a relieved sigh as he passed by Jacob, smiling and still letting out the occasional panicked sob, almost hyperventilating. The moment that he wasn’t able to look at Jacob again, the latter brought his thumb to his neck and glanced at Zeke.

Avelina, from the corner of her eye, noticed that Jennifer was getting ready to throw one of her knives and swiftly moved. Before she even herself had properly noticed what was going on, a painful grunt echoed through the staircase as she buried her knife deep inside the guts of the desperate runaway.

She had made her choice that night, three days ago. There was no going back on it.

“Hey, that one was mine-”, Jennifer complained, “You owe me a kill, Ave.”

“I don’t owe you anything, Jen”, Avelina spoke up, her voice as cold as ice as she barely gave the man that she had just gutted a glance while he was desperately trying to hold the contents of his stomach together, “You were just too slow.”

Defeated a [Fighter lv.3], standard experience awarded.

She hated how easy she had done it, but she wasn’t going to let any of these people get any drop of Experience that she could steal away from them. The death of the guard had been plaguing and haunting her for the last three days and she knew that the death of Zeke would be the same, but she wasn’t going to half-ass her plan to stop Jacob and spit on the sacrifice of everyone who had already died up to this point.

Perhaps that made her as much of a monster as the three she was trying to stop.

“Let’s get going. We can kill two birds with one stone.”, Jacob said as he started to move down the hallway.

For a moment Avelina’s eyes flickered down to the fresh corpse that was now serving as a hindrance before stepping over it. She couldn’t keep feeling bad for hours every time that she’d have to make a calloused decision. The day was for achieving her goals, no matter the cost.

Her sleepless nights were for being crushed by guilt.

“What do you think?”, Jacob glanced at Avelina, “Do you think it is true? Mutated giant rats?”

“The wounds on his body are weird-”, She gave her analysis, “So I do think that he was most likely speaking the truth. Honestly, mutated rats would be the least weird thing that has happened ever since this started.”

“True. Sounds like some good experience. I’m happy they didn’t win on their own, or we might have been in deep shit”, Jennifer added to the conversation, drawing out a hum of agreement from most of the group. If the ground floor group had been able to farm experience from some weak rats they could have killed all of them in revenge without any risk or trouble.

“Oh yeah-”, Avelina added, “I levelled up.”

“Nice.”, Jennifer slapped her on her back as they walked downwards, “Put some more points in your strength and endurance, you are too scrawny-”

A faint smile formed on the blonde’s lips as she realized that no one in the group thought that there was something strange going on. She had a feeling that they knew that she should have most likely levelled up to level three from that kill, so trying to keep her true level hidden had been too much of a risk.

Now, she’d still been able to hide the fact that she had earned some experience from simple training.

As they walked, she finally decided to spend her stat points. With a flick of her wrist and a mental command, she summoned the status screen and glanced down at her stats. After a bit of internal debating she decided to settle for Jennifer’s suggestion and put three points into strength and three into Endurance, using the one point that she had remaining from her last allocations.

Name: Avelina Louisa Croy Race: Human Titles: N/A Class: Medic Level: 3 Parameters Strength: 9 Dexterity: 10 Perception: 10 Endurance 8 Stamina: 4 Mental Capacity: 8 Magical Power: 0 Magical Control: 0 Unallocated: 0 Skills: Clean Cuts

"No backfire?", Jacob asked with a smile, "Perfect. Let's go play exterminator."