It didn’t take long for me to figure out what Chen was doing. Some people had increased their stats during the training and he was taking notes. Coming from Chen I shouldn’t be surprised, he must be trying to understand how the system works. I had no doubt that, given enough time, he would be able to figure out a way to game the system.

After a few minutes he was satisfied with everyone’s answer and started to make his way inside. I caught him halfway to the building entrance.

“Gathering everyone’s stats and progression?”

“Something like that. I am trying to figure out the most efficient way of increasing stats, which exercises progress which stats, that sort of thing.” Chen spoke without turning to look at me as we walked beside each other.

“Don’t want my stats as well? I can share-”

“Not really. You don’t take part in our training routines, so you will probably be a deviation from my analysis.”

“Right. Look, can we talk for a sec?” I paused as we were about to enter the building. He turned to face me.

“Yea. What do you want?” Chen was cold, but not quite rude.

I saw that as we stood there a lot of eyes were on us, on me. I didn’t want to talk in front of an audience. I asked Chen if he could follow me and he didn’t seem to care. We walked towards the alleyway where I fought earlier. I had no particular reason going there, it was just the closest and most secluded way around, but as we found ourselves in the gloomy passage I felt my mood drop.

“Have you joined John’s side?”

“Have you joined Johann’s?” Chen fired back.

“I haven’t.”

“Neither did I join John’s.” He crossed his arms. “You saw me earlier helping Johann, why did you ask that?”

“Why the cold treatment, then?”

“Let me ask you this. Did you have to break John’s elbow to make your point?” I didn’t answer immediately. Chen took it as his cue and continued.

“There were many ways to go about this, Leo. You could have gone to the group and shamed John and his decision. Hell, you could have shamed all of us for not speaking up. Granted, some didn’t even know you were out there, but still.”

I had nothing to say against his logic.

“But no, you had to lose your temper and throw a tantrum by breaking the arm of our second strongest fighter. What were you thinking of when you did that? Because clearly it wasn’t us. Not me, not Gabriela, not the australian guy, and certainly not Mrs Aya.” Chen accused me with his finger. “You are thinking of you and you only. Since you decided to think so much about yourself, why should I?”

I knew I deserved to hear some of it, but there was more to it than Chen was letting on. I knew he was taking out on me things that came from somewhere, but it was alright. I would listen to him and let him calm down on his own. It must be hard for him as well, everyone suddenly had put so much on his back when it comes to the system. He must be under a lot of pressure, but differently than me, who can just do my own thing, he is constantly surrounded by that expectation.

Most importantly, I was surprised how cool headed I felt after talking with Mrs Aya. I don’t think I would have had this peace of mind if I had decided to talk to him before having my conversation with her.

After enough time had passed and Chen’s breathing was calmer, I decided to restart our conversation.

“If it means anything, I am not happy about what I did.”

“You know how much shit I have been listening about you all day?” His voice cracked. “This is not how any of this is supposed to be! We have been given an opportunity to be stronger, to be better, why do we have to keep fighting? We have a common enemy, shouldn’t that unite us? Isn’t that what people say?”

“People are not so easy to let go of their conceptions, Chen. I understand it’s frustrating.”

“No! You don’t understand! People expect me to figure out the entire system! How long have you spent meddling with it? This… shitty system says nothing of anything. Barely any information! Who was the moron who designed this? Isn’t there supposed to be prompts explaining abilities and everything? Am I supposed to guess everything?” Clenched fists and tears barely held back, Chen was almost shouting at this point.

“I hear you. But I do have a bit of info to give you about the system.” Hopefully what Ani told me could help steer his mind away from this frustration.

“What is it?” He took a deep breath and seemed to put his emotions in control.

“I found out that as we increase our stats through the system it starts to influence our minds.” I realized how crazy I just sounded. “I mean, it makes us more extreme when it comes to our emotions. Or something like that.”

“Are you trying to use it as a justification for what you did to John? Cause that’s a poor excuse, even if it’s true.”

“No, no. I am not, but it does have an influence on our actions. Take yourself as an example even, have you increased stats since you got here?”

“I did, I increased 3 stats. But what happened to me could easily be associated with stress and not something from the system. How did you find this out anyway? It’s not something you can simply test out.”

“Right, so the thing is, there is this girl called Anichka…” I explained to him what happened to me during the wave, the instructions she gave me and our conversation earlier. He listened intently, nodding his head a few times.

“You trust her?”

“She did have a [Minor Healing Potion] and Sarah was fully decked out in riot gear. You must have done the math, you know only me or John had enough points to buy it before the third wave.”

“I see. That does sound like enough of an endorsement to take her words seriously. She also knew about your deviation before you even told her anything.”

“Exactly. But speaking of riot gear… Why didn’t John buy some?” I was too curious not to ask. I had assumed he would have bought a suit, being an officer and all.

“We had a food issue yesterday during lunch. It seems the area the scavenging group went to was picked clean by someone else, so John bought 100 points worth of food to help feed everyone.” I did my best to brush past what he had just said about John.

“Picked clean? How large was the area? Is it another group?”

“We obviously can’t be sure. We know there are three names on the rank who are not members of our collective, but we never had contact with anyone besides the two girls you met. They could be two lone wolves or it could be a group actively trying to avoid us, either way, we seemed to have come across their area of interest.” I paused to digest his words. “Or it could be your two friends who did that, maybe you should ask.”

“I will check where it was with Gabriela and I will ask them for sure.”

I mulled over the implications of a possible new group and a potential clash for resources. I knew there were others that had been kidnapped before me, but since we didn’t find anyone else after so many days I assumed it was just us in this place. Assuming was proving to be problematic in this place.

“If you are done, I need to get back inside. I have to update my notes with this new info.” Chen spoke as he gestured to the main building.

“About the whole John situation. Don’t worry, I will sort it out somehow.”

“Despite all that I said, I think we all owe you an apology. I owe you an apology.” Chen stood beside me and spoke while looking away. “I am sorry for not doing anything when John ordered the entrance to be closed.”

“Thanks Chen, that means a lot. You are the first person to say that to me.” It did mean a lot, more than I had thought it would.

“Anyway, I gotta go. We have a meeting every day when the sky clock marks 12:00. Don’t miss it this time.” He raised the sledgehammer. “Also, thanks for this. It helped me a lot.” My cheeks hurt as I smiled broadly.

I didn’t answer as I watched Chen leave the alleyway towards the main entrance. Chen had surprised me with such maturity, I had a different impression from what little time we had spent together before.

I stood there for a while reminiscing about what we had spoken. I could have acted differently, I knew that, but hearing about another way of doing things gave it a whole more meaning. There was also the fact that people weren’t eating properly and John was even sacrificing his points to keep everyone fed. That stung a lot, especially since I knew Mrs Aya was very low on the food order in the group. I decided to do something about it in the meeting later.

The implication of another group worried me. Fighting monsters who threw themselves at me with reckless abandon was one thing, but fight other people? Desperate to survive and in the same situation as us? The thought of it gave me chills. Hopefully we could come to terms with each other and even merge. I wondered what that would do to bickering for control.

I cautioned myself. I shouldn’t be so optimistic about it. This place had a way of bringing out the worst of us. Hopefully we would manage enough food for the entire group. Did we make enough points to feed everyone? I should have asked Chen. Well, one more thing for me to do during the meeting. For now, though, I had to use this time to train. I don’t know where Noah was, so I was left alone to train again.

On my way to the training building, I decided to jump the three barricades instead of going around the sides. I felt stronger and more agile with the stat increases, and doing something such as jumping the barricade felt easy, even if reckless. Maybe with enough practice I would feel confident enough to do it during the wave.

The next five hours were uneventful. I didn’t manage to increase any stats, but I felt like I was on the verge of a breakthrough. It was a weird feeling, as if my body was asking for me to push just a little more, just a little further, but I was exhausted. After the fight, the first training session and this one, I was spent. I knew my body would recover during the night, but that was it for me today. As I made my way back under the lowering sun on the horizon, I checked the sky clock.

14:27:31

There was still a couple hours before the meeting, but I wasn’t going to avoid being in the base anymore.