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Three days later...
Elijah stared at the body lying dead beneath him, blood pouring from a large wound that stretched from the top of the chest to the bottom of the stomach.
The sa blood dripped off his scythe as he swung it again, cleaving the air and splattering it across the arena's ground.
Steps resounded behind him, prompting him to look back.
It was Sofia.
She moved to his left and aid her pistol at a man far away.
Thwap!
A small bullet shot out, tearing through the man's head and splattering his brain.
His body wobbled forward with stuttering steps until it tripped and fell onto the one Elijah had killed, no longer moving.
The two glanced at each other, then looked around the arena.
Their fellow students had n and won rushing at them as well, their mouths cuffed.
They didn't go to help and instead sat on the ground, their gazes landing on Emir who stood above, staring down at them.
Thankfully, his eyes were covered by his sunglasses like always, so due to that barrier, they didn't kill themselves out of fear and simply looked elsewhere, unable to handle the pressure. And as that happened, Sofia unexpectedly started a conversation:
"You owe ."
It would be more accurate to call it a reminder, but it was still unexpected.
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Elijah looked at her in surprise for a while.
'...Wait, seriously?'
Only after a few seconds had gone by did he realize that this was about when she saved him back in the fight with the Cannonjaw Crocodile.
He didn't know how to react to that. This ca out of left field, to say the least.
Deeming his continued silence to be agreent, she went ahead and requested:
"Tell what you know about Professor Emir."
He tilted his head.
"...Are you serious?"
She nodded, looking at him as if he was dumb.
"But... when people say 'you owe ' while doing their job, they don't an it. They say it just to say it."
Sofia slowly opened her mouth and said:
"I do. I an it."
"..."
Speechless, Elijah waited for her to say sothing else, but seeing as she wasn't moving an inch, both physically and ntally, he shook his head and denied her:
"Wait in line. Everyone asked the sa thing."
"...I see."
Saying that, she stood up and left, acting as if nothing had happened.
He stared at her while she walked away, wondering just why she asked him now out of all tis, but suddenly, Emir's voice resounded in the arena, taking away his attention.
"How was it? This was the first ti most of you killed anyone."
Though he frad his words in a question-like manner, no one tried to answer as they knew it
was rhetorical, having grown accustod to his teaching style.
And they were correct indeed, as Emir snapped his fingers, causing the dead bodies to
dissipate and reappear perfectly fine in uniform rows beneath him.
"While this is virtual reality, it still feels real, close to a hundred percent simulation... So if you can't handle it, tap out now."
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Silence.
Not a single student wanted to leave... They couldn't.
Not after what they saw of Emir, his blank eyes still ingrained in their minds.
It haunted them.
A man similar to them in age had endured pain that made them scream and cry without even
flinching.
That alone was hard enough to fathom, but the fact that he had broken the machine itself with a smile on his face was beyond comprehension.
If he could do that, then they had to at least try their best, mask their emotions, no matter how close they were to vomiting whatever was in their stomachs inside this virtual realm. "Good. Teaching you about life seems to have been worth it..."
Emir indirectly complinted them but they didn't even notice that as his next words struck them hard.
"We'll go again. You learned of life, now you learn of death. Just one kill isn't enough."
They were shocked, but not for long, as they prepared themselves, weapons on hand.
But suddenly, those weapons disappeared.
"Try killing them in a different way. Don't be boring. Most of you played a VR ga at one point in your life, no? Channel that experience here."
Before they could react, the rogues were set loose upon them, their hands flailing wildly with each step.
Panic gripped the students for a few seconds, but they quickly snapped out of it, equipping whatever weapons remained at their disposal.
Elijah had first killed with his Spectral Scythe, so he couldn't use it again and was now forced
to rely on his daggers.
With one on each hand, he went forth with the sa intensity as before, closing in swiftly, being the first to attack.
Sofia was not far behind him, aiming a railgun at the target that was highlighted to her.
Bang!
As Sofia's armature round blasted a hole through the rogue's head, Elijah seized the mont.
He hurled one of his daggers into his target's neck, then kicked him in the back of his right knee, dropping him to the ground.
The man fell onto his knees, but Elijah followed through with another kick, driving him face- first into the concrete with a sickening thud.
If left alone, he would've undoubtedly died, but Elijah chose to show his rcy.
He stepped in front of the kneeling rogue, then placed the bottom of his foot firmly on the man's head, pressing it into the ground, driving the dagger deeper through his throat.
In the next mont, the man limped to the side, dead.
The kill was grueso, that was for sure, but it paled in comparison to Max's brutality. His first one was clean, Iron Fist taking out his target with a single punch.
He tried using Rapid Strikes for the second round, but his Aether was nonexistent, deleted.
So with no weapons but his fists, he resorted to his knuckledusters.
Like an untethered savage, he unleashed a barrage of wild punches, disabling his target
before he could even defend himself.
Each strike sent blood and fragnts of bone flying.
The rogue screams were muffled due to his cuffed mouth, but his words didn't need to be heard to understand the pain that he was going through.
His face beca a mangled ss, cheeks puffed, eyes swollen, teeth shattered, simply unrecognizable, and soaked in blood.
Within seconds, the rogue crumpled to the ground, lifeless, and Max stood over the body, breathing heavily due to the adrenaline consuming him.
It was his first ti killing soone at such a close range, and it certainly wasn't a pretty
sight.
He trembled, unable to calm himself, slightly excited by the power he could dish out.
But he wasn't the only one feeling such intensity-though her reasons for it were entirely
different.
Aria had woven a spell earlier and that only ant one thing...
Crack!
She had no choice but to engage in lee combat.
Crack!
With every swing of her staff, Aria cracked the girl's skull, the blunt force of each impact
inflicting slow and agonizing damage.
Unlike Jake's bladed staff, hers wasn't designed for lee combat, so she struggled, each swing chipping away at her once opponent now punching bag's life.
It wasn't until a final, powerful crack! across the head that she managed to end it, the force snapping the girl's neck with a sickening crunch.
Ava, Quinn, and Arthur lucked out; like Sofia, those three wielded both a main gun and a secondary weapon, allowing them to dispatch their targets quickly.
But they were still affected; the brutal reality took its toll on them, particularly Ava.
She was among the few who had run away from the harsh truths of their world, and the violence weighed heavily on her.
Her emotions weren't spiked for long however, as she chanted Zenith Sooth on herself, calming her fried nerves and shaken mind.
"Again. Not until you all learn the taste of blood."
Emir's sudden command sent her emotions spiking once more, resisting the ability.
But she chanted it again and scread, running forward towards her now respawning target,
the pistol she used no longer in her hands.
"Ahhhhhhhh!"
Her war cry wasn't about to scare anyone, but it did its job, masking her fear and allowing her
to kill.
This ti almost every student had no weapon.
They had to kill their attackers barehanded.
Ava was no exception.
She wrestled her target to the ground, both delicate hands tightening around the girl's neck.
Her grip, though belonging to a relatively untrained body, was determined, squeezing with every ounce of strength she could muster.
Her eyes remained locked on the girl's, watching as she convulsed beneath her. Despite the girl's desperate attempts to defend herself, sothing seed to hinder her,
blocking her from attacking, leaving Ava with all the ti she needed to tighten her choke.
Each second that passed threatened to snap the girl's neck, the panicked pulse beneath Ava's fingers serving as a grim clock, a countdown.
With every rough breath Ava took, her fingers ached more intensely from the strain, her grip becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.
It wasn't long before her fingers started to throb painfully, the strain making her hold almost
unbearable.
She wasn't alone in this struggle.
Many of the students resorted to the sa brutal thod, unable to think of an easier route,
their faces reflecting the sa exhaustion and discomfort as they grappled with their own
targets. Those who thought of themselves as smart experinted with their targets, searching for so sort of puzzle to solve.
anwhile, those who were truly smart acted decisively.
They killed their targets as fast as possible by targeting their necks, showing rcy even to
what they thought were digital creations, fake humans.
Yet when the next cycle arrived, they were banned from targeting those areas, unable to
damage them, and forced to be painted in blood.
They resorted to punching, kicking, and twisting with all their might, driven by a desperation
to end their internal suffering.
The scene descended into utter insanity.
Students, freed from societal norms and emotional constraints, treated their targets like programd bots, moving objects, unleashing their primal instincts.
For so, it was the first ti they had ever punched with full force. For others, it was the first ti their feet aid to kill, attacking vulnerable areas.
This cycle of violence kept repeating itself, each round a new lesson in thods of death.
Once they had reached the tenth cycle, attacking in every conceivable manner they could co up with, Emir raised his hand, halting all the rogues in their tracks.
The students only noticed their professor's movent when they saw every last target freeze
in place.
They were so consud by death that everything else had slipped from their minds.
It was at that mont they noticed that those rogues looked different than before.
Their faces remained the sa, but they were now paler, quieter, and weaker-looking, with darker, clumped blood staining their bodies from top to bottom.
It was apparent that the cycles took a toll on them, preventing the system from fully healing
them back to their previous state each ti they died.
But that didn't make much sense...
Were they not just programd bots-re ones and zeros? Shouldn't repairing them be a
straightforward process?
Snap!
Instead of addressing their confusion, Emir flicked his fingers, and without warning, everything went dark.
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