Vrrrrr.
And just like that, the exams were officially over.
At least the practicals were.
If there was one thing I’d figured out over the course of this absurdly long exam, it was that the girl called Maria was a lunatic I needed to avoid at absolutely any cost.
After she and Loren had caught , the rest of the exam was essentially her demonstrating exactly how sadistic she really was, and exactly why Loren had ended up the way he was. As it turned out, I had been completely right to run, because she was powerful to a degree that left with nothing to work with. The mont she grabbed it was already over. I tried to fight back, but it didn’t matter, and she seed to actually enjoy that, just laughing and shutting down every attempt I made to outsmart or overpower her. It was probably the sa thing she’d done to Loren, grinding him down until he stopped resisting and beca whatever that hollow version of him was now. But unlike Loren, I didn’t just roll over. I knew I was going to lose, but I stopped fighting on my own terms, and I paid for it.
She had tied up in so underground building where she’d apparently been stashing every student who had annoyed her enough that she didn’t want to kill them outright, keeping them around purely for her own amusent. Loren had probably been through the sa thing at so point, though I couldn’t say for certain. That was also when I finally understood why she’d bothered teaming up with people like us in the first place.
The truth was simple. She was a power-hungry lunatic who enjoyed dominating people, and we were convenient targets. I won’t pretend I didn’t co close to breaking under everything she put through, but sohow, against all reasonable odds, she slipped up. One small mistake on her part, and I took it. I landed a hit that should have ended things right there, should have, but it didn’t. She was just too strong for that kind of thing to stick. So I let go of any idea of revenge and used that window to get out, and I spent the rest of the exam running, because she could still track through the team locator on the graphto-watch.
"I made it! Screw you!" It ca out as a genuine cry of relief, because nobody had any idea what I’d been through in there. On top of everything else, the system had been completely useless the entire ti, not even trying to help, just sitting back and mocking until the mont I escaped. I genuinely couldn’t stand it. If there was any way to delete a system consciousness, I would have done it without thinking twice, because it wasn’t useful for anything anyway. But that didn’t matter right now. The exam was over, I’d kept running because I was fairly certain that if she caught again after I’d actually hurt her, whatever she’d done before would look mild by comparison.
That ship had sailed though. The exams were done and she couldn’t touch .
That didn’t an I was letting it go, not even close. Just like that lunatic who had kept coming after over a mistake I hadn’t even ant to make, I was going to make her pay for what she did. She had literally tried to cut off a part of my body, and that wasn’t sothing I could overlook. It didn’t matter that this wasn’t originally my body. So things are unforgivable, and that was one of them. I had plenty of ideas about what I’d do when the ti ca, but it wasn’t going to be now. I was still too weak, and going after her in my current state would just be handing myself over to her. So that ant one thing, I needed to get stronger, and I already knew exactly how I was going to do it.
"Huh?"
Just as I sat up, soone grabbed my wrist. I frowned and turned to see who it was.
’Oh, you’ve got to be kidding .’
I genuinely couldn’t catch a break.
"Co with ," she said.
I looked at her for a long mont.
"No."
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