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It was like someone had flipped a switch in her head. The change had literally happened mid-step. Alex\'s skin prickled in unease. The sensation he felt wasn\'t too dissimilar from staring into a dark alley in the middle of the night and finding someone peering back at you.

Claire\'s approach drew gazes as they came to a stop at the edge of the group.

"My ears must be deceiving me," Claire said, her words lined with razored edges and dripping with a thin layer of honey that did nothing to conceal the threat behind them. "Because with the amount of noise you were all making, I might have been deceived into thinking one of you actually tried to fight the boss of the Trial. Be quiet, please. Talk like the adults you are instead of screaming like spoiled children."

The argument faltered for a moment as both sides hesitated.

One of the survivors from Isaiah\'s group took a step forward and thrust a finger into Claire\'s collarbone. "Shut your trap, you mouthy bitch. You don\'t get to throw weight around just because you got carried by your—"

A sharp crack echoed out, like a particularly loud twig snapping beneath a heel.

The survivor let out a pained scream. Claire held his hand by the wrist with one hand, black veins running down her arm and through her fingers. The man\'s finger hung at an odd angle.

Claire had broken it at the joint.

"I\'m quite certain I just asked you to be polite," Claire said, admonishment entering her voice. "I did do that, didn\'t I?"

Alex pushed down his surprise at Claire\'s shift in personality to see where she was taking things. If she could stop the all-out brawl that seemed to be brewing, a broken finger would be a small price to pay.

"You definitely did, But I\'m sure that…" Alex trailed off to glance at the name of the man, who was only Novice 2, floating in golden letters in the air above his head, "Carson is smart enough to avoid being a prick and poking people stronger than him."

The Novice 2\'s hand tightened at his side. For an instant, his good hand shifted toward a dagger at his side. Then his eyes widened in pain. He let out a pained whimper and tugged desperately on his arm.

"I\'m sorry! Let me go, you maniac!"

Claire released his hand like she was dropping off a bag of trash. The motion held just enough force in it to send Carson stumbling several steps back.

"With pleasure," Claire said. She wiped her hand off on her side. "Now, will someone enlighten me as to what has a group of grown men and women frothing at the mouth instead of doing something useful?"

"This lot thinks they can come back into Towntown after leaving everyone in it for dead," Ben said, setting his jaw and driving the butt of his axe into the ground. "That\'s not happening. Anyone can stay — but if you don\'t pull your own weight in a fight, why should we let them eat up resources? Everything is limited, and I don\'t feel comfortable having a traitor watch my back."

"Yeah, well, who made you leader? Why do you get to choose who stays and leaves?"" One of the male survivors from Isaiah\'s group demanded, though Alex couldn\'t help but notice that he kept his voice notedly quiet to avoid it being misconstrued as yelling. He glanced to Isaiah for support, clearly expecting to find something there.

But Isaiah wasn\'t paying attention to the argument anymore. He was staring at Alex, his face a shade paler than it had been before. The man\'s shoulders shrunk in unconsciously. His stance shifted — where there had once been confidence, there was now unease. The survivor\'s eyes flicked over Alex\'s shoulder, to where the boss had come from, then back to him.

"You," Isaiah muttered, his attention shifting from Alex to Claire. It lingered on her face — or, more accurately, her mouth, which was still pulled up in a confident smirk that just barely revealed a hint of her fangs. Realization lit in his eyes. Isaiah took a step backward, shaking his head. "Fuck this."

He turned on his heel and strode in the other direction. The other survivors stared at him in stark disbelief.

"What?" the male survivor that had been speaking a moment before exclaimed. He grabbed Isaiah by the wrist. "Where are you going? They don\'t get to say who lives in the damn town, man. Why would we—"

Isaiah ripped his arm free. "Don\'t touch me. If you want to get yourself killed, go ahead. Leave me out of it. Join Carson and see what happens when they rip both of your heads off."

"Killed? By who?" another survivor from Isaiah\'s group asked through a scoff. "Ben? The idiot that named himself after a cartoon? Or do you really think that woman—"

"You are a moron. The two people that were at the top of the fucking leaderboard. Do you remember their names?" Isaiah snarled. He thrust a finger in Claire\'s direction, then moved it to Alex. "Fangs. And a summoner — it\'s a Pokémon reference. Ash. Just use your head for a millisecond. Are you dense? These crazy bastards killed more people than they did monsters. If they\'re anywhere near this shithole, then you can bet I\'m not staying around to get run through in my sleep."

Isiah turned and strode off without another word. Everyone watched him leave in a stunned silence. It was only a second before a second survivor broke away from the group and hurried after Isaiah. Several others broke away in quick succession.

The final holdout hesitated for a moment longer. His jaw clenched as he looked from Alex to Ben. For a moment it looked like was actually going to try and stick around to keep arguing. But, without the rest of his group, it would have been in exercise in futility and he knew it. The final survivor that had been standing off against Ben\'s group strode off with a slew of muttered curses under his breath.

Nobody said a word for several long seconds as the group left. Claire\'s entire demeanor shifted once more as it returned to normal. Her shoulders slumped and her nose scrunched in disappointment.

"Damn it," Claire muttered, crestfallen. "I was really having fun there. They didn\'t even put up a fight. Why are people here so damn scared? They could have at least tried!"

"Are you kidding? That was the best possible result," Ben said, letting out a relieved breath and letting his shoulders sink. "That was a crazy show. Things weren\'t far from coming to blows. I\'m pretty sure we would have won if you and Alex hadn\'t showed up, but it would have been bad. We can\'t afford to lose even more people."

"Maybe you should tell that to Ash," Mary said, watching Alex warily. "I was watching the leaderboard through the entire event. The number of kills you got… a lot of them aren\'t from monsters."

"I only killed two people," Alex replied, doing his best to avoid sending a sidelong glance at Claire. She\'d said she liked Court — but there was a difference between acting and acting. That had been more than a little scary, but now wasn\'t the time to address it. "Both of them deserved it. Gentlewind tried to kill me first, and Ogre was Diego."

"You killed Diego?" Mary took a step back, clutching her staff closer to herself. "The Novice 9 monster? You?"

"You heard Isaiah. He\'s a coward, but he\'s right," Ben said. "Alex is Ash. Claire is Fangs. They were at the top of the leaderboard. I\'d imagine there\'s a reason for that."

"But… how?" Mary asked. "I heard stories about what he could do. Nothing hurt him. How could you survive a monster like that?"

"Generally, the best strategy I\'ve found thus far is killing my opponent before they kill me," Alex said. "But I\'m still ironing out the kinks."

Mary levied a stare at him. Claire heaved a long sigh. It didn\'t seem like she\'d been paying too much attention to the conversation ever since Isaiah and the others had left. Given how excited she\'d been to actually be able to do… well, whatever it was Court involved — Alex still hadn\'t figured out if the whole speech & debate aspects were separate from the stabbing bits or not.

Honestly, I\'m kind of bummed as well. I wanted to see what she was going to do. Then again, I feel like it almost would have been too easy against them. Nobody in Isaiah\'s group could have been that strong given the leaderboard rankings. Any sort of fight against them is basically just a waste of energy.

"If this is all dealt with, I think I\'m going to head off and get some rest," Alex said. "I\'ve been up for hours now, and the only thing I want to fight from now until the morning are some bedsheets."

After I meditate, of course. I cannot wait to see what I got for the rest of my rewards — and to level up as well as cash in those extra skill Units I got. There\'s a literal goodie bag in my soul with my name on it waiting for me.

"Maybe that\'s best," Ben said. He ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. "We owe you, Claire, Alex. The town would have been fucked if you hadn\'t dealt with that monster. There\'s no way we could have beat it, even if Isaiah\'s group hadn\'t bailed on us."

"Makes you wonder what the fuck the System is trying to do," another survivor said under his breath, just loud enough for Alex to hear him. "There\'s no way we were meant to win that fight, right? The System is just trying to murder us. This is unfair. It\'s just a matter of time until we all get killed."

Alex wasn\'t so sure.

He\'d seen the people that had gotten summoned into the Nexus Point together with him. Every single one of the top leaderboarders was far higher in level than he was — more than high enough to have reasonably challenged the Crawling Tomb without too much difficulty.

Alex wasn\'t sure how large Subsector 735 was, but the System had referred to Earth as a whole before. That strongly implied that Subsector 735 was smaller than Earth. Possibly a country or a continent in size — he had no way to know.

But either way, there are a ton of powerful people out there. It isn\'t that the System is unfair. It\'s that people here are too weak. Maybe that\'s because they weren\'t pushing hard enough. Maybe it\'s because there just aren\'t enough difficult monsters to grind against here — but the fact of the matter is, Towntown is lagging behind.

"We\'ll be off, then. Until tomorrow," Claire said, interrupting Alex\'s thoughts as she raised a hand and grabbed him by the arm, dragging him away from the group and back toward town.

The streets were a scene of destruction. Already-damaged buildings had been destroyed. Glass and broken wood littered the streets amidst large chunks of masonry. An eerie silence hung in the streets, devoid of both people and monsters.

Alex and Claire slowed as they passed by the center of town. An enormous white meteor that had fallen from the sky — the one that Alex had mistaken for a star — rested directly in the middle of the town square in a large crater.

Its surface was pockmarked and wisps of dim white magic twisted across its body like oil in water. A faint hum emitted from its surface, just high-pitched enough to grate on Alex\'s ears. The System made no move to identify it.

Hm. This definitely isn\'t suspicious.

"What do you think the chances are that this thing does something when you touch it?" Alex asked.

"Probably pretty high. It\'s shiny," Claire said. "But I\'m not so sure messing with it is a great idea right now. I\'ve got so many unrealized rewards from the Trial that I feel like doing anything before leveling up would just be asking to get killed."

"Oh, I completely agree," Alex said. "I wonder if it\'s got something to do with the next stage of Initialization."

"What, you think it\'ll blow up or something?" Claire asked as they started back off toward their apartment building.

Alex sent a sidelong glance at her. "After all that shit to defend the town? That would be pretty damn annoying. I hope not. But… that does bring up an interesting point."

It was Claire\'s turn to look at Alex. "I know what you\'re going to say. Save it for the room."

He inclined his head, and neither of them spoke again until they\'d made it back to Room 221. The apartment had been shaken pretty badly by the 2nd Initialization, but it still seemed mostly structurally sound.

"I don\'t think it\'s worth staying in Towntown," Claire said as soon as they\'d closed the door behind them.

"Can\'t say I disagree," Alex admitted. "The main reason I stuck around this long in the first place was to get the rewards from the Initialization event. Thus far, the only other real benefit of being in Towntown are the dwindling supplies."

And there are things I want to accomplish that won\'t happen here. I\'m going to find Teddy, if he\'s still alive. He better be. I have to figure out why the hell he pushed me into the Mirrorlands.

That isn\'t even to mention the other leaderboard rankers. I have to keep pushing forward and getting stronger. Strong enough to beat them.

After that… I don\'t know. What the fuck do you do when the world gets destroyed? Maybe find a place to carve out for myself somewhere. I\'ll need a home at some point.

"We\'ll deal with it tomorrow," Alex said. "Given the direction this last Initialization went with the focus on towns, I wouldn\'t be surprised if the third one is similarly related to them."

"I suppose we\'ll find out," Claire said. She sat down on the bed and stretched her arms over her head with a yawn. "You want to meditate first? You\'re practically vibrating in place."

Alex glanced down at himself. "Is it that obvious?"

"Yes."

He grinned and shamelessly sat down, crossing his legs beneath him. "Whoops. Well, if you\'re offering, then I won\'t refuse. Thanks. And we\'ll get you a chance to practice Court some more sometime soon."

Claire blinked in surprise. "Huh?"

"You were put out about not getting a chance to do more earlier."

"Oh," Claire said with a small laugh and a shake of her head. "Right. Thanks. I appreciate it. I do miss it a lot. Maybe my skills will be a little more useful when we get to a larger town. If you\'re anything like Dhampirs, humans are herd animals. They gather instinctively. And where there are groups… there are opportunities."

Alex nodded. Then he sent his senses inward, sinking into meditation.

There were rewards from the System ready for him, and he wasn\'t going to keep them waiting any longer.