OLD-WORLD EXTRA

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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 same 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 aimed 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 men and women 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 me."

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 came out of left field, to say the least.

Deeming his continued silence to be agreement, she went ahead and requested:

"Tell me 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 me' while doing their job, they don't mean it. They say it just to say it."

Sofia slowly opened her mouth and said:

"I do. I mean it."

"..."

Speechless, Elijah waited for her to say something else, but seeing as she wasn't moving an inch, both physically and mentally, he shook his head and denied her:

"Wait in line. Everyone asked the same 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 times, but suddenly, Emir's voice resounded in the arena, taking away his attention.

"How was it? This was the first time most of you killed anyone."

Though he framed his words in a question-like manner, no one tried to answer as they knew it

was rhetorical, having grown accustomed 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 complimented 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 game 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 same 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 moment.

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 mercy.

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 moment, the man limped to the side, dead.

The kill was gruesome, 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 fragments 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 became a mangled mess, 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 time killing someone 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 meant one thing...

Crack!

She had no choice but to engage in melee 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 melee 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 screamed, 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 time 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, something seemed to hinder her,

blocking her from attacking, leaving Ava with all the time 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 same brutal method, unable to think of an easier route,

their faces reflecting the same exhaustion and discomfort as they grappled with their own

targets. Those who thought of themselves as smart experimented with their targets, searching for some sort of puzzle to solve.

Meanwhile, those who were truly smart acted decisively.

They killed their targets as fast as possible by targeting their necks, showing mercy 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 programmed bots, moving objects, unleashing their primal instincts.

For some, it was the first time they had ever punched with full force. For others, it was the first time their feet aimed to kill, attacking vulnerable areas.

This cycle of violence kept repeating itself, each round a new lesson in methods of death.

Once they had reached the tenth cycle, attacking in every conceivable manner they could come up with, Emir raised his hand, halting all the rogues in their tracks.

The students only noticed their professor's movement when they saw every last target freeze

in place.

They were so consumed by death that everything else had slipped from their minds.

It was at that moment they noticed that those rogues looked different than before.

Their faces remained the same, 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 time they died.

But that didn't make much sense...

Were they not just programmed bots-mere 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.