"I HAVE WAITED, OH, I HAVE WAITED, FOR SO DAMN LONG! I HAVE WAITED FOR THIS MOMENT WHEN I CAN FINALLY TORTURE YOU ALL!"
The instructor laughed, his voice carrying across the entire gathering, and everyone around me grimaced. We all knew he wasn't joking. He was completely serious, and I knew that better than anyone.
Kylen Wilston Strahgat.
This sadistic man was a complete psycho, and it made no sense that someone like him was allowed anywhere near students. But here we were. The reason he was so thrilled right now was simple: we were in our final year in the Standard Zone, which meant we were officially Guardians, and there was no longer any need to hold back on what we were put through. That's what they wanted us to believe, anyway, to keep us afraid. They weren't actually going to let us die.
Right?
Honestly, at this point, I wasn't sure anymore. He kept laughing like a man who had completely lost it, and that didn't exactly inspire confidence, especially for the weaker students in the crowd.
Students like me.
"I HAVE MADE SURE TO CLOSE EVERY LOOPHOLE THAT COULD SAVE YOU WEAKLINGS! THERE WILL BE NO SAVING GRACE! THOSE OF YOU WHO'VE BEEN SLACKING OFF THESE PAST EIGHT YEARS WILL FINALLY FACE RETRIBUTION! HAHAHAHA!"
Shit.
I needed to get out of here.
[You can't.]
"I know," I muttered, touching the restriction collar around my neck. As long as that thing was on me, any thought of leaving the facility was pointless. We were all trapped, every single one of us.
"Now, I will explain how this exam works," Wilston said, his eyes moving across the crowd.
We were standing in front of the Augmented Reality Lab, or ARL. It wasn't the largest building on campus, but it was impressive enough. Three stories tall, each floor packed with VR equipment that was heavily guarded because of how expensive it was. Only high-ranking students were normally allowed inside.
Wilston stood at the front alongside the homeroom teachers from each class, five of them in total, which gave some sense of just how many students were gathered here. We were arranged in neat rows, but even then there were so many of us that the rows stretched further than I could easily see.
Wilston himself was the definition of physically intimidating. He wore a tank top, presumably just to make sure everyone noticed how much larger he was than the rest of us. Even the protagonist, who had an absurdly developed physique, didn't come close to this man's build. Wilston had black hair tied back and green eyes, which pointed to his elven heritage. Most of us had some connection to elves at this point, one way or another.
"This will be a simulation of CREVEN CITY," he announced.
"WHAT?!"
Murmurs broke out immediately, and understandably so. Everyone knew what that meant. Creven City was one of the cities destroyed by the Kaleed during the Age of War.
I paused.
This happened in the game too, I was fairly certain of it. This was where everything started. The mission was designed to introduce players to the game's mechanics and its story, but I also remembered this being the arc where the protagonist made enough of an impression on one of the heroines that their relationship shifted from friendship to something more.
Emily Lora Raitilian.
One of the heroines. Like Lyra, she was a princess, and not from a minor nation either, she was royalty from one of the most powerful states in the Azure Empire. Nobody knew that yet, but it would all come out by next semester when we moved up to the Upper Zone.
Something about the whole setup felt off to me, though. There were too many gaps, too many things that didn't quite add up. Given that this world was originally built around a game, that wasn't entirely surprising, but it still bothered me.
[Nonsense. This world is perfect.]
"You will be placed in teams of three," Wilston continued, his grin getting worse. "Your mission is to accumulate 1,000 points per member to pass, and your group must collect a combined total of 4,000 points."
So that was his angle. By requiring each member to hit 1,000 points individually, he made it impossible to coast behind stronger teammates. And with the group total set at 4,000, everyone would be pushing for more than the minimum, which meant no one would be stopping to help anyone else. It was every person for themselves, by design.
"Creatures are ranked by tier, and you'll be notified of that through your Graphto watches," he added.
Wait.
Graphto what?
I looked down at my wrist.
There was a watch there.
Had that always been there?