Enveloped in the darkness, only the pain informed him of his status. In a split second, his eyes gained light. He stood beside Tas, facing Elise sitting at the far back end of the cabin.

  “You did it!” Tas screamed with a huge smile on his face. He immediately raised his arms and tightly hugged Harley in excitement. He lifted him up, jumping up and down in circles. “Fuck! That took so long! Finally! Hah!”

  While Tas was celebrating, Harley’s thoughts took a bit to get back into the real world. No pop-up, that means others have already beaten this level in less than a month. Insane beings. He thought, his mind not really filled with what you would expect someone would after going through an extreme situation like he did.

  “I don’t even care how you did that. Just like… thank God we were finally done with that.” Tas finally released Harley and rubbed his chin. “Now onto the fifth floor, would definitely be something special.”

  “That’s why we have to prepare before going in.”

  “Oh, you know I’m not like that.”

  Harley turned his head to Tas, his eyes calm like a robot, and his mouth as straight as a plateau. “This isn’t going to be simple. Stop joking around. It took us a month to finish the fourth floor. If you were still caught up in your love, you would have jumped out of that mountain so much that you would look like an AI programmed to just kill itself forever.”

  “... What… no- I- sti-i-ill.” Tas was taken aback. His chin wrinkled, his eyes squinted, and his hands began to fidget uncontrollably.

  A warm smile formed on Harley’s face.. “Tas. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. What’s important is to be alive. It’s not a race. And fine, so what if you want to meet her as soon as possible? But it’s better to take some time than to lose yourself.” He paused, waiting for Tas to look him in the eyes. “Be proud. You’re still alive.”

  Harley walked off to his bed, sitting down and then lying down. His eyes closed just as his head touched the pillow.

  “The fuck type of motivational speech is that! I’m immortal! Of course I’ll still be alive!” He rolled his eyes, brushing off his emotion and walking off with a slight chuckle. “What a guy, right?” He commented, directing it to Elise.

  While Tas was trying to climb up the above bunker, something unexpected happened. “I know,” Elise replied in a low monotone. The reply made Tas immediately turn to his side to look at Elise. His arms grabbed the top bunker, and his legs stood on the first bed, slightly grazing Harley’s leg. In just a second, he jumped down from the bed and walked to Elise.

  “You could talk.” His lips elongated, mouth opened in a circular shape. “Are you finally not insane? You okay, Elise?”

  “I’ve always been okay. Just devoid of energy.”

  “To live?”

  “What else?”

  There was a few seconds of pause, until Tas replied with something Elise wouldn’t expect.

  “Then why won’t you kill yourself?” He said nonchalantly.

  “Has Harley rubbed off on you?” She chuckled, a short smile pasted on her face.

  “Yeah, kinda. You have to be like that in this world, I guess.” He moved closer to Elise and pressed his back against the wall. Just a second later, after a deep breath, he slid down and sat. “I haven’t even been thinking of her lately.” His eyes shortly lost their life, and the smile on his face soon forced itself to go down. “I can’t even remember her face anymore.”

  “Come on. You’ve known her for less than a year. So how could you love her that much?”

  “When you know. You know. Time matters not.”

  “Haha!” She glanced over to him. A few seconds of silence passed.

  “What?” Tas asked.

  “You just don’t know how love works.” She retracted her head and shook it slowly.

  “And you do?”

  “Hey!” Her head stopped bobbing. “At least we had been together for two years!”

  Tas scoffed. “Yet you’ve broken off two times. For the same exact reason. Be thankful he died, or else you would have broken off again for the third time. Better to end when it was in the good part. Right?”

  “If I had the power to, I would fucking strangle you!”

  “How about you try?!” His tongue hung out, mocking her closely.

  Elise took a deep breath and her smile disappeared, her head leaning back on the wall, staring at the ceiling.

  “Wow… what a way to drag the mood back down again.”

  “Call me a downer then.” While she looked up, her mind blank, something tapped on her shoulder. As she looked back down, Tas was resting on her, his eyes closed. “What?”

  “Cheer back up. You’re the class president. Remember?”

  “That was before…”

  “Just brighten up. I know you can do it.”

  “Okay… I’ll try…”

  As the two quitly closed their eyes, their minds slowly fading away, and soon they fell asleep. On the bed, Harley heard everything, a giant smile enthralled his face.

  ***

  On the second floor, the two wandered through the forest. The sun shone brightly as always, and the ground was still just as round. They headed to the goblin village, taking their leisure time by walking slowly while planning for the fifth floor.

  “Okay, so we have a lot of magic cores to just keep selling every single day for the next two months, we could wait that long to challenge the fifth floor.”

  “Tas, that is not what I meant by preparing. We need to learn how to fight.”

  “How the hell are we gonna learn without a teacher?”

  “Us? We could just fight each other to the death.”

  “I’m immortal, not you.”

  “The cabin, dumbass. There. We-”

  Harley was cut off with a smack on his head. “Don’t call me dumb again.”

  “Yeah yeah, anyway, why are we even going to the goblin village?”

  “Hmmm? I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I don’t know! Why are you going to the goblin village?”

  “I woke up, we talked, and I just followed you!”

  “Oh shit. Habit. It’s muscle memory.”

  The two slapped their face at the same time, turning back around and opening the portal back to the cabin.

  “Anyway, right now, all we can learn is to fight with a dagger.”

  “How about saving up for a weapon?”

  “No… We’ll save up for something else… an ability.”

  ***

  The tower took an interesting approach in taking the players to the tower. Instead of taking every single human, or making the tower appear on Earth, they instead took every student in the world, ranging from secondary to tertiary. There are estimated to be over a billion students all over the world. Right now, there are fewer than a million remaining, numbers decreasing every second.

  In correlation to this number, the market, with its stock feature, has run out of many things. The weapon section, the armor section, the abilities, everything that was in the range of one hundred points is all gone. The only ones remaining range from around three hundred to one thousand. Some of the items had already been bought, though only a few were even able to push through that long without needing anything else.

  Harley and Tas locked themselves inside the cabin. Their daily routine was instantly set to something simple: fight when they woke up, sell items right after, fight again, and then sleep. That was the exact setup that they were going for in the upcoming one and a half months.

  “Remember this, Tas. In this room, we are both immortal. Only when someone is on the brink of death could they learn at a rate faster than any normal human could. Don’t think we can’t die… think that you will die any second… cause I won’t have mercy Tas.”

  “Right back at you.”

  The fight went on, days passed, and the two progressively went more insane. From the start, they treated their fight like a fence, where the moment you are stabbed, you are dead. However, as time went by, even if it wasn’t something that was totally relevant, the two didn’t stop at just “death”.

  Learning how to fight from scratch all comes from experience; the two were certainly gaining experience of how two monsters would fight past their own deaths. While the two trained to make themselves stronger, it wasn’t only them who were changing. Elise left the cabin the first day the two fought and not once has she gone back at all.

  Sixteen days passed, and on this day, Harley would gain a form of enlightenment, his skills would explosively improve, and it was the moment his perception of pain would actually disappear, just like Tas.

  ***

  The day started as usual, Harley woke up faster than Tas and immediately stabbed the bed above him with a dagger placed just beside him. Blood flowed down the blade, he felt it his a piece of flesh, yet no scream came out. “So early? Again?”

  Tas woke up abruptly, despite already going through the same thing so many times; he just couldn’t get used to it. He smashed the bed as hard as he could, the entire bunk breaking into pieces. He fell straight down, quickly turning around mid-air.

  Harley kicked his legs up before Tas could even land on him. Tas hit the ceiling, cracking his bones against the indestructible roof. Harley jumped out of the bed, his entire body bleeding from the sharp cuts of wood.

  He headed straight to Tas, clashing their blades in the sky. Once they landed on the ground, the two stomped, sending waves to destroy the other bed, just as the cabin’s frame stayed all the same.

  Tas stood at the other end of the door, while Harley stood on top of the carpet, a smile etched on his face. Before Harley could play with the carpet below him, Tas immediately appeared before him. The two exchanged multiple blows, cuts adding to their body, ripping their own skin.

  Blood sprayed across the room. Blood dropped to make small pools. Skin flew to the walls, splattering, sliding like a piece of red meat. In less than a minute, Harley pushed Tas a few steps back, allowing him to kick the carpet up the ground, blocking vision even for just a second.

  As he reached for the final attack, Tas swiped his feet, making Harley fly off the ground. Still taking advantage of Tas’s blindness, he grabbed onto his shoulder with his left arm just as the carpet fell, lifting himself up in the air.

  The two’s face smiled, Harley clicking his tongue and Tas releasing a quiet sigh.

  Tas sliced the hand that held onto him. He then leaned down, turning around, stabbing the airborne Harley in the chest. Harley let out a final cry by slicing his entire left arm off. Tas released the grip on his dagger and pierced his finger on Harley’s chest, pulled him close, and bit his neck by the bone and ripped it entirely off.

  Harley flew into the sky, his entire body feeling absolutely nothing. It wasn’t the first time his entire head was ripped off like a savage beast attacked, but this time, there was actually no feeling. The lie turned into the truth.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Enveloped in the darkness, only the pain informed him of his status. In a split second, his eyes gained light. He stood beside Tas, facing Elise sitting at the far back end of the cabin.

  “You did it!” Tas screamed with a huge smile on his face. He immediately raised his arms and tightly hugged Harley in excitement. He lifted him up, jumping up and down in circles. “Fuck! That took so long! Finally! Hah!”

  While Tas was celebrating, Harley’s thoughts took a bit to get back into the real world. No pop-up, that means others have already beaten this level in less than a month. Insane beings. He thought, his mind not really filled with what you would expect someone would after going through an extreme situation like he did.

  “I don’t even care how you did that. Just like… thank God we were finally done with that.” Tas finally released Harley and rubbed his chin. “Now onto the fifth floor, would definitely be something special.”

  “That’s why we have to prepare before going in.”

  “Oh, you know I’m not like that.”

  Harley turned his head to Tas, his eyes calm like a robot, and his mouth as straight as a plateau. “This isn’t going to be simple. Stop joking around. It took us a month to finish the fourth floor. If you were still caught up in your love, you would have jumped out of that mountain so much that you would look like an AI programmed to just kill itself forever.”

  “... What… no- I- sti-i-ill.” Tas was taken aback. His chin wrinkled, his eyes squinted, and his hands began to fidget uncontrollably.

  A warm smile formed on Harley’s face.. “Tas. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. What’s important is to be alive. It’s not a race. And fine, so what if you want to meet her as soon as possible? But it’s better to take some time than to lose yourself.” He paused, waiting for Tas to look him in the eyes. “Be proud. You’re still alive.”

  Harley walked off to his bed, sitting down and then lying down. His eyes closed just as his head touched the pillow.

  “The fuck type of motivational speech is that! I’m immortal! Of course I’ll still be alive!” He rolled his eyes, brushing off his emotion and walking off with a slight chuckle. “What a guy, right?” He commented, directing it to Elise.

  While Tas was trying to climb up the above bunker, something unexpected happened. “I know,” Elise replied in a low monotone. The reply made Tas immediately turn to his side to look at Elise. His arms grabbed the top bunker, and his legs stood on the first bed, slightly grazing Harley’s leg. In just a second, he jumped down from the bed and walked to Elise.

  “You could talk.” His lips elongated, mouth opened in a circular shape. “Are you finally not insane? You okay, Elise?”

  “I’ve always been okay. Just devoid of energy.”

  “To live?”

  “What else?”

  There was a few seconds of pause, until Tas replied with something Elise wouldn’t expect.

  “Then why won’t you kill yourself?” He said nonchalantly.

  “Has Harley rubbed off on you?” She chuckled, a short smile pasted on her face.

  “Yeah, kinda. You have to be like that in this world, I guess.” He moved closer to Elise and pressed his back against the wall. Just a second later, after a deep breath, he slid down and sat. “I haven’t even been thinking of her lately.” His eyes shortly lost their life, and the smile on his face soon forced itself to go down. “I can’t even remember her face anymore.”

  “Come on. You’ve known her for less than a year. So how could you love her that much?”

  “When you know. You know. Time matters not.”

  “Haha!” She glanced over to him. A few seconds of silence passed.

  “What?” Tas asked.

  “You just don’t know how love works.” She retracted her head and shook it slowly.

  “And you do?”

  “Hey!” Her head stopped bobbing. “At least we had been together for two years!”

  Tas scoffed. “Yet you’ve broken off two times. For the same exact reason. Be thankful he died, or else you would have broken off again for the third time. Better to end when it was in the good part. Right?”

  “If I had the power to, I would fucking strangle you!”

  “How about you try?!” His tongue hung out, mocking her closely.

  Elise took a deep breath and her smile disappeared, her head leaning back on the wall, staring at the ceiling.

  “Wow… what a way to drag the mood back down again.”

  “Call me a downer then.” While she looked up, her mind blank, something tapped on her shoulder. As she looked back down, Tas was resting on her, his eyes closed. “What?”

  “Cheer back up. You’re the class president. Remember?”

  “That was before…”

  “Just brighten up. I know you can do it.”

  “Okay… I’ll try…”

  As the two quitly closed their eyes, their minds slowly fading away, and soon they fell asleep. On the bed, Harley heard everything, a giant smile enthralled his face.

  ***

  On the second floor, the two wandered through the forest. The sun shone brightly as always, and the ground was still just as round. They headed to the goblin village, taking their leisure time by walking slowly while planning for the fifth floor.

  “Okay, so we have a lot of magic cores to just keep selling every single day for the next two months, we could wait that long to challenge the fifth floor.”

  “Tas, that is not what I meant by preparing. We need to learn how to fight.”

  “How the hell are we gonna learn without a teacher?”

  “Us? We could just fight each other to the death.”

  “I’m immortal, not you.”

  “The cabin, dumbass. There. We-”

  Harley was cut off with a smack on his head. “Don’t call me dumb again.”

  “Yeah yeah, anyway, why are we even going to the goblin village?”

  “Hmmm? I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I don’t know! Why are you going to the goblin village?”

  “I woke up, we talked, and I just followed you!”

  “Oh shit. Habit. It’s muscle memory.”

  The two slapped their face at the same time, turning back around and opening the portal back to the cabin.

  “Anyway, right now, all we can learn is to fight with a dagger.”

  “How about saving up for a weapon?”

  “No… We’ll save up for something else… an ability.”

  ***

  The tower took an interesting approach in taking the players to the tower. Instead of taking every single human, or making the tower appear on Earth, they instead took every student in the world, ranging from secondary to tertiary. There are estimated to be over a billion students all over the world. Right now, there are fewer than a million remaining, numbers decreasing every second.

  In correlation to this number, the market, with its stock feature, has run out of many things. The weapon section, the armor section, the abilities, everything that was in the range of one hundred points is all gone. The only ones remaining range from around three hundred to one thousand. Some of the items had already been bought, though only a few were even able to push through that long without needing anything else.

  Harley and Tas locked themselves inside the cabin. Their daily routine was instantly set to something simple: fight when they woke up, sell items right after, fight again, and then sleep. That was the exact setup that they were going for in the upcoming one and a half months.

  “Remember this, Tas. In this room, we are both immortal. Only when someone is on the brink of death could they learn at a rate faster than any normal human could. Don’t think we can’t die… think that you will die any second… cause I won’t have mercy Tas.”

  “Right back at you.”

  The fight went on, days passed, and the two progressively went more insane. From the start, they treated their fight like a fence, where the moment you are stabbed, you are dead. However, as time went by, even if it wasn’t something that was totally relevant, the two didn’t stop at just “death”.

  Learning how to fight from scratch all comes from experience; the two were certainly gaining experience of how two monsters would fight past their own deaths. While the two trained to make themselves stronger, it wasn’t only them who were changing. Elise left the cabin the first day the two fought and not once has she gone back at all.

  Sixteen days passed, and on this day, Harley would gain a form of enlightenment, his skills would explosively improve, and it was the moment his perception of pain would actually disappear, just like Tas.

  ***

  The day started as usual, Harley woke up faster than Tas and immediately stabbed the bed above him with a dagger placed just beside him. Blood flowed down the blade, he felt it his a piece of flesh, yet no scream came out. “So early? Again?”

  Tas woke up abruptly, despite already going through the same thing so many times; he just couldn’t get used to it. He smashed the bed as hard as he could, the entire bunk breaking into pieces. He fell straight down, quickly turning around mid-air.

  Harley kicked his legs up before Tas could even land on him. Tas hit the ceiling, cracking his bones against the indestructible roof. Harley jumped out of the bed, his entire body bleeding from the sharp cuts of wood.

  He headed straight to Tas, clashing their blades in the sky. Once they landed on the ground, the two stomped, sending waves to destroy the other bed, just as the cabin’s frame stayed all the same.

  Tas stood at the other end of the door, while Harley stood on top of the carpet, a smile etched on his face. Before Harley could play with the carpet below him, Tas immediately appeared before him. The two exchanged multiple blows, cuts adding to their body, ripping their own skin.

  Blood sprayed across the room. Blood dropped to make small pools. Skin flew to the walls, splattering, sliding like a piece of red meat. In less than a minute, Harley pushed Tas a few steps back, allowing him to kick the carpet up the ground, blocking vision even for just a second.

  As he reached for the final attack, Tas swiped his feet, making Harley fly off the ground. Still taking advantage of Tas’s blindness, he grabbed onto his shoulder with his left arm just as the carpet fell, lifting himself up in the air.

  The two’s face smiled, Harley clicking his tongue and Tas releasing a quiet sigh.

  Tas sliced the hand that held onto him. He then leaned down, turning around, stabbing the airborne Harley in the chest. Harley let out a final cry by slicing his entire left arm off. Tas released the grip on his dagger and pierced his finger on Harley’s chest, pulled him close, and bit his neck by the bone and ripped it entirely off.

  Harley flew into the sky, his entire body feeling absolutely nothing. It wasn’t the first time his entire head was ripped off like a savage beast attacked, but this time, there was actually no feeling. The lie turned into the truth.