the tragedy befalls~

In the chill of the night, a small, timid boy wandered down a dark road, his eyes heavy with exhaustion and his stomach hollow with hunger. He glanced around, hoping to find something to eat, but the streets offered nothing but shadows and silence. His legs trembled, barely able to keep him upright, and he couldn’t muster the strength to lift the pickaxe he carried.

Desperate, he stumbled to a public site, hoping to find work. But his frail arms couldn’t lift the pickaxe properly, and he was turned away. Defeated, he sat on the cold ground, a stone pressing into his back. His vision blurred, and he struggled to even lift his hand.

With a quiet, wavering voice, he muttered, “Is goddess Fula coming for me? It’s so cold here…”

Suddenly, a voice broke through the silence. “Oi, you dead?”

The boy sniffed the air, catching the scent of something delicious. In a moment of instinct, he snatched the food from the person holding it.

“That was a good reaction, but slower than me,” a young girl around his age said, laughing loudly with broken teeth.

“Why am I remembering these memories right now?” Dwart the Giant thought as he wandered in the labyrinth, an arrow stuck in his back.

Meanwhile, Johan, also known as Fatface, was climbing the stairs. He would continue one floor down until he found marks. Upon reaching the 30th floor, he was taken aback to see the walls along the stairway splattered with blood marks and various inks. "You must be kidding me, how am I supposed to find it now?" he muttered under his breath. Not only were there blood traces but also scratches from weapons leading to a door now situated on another floor. Following this gory path, he kept walking until he disappeared onto a floor covered in dust.

"Tak tak," he tapped the walls, searching for a hint of an underground floor. "Something's here," Mihak murmured to his partner. He meticulously examined the area for any hidden mechanisms, pressing illuminated stones and lifting tiles, but nothing happened. "Those lunatics, did they really find a way to an underground floor?" he cursed the members of Party 1. "They mentioned a fragrance or something, but I don't smell anything." He removed his mask, exhaled deeply, and inhaled, only to have dust fill his lungs, causing him to cough violently. "What did I even expect, if not a scent created by the body?" Covering his nose with his hand, they followed the overpowering smell of ammonia from urine. They finally reached a gate that looked deceptively normal, which was quite expansive. After some hesitation and a bit of doubt, he reluctantly paid 10 tokens to enter.

The whole building was not silent for a second. Echoes of screams of the unlucky ones, either caught in traps or being slashed by someone, filled the air.

“You better hand that treasure box to me. I was the first one to find it!” a woman shouted, looking flustered.

“But you didn’t touch it, I guess you were afraid of the traps,” another woman replied while holding the box tightly.

“Hand it over,” the woman said, sweating and taking her sword out of its sheath.

“That was our team’s token, you devil! Why would you destroy it?” someone else on the same floor shouted with tears in their eyes, grabbing the collar of a teenager.

“Aah, help me!” someone else shouted, who seemed to be stuck to the walls, pierced by arrows.

“This is much more chaotic than the last D30 event,” Rita said as she heard them all from beneath with George, while traveling a dark passage. As they went through, they saw a light of a room. “Looks like we are finally here,” George replied while seeing everything through the glasses. They quickly came down from the ventilation shaft in the room, but what they saw was unexpected to both of them. George quickly ran to a corner and vomited. “What the hell happened here?” Rita muttered, shocked at the scene unfolding in front of her eyes. People lay headless, with no blood left in them, and their heads rolled all over the room, which seemed to be freshly cut. The room had many sections, but all were filled with corpses. Without a second thought, George ran back with fear filling his mind, leaving Rita behind. “What is happening here? This is not something done by a trap or simple killing,” Rita thought and remained there, looking around the corpses.

Phase 3

"Do you think those guys found anything?" Stark asked Renard, holding a thin sheet made from a mixture of metal and stone and standing in a weird pose.

"I also don’t know," Renard replied, holding a chisel and hammer. The constant sound of teams being disqualified—"tee tee"—echoed in the background as everyone’s gaze remained fixed on the ranking board.

"What... what is that thing?" someone asked his teammate, who was standing in a salute pose with both legs joined, holding a weapon in one hand as if he were handing it to someone.

"Isn’t he fighting our leader?" the teammate replied while looking at the broadcasting screen. In the next instant, their eyes filled with despair as their leader's head seemed to fly off. The rate of teams being disqualified suddenly increased, accelerating at an abnormal speed. Suddenly, the broadcasting camera for Phase 2 went dark. Phase 3 ended in confusion and chaos.

“Sorry for the inconvenience, it looks like there is a technical error with the broadcasting camera in Phase 2,” the proctor of Phase 3, a girl with a big hat from the previous chapter, said. “We will try to fix it as soon as possible,” she added, and left.

Soon people started to emerge from the exit of Phase 2.

“Help! Aaah!” people shouted, trembling and running.

“You idiot!” someone from Phase 3 approached, punched the person emerging from the exit in the face, and said, “Why did you… why? I should have not let you in the team,” while frustrated and crying.

A person emerged from Phase 2, trembling and wide-eyed. “I... I was on the 13th underground floor when I heard the buzzer of G-token. I was about to look inside the pillar when something rolled to my feet—it was Ryu’s head. Our teammate’s head! That... that thing is not human! He’s a devil, cutting through us like nothing, laughing with eyes rolled over the whole time...”

His voice cracked as he continued, “But you’re right. No matter what I say, I’m a coward. I ran for my life, leaving everyone behind. I’m so sorry for being such a coward! Aaaaaaaahhh!”

He collapsed into his teammate's shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably. Some of the contestants of Phase 3 tried to enter Phase 2 from the exit but were excused and physically restrained by people in full protective gear and pressure guns standing at the exit.

[^14] it is compulsory for everyone in sectors to enroll in a military school and train in any weapon for at least 1 year and up to 5 years.