[Residential Zone – King’s Prophet guild hall; Year 2, Day 334]

POV Swap – 3^rd person

Inside the training room that Rin had been teaching those to transfer over to Hell Difficulty. The twelve trainee were scattered throughout the room, sparring each other.

Kara and Rin stood at the end of the room, watching the group that had been trained for the past two weeks.

Their physical combat skills hadn’t improved dramatically. The vast majority of the time had been spent on drilling important knowledge into their head about Hell Difficulty. Although there wasn’t much time to improve their skills, Rin hadn’t chosen to completely neglect physical training.

“Alright, that’s enough.” Rin stopped their practice.

The sparring stopped and the trainees each lined up in front of Rin and their guild leader. Kara’s watched the group with worried eyes and glanced between them.

“This is the end of your training. I’m not going to waste any more time to babysitting you.” Rin commented with a cold voice.

The trainee disciples cheered, happy to finally be finished with the training.

After being around Rin for approximately two weeks, they already stopped being completely terrified of her. While she was still cold and scary, they weren’t worried about her killing them for something as simple as cheering. The only thing they worried about now was her beating them up whenever they weren’t listening or replied with an idiotic response.

“I’ll be send you into Hell Difficulty, now.” Rin stated blandly before glaring toward the group of trainees. “If you have any questions or regrets, now the time to mention them.”

In the silence, Kara spoke up. “It is fine if you don’t wish to go into Hell Difficulty.”

Rin sent a menacing glaring at her sister, who responded with a similar glare. After have a non-verbal argument, Rin reluctantly agreed. “Hell Difficulty is dangerous and even with this course, there’s a high likelihood of death. Now is the time if you want to be cowardly… Once you have entered, you’ll no longer than choice.”

“What do you believe our chances of survival are?” Inquired a woman in an analytical tone.

All the trainees in the group immediately began to pay attention. This was a question they wanted to ask, but hadn’t dared.

Rin silently calculated their chances of survival.

Presuming the group had been paying attention to her advice and made the correct decisions, with their current physique and combat skills…

“Less than 10 percent.” Rin calmly replied.

Although Rin didn’t know their abilities, they hadn’t used them in the sparring. She could only assume they were non-combat related.

The biggest problem was the many powerful monsters in the wild area. If any of them were unlucky, once something dangerous caught their scent, their chance of survival plummeted dramatically.

The group of trainees gasped and glanced around at one another. While they might’ve known that they could be in that statistic, it’s human nature to believe that the unlucky people are going to be somebody else.

“Any other questions.” Rin calmly asked.

None of the trainees spoke. Any other questions had already been answered in the past two weeks and they couldn’t think of any others of the top of their heads.

Rin waited thirty seconds before moving onward. “Anyone who wish to leave, do so now.”

Nobody spoke.

Kara and Rin watched the group and the twelve people each looked at one another.

None of them choose to leave. Each had their own personal reasons for being here, but it was a combination of peer pressure and desire for power that kept them in place.

“Line up.” Rin ordered preparing to transport them into Hell Difficulty.

The twelve of them stepped into a single file line and Rin approached the person at the front.

“Remember to move immediately upon teleportation.” Rin reminded whilst interacting with the system. She ordered it to swap the difficulty level of the person in front to her.

The man vanished in a light of teleportation a moment later.

“Next.” Rin indicated for the next person to step forward. Everyone stepped forward one at a time and vanished into Hell Difficulty’s tutorial.

As the last person vanished, Kara spoke to her sister. “Are you sure this was a good idea?”

“We’ll find out.” Rin stared into the empty room, “If any of them show up again, have them train another group to travel into Hell Difficulty.”

Kara stepped next to her sister, “Is that a good idea?”

“If they’ve managed to survive that long, they can handle it.” Rin turned away and began walking out of the room.

Following Rin out of the room, Kara twirled around her sister. “You’re planning on leaving now, right?”

“There are some minor things to take care of first.” Rin nodded as they walked.

“What about Toby?” Kara quizzically inquired, leaning forward into Rin’s line of vision.

Rin momentarily paused stopping, leaving Kara to continue walking in front of her. When Kara realized she waited for her catch up. “Hmm?”

“Nothing, Tobias will be fine on his own.” Rin continued walking forward and brushed off the question.

Kara momentarily frowned, but didn’t bring up her protest of the decision. She had already expressed her disapproval previously, there was little point in doing it again. “Alright.”

“Sorry, I simply don’t have time to stick around. Keep yourself safe.” Rin apologized, “Before the year ends, we need to finished with the Third Zone of Hell Difficulty.”

“Why do you need complete these zones anyway?” Kara complained, “I know some people do it for the power by artifacts, others for the wealth they can provide… but, you don’t need the power from the artifacts. If it’s wealth, I’m doing well enough for the both of us.”

“You don’t know?” Rin blinked at looked at her sister in surprise. “Where do you think the people inhabiting this place went?”

“Inhabiting this place? You mean the natives?” Replied Kara, unsure where she was going with this topic. “There are some here and there in the Residential Zone.”

“A corrosive change in the surrounding mana caused them to be almost wiped out.” Rin informed her and continued to explain. “The new mana is corrosive slowly destroying all matter and affects living organisms more easily. The reason we’re fine is the process a faction in the universe created that tutorial had us undergo a process to adapt to it beforehand.”

“Okay? So, what? We’re fine?” Kara shrugged, she didn’t particularly care about the reason they were teleported here or why they were fine. Life had improved. She’d awakened her superpower and created a guild. Rin had found someone she liked and become more powerful.

Before this, they were in a situation where they barely had the capital to survive day to day. If hunting went badly, they could get unlucky while traveling, or encountered powerful mages that wanted meat and refused to pay. They could easily go hungry for several days.

Rin shook her head, “The rest of the universe didn’t mysteriously disappear because of the change. There are other factions with deity-levels that want to dispose of us because we can adapt to the new mana.”

“People of that level wouldn’t lower themselves to dealing with mortals.” Kara easily dismissed her worries.

When a mage reached Deity-level in their old universe their power-level underwent a massive change. Their bodies constantly generated enough mana to continuously cast spells without having to worry about mana. Even their basic spells gained far more power and their lifespan became infinite.

Before reaching Deity-level, mages needs to stay inside a largely populated city to regenerate mana and it took a long time to increase their mana otherwise. While their bodies produced mana, it was a rate that it was barely noticeable.

As for the specific process on how to reach deity-level, they had no way of having contact with that knowledge. Nor was it particularly relevant to them.

Those with bloodline of superpowers had another path to become a deity-level which involved expanding the authority of their powers. Superpowers were passed down through bloodline making it easy for them to reach the level of their predecessors, but harder to grow beyond it.

It was far more difficult for superpower bloodlines to grow stronger when compared with mages. Mages relied on intelligence, personal talent, and knowledge.

In comparison, superpower required none of that.

Even an idiot could become almost unbeatable with a powerful bloodline. They only had to awaken to their bloodline’s power.

Regardless of the specific mechanisms of bloodlines and magic, whether any of them became deity-level, they tended to stop caring about the affairs of mortals. Catching the attention of someone at that level is almost impossible.

A mortal’s lifespan was simply too short in comparison. Wait around for a hundred years, they’ll all be dead.

“This universe has different rules.” Rin shook her head, “Their deity-levels don’t have unlimited lifespan.”

“They simply haven’t reached the deity-level, it’s a qualitative state. Not something that can be easily reached by simply becoming powerful.” Kara waved her hand in dismissal.

Rin informed her. “Regardless, people here reached the power-level of a deity. Even if they failed to accomplish the last step and they want to destroy us. The protection system preventing their factions invasion arrival isn’t perfect.”

“Protection system?”

“I don’t know the details. Tobias would-” Pausing mid-sentence, Rin shook her head. “Never mind any details.”

“How does that relate to completing the zones?” Kara inquired.

“Like an abandoned house with nobody managing and repairing it, the protection system will quickly expose flaws that they can utilize and won’t last forever.” Rin explained as they walked out of the guild hall.

It was early morning, the street was relatively empty.

“You mean the current peace won’t last long?” Kara quickly understood her meaning.

Acknowledging that her sister had been correct, Rin spoke metaphorically. “Precisely, we’re inside a surrounded city and the food supply is slowly depleting.”

“In other words, you’re doing going forward for power?” Inquired Kara, “Trying to turn the battle around? Or simply give us the capital to escape?”

“Does it matter?” Rin glanced at her sister with a strange gaze. She was being awfully pushy for some reason. While forcefulness wasn’t extremely out of character for Kara, it was still strange she’d chosen this topic.

“Suppose not.” Sighed Kara, before her expression returned to normal playfulness. “Makes more sense why you bothered to train a group people, though.”

Rin informed, “Wasn’t my idea.”

“Oh~ it was Toby’s idea?” Kara jumped on the new topic, her expression brightened and a small smile appeared on her face.

Not dignifying the question with a response, Rin continued walking forward.

“A self-sustaining cycle to increase our overall strength. A decent idea.” Kara noted before frowning, “Assuming they survive the process.”

“Personally, I don’t see the point.” Rin quietly replied. “Although Hell Difficulty needs more people, I don’t think recruiting in this manner is the way to go about it. Selecting a massive group and throwing them in without training would result in better warriors.”

“That would result in massive losses. You already stated that yourself.” Kara frowned.

“It would also result in only the elites with powerful abilities surviving. Hell Difficulty doesn’t need weak people to make up the numbers.” Rin reminded. “There are a person in Hell Difficulty that cannot be killed, and that an impressive feat that cannot happen with simple training.”

“Nobody would agree to join without training.”

Rin’s eyes flashed in a cold light, “They would if the alternative was certain death.”

Kara glared at her sister. “Stop treating other people’s lives like they don’t matter. This isn’t the same world we were in before. There isn’t a function civilization to make up numerous losses. You need should realize that.”

“There are people outside of this little bubble.” Reminded Rin, “Even if everyone here died, civilization could still exist.”

“Even so, deity-levels do not treat the common people’s lives as worthless and slaughter them on mass. Civilization would’ve been wiped out had they done that.” Kara argued. “Keeping your current views will cause innumerable damage to society when you grow to that level.”

Kara never once doubted that her sister would eventual grow to deity-level. Her sister had been an unimaginably talent figure in her eyes. Their dad had praised her constantly for her fighting talent.

Although they were far away from that level at the moment, the future was always infinitely bright and optimistic until the present caught up with it.