Although Rin kept silent and no longer argued, the determination in her eyes had only grown stronger.

Clearly, she had zero intensions of giving up on her plan of upgrading her superpowered bloodline.

Snorting, I took a short breath and forced myself to calm down. Reluctantly preventing myself from continuing to argue.

Rin’s extremely stubborn.

Attempting to convince her through an argument is pointless. Mere words won’t change her mind. That’s something I’ve learned better than anything through repeated examples.

Only strength and actions will change her determination. Better to fix the situation with actions than words.

The situation might worsen, but there’s an option to petrify her to delay for time. Petrification certainly isn’t a permanent solution… but petrifying her can temporarily preventing her from acting like an idiot and getting herself killed.

Fortunately, Rin shouldn’t have any basilisk blood to avoid petrification in this timeline.

“Let’s talk about this later. What are your plans for the Decima game?” I shook my head in disappointment realizing that I wouldn’t be able to convince her.

Stretching out her arms and standing up, Rin said with shrug. “There are no plans. I’m on vacation.”

“Vacation?” Hearing her answer, I was caught off guard.

“This is my short vacation hanging out with Kara before reloading and getting back to studying for another year.” Rin explained with a nod, before walking into the bedroom.

Briefly frowning, I silently watched her leave the room.

Vacation… She considers this a vacation.

While Rin hadn’t actually said much, her short explanation perfectly encapsulates her state of mind.

To be perfectly honest, I could understand perfectly.

There were only so many times someone could repeatedly attempt the same task. If someone continued to experience failure repeated, anyone sane would consider giving up.

Who knows how many times Rin attempted to save Kara over the years?

Instead of attempting to solve the task in manner that was obviously failing, Rin wanted to improve her ability and solve the problem at the root.

Theoretically, it’s a perfect solution… if she succeeds at her promotion.

The main problem is it’s too dangerous. Taking a deadly trial that targets the soul in particular, which is her weakness, is simply tempting fate.

What would I do should Rin fail?

Shaking my head, I tried not to think about it.

For the time being, it does not matter. Theoretically speaking, reaching the requirement to upgrade her superpowered bloodline isn’t so easy. I don’t remember specifics, but I remember the process being particularly complicated.

Glancing around the room momentarily before leaving, and heading into the elevator and rode it down to the lobby. I took the opportunity in the elevator to examine God-hunter, but my daughter kept silent for the moment and I decided to not bother her.  

When I entered the lobby, there were a couple people inside. Particularly notable was Stanley, who held a black tablet and seemed to be exploring. As Stanley moved throughout the lobby, he opened and shut doors as he explored the facility.

Walking up behind him, I tapped his shoulder and greeted him. “Stanley, how’ve you been?”

Nearly jumping out of his shoes in surprise, Stanley placed a hand over his heart and calmed down. “Oh my god… You scared the life out of me. Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

Snorting in amusement, I raised an eyebrow and realized something. “I finally managed to catch you unaware?”

“Uhhh… you’re the guy who upset the holographic cat, right?” Stanley looked at me with blank, confused eyes. “You finally caught me unaware? Sorry, have we met before?”

“Well, I’ve met you before.” I shrugged and didn’t plan on explaining further. The actual situation was too complicated.

“Ah…” Stanley stared at my face, but shook his head. “Sorry, I have no impression of you.”

“It’s fine… I’m Tobias.” I swapped god-hunter into my other hand and held out my right-hand, and replied in a factual manner. “We’re from the same planet.”

Stanley reached out and shook my hand, before realizing something. “Ah! Did we meet back on Earth?”

I shrugged and stated a completely unrelated fact. “Life back on Earth seems like a lifetime ago.”

“Yeah.” Stanley agreed with the sentient, probably misconstruing this unrelated fact as an answer to his question.

The next fifteen to twenty minutes were spent chatting with Stanley about Earth and reminiscing about the good old-times with nostalgia.

In the process of chatting, we found a cafeteria in the hotel that had stocks of food and made ourselves a quick meal.

The fact there’s a cafeteria here… technically makes sense, considering most people here need to eat and nobody starved last time, but feels wrong.

In my cognition, Schrödinger wants everyone to die. Why provide us with supple amount of food and luxury? Unless the sadistic cat deciding that starvation isn’t an entertaining enough manner of death.

Just… I don’t think I discovered this cafeteria last time. At least, there was no impression of a cafeteria in my memory.

There was nothing much to say about he next period of time. It was spent mostly waiting for the first game to begin whilst postulating methods to save Kara. Nothing came to mind in term of methods to save her, however I did find the training room where I made my musket last time.

When I got the opportunity, I’d always planned to remake my old musket. The parts and materials were difficult to find outside of this place.

Thus, whilst waiting, I fiddled with the parts inside and… well- I failed to make the musket. Making a gun is far harder than I anticipated or remembered, perhaps because the weapon guide for making the gun was no longer available.

When the first game opened, I entered without much further thought only to discover a slight problem. The game wasn’t capture the flag as I remembered, nor did the system reactive to inform me as to the game’s rules.

That meant I entered the game without any preparation or knowledge as to what the game actually was.

We’d all been teleported to an empty grassy field.

Beyond that the only notable thing was that there were a significant number of people here as everyone seemed to be in the same field. That was the main determination that allowed me to realize that we weren’t playing capture the flag like last time.

“That’s annoying… and dangerous.” I muttered to myself, thinking about the lack of an explanation… looking everyone seemed to be in one place. Looking around the grass field, I decided to inform Schrödinger of my complaints and yelled out. “Oi, Schrödinger! Your stupid game’s broken. I didn’t get an explanation of how to play.”

“Your broken! Nyour whole life’s broken!” Schrödinger appeared midair, apparently unable to take my complaints silently and the holographic cat began cursing me. “My programing is perfect. If there’s a problem, it’s your own damn fault.”

“Stop making excuses and explain the damn game.” I rolled my eyes. While he was technically right, admitting that would end up in being forced to play the following games without any inkling as to the game’s nature.

“Nyu….” Schrodinger flicked his ear in anger before snorting. Hovering midair with a swaying tail the beast stated. “Fine! New game, hide and seek. Whoever captures the hider can steal all their points and killing them will provide the six points. If the hider is still alive after twenty four hours, the game will end and the person hiding will steal one point from each of you.”

“Congratulations, you’re extremely lucky!” Schrödinger flew up to me with a tail flicking into my face. “You’ve won the completely random lottery and will be the one hiding. By the way, getting captured doesn’t end this game. As long as you’re alive the game continues, you’ll gain one of their points and if you avoid getting captured before the end you’ll have enough to leave immediately.”

Hearing Schrödinger’s explanation, I unceremoniously frowned.

It’s not that the game’s winning conditions were bad, but that they were too favorable to me. It was uncharacteristic of him. Stealth was my specialty and there was no reason for such favorable treatment when he clearly hated me.

“Right… The exit only opens once. Only the first person to ten points can leave, trapping everyone else here forever!” Schrödinger pretended to think out loud, before looking at the other people in the grassy field. “Hmm? Guess that’s not particularly fair for everyone else, but life isn’t fair.”

Hearing his statement, I turned to look back at the face of the other people and frowned. The vast majority of people in the crowd were now projecting hostility and killing intent toward me.

The exceptions being Stanley and Kara.

Stanley was simply too kind to even think of killing me and Kara understood my origin of Hell Difficulty and personal relationship with Rin, thus remained without killing intent.

Also, Rin was notably missing from the crowd. It appears that she had skipped this particular trial, which is considered forfeiting while her points are still at risk.

If I couldn’t understand Schrödinger’s intentions at this point, I might as lay down and let everyone kill me.

This was a completely empty grassy field, where was there anywhere to hide? This might as well be an eight vs. one battle.

Schrödinger was utilizing his unreasonably treatment to attempting to kill me with a borrowed knife. Purposefully neglecting to mention that someone with ten points could choose to wait for other to gain point is simply to force everyone into a dead end.

Random lottery to choose the person who hides? That was complete bullshit.

Clearly, Schrödinger designed this game with the intent of having me die at everyone else’s hands will be desire killing me.

If it weren’t easily being able to fight everyone in this place, I might actually have died to his petty scheme. I only needed to avoid poking the hedgehog and I’d be fine.

“Ah! Right… This is hide and seek, not a battle. So the person hiding shouldn’t be attacking the seekers. Doing so will result in a loss of points.” Schrödinger added afterwards with a giddy expression.

Frowning, before I simply rolled my eyes and ignored him.

Who the hell would care about points in a life-or-death situation? Points can be earned again, but nobody can earn back life.

“Oi, Schrödinger.” I called out to him, “You neglected to mention that people with ten points can wait for others to collect points and then everyone with enough points can leave together.”

“Hmmm?” Schrödinger pounced in front of my face, staring into my eyes with a mischievous grin and replied. “It appears my memories are a little faulty… are those the rules? Maybe these people wouldn’t mind letting you test it out.”

I silently cursed the idiotic cat.

Let me test it out?

Who would dares play with their lives and let me test it out?

In fact, even if Schrödinger personally admitted those minor alterations to the rules, there was a high probability of people attempting to kill me regardless. Nobody likes to put their own lives in someone else’s hands.

Someone having the ability to leave at any time is a death threat hanging over their head for those without sufficient points to leave.

The only influence of Schrödinger personally admitting the differences in rules is a slightly reduced hostility level and the possibility of negotiation.

Without his admittance, even the slightest possible of negotiation was impossible.

The worst bit is that I don’t even want the points. Based on what I theorized before, Kara’s fate of dying is accelerated as people collect points closer to the amount necessary to leave.

By collecting points, I essentially be accelerating Kara’s death and ruin Rin’s vacation without finding an opportunity to fix the situation.