The remaining twenty-four hours went by without problems. Whether Schrödinger was unable to encourage the remain people to search for me or I simply managed to avoid them, the result was I managed to survive and complete the challenge without further problems.

Upon returning to the challenge area of the Decima game facility, I realized something was wrong and counted the number of people.

All eight people had returned.

The four petrified souls (Adin, Edward, Dylan, and Barin) had somehow been de-petrified and were looking around the room in confusion. Judging by their confused expression and their poses, they had been de-petrified upon getting teleported back to the main facility.

Schrödinger must’ve acted to save them. It’s annoying that he can remove petrification.

Activating my petrifying gaze again, I re-petrified the people that had ambushed me before and nodded in contentment as they all returned to inorganic stone statues. Even if they're rescued again, I can do this all day.

Stanley’s gaze turn slightly strange upon noticing the people return to their statue forms, but Kara seemed to have expected it. The hedgehog had the policy of an ostrich that buried his head in the sand, he simply turned his head away and pretending not to notice the situation.

With those people petrified, there are only five people remaining in the Decima game… Rin, Stanley, Kara, the hedgehog, and myself.

If they had remained petrified, I might’ve been able to delay Kara’s death by simply petrifying everyone or petrifying Kara to prevent the fate.

That plan has fallen by the wayside before it was even created, though.

Since Schrödinger can save people from petrification, it’s too easy for such a strategy to backfire and cause an unexpected failure.

Checking the back of my hand for points, I found five dots on it… that meant I had five points.

Huh… Wasn’t I supposed to get nine points for surviving? Maybe there were negative points?

I entered the game with two points, subtracting points for hitting five person… roughly equals negative three. Then I gained nine points for surviving, so I should have six points?

Okay, maybe Schrödinger purposefully deducted Rin’s points as she didn’t participate or docked another point for some minor rule violation.

Realizing the amount was approximately correct, I gave up and shrugged.

Anyway, the number of points doesn’t matter… If I actually ended up with nine points, I was going to try lowering my points. This simply saved me the effort of going through that process.

Leaving behind the statues and other players in the Challenge room, I searched for Rin throughout the facility. She wasn’t in the cafeteria or the storage area. Finding Rin would be impossible should she be hiding inside her hotel room.

To search for her properly, I opened the training room doors to search for her.

There were too many different training room, but I found Rin practicing inside of the archery training room. Her focus was entirely on archery and the target, she hadn’t reacted to my entrance.

Closing the door, I maneuvered into a good position to watch her practice while standing on the edge of the training room to avoid getting hit by mistake.

Rin held the bow in her left hand, whilst pulling the string to her nose… the top of the bow’s string barely touching her right ear. Her left foot pointed toward the target and the other was parallel with the target.

The target that Rin aimed for was a good hundred meters away and was person-shaped. In a swift motion, Rin released the arrow and it flew forward.

…far above the target? Rin actually missed?

Watching the arrow as the arrow completely miss the target and fly into the distance, I raised an eyebrow and turned my gaze back toward Rin.

In the short-time, Rin had readied another arrow and promptly released it.

The arrow flew forward, directly following the path of the previous arrow and whiffed. Flying over the target.

Watching carefully, I quickly noticed a peculiarity.

Shortly after flying over the target, the arrow directly turned 90 degrees downward and hit the floor behind the target.

“Huh…” I subconsciously mumbled, while moved closer and noticed a batch of arrows sunk into the dirt behind the target at 90 degree angles.

While some shots had flow far behind the target, a good portion had landed directly behind the target. While I was examining target, another arrow had been released and landed on the floor behind the target.

I swallowed my saliva and looking back at Rin, who seemed intensely focused on her archery practice.

How is she doing that? Arrows shouldn't be able to turn 90 degrees midair without an outside force, right? That's impossible?

I vaguely remember Rin practicing arrows that curved midair to hit a particular target, but I thought I was mistaken… or remembered incorrectly. Eventually, I convinced myself that Rin was taking advantage of wind to correct the position of the arrow midair.

But… there’s definitely no wind in here.

Even the fiercest wind wasn’t going to result in an arrow carrying its momentum while performing a 90 degree turn.

There’s definitely something supernatural going on.

“Impressive.” I commented to obtain her attention and inform her at to my presence.

Upon hearing my speech, Rin’s wolf-ears swirled in my direction. Rin refuted my admiration while lowering her bow. “I missed.”

“Oh? Where were you aiming?” I inquired with interest. Even if it was a mistake, having an arrow carry momentum while turning 90 degrees was a useful skill.

With archery skills like that, you could easily hit people behind any cover.

“The back of the target.” Rin clarified as she walked over toward the target to pick up the arrows.

I stared at her, wondering whether she was joking.

The arrow would have to turn approximately 180 degrees midair to accomplish that feat and hit the target's back. While that might be possible, there was little chance of the arrow conserving its monument throughout the process.

She actually wants the arrow to turn completely around midair to hit a target? Isn’t that like… an impossible shot? What about the law of conservation of linear monument? Are the laws of physics a joke to you?

However… judging by her facial expression, Rin was completely serious.

While I inwardly remained doubtful about the plausibility of that feat without auxiliary abilities, I swallowed my doubts and tried to be encouraging. “It’s good to be ambitious…”

We both sat there in silence for several painstaking seconds.

I brought up a random topic to fill the deathly silence and prevent her from thinking too much into the previous sentence. “I thought you were on vacation.”

Rin tilted her head before replying, “I am.”

I gestured toward the bow and arrows, “Why are you practicing archery, then?”

“What else would I do?” Rin’s voice portrayed her confusion. “Kara’s busy.”

I momentarily fell speechless before realizing the problem.

I’d forgotten there was little entertainment in the culture of Rin’s hometown. Almost everything is their culture is based around strength, power, and skill. Knowledge is only passed down when it is useful in furthering those goals or when it is necessary for survival.

Unnecessary knowledge, such as games or entertainment, tends to get directly eliminated from books and heritages. Even if someone wrote a fictional story in her homeworld, the useful information in the story might be summarized by later generations… but the story itself would be eliminated.

Basically, besides a few games that are commonly spread through word-of-mouth, the only entertainment is factual books and practicing skills. Rin’s homeworld is an entertainment starved civilization and the population actively keeps it that way.

The root problem is the civilization has immortals.

On Earth, children and the next generation drive the times. Older generations will die and can no longer impose their viewpoints on the younger generation. This slowly results in dialects changing and new languages being formed, along with differing ethics and morality.

In a civilization with powerful immortals, the language’s dialect and their morality are difficult to change as those powerful immortals will use the language they know. Along the same lines, from the perspective of mortals, it is in their interest to learn the language of immortals so they can converse and potentially receive help or request guidance from immortal beings… and nobody would dare to speak up against them to call the older generation’s views immoral or unethical unless they had a death wish.

This strange situation results in anyone with a decent education speaking, reading, and writing with the same unchanging universal language and morals as immortals. Almost all knowledge is recorded in their language and even if some immortals disappeared for a millennia, they could still read any new books and knowledge.

The root problem with such a system is that as people live longer, they tend to adopt conservative views and dislike change. With immortals living forever, unless they’re killed… there will always be extreme stagnation in terms of culture and entertainment.

That’s why there are many missing words in Rin’s language.

For example, there’s no term for girlfriend and boyfriend in their language… only the less descriptive fiancé and fiancée.

In a world where strength and power are important factors in survival, a standard immortal’s reaction to hearing that a book is completely fiction and is made up by the author with no effect on increasing someone strength, skill, or power would be to mention that such a book is a complete waste of time.

At that point, the book would promptly be purged from the heritage and any copies destroyed.

Who dares to keep around a book that an immortal insulted? It would be lucky if the book’s creator wasn’t killed.

Books and knowledge are expensive in most civilizations, there was little chance of someone financing a book in the non-standard language and most fictional books designed for entertainment would be insulted as useless by immortals.

... Anyway, that isn't important at the moment.

“Kara shouldn't be busy anymore.” I decided against give Rin long lecture on the value of the pursuit of  entertainment and enjoyment. "The previous challenge has ended, she should have free time."

“Alright…” Rin nodded, putting down her bow and arrows.

I didn’t continue the previous topic on the necessity of entertainment.

As a former writer, specifically of fiction, I had a strong view on the necessity of entertainment in people’s daily lives… but this wasn’t the time to attempt to change Rin’s entire worldview. Not to mention, there wasn’t really much for entertainment that could be done in this place.

I also understood their culture’s point of view, excessive entertainment is detrimental to an individuals and a civilization’s development. Without any understanding of their point of view, I couldn’t have described the existence of such a culture.

Following Rin out of the room, I heard God-hunter speak in my head while portraying confusion.

Dad, why are we back in here? What’s going on?

Uhhh… It’s kinda complicated. To make a very long story, shorter than it should be… Rin reloaded, I managed was given a rock that allowed me to keep my memory and items.

Why’s Mom avoiding you?

I looked back toward Rin, who walked a couple steps ahead only a short distance away. Before inquiring silently.

What are you talking about, God-hunter?

Are you blind? Mom always treats you like a fragile puppy that could keel over at any time. Even when fighting you.

Also, what happened abandoning you? She doesn't seem to have left?

I mentally compared Rin’s behavior to before that incident purposeful avoided thinking about everything that happened afterward, and swiftly understood what God-hunter meant.

Rin had always acted extremely protective toward me.

… Yet, Rin walked a few feet ahead without checking on my existence and barely seemed to acknowledge me whenever I wasn't speaking with her. She didn't insistence that I stayed in the same room with her to sleep last night either.

While I was blind and obvious to others actions most of the time, I could still tell there was a difference in her treatment when specifically searching for it.

Is it simply a difference in timing?

God-hunter has been gone… Uh- has been asleep for awhile.

Hmmm... I’ll have to talk to Rin more in-depth about the situation later.