POV – Tobias

Right, so… what direction should I head?

Ignoring the path I already explored… Let’s check out the path opposite to it.

Walking through the hallway for a few minutes, I reached a white door.

Examining it, it seemed to have the picture of a bed on it.

So, would this be a resting area?

Opening the door led to somewhere similar to a hotel lounge.

Various chairs were scattered about with holographic advertisements playing in the background for random products I didn’t recognize.

Even being transported to another universe doesn’t let me avoid advertisements.

Making my way around the room, I discovered something similar to keycards behind a counter.

Searching through the various keycards, I grabbed one matching the new tattoo on the back on my hand.

We’re supposed to be player four, so presumably the symbol on the keycard (and my hand means four).

Blindly stumbling my way around attempting to open everything, I managed to find something akin to elevator.

Doesn’t seem to have any buttons to press, though.

Seems to have a keycard slot… Inserting the keycard into a small slot, the floor beneath moved until it arrived at a room.

…This place seems to be a luxury suite. What kind of place is this?

Glancing through the various rooms… it seems to have several bathrooms, something I would presume to be a kitchen, a gigantic forty meter wide bedroom, and some type of pool?

Maybe it’s a decorative fountain?

Anyway, there doesn’t seem to be any way to acquire points here.

I’ll spending another few minutes searching around, just to be sure…

Yeah… besides the holographic game-board, nothing particularly stands out as something that could potentially grant points.

Play with the game-board, it seems to literally be a simple holographic game-board, with something similar to chess on top.

It’s not chess, though.

It has various pieces different colors and shapes atop, nothing seems to be triggering when I moved them about.

If there's a way to earn points from it, I wouldn’t know it.

Well, I don’t think this place is going to be any help in obtaining points.

I’ll keep the keycard, though. Might need it later if we're spending ten days here.

Heading back down to the main lobby, I noted that Rin and Kara had disappeared off somewhere.

Two other paths to check out…

Eh, it probably doesn’t mater the direction I head… Let’s try… Left.

I immediately noticed various signs depicting various activities lining the hallway.

Seems to be some type of training facility?

Glancing into a room with the picture of a sword on the door.

The room had various training dummies inside… So is this a combat practice room?

Rather crappy for combat practice if it’s against non-mobile dummies.

Slowly entering into the room, I received a system message.

<Sword Combat Training Facility Entered>

<This room has a time-dilation effect of 1:100 (1 second outside to 100 seconds inside)>

<Close the door to active time-dilation effect>

Time dilation?

Isn’t that extremely mana intensive to maintain?

Hmmm… I don’t want to get stuck in here. Something entirely possible if there’s an unmentioned time limit before I can reopen the door.

Also, I want to know if all the training rooms have this time-dilation effect.

Striding a bit further down the hallway, I spotted a door with a picture of a bow.

I received another system message upon entering.

<Bow Combat Training Facility Entered>

<This room has a time-dilation effect of 1:100 (1 second outside to 100 seconds inside)>

<Close the door to active time-dilation effect>

Seems these training rooms all have time-dilation effects, and a rather large dilation effect at that.

How could this possibly be maintained long-term?

Time dilation is ridiculously expensive to maintain mana-wise.

Not to mention complicated to maintain.

How recently was this facility created to have all training room with time-dilation effects?

Maybe… the effect’s only active when someone’s inside the room?

…that makes it plausible. Still extreme, though.

Checking around the room to see whether there were any instructions ended up fruitless.

Maybe I’m overthinking this? It shouldn’t be particularly difficult to earn points. Otherwise, Schrödinger would’ve been forced to mention it.

Still, this hallway seems to have training rooms for everything I can think of.

Including a simulated antigravity environment to presumably simulate space.

Why they have a training facility that simulates space? I'll probably never know.

Checking out the final unexplored path.

This path seemed more fruitful.

It had 10 blue doors (presumably number 1-10) with symbols carved into the wall constantly changing above them.

I’m going to presume that those constantly changing symbols are some type of countdown.

I spotted some text on the wall… but, it was also incomprehensible.

Ugh… I need to get Rin to teach basic written words for situations like these.

Unless something displayed holographic or displayed through the system, it seems to be completely unreadable.

Now that I think about it... that’s probably a remnant of some automated translation program installed on the system.

Still, this seems to be the kind of place where you’d earn points…

Testing all the doors to see if any opened ended up being pointless.

All of them seemed to be locked.

They’ll presumably open when that countdown ends.

I’m gonna have to search for Rin to obtain more information.

[Abandoned Timeline - Storage Rooms; T-9 Days, 20 hours.]

POV Swap - Kara

Rin and I discussed the past for awhile, before heading together into a corridor.

Still, it's hard to believe I hadn't seen Rin for a year.

Apparently, she'd chosen Hell Difficulty instead of Hard.

She's always been stubborn like that.

Still, compared to before, Rin seems far more relaxed and happy.

She's been telling me about her various adventures collecting artifacts and fighting powerful monsters.

They're impressive to say the least.

I stopped.

Staring at the piles of boxes, crammed drawers, and junk scattered throughout the room.

I recognize this place.

This is where I foresaw myself dying… stabbed in the chest.

With Rin crying over my body…

Ahhh! I messed up.

When I foresaw Rin crying, I couldn’t bring myself to cancel my ability.

It was the first time I’d seen her since arriving in the place. Even when she’d somehow grown animal-ears, I’d instantly recognized Rin.

…How do I fix this?

Fate always leaves a path to survival.

Always.

If there something I’ve learned since obtaining this ability, it’s that.

So, where is it?

How do I survive this?

Still, I should leave this room as soon as possible.

Until I’ve discovered out how to survive this, I can only delay.

Fate isn’t usually too picky about the timing.

I probably won’t be able to delay longer than a week though.

Should I let Rin know?

Watching Rin walk throughout the room pick up a random materials.

No, I shouldn’t worry her.

I’ll either figure out how to survive this or I won’t.

Either way, informing Rin would only cause her to worry without anything she can do about it.

Rin’s always been overprotective.

I want to solve this myself.

I’ll have to take some risks if I don’t want to end up dying here stabbed through the heart.

Still, it shouldn’t be too risky.

Fate ironically will protect me until it’s my time to die.

[Year 2, Day 91; 19 hours before Decima game.]

POV Swap - Tobias

“So, what your saying is Kara always died the same way… stabbed through the heart?” I confirmed with Rin.

Rin seemed somewhat depressed, but nodded anyway.

“And it’s always through seemingly random coincidences? With the timing being somewhat random as well?” I summarized to confirm what Rin had been explaining.

“Yes…” Rin verbally answered this time.

Damn, Kara must’ve created a fate that forced her death before entering the Decima game.

Well, this is somewhat obvious… but, I should ask it anyway.

Considering the situation, I carefully asked. “… I assume you’ve already tried getting someone with magic to heal her after she’d been stabbed?”

“The injury was always too severe, stabbing straight through her heart…” Rin explained in a monotone manner, “It can’t be healed without someone specialized in healing magic, which no one participating in the Decima Game specialized in.”

Yeah, of course not… that would make my life too easy.

Sighing to myself before speaking, “Alright, that’s enough questions for now… Please continue.”

[Abandoned Timeline; T-8 days, 19 hours.]

POV - Tobias

It hadn’t taken me long to reunite with Rin.

At that time, she’d been hanging out with her sister exploring the storage rooms I’d initially wandered through.

It was only after chatting with Rin for a little bit, that I'd learned how to earn points in this game.

Those door I discovered earlier open every 12 hours or so.

They basically involve a race to complete a randomly decided challenge before the other players.

With points being awarding on your placement.

At this point, we’ve already participated in two games, an arena combat type game and an archery competition… Rin won four points in total from obtaining first place in both of them.

Leaving us with a total of six points currently.

Both those challenges seemed to take place in some type of pocket dimension.

Again, something that should be extremely mana intensive and, logically, completely unnecessary.

It’s like whoever made this place designed it to waste literally as much mana as possible.

Yet, apparently, they couldn’t bother to even provide a bow for the archery competition…

Many people probably straight up failed at the starting-line.

Meanwhile, Rin had already fixed up her bow using parts from the storage room before we even entered the competition.

Something I’m slightly suspicious about, as it means she’s potentially reloaded at some point.

Anyway, I basically sat there like an idiot, watching as Rin use her bow to snipe target after target… It’s at times like those when I feel completely useless.

I should really avoid comparing myself to Rin.

Nothing good ever comes of it.

Anyway… afterward we’d gone to the hotel-like area and slept in that luxury suite for the night.

There’s only one actual bed in that bedroom… but, I’ve gotten used to sleeping near Rin at this point, so it wasn’t that big a deal.

Although… upon waking up, I realized that I’d been wearing Rin’s old clothes this entire time.

Including when I’d been speaking with Stanley… and Kara.

I mean, Stanley and Kara probably wouldn’t recognize them as Rin’s old clothes… but, they’re still clearly girl’s clothing…

*Cough…* Definitely didn’t get embarrassed about that.

Which leads me to where I am now… spending some time in the storage area, as Rin called it, and to hopefully manage to acquire some male clothing from among the random junk.

Sorting through various junk isn’t particularly complicated and, considering the amount of stuff in here, I should be able to find some wearable clothing.

Spotting something clothing-like sticking out of a drawer, I pulled it open.

There we go clothing! That didn’t take too long.

Ehh… Seems to be some type of leather-like jacket and wool t-shirt.

Both potentially being from some type of magical beast, considering I doubt they have regular cows and sheep here.

Well, it’s good enough.

I’ll have to clean it before wearing it.

It’s male clothing, though.

Alright, I should have… five-ish hours until the next challenge starts.

Hang on… speaking of the time, why hasn’t God-Hunter been crying?

It’s been nearly 30 hours since I last fed her.

Pulling God-Hunter off my belt, I checked on her.

Everything seems normal?

Wait… there’s a bit slightly lighter green.

God-hunter seems to have a green leaf tattoo on her handle similar to the tattoo on my chest?

Is that the world-tree’s influence?

No, wait… How does that work? How could that work?

Maybe… some kind of active connection between the two of us created a magical duplicate?

Well… It probably doesn’t matter.

If it is working, I won’t have to worry about feeding God-Hunter as often.

Since that problem seems to be solved… I’ll just deal with about it later if God-hunter complains.

Not… that I’d have the slightest idea how to deal with that problem.

For now, I’ll just pretend the problem's solved.

POV Swap – Rin

Everything's going well.

Both games ended up being the same as last time.

Tomorrow, I’ll need to be extra careful and keep an eye on both Tobias and Kara.

That’s when the cat should reconvene everyone and announce that players can steal the points of killed players.

Turning what was basically an already fragile situation into straight up hostility, especially for anyone who hasn’t yet gained any points.

… I won’t let Kara to die again.

The next competition should involve a direction confrontation between two players in a capture the flag format.

The winner stealing the flag earns 2 points from the loser.

Killing them would steal all their points.

Another example of the unnecessary brutality involved in this game.

Still, I’ve taken several precautions. Including providing Kara with several of my protective artifacts.

This time, everything will work out.