I calmly walk through the strange door and into an alleyway, the sound of traffic and voices come from somewhere nearby.

The others follow me out from the door, with Isabelle coming through first and the Asian business man coming last.

I walk out of the alleyway and into a busy street. The stores have Asian lettering on their signs. I think it is Korean, but I can’t tell for sure.

“The devils appear to have sent us to Korea. South Korea if I am guessing right.” The Asian man says from behind me, spooking me.

“What is the infection that we need to fight?” Nicolas asks. The Spaniard studies everyone passing us by carefully.

Most of the passerby look at us strangely, but none of them start growing second heads.

“Maybe it-” Isabelle is cut off mid sentence as a scream reverberates through the street.

“It appears that we have found this infection.” Anton says, pushing his beret up with a finger.

“What are you waiting for? Let’s go.” Nicolas responds, moving at a fast pace towards the scream.

The rest of the group follows him, their hesitation obvious. More screams come from the direction that we are walking. The street we are walking on is rather busy and the rush of the crowd intensifies as the screams are heard. Most people are running away from the screams, but a few curious souls are heading in their direction.

I hear the sirens of the police in the distance and frown at the lack of progress our group seems to be making toward the screams.

I think for a moment, trying to come up with a strategy on how we can get their faster. My mind goes to those spells that Mr. Monroe used so that the class wouldn’t be disruptive. Maybe I can try something similar?

I grab the psi in my communication chakra and manipulate it almost instinctively.

GET THE FUCK OUT OF OUR WAY RIGHT NOW. Please. I send the mental wave into the crowd, manipulating it so that it ignores the Beta Testers. The crowd stops, stunned from the mental manipulation, before the crowd parts before us like the red sea.

The other Beta Testers stop as well, confused by the strange behavior of the crowd. I continue walking nonchalantly as everyone in the crowd starts running again, while giving our group a meter of space.

I feel the stairs of the other Beta Testers on my back, but ignore them in favor of continuing towards our destination.

Finally I see it, the “infestation”. Spiders, millions of them, in all shapes and sizes were flooding out of portals that seem to be opening and closing at random.

Why does it always have to be spiders?

With their fuzzy bodies, long spindly legs and beady little eyes. I mean they’re just so… so cute! I hate having to kill the poor little things.

Alright, so that spider spinning up that poor civilian in webs isn’t as cute, but still! Spiders aren’t evil.

I sigh as I realize what I have to do. The creatures may be cute, but they are still deadly monsters that want to suck these poor people’s blood.

“[Enhance Body]” I cast the mana enhancement on myself, idly noticing as the other members of my party do the same.

I run up to the spider who is currently wrapping up a human. A brown spider the size of a car, two eyes stare at me from the center of its head. It hisses at me and before I can react, It is descending on me with its stinger at the ready. I jump out of the way, barely dodging its attack.

My mind goes to those common jumping spiders I would see around the house. The ones that could move faster than my eyes could follow. Multiply that speed by this creatures size.

It’s fast.

It comes at me again, but this time, I block its stinger with the invisible shield that my gloves make.

Wow. Those are some pretty colors that stripe its thorax. I wonder if there is a smaller replica of this spider on earth, it might be cool to find one. Sadly, I’ll have to kill this one-

A gunshot rings out and the spider stops mid movement. Viscera lands on me. I have to say, I much preferred its blood inside its body.

I look at where the gunshot came from.

The asian man is laying on top of a car, a sniper rifle lined up in front of him. That must have been the thing he had in his suitcase.

I look at the other Beta Testers who are involved in taking down other spiders. Anton seems to be keeping his distance, helping anyone who needs it, but not getting into any kind of close range fight.

Hans and Nicolas are taking down another jumping spider together, while Isabelle is approaching a spider that thinks itself hidden by blending in with the building. Finally, I look at the dead spider in front of me and sigh. Today is going to be a weird day.

I leave them to their fights and move to the man who is partly wrapped in webs. I feel his neck for any vitals, like my father taught me to do.

I can feel a faint but real pulse. I pause for a moment, not really sure what I should do. There is probably some kind of venom running through his system, but I don’t know how to detect it with my powers, let alone treat it.

An Idea pops into my head as I think about using one of my more recently acquired skills. “[Psi Manipulation]” I use the man’s own psi to detect the poison flowing through his system. “[Clear Impurities]” “[YOU BETTER HEAL RIGHT NOW]” Casting the spells that I learned when I first dealt with Mr. Monroe’s bullets, I try to save one man’s life, while men and women battle around me.

An hour passes with the five Beta Testers and I loosely working together to take down the spiders. Occasionally, we could see other Beta Testers fighting in the distance. Once, we even saw a military plane observing the spiders, before a type of spider we hadn’t met yet, shot it down with webs.

The farther we traveled in the territory of the spiders, the stranger and the more powerful the spiders got.

We decide to stop before entering the first spider web we find. Currently, we are all in a small market eating some snacks as we regenerate our mana and other power sources.

I am sitting on the counter enchanting masks against poison for Nicolas and Hans.

“It might be a good idea if we got to know each other while we are here.” Anton says, finishing the last bite of some kind of bun.

“I think that’s a terrible idea.” Isabelle responds, taking a sip from a beer bottle.

“Why do you say that?” Anton frowns at her.

“Because we might be forced to kill each other at some point.” Isabelle says without emotion, taking another sip of her bottle.

Everyone turns their attention to her at that statement. She looks at us with a sad smile. “Come on. It isn’t that hard to believe. You guys might not talk to the gods yet, but I’ve had a conversation with one. This is The Game Of The Gods. What do you think our role is in this game? It isn’t to become best buds. We are supposed to fight for our gods and kill for them.” She takes a gulp from her bottle. “My god asked me to kill any supporters of certain gods. Including Isis.” Isabelle gives me a direct look.

I finish enchanting the mask and set it on the counter. “Your god sounds like an asshole.” I respond, yawning into my hand.

I wonder what the time difference is between here and my home?

Isabelle chuckles. “Yeah. He is.”

Nicolas looks at the both of us confused. “Why haven’t you killed Elena? I am sure that your god would have rewarded you.”

My gaze narrows in on Nicolas. What a strange way to say that.

“I’m not so far gone that I would bloody kill a sixteen year old girl because some powerful man told me to.” Isabelle says bitterly before jumping off of the counter. “We should get going. We are wasting time and points.”

No one argues with her as we gather our things from the store. I notice that more than a few of the other Beta Testers grab some extra food for their inventories. Not a bad idea.

I approach the web cautiously. It is a tunnel web, leading through the next part of the city.

“Maybe we should find a way around this web?” Nicolas says “I have no desire to fight one of these things on their own ground.”

“I agree.” Hans says, looking at the web intensely.

“Does anyone here have a good control of fire?” I ask, wondering if we can just burn the thing down.

“I have some-” Nicolas speaks up, but is interrupted by the ground erupting next to him. Long legs reach for the spaniard.

Hans is the first to react as a giant sword crashes down on one of the legs. The spider screams in pain as it quickly pulls itself back underneath its trap door.

Nicolas stares at the piece of leg a foot away from his body. “That is the third time we’ve been ambushed.” He kicks the dead leg. “Eventually Hans won’t be fast enough to react.”

“Should we go after it?” Anton asks, studying the piece of ground that looks completely normal but houses a twelve ton spider. “No.” He answers his own question with a shake of his head. “It would take too much time.”

“Nicolas. You said you have some control over fire?” Isabelle asks, moving over to the leg and putting it in her inventory.

“Yes, but not much, not enough to do what Elena is thinking.” Nicolas taps his chin in thought.

“[Event Points]” I say bringing up the screen that Hans had discovered.

 

As far as we can understand, the ranking ranks us amongst all the Beta Tester teams participating in the event.

“Light the web on fire.” I say frowning at all the poor spiders that will be killed because of what we are about to do.

“Maybe you misunderstood. I do not have enough control of the fire to stop it from spreading-”

“I understand. Just make sure you have your mask on tight.” I interrupt him.

Nicolas looks unsure. He glances at the other Beta Testers, looking for their input.

Isabelle speaks up, “Do it. We can’t fight these spiders on their own turf. And this is a very fast way to farm up points.”

“You realize that there may still be people trapped in there…” Anton says.

“None that are alive.” I respond with a sigh. If I didn’t get to someone affected by the spider’s poison right away, they died within minutes.

“Just kill the demons.” The Asian man says, “We have wasted enough time as it is.”

Nicolas raises his hand and a flamethrower’s worth of fire comes out of his hand, lighting the web on fire in seconds.

I watch as the flame spreads along the web with awe. It moves almost faster than I can follow with my eyes.

Strange screams come from the fire as it spreads farther than I can see. I tear up at the screaming wails of the creatures inside.

It takes a moment for the smoke to hit us, but I find to our good fortune that the Detox spell I put on the cloth masks, keeps the air clean of smoke.

My mouth opens in surprise as the fire spreads to other webs and buildings killing the creatures and dropping the motherload of points into our laps.

“[Stop Right There]” I cast, as the other Beta Testers cast their own protective shielding. The flames spread around our shields.

The trap-door spider that had tried to grab Nicolas jumps out of it’s hole, already caught on fire. It turns to us with anger clear in its inhuman body language.

It jumps at Nicolas who hastily moves out of the way. It throws one of its legs out impaling Nicolas’s shoulder and setting him on fire. Anton shoots the spider with his revolver, impacting it with some kind of force wave and knocking it away from our group.

Nicolas falls to the ground and Isabelle hastily covers him with a blanket from her inventory, smothering the fire.

I ignore Nicolas’s screams as I run up to him and use my abilities to heal him. After a few scary seconds, he passes out. I breathe a sigh of relief as I manage to prevent permanent damage with my healing spell.

I look at the blue window telling us of our massive increase in points. It is still slowly increasing, but most of the damage had been done.

I sit back on my hands, feeling rather done with the constant battles I have been going through for the past week.

At least we’re a lot more likely to get whatever that prize was for the top scorers of this crazy “event”.

I look at the flames that have calmed down now that they have run out of web to burn.

I chuckle as the words to the song Highway To Hell come to mind. “I didn’t expect it to work quite this well.” I say to everyone as they also stare at the carnage one simple flamethrowing spell had caused.

No one responds.

I look down at Nicolas who is sleeping away not noticing the destruction he had caused.

I take a glance at my status and wonder why I haven’t gained any experience or gold from the creatures we had been killing.

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General Info: Elena S. Trudeau, Age:16, Lvl:3, Class:   Protector, Mana:120, Health:240, Psi:140

Sponsor: Isis

Titles: Beta Tester, Crazy In A Good Way (Is that even possible?), Watched By The Gods, Chosen Of Isis

Special conditions: Most Definitely Not-Normal

Physical Condition: Healthy

Physicality: Athletic 93%

Brilliance: Doctorate 4%

Equipment: Gloves(unique), Detox Mask(common)

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I’ll probably find out soon either way. There can’t be much left of the infestation after what we did with that flame.