***Scarlet enters the chatroom***

PR3DAT0R_696: disgusting little fkers I tell you. reddit fills with shit every election 6 months on then off. why pay more if you can brainwash the horde in a woop?
Knight: Buying votes achieved new heights after 95% got naked on social media and google archiving our every step
Knight: If corporations can buy our internet history to target each of us with personal ads then why politicians can't do the same? Or their Corporate Big Brother
PR3DAT0R_696: i agree. or just big brother :-o. not like intelligence agencies dont have their own narrative.
MagentaFey: shut up you two. We have the eighth.
Scarlet: What's going on?..

...Alice wondered as she chewed steamed rice with actual meat in it. For post-breakfast, she pampered herself with some fancy meal. Minus 360 BP to stay full for half a day, possible dungeon activities being taken into account.

The chat was organized quite simple. She had come up with a nickname and that was it.

PR3DAT0R_696: eighth! 8-0 *О* finally. {} you must be that shorty. you can leave your name out, but me is Jean. o(ٿ)o
MagentaFey: and she is she, to rule that out.
Knight: Talk went astray. No theme is banned here, you see. No mods.
PR3DAT0R_696: come on teach, why the spoilers? T.T she should learn the truth the hard way.
Scarlet: You mean no society control whatsoever?
PR3DAT0R_696: i like her. she is smart. ^_^
Knight: Yeah. No one cares if you are racist here. I hate whites btw.
Knight: Or not ;)
MagentaFey: we must expect changes in quests now. Notify the rest ASAP.
MagentaFey: Scarlet, as Jean said, I am professor Lauster. You are the last from our group from that day to come online. Hence possible changes since the system can now process us as a group. Jean, Robert, I need to log off now. Take care every1.

***MagentaFey leaves the chatroom***

That was abrupt. Alice should have at least teared up by an online meeting after a horrible day, but she had slept for more than eleven hours that the system had set for her. Fortunately, without any dreams whatsoever. The girl had awoken hungry like a wolf in the middle of winter and was now busy pacifying it. The chatroom somehow took a back seat.

PR3DAT0R_696: so-o-o... (-_-;)・・・well, first this chat has /help and /commands.
Knight: Only in your head this is first.
PR3DAT0R_696: shuddup. :-P
Scarlet: I can see it's a pretty advanced chat.

Alice agreed. The said chat was even showing now 'Knight is writing...'

Knight: The system imposed a game-like system on us. Pun intended. If you have any questions about the system itself, we figured out some things, but it also prohibits us from sharing any info about our training so we can't really help you with advices on that. You can try though.
Knight: Jean is trying too right now, yes?
PR3DAT0R_696: shuddup! :-E

As Rob said, Alice tried to write 'Emerald Dungeon', 'ants', 'centipede', 'was injured' in a rapid succession, but nothing showed up in the chat.

Scarlet: Yeah, it just erases altogether.
Scarlet: Wait, what do you mean training? And why can you tell about it at all then?
PR3DAT0R_696: system said so before transporting us? :-/ wait asec.
Knight: The Training Grounds of Apocalypse.
PR3DAT0R_696: training grounds of abogralipsys (‡▼益▼)  rob dammit. see logs.
Knight: You didn't notice?

'I didn't'. Alice started and then deleted a honest confession. There was lots of crap in system messages.

Scarlet: Apocalypse, hah
PR3DAT0R_696: yep. the beast itself. ٩(͡๏̯͡๏)۶
Scarlet: and we are being prepared for it.
PR3DAT0R_696: yep.
Knight: Our common agreement that Apocalypse means "The End Of The World As We Know It" and not "wipe out all people by an asteroid or whatever". You have a window to look at Earth, right? The university resumed activity in that lecture hall in half a month.
PR3DAT0R_696: can draw conclusions from there.
Scarlet: ...
PR3DAT0R_696: or yeah you dont know yet. (ノ_<。)ヾ(´ ▽ ) we have different timelines here. i was the first and it is a month for me. 32, 34 days, dunno hard to track.
Knight: Basically, everyone here accessed chat on their first to third day. But the starting line isn't set and our clocks are ticking with different speed, too. Also the chat doesn't have time stamps because of it, I think.
Scarlet: ...it still's sinking in.
PR3DAT0R_696: me not a fighter. civilian classes started earlier. you must have combat training right? *->->— we figured combat and non-combat thing on our own btw. system doesnt prevent guesses.
Knight: So if we eight were the only people in the world to disappear in plain sight literally no one would use those facilities like ever.
PR3DAT0R_696: when they started new lecture i was like ARE YOU CRAZY? (」°ロ°)」
Scarlet: But if it happens commonly all other the world, shutting down every building is not an option. Got it.

A month has passed already. Unless the system is gonna send us back into different timelines I'm just seeing a recording. Alice bit on her nails as Jean and Rob started sharing more unverifiable theories and wild guesses. They seemed to form a habit, but their words blurred in the eyes as her thoughts went elsewhere.

Alice never expressed herself well, but she was really, really glad she was not alone. From the moment she had logged into the chatroom, she got some peace of mind and even her body filled with vigor. She was happy to talk, or more just see life go on even in her... their circumstances. It felt healthy. Almost normal. Like a support group.

Month...

She still couldn't believe it. Dad must be going crazy at home. Mom is probably overworking, she always... Does Ben work on this case too? Not my case, but if a whole lot of people went missing then FBI... Did Dan confess to that girl? I hope he did, even if I don't like her... or was any of them was snatched by the system, too?

Liv... Alice's hands trembled when her mind touched the name she had been striving not to think about until now. Olivia. Her best friend. Don't you dare to take her too...

"Wait." Suddenly, an opposite doubt appeared. "Apocalypse is coming. It must be, or else what's the point?.. Should I hope for the other way instead? So she, they would be prepared?"

Her fingers reached the keyboard.

Scarlet: Can we die during this training? Like in games, do we redo everything after a failure?
PR3DAT0R_696: spoiler section. you say me. cannot answer yes or no. (￢_￢;)
Knight: Personal opinion: do not die.
PR3DAT0R_696: but do not die.
Scarlet: Thought so.

"It can be DS-like. Not like I am going to check." Alice couldn't possibly go and get pwned on purpose even if the system itself said it was ok and offered some rewards for an attempt to boot.

Scarlet: I have some questions about attributes, skill and so on. And advice about this system shop.
PR3DAT0R_696: sure. shop us is kinda spoilirish though.
Knight: We have a guy, his is a Sage. Basically intelligence-gathering class.
PR3DAT0R_696: be kind with him, i think he is autistic. /:-] mildly.
Knight: He also got an ego.
PR3DAT0R_696: well scratch it dummy. (￣ ￣|||) won't lose anything.
Scarlet: So he what? Can get answers from the system?
PR3DAT0R_696: kinda. dunno really. name is Mike. anyway, what do you wanna know?

My questions, huh. What attributes beyond physical are out there, what exactly they do, what about magic... I have many.

"Magic first," she murmured to herself.

PR3DAT0R_696: no mage here.
Knight: Same. We have some second-hand info, but you better ask Teach, Sage or Nomad. Are you in a hurry?
Scarlet: No. Curiosity.
PR3DAT0R_696: right? know the feeling ( ´ ∀ )ノ～ ♡ we have a rule you question the one who knows the exact answer unless emergency. sage will flip.
Scarlet: Then a shop question. I looked through the stuff here. Want some protection, but don't have any clear idea.
PR3DAT0R_696: o-o-oh this is the right address.
PR3DAT0R_696: see? ヽ(´ー )┌ 

Yes, Alice indeed saw one very prolonged 'Knight is writing...'. Now she figured out his nickname. Speaking of which,

PR3DAT0R_696: lets talk Scar. why this nickname?
Scarlet: ... actually, I have no idea. Not my usual. It popped up in my head on its own so I went with the flow... why?
PR3DAT0R_696: just ┐(￣ヘ￣)┌  mine fromthe time i cosplayed a guy. sounds like a guy would come up with, right?--> (＃＞＜)
Scarlet: I guess?

Totally an overkill, the girl judged silently. As they waited for Rob to post his monumental treatise, Jean somehow guided her to talk about pets. She was a cat person, while Alice was a dog one... sort of. Max, their German Shepard, seemed to never really like her back. Once the girl was walking him and was dragged into a puddle, face down. Also, her very brother Dan laughed his ass off instead of helping her.

As Alice was sharing her little grievances, time passed. Just... passed. Without killing things, running from things, hunting things or anything things. Even Knight's answer didn't motivate her back to alert mood and the guy tactfully joined the small talk about pets, then her skipping school, then two weeks of university... about everything and nothing.