123: Hope

Hope

Neve and Lia both hit the ground. 

Erin was by Neve's side in an instant. 

The healer used what little strength she could muster to pull all of her Minor Healing Potions out of her Inventory. She couldn't even bring them to her mouth, though. Erin had to do that for her, pulling the caps off and pouring the potions' contents past Neve's lips. 

Her wound healed quite a bit thanks to the Angel Set. It was enough to where Neve could wait for her mana to regenerate just a little and cast {Great Healing Dart} soon. 

Neve choked on blood. She coughed it out as Erin gave her an intensely concerned look. 

"You damned lunatic," Erin said with a chuckle, though she still looked worried. 

Turning her head toward Lia, Neve smiled a little, showing off bloodstained teeth. 

"It worked, didn't it?" 

Erin just shook her head. 

Beside them, Lia laughed, coughing up even more blood than Neve had just done. 

"And here I thought I was the one who wasn't normal," the woman said. "A strategy like that was always bound to be the end of me. I cannot comprehend it." 

She sounded a little too eloquent for someone who had a massive hole in her chest, but Neve just chalked it up to video game logic and moved on. 

A short time later, Erin disappeared and Neve's mana regenerated enough for her to finish healing herself. 

Walking up to Lia, Neve took a few slow, steady breaths as the other woman glanced at her. Her eyes were yellow once more, and the smile on her face had lost none of its sinister edge. 

"It is quite a shame that things must come to an end like this," Lia murmured. "Though, I suppose there is some solace in the idea that you will make my strength yours, now. You denied that there is a piece of me within you so strongly, and yet you will do this. How ironic." 

Neve tilted her head, narrowing her eyes at the fallen enemy. 

"What? What are you talking about?" 

She figured that perhaps Lia was talking about the EXP she would gain once Lia died, but this sounded a little too... literal to Neve's ears. 

"Won't you?" Lia giggled. "Don't you want this?" 

She moved a hand toward Neve, then.  The healer flinched instinctively, but there was nothing in it. A loot menu popped up, though, and Neve saw:

Hollow Soul

{Unique}

{Consumable - One-time use}

{The soul of a person whose entire existence revolved around ending others' lives. Throughout many years, this soul has absorbed the strife and pain that it caused, strengthening it.} 

{Effect: Instantly gain 15 Speed and 15 Precision permanently}

{Val: 0 WST}

{Note: This item only becomes usable once its holder has experienced a traumatic enough event after obtaining it} 

"Hehehe," Lia laughed some more, "this is the product of all my hard work. It's funny, I don't even need to ask whether you'll accept it or not. The look in your eyes tells me everything I need to know." 

Neve swallowed. 

Hesitantly, she placed the item in her Inventory. 

"There," Lia said with a grin. "Now, whether you deny it or not, one day I will become part of you. I hope something terrible happens to you soon. Ohhh, I cannot wait~" 

Before she could speak any longer, Neve raised Sayran's Holy Blade and brought it down on her neck. 

EXP Gained: 2500

WST Gained: 5000

At the same time, a message appeared. 

{Quest Gained!}

{Activate the Hollow Soul} 

{Reward: 10 IP}

"Oh," Neve muttered as she tore her sword out of Lia's throat. "So, this is the Floor Quest, then? So, Tamira, can I complete this Floor Quest outside of the 4th Floor?" 

"Indeed!" Tamira replied. For once, the snake chose to appear physically, out of Neve's thoughts, freely roaming the air right in front of her. "This item is intended to be a pivotal piece of a player's journey in the Final Challenge, so you can take it with you and it'll activate automatically whenever something... interesting happens. Upon it doing so, you will receive the Influence Points for this Floor Quest as well." 

"Oh. Nice." 

Neve leveled up four times from this boss fight, bringing her to this status: 

Level 62

MP: 1100/1100 (+300)

EXP: 130/620

AP: 3690

IP: 30

WST: 20916

---

Endurance: 40

Speed: 36

Precision: 30

Strength: 5

Arcane: 80

The portal to the next floor appeared to Neve's right. 

With the Floor Quest received, Neve did not care to go looking for every single piece of loot available here.

As bitter a taste as it left in her mouth to behave the way Lia would like her to, Neve couldn't deny the simple truth. 

Thomas and his group were on the 8th Floor, right now, while she was just about to enter the 5th. 

She needed to move. She needed to make progress. 

[I'll go through these floors as fast as I can,] she thought, looking up at the bloody moon. [If I don't kill them, if I don't end the lives of those fuckers myself... Then what even is the point of all of this? I should have just curled up and died back when the massacre happened.] 

She shook her head, walking toward the portal.  0

[No. I have to do this. I *have* to.] 

---

{Charlotte} 

The journalist slept with one eye open last night. 

She hadn't seen it wrong. Her eyes hadn't been playing tricks on her. Her name was on the list of the Hidden Blade Guild's suggested targets. 

Tossing and turning in her bed as the cold morning air rolled in through the windows, she understood that this was a fight now. 

This guild wanted her dead. And she wanted this guild gone after what they'd done to Jack, and after learning of the threat they posed to society. 

The question was, however, how exactly could she accomplish this? 

Charlotte got out of bed and dragged her legs into the living room. She'd gone to bed wearing only her underwear and hadn't bothered to put anything on now either. As she went through her usual routine, making some coffee and putting on the news, she pondered the matter over and over again. 

A guild without structure. A group without morals or codes. An entity that existed for no other purpose than to attempt to speed up the process of the world's end, through chaos. 

As Charlotte sat on her couch, her legs crossed and a mug of hot coffee in her hands, the sound of the lady on the tv speaking faded into the background. 

[Informing the police about them wouldn't do anything. They have no structure. No real leader. That lady who spoke back at the stadium, they can probably replace her in an instant if she was to get arrested. Spreading the word about them would be more detrimental than anything else, too. Their ideas would bury themselves in more people's minds. No, I have to do something else.] Charlotte thought. [... If I want to take them down, if I want them to fail, then, first, I need to comprehend what victory means for them.] 

Closing her eyes, she was reminded of what she saw back at that stadium. 

The people who'd come to listen were hunched over and paying the speaker their full attention. Charlotte could see it as vividly as if she was there now. 

[Why...?] She wondered. [Well, it's because at least a few of them agreed.] 

The speaker's words went through her mind. Charlotte walked back into her room to retrieve the notepad she'd written on. The ideas that woman had put forth were painfully simple, and...

[Relatable, to some people,] Charlotte thought. [They agree that the world is doomed. They agree that there's no point in continuing to fight back, to continue participating in the Unity Trials. Why?]

That part wasn't terribly hard to figure out at all.

[Probably because of what they've been through,] she reasoned. [They've seen loved ones die, they've seen other players meet all manner of gruesome ends. They've tried time and time again to adjust to this new world and...] 

Here it was. The crux of the matter. The reason, Charlotte assumed, why an average person could consider joining the Hidden Blade Guild.

[... They're hopeless They've given up. And, all these people want now is for their suffering to end as soon as possible, but they're too afraid to pull the trigger on themselves, so they want the world to end and for it to bring them down with it.] 

Pacing throughout her home, eventually, Charlotte came to a stop at a window and peered out.

Even now, in these early hours, players were moving from one place to another, geared up and ready to fight. Some of them had likely missed their AP quota and were debuffed, desperate to find an easy dungeon so they could remove that status effect. Others were probably low on WST and couldn't afford to pay for breakfast this morning. 

Average people, each with their own stories, goals, hopes, and ambitions. After years of reporting on events happening around her, Charlotte had seen many of them. 

And, it wasn't hard to imagine how someone could just give up on the world around them. Hell, Charlotte had done so herself. 

It was what she'd talked about with her boss before. It was why she mainly focused on stories that were fun to investigate, not necessarily meaningful. She had believed that society was doomed as well. Only, these people clearly came to an entirely different conclusion based on it. 

This realization, however, brought with it the only thing Charlotte could use to fight back.

As she put her coffee up to her lips, her hand froze just before the mug reached them. A smile tugged at her lips. 

Here it was. The only way in which Charlotte could defeat these people. 

[Hope,] she thought. [I need to bring hope to the community. I need to convince people that the world can be saved. That humanity can make it through the Unity Trials. If that happened, then... Then this group would be viewed as nothing but what they are. A bunch of psychopaths.] 

What she needed to figure out was: how?

But, at that moment, Charlotte looked through her notifications and saw a message that gave her the answer. 

{Donation Received!} 

{Neve Stephens: 21 WST}

{Donation Received!} 

{Neve Stephens: 15 WST}

{Donation Received!} 

{Neve Stephens: 11 WST}

As soon as she saw it, Charlotte's eyes gained a certain glint. 

This was it. 

Among many different potential actions, this could be the biggest dagger she could slip into the Hidden Blade Guild's neck. 

[Well, well, ma chérie,  I think it's time we truly get to know each other better.] 

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