Weapons of Mass Destruction

We stop for a short break after a few more clashes. At this point, we’ve all killed plenty of lurkers, so we’re attracting a lot of attention. As always, the lurkers are going to be the most attracted to the people who’ve killed the most of them. Even so, the floor itself is huge, so we always have a few minutes before we make contact with another group.

Could we move without killing so many? Quite possibly, but even if we were to run into another lurker like Whitey, I don't think it would cause us much trouble.

Surrounded by a circle of trees, we stand there, taking a moment to eat and drink under the cover of multiple defensive arrays and sensory webs. That's when Luna decides to move in closer and take a sniff of my hand, her nose lightly brushing its back.

She opens her mouth, and the sound comes from it. "That mark, that scent has grown stronger, human."

"It's possible."

"Why didn't you bring the one who marked you as well?"

"He’s currently pretending to be asleep. And I'm not sure if he could come to the Beyond."

"Why would he..." Luna shakes her head and growls as Leticia pulls her tail and joins us.

"Don't be rude, Luna."

Luna, apparently deciding it's not worth the argument, simply closes her mouth and sits down.

"Why doesn't Biscuit talk?" Lily asks curiously. "I mean, he does, but not as much as Luna."

I shrug. "You can ask him if you want. I won't be telling it without him agreeing."

"So you know?!"

"Obviously."

It's fun to see Lily's expression. I wonder what she could be thinking.

"If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have a conversation with Soph. She made some really fancy modifications to her web, and it made me curious!" Leticia says, excusing herself, and Luna follows, her movements taking on a very protective manner—something she does every time Leticia decides to approach Sophie.

Taking her place, Tess comes closer after a quick conversation with Jean. "Half a day at this pace and we should reach the safe zone."

"Did you learn anything else in the meantime?" I ask her.

"A little. The first floor is shaped like a massive circle—emphasis on ‘massive’. Thousands of tutorials, if not more, run simultaneously, and it's believed that there are tens of thousands of Beyond attendees at any given time—maybe even hundreds of thousands. If anyone knows the exact numbers, they’re not sharing."

"Isn't that... too much?" Lily asks, glancing between Tess and me in surprise.

"Well, if we consider that every tutorial is connected to this single instance of Beyond, I wouldn't say so. Isn't that amazing?" Tess smiles. "Thousands and thousands of beyonders. You get 100 people at most from each world’s tutorial, and that means thousands of tutorials running all at once. Each tutorial only takes 5 years and then there is many more included that already ended."

"That probably means... there are a lot of planets already in the system," I reply.

Tess nods and asks with a smile, "The system is enormous and very old. Doesn't that humble you, Nat?"

"Why would it?"

"The fact that there are so many people so much stronger than you."

"Why would I care about that? Just give it some time."

"Boring," Tess complains and turns to Lily. "And what do you think?"

Lily glances at me and then back to Tess. "With my skills, I will probably outlive most of them, so I just need to learn how to help others to do the same."

"You can be so cute sometimes, Lily." Tess swoons, pulling her into a hug before asking quietly, "Remind me, how old are you?"

Lily once again glances at me and then back to Tess. "Eighteen, almost nineteen!"

That almost makes me roll my eyes and Tess notices, I'm sure.

"And I'm just a bit over twenty," she notes.

"It's still hard to believe that Sophie is older than you by two years no matter how often I hear it."

"That's rude, Lily. Look at Nat, for example. He’s older than me too, but going by our behavior, who would you say is older?"

And at that, our healer, rightly, decides to stay quiet, much to Tess's amusement.

"Min-Jae will be turning eighteen sometime after the second tournament, so don’t forget, you need to start thinking about the right gift," she reminds me, before hurrying over to Sophie, who gestures a signal about something triggering our detection arrays.

A minute later we are on our way again.

The 1st floor is enormous, just as Tess said. You can move for days at our enhanced speed and just manage to reach the first safe zone. After that, you head even deeper towards another safe zone. That one is closer, but the danger increases; there are fewer lurkers but they tend to be stronger, and for the first time, you get to meet the true monsters of this floor.

According to the information we’ve managed to gather, they mostly tend to be the millennia-old reanimated skeletons of the monsters that lived here when people first entered the 1st floor before they ended up reanimated much like the lurkers did.

Something, or someone, makes it all happen, and even if someone did happen to know the hows and whys, the censor keeps them from sharing the information even here.

So that leaves us with the question of how to progress to the second floor?

The answer, as it turns out, is quite simple.

You reach the first safe zone. And then you make for the second safe zone. When you get there then you have three ways to clear the first floor and enter the second.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

First, you look for a reanimated lurker or monster who may, on exceedingly rare occasions, have a special crystal that’s formed inside their bodies. These crystals basically act like coordinates and, with some additional work and items, can create a temporary entrance to the second floor. They can apparently be bought, are single use, and sell for a lot of shards.

Your second option would be to find one of the permanent entrances to the second floor. All of them are hidden well and tend to be guarded by something like a raid boss—a monster even stronger than a lurker that usually takes hundreds of attendees to kill or distract it long enough to even have a chance of entering the second floor.

And then we have the third, head towards the center of the 1st floor where something awaits, likely whatever being causes the reanimation of lurkers and monsters. That being likely reanimates as well, and rumor says that it hasn't been killed in hundreds of years, and doing so is said to clear the floor. That's the reason why people on the lower floors of Beyond sometimes return to the first, to kill it in hopes of better rewards, and more often than not they die trying.

The sheer size of this floor means that each of these options will take some time, but with the right amount of luck, this floor could also be cleared in a matter of days.

I'm not going to lie, but there is one option I'm really fond of. It feels like a mystery and challenge combined, and how could I resist that? I'm sure that at some point I will attempt to pull it off, even if it isn't this time, but sometime in the future. Just the fact that 4th and 5th year attendees have been known to die trying to reach the center of the first floor.

The fact there are thousands or tens of thousands of Beyond attendees—the best out of everyone from their planets—and yet they still have trouble dealing with it, just makes the thought irresistible.

But I learned my lesson fairly recently. There is too much to be excited for to just... I stop myself there. Trying to gaslight myself into that kind of thinking has never truly worked.

Tacita does reappear every once in a while, often leaving a big group of dead lurkers in her wake. At this point, I don't even want to know how many she’s killed, most of them seem to have been left in our path for us to loot—in this way, she almost seems like a mama cat trying to leave food for her kittens.

I don't know if I should consider it an act of kindness or if she just doesn't have any use for them and decides to leave the items where they are.

Or maybe it's just a payment for the bigger groups of lurkers she can't deal with and decides to pull our way.

But one thing has been confirmed for me: Tacita, with her extremely high Dexterity and that field is very terrifying, much more so than she ever was during the tournament. Even though her skillset isn't all that good against huge or flying monsters, she is very effective against anyone around her size.

Sometimes I move a bit ahead to finish off a group of lurkers trying to run away or prepare some grand attack, and in those cases, I can see her fighting. Even lurkers over level 300 tend not to notice her before their heads fly off. The weapons in her hands are extremely sharp, and the multiple daggers hidden across her body each seem to have their own very different effects, and she frequently swaps between them.

After one of these fights, I finish off two lurkers preparing a large-scale attack. Just as she finishes with hers and moves a bit closer, taking a seat on the branch of a nearby tree, watching as I cut a giant lurker apart.

The man seemed to have some weird-feeling way to move mana through his body, so I'm checking to see if it’s at all similar to my Mana Circuits or something else I could use as inspiration.

A small stone hits the back of my head, and I look over at her.

She waves shamelessly, and a bit of mana glows at the tip of her finger. She moves her hand at an incredible speed, drawing an emoji in the air.

ლ(¯ロ¯"ლ)

"I'm learning stuff."

(￢_￢)

"Sure, and why the hell are you even here? Were you spying on the Beyond Community so that you could join at the same time?"

|･ω･)

"So very sneaky, I'm sure it was extremely difficult to spy on us while we were chatting out in the open."

Another small stone hits the top of my head.

(ಠ o ಠ)¤=[]:::::>

"You can try anytime."

A flicker of interest flashes in her eyes, and she leans closer, her muscles twitching, eager to move, to attack.

Mana and kinetic energy do the same inside my body, my eyes activating, in a clear challenge to her.

A challenge I hope she will accept.

(╯°益°)╯彡┻━┻

Tacita disappears.

My body moves, and the Resonance Flow field surrounds me, slowing anything that moves within it by absorbing its kinetic energy.

Within it, Tacita's movements slow down, but with wild animal instinct rather than skill or knowledge, her field adapts and her movement returns to that same incredible speed.

I boost my movement more, and rather than relying on my eyes, I focus on tracking the disturbances in the air around me.

The dagger playfully moves toward my neck as I absorb my inertia, shifting in place, absorbing it again, and moving once more. I repeat this multiple times in half a second—something that would tear a normal body apart. After all, humans aren't meant to move like this.

As the dagger passes by me, my hand shoots toward her, kinetic energy flowing through my body and my feet sending a burst into the ground to move me to the side.

I miss, and so does her strike at my neck.

She pulls back, and I boost myself ahead in a surge of quick movement to follow her.

I duck under the swing and then use Wraith Dance to bring me back as the dagger passes through the space I once occupied three times in succession.

Tacita appears in front of me in a movement reminiscent of Wraith Dance. Her eyes shine under her messy brown hair, and her mouth curls into a smile. Her dagger crashes against one of my own woven out of mana, and I change its shape, causing it to coil around and grab her dagger. I boost my body back, and I drag her with me, trying to pull her off balance.

But she lets go of her dagger before I can do so. Her figure blurs and disappears, but I follow her movement and...

I release a burst of kinetic energy pushing myself back, then again to the side, and then Wraith Step to move even further away.

Another spike of danger raises the hair on the back of my neck, I duck and kick behind myself, weaving mana around my forearm in an attempt to deflect a dagger that seemingly comes from nowhere, managing to slice through my protections, drawing blood and poisoning me.

Thermal energy concentrates around the wound, and I let it burn the flesh, the golden flames surrounding my forearm and scorching away the poison in the process.

Tacita appears again, the way she was confusing my kinetic movement senses dropping as well. She smiles even more and happily waves the dagger with my blood on the blade.

Wow.

So that's how it is?

I let my heart beat without trying to calm it down. Armor covers my left forearm once more, and a dagger forms in my right hand again.

Part of my Burden Enhancement Inscriptions dissolves, and the kinetic energy immediately starts moving so much easier through my body.

This time I allow much more of it to flood me, nearly emptying my Vortex Core, and I take a stance, deactivating my Mana Wavelength Iris and solely relying on my kinetic and thermal senses —not to track her, but to watch for the slightest change in the air around us.

ʕ •̀ o •́ ʔ

Tacita pulls daggers into each of her hands. One of them has a transparent blade made of crystal and the other one is made from a black metal with blue veins running through it. She lowers her body, taking on a stance more reminiscent of a wild beast than anything a human would take.

I know she's getting more serious too.

Before either of us can attack though, a powerful shockwave washes through the area, followed by three more in quick succession.

Then I get a hurried message from Sophie. (Nat, we might need help here.)

(Oh, come on.)

Tacita notices my hesitation, and her daggers disappear back into her clothes.

She rolls up her sleeve and flexes her biceps, showing off the small peak of muscle victoriously.

"That's not it," I correct, trying to defend myself, but she’s already gone.

For a few seconds, I stand there, motionless.

With no other options, I move toward the source of the explosions.