The Subway's Reward

Hm.

Maniac's cloud snack right off the bat how, lucky his high luck stat was paying off, he pinched himself to make sure it was real and sure enough when he looked again

'...'

<Ketil's Fingernail>

He shook his head a bit to get out of his daze and in response to the item.

Not bad but not good enough, he was willing to skip it.

V got back on the train and continued to stop at each station, each time suffering disappointment, it wasn't all that bad since all items down here were good however.

Hoh!

Verathragna felt his Sixth Sense pointing him a direction further down the subway. There was no reason not to trust it, in fact, if he couldn't trust his other senses he could definitely trust it. He got back on the train and rode it until he was where his sixth sense indicated.

On the platform on this station was.... A humanoid figure sitting down, It was highly unlikely that it was a trap nonetheless he cautiously drew closer to touch it and view it's options.

<Damaged Battle Puppet>

Reflects its users abilities. Able to follow commands.

Two short sentences but they were enough to shock him, this puppet could serve as a second him! It could fight for him with his own abilities. It was the perfect partner.

'Damaged? meaning originally it was better?.....sigh judging from its options it's not a growing type artifact and I don't have the expertise to repair it.....'

'And isn't this sort of broken...but cloud snack was kind of out there when you think about it....'

Anyways it was great to have a extra set of hands that wouldn't betray him and followed his orders to the letter.

'This is it.'

No need to continue down the line.... But this was the last stop anyways.

He returned to the third floor and began scoping the area. He cringed when he thought of the toughness of The Rokoko lizard's body, none of his weapons could pierce through at all. Without his Tai Chi he would be dead right now. He gazed at the corpse of the beast that almost took his life.

The scenes flashed through his mind.

The beast with its glistening scales, slitted eyes, bloody maws, bloodlust which he felt for the first time from it thickening the air like it was a material existence that was pulling his hairs on end, no goblin, green worm and especially no zombie, could compare to what he felt staring it down.

His fingernails dug deep in his palms to wake up his shaking body, as an animal himself, he had a survival instinct as well, one of the things he had prided himself was his self control, while his body wouldn't pump blood faster if he told it to, he could get the job done with just a rapidly beating heart.

He lowered his centre of gravity, loosened his stance, and waited for it to attack him, thankfully it only bit viciously at his head, like a true beast guided by instinct, a predator. He knelt while shoving his podao up in the roof of its mouth quickly taking out his hand.

Ripp

Zzz

He couldn't avoid the entirety of those large fangs which ripped through his clothes and tore through his skin.

He took charge as it howled in pain, he gathered the bag of weapons he dragged along to switch out with his crappy equipment drops. He threw the bag of moderately sharp weapons down its throat, he jumped on its scaley body whose protrusions, pierced into him and held down its mouth for dear life.

It didn't end up swallowing it but it was severely injured and was only on its last legs. He was flung off. He struggled to get up, and took a Tai Chi stance, tai chi was supposedly comprehended from nature itself, if that was true, it should be useful as that thing was living.

He did his best, but he was lacking, he did something awesome here and there with Tai Chi while facing off with it but he couldn't really fully apply it but he knew, if properly used, it'd be one of his greatest survival cards.

He finished it after an extended battle with the scars to prove it, without the mana doing a little cracking to those close that seemed to have a skill within them, he would be stomach less right now.

This furthered his resolve to get stronger, he wasn't Kang Hansoo, he didn't have his abilities and his experience, he'd have to work hard to even be similar thankfully the sixth sense stat cleared up that gap a bit but that was far from enough, he'd have to beat him to all his would be great feats, in these five years ahead of him.

There were 134 weapons able to be made in the tutorial area, he only knew the specifics of one but with the general directions and his sixth sense, he had no doubt he could make number 17 from the Rokoko Lizard, all it took was his handy intuition and a little luck, eventually he'd get there.

He dissected the beast and found several odd sacs.

The were full of an unknown purple liquid with holes in the sacs yet the liquid didn't fall out. In addition to this, there was an odd colored section of its vertebrae, the lizard hard sharp stone like spinal protrusions on its back like a dinosaur, each was incredibly sharp.

He gathered the materials and further scoped the area, to find several dark brown coloured metals in the surroundings. He took them all to the convenience store he had otherwise ignored till now for the day's end.

All tutorial areas had one similar to this apparently, like a reward for your troubles however most didn't think to come down here until the final few days, missing the opportunity for the hidden piece that disappeared on the first day.

It was a valuable source of food that would be hard to see from this point on.

Humans could definitely become transcendentally strong as they acquire runes.

The best part was that the number was basically being twisted so the efficiency rose explosively.

It would make sense that one would require twice as much food if your strength is doubled but the amount of strength increased by runes didn't need extra food.

The Otherworld's adventurers could eat and sleep at a similar pace that they were at in their own world and still maintain their battle powers.

Even if you have the strength that could smash apart mountains.

But in other words if you couldn't even maintain that much then your battle powers will sink down tremendously.

He saw this situation as both a plus and a minus, leaning towards the latter, if you are the same amount, that means your body was the same in a sense, you had a monsters strength but not his physique which was a huge loss if you thought about it.

But things remained the same, remained human.

In order to maintain the top condition, food, sleep and rest was needed.

And sudden exercise would make one even hungrier faster.

His mind wandered as he used his hands to feel out the sharp scale like protrusions that had a warm feeling, he used those protrusions to cut and shape the metal he had compressed, afterwards he put the spinal scales and metal into the pot of solution, which bubbled rapidly.

A normal pot couldn't hold such a long and wide material, thankfully there was an industrial pot in there for some odd reason.

The thick Brown metal spear compressed even further and extended to 1.5 metres, the fat blade like head didn't even need sharpening, as it was already sharp and didn't expand but compressed into a smaller state, it was even sharper than before, with a flat wide blade edge and a circular uniform shaft.

He picked it up and did a couple thrusts finding them satisfactory. It was already nightfall but the moon would only have him and the monsters to keep it company.

He cooked and ate goblin meat to gain that item before beginning his hunt.

He gazed above while eating. It was cold quite cold, a chilly night which he always enjoyed was now a piercing cold feelings that gnawed on his very soul. Even the round thing he liked to watch at night with the stars wasn't the same.

Blink

'Sure enough it really did it, The moon blinked its eyes, I keep hoping somethings would be different but it seems.....sigh.'

The surface of the moon split open with a crack and then a frightening eye appeared.

The iris on the center of the eye moved back and forth without stopping as it scanned every living organism around.

Finding only him.

It is really a god-forsaken world, the weak will all perish. That's why he had to harden his heart.

Not a single moment will be left in peace.

Firstly, because of that <Moon>, all the food that one had in possession will burn down and disappear.

Which meant that it was impossible to stock up on foods and then nibble away at it.

If you leave it in the convenience store that it does not count as being in one's possession so it remains. If he had company the convenience store would have roused problems, thankfully he didn't.

The residents of the Otherworld must scavenge food everyday.

No matter if you search for every food within the corners.

No matter if you kill a beast, find a way to get rid of the toxicity and then eat it.

That item, he needed it because of this.

It was a reward that could only be gained on the first night of the Tutorial and only when you clear the mission while the Moon was up.

<Selfish Wealthy Man's Food Jar>

The requirements were rather simple.

<Within the 6 hours of the first night while the moon is up, cook up a beast and then eat it>

The problem was that it was on the first night.

Most people will figure out their situation after the first night and then will zealously hunt for food.

Beasts will naturally come into their views and naturally they will get their carcasses to cook them around the second day but a situation where one cooks the toxic beast within the first day to eat it was rare.

The Jar that you obtain after all this is rather simple.

It hid the food away from the eyesight of the Moon and always kept the food inside fresh.

The name was a jar but it was in the form of a small pouch.

'And the storage amount is important'

The storage amount was five times the amount of food you eat within 6 hours.

1 person's worth meant 5 people's worth of space, 10 people's worth of food eaten meant that you could store 50 people's worth of food.

The fact that you could store food was very advantageous in this situation where that damnable <Moon> was up.

He had to eat as much as possible.

He learned a technique that was suitable to burn calories long ago. It wasn't even a technique so to speak, if you truly worked your brain to study and think, it'd naturally use up energy, food could supply that energy, this he quickly ate while thinking of the most complex mathematical equations to have plagued the earth, and judging what death was.

His food intake increased steadily without interruption as everyone was dead.

He stabbed at the meat with the kitchen knife that was almost completely dull and tasted it while chewing on it.

Meat from which the toxins were perfectly removed by being boiled with blood and having been mixed with the Green Worm's pancreas.

Boiling goblin meat in goblin blood riddled it if the toxins, you just had to avoid the liver and intestines. No one would know this until after they left the tutorial however, unless they had a curious scientists with loyal companions.

******************

He canvassed the area to find monsters.

The main goal he had right now was to evolve his fighting style even further. It was possible he had his own trait but not everyone awakened their traits immediately, It was unlikely that he had the Seven Stars, but even if that was the case, the Three Gates were still necessary.

Kwaaaaaark!!

A short beastly purple skinned monster resembling a goblin attacked him, with its huge canines unable to concealed by it's jaws, covered in saliva.

He hadn't come from the future and while he had created a file able to accessed through his glasses, His Recreation File which included all novels from his previous life, which he wrote from memory with the stimulus from technology.... He only knew what was written.

Yes, he did read the unedited draws so he was aware of all the ingredients of the Hardening fluid and a few others however he only knew that and not much more, a novel was less than an anime in world building and Even an anime couldn't reveal all the world it depicted had to offer. If the author was a prophet of this world, like the bible, it took several prophets to write a book and even then it wasn't enough to depict reality.

A lot that would be immensely useful to him was glossed over.

He could only treat this world as seriously as he could for every single minute, without carelessness.

He focused and honed in on the mysterious feeling birthed from his Sixth Sense, let loose his body which had Tai Chi engraved in his very bones, his hand swerved and twisted like a snake before drawing his blade that left only a few thin marks on the creature's corpse.

His brow wrinkled in displeasure, that was meant to be an internal attack, it shouldn't have left a mark, the majority of the force was contained but it seemed he was still lacking.

If a Tai Chi master saw what he just did, their jaws would drop in shock. While it was possible to such a thing with fists, it was even more complex to do with a weapon much less a slicing type weapon. This was only possible due to the mysterious nature of sixth sense which encaptured the world.

He focused on perfecting his control of his forces and one day soon, he hoped he could turn a hard strike inflicted on himself to a soft strike reflected on his foe.

He couldn't afford to act cool and calmly kill even though that saved energy, staying quiet was eating away at him.

"Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!"

"Die!!!!!!!!"

That only attracted more monsters but he didn't care, his adrenal glands went into overdrive as he didn't stop fighting at all, literally, the runes gained restored his body to an extent so he wouldn't collapse in fatigue, at least not immediately anyway.

He hunted non stop for the remaining days only stopping to meditate on the eve of the fourth day.

*************************

Some time before.

"Gah! What the Hell?"

"Where are we?"

"Kokoadoco?"

"Oi which bastard is playing games"

A collection of students from V's previous highschool were also summoned to the Otherworld. Within this chaotic mixture of students shouting here and there was a tall blonde woman in high heels, unlike the students she was noticeably older. She was dressed in a white coat like a medical personnel and she too was confused and looking around.

"Oi you bastard did you do this"

"Konoyaro"

Two male students grabbed each other by the collar and duked it out. They were both confused and that was the way they choose to cope with the situation, normally Minerva would intervene in such a situation but she was confused as well.

Suddenly a small figure dropped from above, it was a palm sized winged creature that looked kind of like tinker bell from Peter pan, but more beautiful and exotic.

The tiny thing opened its mouth," Welcome to the Otherworld"

Those words were the starting of Hell for all of them, the two students who were fighting at first were both killed as demonstration as she called it, to give runes, A bold student with spectacles and freckles put up his hand to receive the runes. Afterwards, they suddenly appeared.

No, they were summoned by that thing. 200 green abominations they were told to fight them, normally they'd kick up a fuss being told to randomly kill something but these things weren't human and that thing killed as easy as breathing.

They had no choice was what they told themselves, however that wasn't all, at first they were reluctant to fight however,

"…Huh?"

As they walked back slowly somebody stopped and moaned.

And that somebody got frustrated and spoke out.

"What are you doing? Keep moving. We need to get away."

The student replied at those words.

"No… this is weird. Something is here. Mid-air."

"What?"

People started moving towards in a hurry at those words.

And then shouted in frustration.

"Fuck! What is this! It's blocked!."

"Here too!"

The students started hitting the wall as they shouted about.

At that point somebody pointed something out

"Hey… this thing is slowly moving towards us."

"…What?"

People started leaning against the wall at those words.

And they all frowned.

The wall was slowly pushing them back.

Kiiiiiiik!

As they heard the cries from faraway they looked in that direction.

At that location the goblins were also getting pushed towards them.

As something kept pushing them they grew frustrated and started hacking away at the void but nothing happened.

Kaaaaaak!

"Fuck…"

As they saw the goblins staring at them they gripped their daggers harder.

At this point they had to fight no matter what.

At that moment, somebody fell to the other side.

"Huh? What? How did you get there?"

"Uh… I don't know. It just happened to be that way here?"

One person got through the clear wall.

And in the air where the young man passed through a number came up.

<49>

"…49?"

It was then chaos started the children had yet to see the ugliness of the world. So despite all their bravado they weren't heroes or fighters, in that manner they were even worse off they all grew up in a box of metal. Shielded away from the world.

They were terrified to the bone of the prospect of death.

"Gah you fool get out of my way!"

"Move!"

"No you move!"

"Damnit"

"Chikusho!"

They frail rich second generation kids rushed chaotically to the 'door' that appeared, tripping over each other like maddened animals. Some students were injured in the stampede to the exit that had appeared.

50 students exhaustedly escaped, the remaining 50 which included her had to fight the goblins, most of them shook just from holding the dagger has they never did something even remotely similar before.