Chapter 271: Broken Biome
———Lynda———
<11: 01 AM>
“...There used to be a city block here, right?” I asked, seeing nothing but a massive crater where another patch of buildings should be. There’s nothing left there aside from some pipes in the ground, if you can even call that ‘something’. “I didn’t sense anything beforehand, so this must’ve been a while back.”
“Maybe we should’ve upgraded the map to give us the live status of each point of interest.” Glery remarked. It cost quite a lot and we don’t have enough points going around to splurge on the upgrades just yet. “As for who did this… Hmm… It looks like everything was destroyed in one attack, so it’s probably someone from the Perfect Class.”
“…Let’s keep quiet for a while. What biome is the closest to us again?” Can’t say I like bad news like that.
“Mountain range. So we have to navigate the uneven terrain tomorrow.” Right…
“Guess we better get moving. Better mentally prepare for a rough start tomorrow.” None of us can fly, and even if we can, the people in that class probably know how to and can easily catch us. We have to travel on foot and that’s gonna be a bit of a pain. “At least we’re not going to a desert or the ice area. It could be worse.”
Let me check the map again and see if there are any points of interest there that should have a place for us to rest… It’s hard to find stuff when we only have the basic function and not much else. The premium version is a lot more expensive.
“Let’s just get there first before doing anything else. We shouldn’t waste time looking at the nasty handiwork in front of us.” I would rather go to the safe zone as quickly as possible and find an area for us to operate in than staying around here even if the culprit is probably long gone.
———Fiss———
<12: 03 PM>
*Splash* *Crawl*
“Haaaa…” I let out a large sigh after getting myself out of the water. I recovered… way quicker than I thought I would. Maybe it has to do with my affinity with water, or maybe it’s just because I chug a whole load of pills... Either way I need to make my way to the next safe zone. I haven’t been paying attention about where I’m going, or maybe I just forgot. The few agonizing hours kinda drowned everything out for me…
…Anyway! Travel time… How do I even figure out where I’m going as it is? I think I got launched extremely far. Let me at least get out of this forest and look around for maybe another point of interest.
Ugh. I’m completely drenched. At least my body is not-so surprisingly resistant to getting all wrinkly, so it just looked like I only fell into a pond and not because I was in there for hours.
…All my pills outside the mana ones are all gone though, unfortunately. It’s good that creating water out of thin air is surprisingly easy, though that may have something to do with this area being surprisingly humid.
Now where the heck am I? I walked out of the forest and suddenly I could see a coastline? Did I get launched onto an island or something? I need to look around a bit more to get a good idea of where I am.
…I can’t quite tell. The massive body of water expanding out makes it look like I’m near the edge of the map, but I don’t even have a good idea of what the map looks like. For all I know they put down a massive lake here just for kicks.
…Maybe there is something underwater? There should be secret areas scattered about and hiding it underwater is a pretty classic trick.
*Splash*
The water is nice and clear so the visibility is pretty good. Hmm… It’s pretty lifeless here since there seems to be no animals or monsters in this place. That does mean it’s easier for me to navigate around without getting interrupted. I’m pretty sure other players won’t even think about diving in, they probably can’t stay underwater like I can… If I don’t forget about any fish people out there. I think I would’ve noticed one of those by now.
Hmm… There are a lot of rock formations down here, but nothing that really leads anywhere. The lake is vast and there is a lot to explore, even if it all seems to simply be cosmetic…
…Ah! I saw something. It kinda looks like a cave? An underwater cave like that probably has something special in there, right?
…What’s the rule on underwater caving again? I think I should get out and gather my breath first before going in.
*Splash*
“Haaa…” I need some nice fresh air before going in. I still don’t fully understand how this body works. The retractable claws are easy to figure out, but how I breathe underwater is still a work in progress. You would think that would come naturally but apparently that’s not the case.
*Splash*
Either way it should be enough to traverse through the cave. Going through the entrance and then slipping through the small passage doesn’t take much time.
*Splash*
“Haaa…” Thankfully there wasn’t any branching path before I ended up on the other side of the cave… Hey, is that a map!? Talk about luck! Gimme that! “Ah.”
…Oh wait. I think it should… Let me pull out my device and check again. Yep, it’s now an extra function that’s unlocked. Let’s see how it looks… Oh! I’m in the safe zone right now. That’s convenient.
Now let’s zoom out and see… Huh? What’s this?
There seems to be a ring of biomes that we have to cross through eventually. I’m now in one of those areas. Looks like I’m in a lake so massive there are multiple islands emerging from it. The other areas seem to have harsher temperatures or terrain like an area that consists mostly of rocky terrain and another that looks like a massive mountain range with extremely uneven terrain. Also usual stuff like a snow and desert level. I conveniently got launched right into an area that played to my strength.
Seems like I wouldn’t have any problem navigating this area and even choose to get out of this ring area and go to what should be tomorrow’s safe zone.
As for the thing in the middle of the map that everyone will probably end up at… No idea what will happen then. As it stands we haven’t lost even a hundred lives yet. I would’ve thought there’d be a bigger drop off.
Either the top players are slacking or everyone else is playing very cleverly. I don’t really know enough about the schoolmates here to make a conclusion. It doesn’t help that the other people in my class are also newcomers. Their perspectives are probably similar to mine.
…Do I have to worry about oxygen levels here? Because if not then I can stay here until the next day… Where would I sleep though? Floating on top of the water surface?
Either way, if I stayed here I probably wouldn’t have to worry about the fox woman that wears a shirt with some red paint on it. That punch to the gut was absurd. I really don’t want to run into someone like that again…
…If I remember correctly, there’s this one group of people who are said to not only be the most academically talented, but also absurdly strong. I think everyone had talked about them and even put a face to all of them at this point. I’ve never seen that fox woman before, so she probably isn’t a part of that.
That means that she’s far from the strongest person in this game. If I almost got one-tapped by her then my chance of winning is basically in the dirt. Just what sort of destruction can someone even stronger than a person who can casually tear a massive hole in a giant building do?
———Lynda———
<2: 12 PM>
“...What the fuck?” What should’ve been a chaotic mountain range that span a large distance have a convenient and smooth route to the other side. “...Hey. This isn’t the handiwork of who I think it is, right?”
“Unfortunately, it’s probably who you were expecting.” Glery said before taking a long sigh. “That means if we thread this path the odds of us becoming her next victim is quite high.”
“Would really love to think it's at least one of her classmates instead… Discounting Kenni.” That way we might be able to escape using our current toolkit. With those two nothing is gonna work. The gap is too big unfortunately. “...So do we use the path so graciously given to us or…”
“If we want to risk it a little bit. We still don’t really know what her approach would be. You should have a better reading on her character than me.” Glery deflected the question back at me. I mean that’s true and all, but isn’t she the smarter between the two of us anyway? Besides, it’s hard to even tell what she’s planning. I can never get a good read on that woman.
“...If it’s just based on my gut feeling, it’d be crazy to not take this easy route.” She cut through the entire mountain range and the biome looks to be bigger than a city at minimum. I can even see the final area in the distance, not that we can go in there immediately.
“In that case, let’s not waste any time.” She said and I nodded in response.
It’s not exactly a smooth route with the gash in the ground creating its own uneven terrain, but compared to climbing those mountains it’s way easier.
“...Yeesh. How long is the path to tomorrow’s safe zone?” We’ve been walking for a long while at this point and it doesn’t feel like the view towards the horizon has changed. “Just how massive was the attack for it to cleave through all of this?”
“Unfortunately we can’t simply calculate the damage with our eyes alone. I don’t believe either of us even know for certain how much an inch is without a ruler.” Glery remarked.
“Do we at least know how long we’ve been walking for?” I think it’s probably easier to gauge distance from that, if only because we have a clock built into the device.
“I haven’t been checking it.” She bluntly answered. Great, so neither of us know how long we’ve been walking for.
…At least we have plenty of time. We’re already in today’s safe zone. We’re just trying to cover our asses by going to tomorrow’s safe zone so we’re ahead of the others and call dibs on any area that’s safe and hidden.
It’s obviously just a speculation on our part, but it’s pretty clear that beyond the biome ring is the safe area for tomorrow. Today we were pushed into it, the next day we’re being pushed out. The day after that… Well, it doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.
“We’re almost at four-fifty…” I remarked as I saw the number popping up in the sky. I’m not really sure if the rate is higher or lower than expected. I think the people who were eliminated yesterday were all reckless folks that don’t consider ambushes and the like.
I can only hope that by the time we reach the endgame it won’t be a hopeless situation for the two of us.
…Come on now. Get us outta here already!
“I think you have underestimated how massive a state is. While from the map it doesn’t look like the ring would cover such a massive area, the-
“Yeah yeah I get it.” She doesn’t need to lecture me about that. She saw my face twisting up and immediately tried to say stuff.
Obviously neither of us should be complaining or yapping when we got such an easy way to pass the biome. The others probably don’t have much luck.