Victor woke up refreshed the next morning to multiple new notifications. He received one notification from the system, another from the school, and a third... said he had been added to a group forum? Victor shook his head and easily decided to leave that one for last and open the system notification first.
Victor's eyes then widened when he realized he had automatically joined a school-wide event.
[Ojus School: Assassin's Game]
[Game Description: The location of the game will be set in the Ojus school virtual campus. For the duration of the game, each remaining student will be obligated to stay within the simulated world until the end of the game or until they are eliminated. Each player takes the role of an assassin trying to eliminate all other players until they are the last one standing.
Each player will be armed with a knife and another player's name as their target. A player can only be eliminated by the knife of the assassin hunting them. Upon a successful elimination, the hunter will earn one point and be assigned a new target from the remaining players. The game ends when one player is left standing.
Game Timer: One Week
Point-based Rewards: 5 white shards for each point earned.
Placement Rewards: 1st to 5rd place—tier one reward, 6th to 50th place—tier two reward, 51st to 400th place—tier three reward to be redeemed from the school.]
Victor sucked in a cold breath. 'Assassins game? So we're going to kill each other until there is one of us left standing.' Victor had played many games in the simulation where he killed opponents, but many of them were wacky avatars, strangers, or some friends he killed in harmless fun. However, that environment was never on their school grounds, filled with 100 students who may actually harbor thoughts of killing him while those thoughts are secretly encouraged by their teachers.
Perhaps this was just another way to prime them for how bloodthirsty these competitions would start to get in the future.
Victor saw that he had already joined the game and noticed a timer reading 10 minutes, which indicated how much time he had left before he needed to enter the game location.
Not yet pressured by the time, Victor decided to read the notification sent by the school next.
"Dear students,
Today, you have been invited to participate in a schoolwide simulation game. There are many awards available for those who perform well, but you must remember you are still obligated to attend your regular classes during the scheduled times. Those who fail to show up for their classes will face a penalty decided by their teachers. Those who are caught eliminating another player will face an elimination caused by the teachers themselves. Your class time is not to be interrupted during the length of this week.
Your Principal, Ojus."
Besides the letter, there were some additional notes about updated changes to the main server for the simulated world that would be introduced upon entering. Unfortunately, Victor would be heading to the school server upon entering, so he would only learn about those changes once he left the assassin's game.
Finally Victor turned his attention to his communicator, reading the name of the group he was just added to.
'Domestic Students Alliance? What the hell?'
After reading the group description, Victor finally realized what was going on. This group was formed this morning as a reaction to the behaviors the transfer students had inflicted on the original ones. This page's users could share info about other students' behavior or other helpful information they learned unrelated to the transfer students. Overall, the primary purpose of forming this group was to provide mutual support when needed.
When quickly checking who the group admins were, Victor wasn't very surprised to see the name Keiba at the top of the list along with the rest of his friend group. Keiba was probably the most popular student in the school. He was not only well liked amongst his peers, but he also excelled academically, ranking near the top of the school. Keiba himself was a sort of goody-two-shoes who often went out of his way to help others, so this kind of behavior was quite typical of him.
Keiba's friend group and Victor's had a sort of friendly rivalry going on for the past couple of years, with neither group gaining a definitive conclusion as to which team was better. Victor himself didn't take it too seriously, but both teams had some fans who were way more invested than those personally involved. Perhaps in the following months the two groups would end up clashing just like old times.
Victor then found that there were a few students missing from the group. After a bit of investigation, he learned not all 1000 domestic students were invited because the outliers were spotted hanging too closely with the transfer students.
'So the factions are already forming...'
Victor almost caught up with the latest posts when he saw one of the students mention losing a white shard to a strange game out in the fields, asking them to find the game master.
Several other people commented under the post detailing their experiences with the same game, all describing having lost within the minute they stepped into the game area without having any time to explore. All the info indicated that whoever was running this was probably the same person as yesterday.
Victor replied to the main post, encouraging other students to report the times and locations of their encounters with that game in the future so other students would know the common places it appears. He also asked many forum members to help determine the size of the game zone so that others could understand its limitations and avoid it.
Of course Victor wasn't asking for this information out of selflessness, but because he wanted better chances when he challenged the game. Whether or not there would be kind and selfless people who would offer up such info... Victor decided to leave that up to luck.
Once he finished reading the three notifications, Victor spent the rest of the time in his room cleaning himself up.
When the timer had a minute left, Victor lay down in his sim-pod, ready to enter the game.
Victor sighed. 'Either I lose quickly and my body thanks me for it, or I win it all and my bank account thanks me. We'll see which one's which.' Victor thought as his consciousness blurred and he opened his eyes to his room within the virtual world.
Victor quickly got his bearings before walking to the window. Looking outside, the campus almost looked like a one-to-one reproduction of what it was in reality. However, to keep students from being confused, the designers added some obvious signs and details so no one was ever truly fooled. One of the most obvious was the numbers floating in the sky, constantly indicating the current time. And right next to it was a countdown timer on the verge of reaching zero.
The moment the countdown ended, Victor saw a white light beside him, which caused him to turn reflexively towards it. Floating in the air before him was a standard-looking 20 cm knife with a black handle. Victor grabbed the knife from the air and turned the blade, inspecting it from different angles. Along the spine of the blade, he recognized the name of another student printed in black ink: Corin.
"The target and the knife together in one place. Convenient."
Each day Victor would usually have breakfast, and there would still be another hour of time before class started. Now that he was in the simulation, he would be getting his sustenance through the sim-pod, giving him a little extra time before training.
Victor decided to use his time wisely, setting an alarm before diving back into his ability space. Soon Victor was awakened from his ability core a bit over an hour later, having absorbed another 3 white shards.
Victor walked towards the door, grabbing his knife and hiding it under his clothes to ensure it was not immediately visible. He then reached into his pocket, retrieving a nondescript dark grey metal ring, which he immediately wore.
Recognizing that he was the target of someone else, Victor chose to exercise caution and use the ring to lessen the likelihood of his hunter spotting him. Once that was complete, Victor was finally ready, leaving his room and making sure to take a less frequented path to class to reduce his chances of being seen.
During his travel Victor encountered no incidents, but it seemed many other people had the same idea as him, so he saw more students than usual on this path to class. Complications truly started to arise when Victor reached building B. With 220 students all within the same building, it was difficult for people to pass by without entering close proximity with each other. As such, there was a strange phenomenon where most people were traveling along the wall, making sure no one entered within arm's length of them.
A small group of students even held their knives out in the open, waving them directly at anyone who approached. Victor watched this all as he slowly passed by unseen, eventually approaching the open door to his classroom at the same time as some of his other classmates.
Unfortunately, Victor let his guard down too soon because right as he reached the door, Victor heard a scream of pain. Victor froze as he saw blood begin to pour out onto the floor just a couple of meters in front of him. One of Victor's classmates stood with shock and anguish on his face, staring down at the knife embedded in his stomach.