The line to the ration station was quite long the next day.
A crowd of people piled up outside, all waiting to be let in so they could receive some food, courtesy of some of the more well-off players. Players who had more than enough World Shop tokens.
Among those people was Neve. Standing near the back, she was waiting for what would be her final meal before heading into the Final Challenge.
Of course, no one here knew that. So, she didn't receive any special treatment. Not that she cared to have any.
"Fuck, it's cold out today. They really weren't lying when they said the climates would be harsher, huh?" A man remarked in front of her.
"It snowed a couple of days ago, that was crazy. It had never snowed once in Starlight," another responded.
"I'll take a little bit of snow over the fucking heat we went through this summer, personally."
Neve kept her head low as people conversed around her. She tuned out their words, focusing only on the battles that played back in her mind.
[… I messed up in that last dungeon. Someone almost got killed because of me,] Neve thought, sighing. [I didn't think a dungeon full of spiders would have a troll as the boss at the end, though. I might have bought some serrated throwing knives if I'd known that.]
When the world changed, Neve had been offered three different paths to choose from.
The path of the warrior, the assassin, and the mage. Each one branched off into different classes that would determine Neve's starting stats and skills. Neve, of course, chose to become a healer.
Most people weren't alive to see any of that, though. 95% of humanity died over the course of the last year. Most of those were in just the first month.
The two guys chatting in front of Neve were levels 13 and 15 respectively. The lady standing behind Neve, wearing a mage's robes and carrying a white staff, was level 10.
Somehow, Neve was outpacing a lot of these people, even though she only went on dungeon runs when she was broke in terms of WS tokens, and even then, she only took ones she was sure would be easy.
Like everyone else, Neve had to get used to the way things were, or else, she would die. Sure, nowadays, there were military tanks at almost every corner just in case monsters sprang out from the nearby abandoned buildings, but when the Unity Trials first started, there was no such thing.
She and everyone else had to fight. They killed monsters, they watched their loved ones die, and they tried to survive, up until the forces that had brought the Unity Trials to humanity gave them what would be their objective from now, till humanity died.
The Final Challenge.
Everything that existed in this world, from the dungeons the humans had to clear to the WS tokens they stacked, to the levels they gained, all of it was for the sake of preparing for the Final Challenge.
"Did you hear?" A man asked in front of Neve and the girl snapped out of her meditations. "The next 100 are heading out today."
"Ah, yah, heard about it on the guild forums. So hard to believe that anyone would volunteer for that. I can't tell if they're brave or if they're suicidal."
"What's the difference?"
Neve could answer that question, though she only did so internally.
The difference was that the "brave" players who volunteered did so because they genuinely believed they could give humanity the reprieve they desperately needed. People like Neve, however, had no such delusions.
She volunteered because she'd already had enough of this new world, but she wasn't brave enough to put an end to all of this herself. That was the difference.
"Ah, I can kind of understand it, though. Grinding every night for Activity Points just so you don't get a huge debuff to all your attributes blows."
That guy didn't know the half of it. It was exhausting. Especially when every expedition, every dungeon, and every boss fight, rested on your shoulders.
Before, when being a healer was just a class in a videogame, if Neve didn't do her job right, she would get flamed in team chat. Maybe she'd get called a slur if the person she was playing with knew she was gay and was feeling particularly irritated that day. That was all.
Now, failing at her job meant people died.
Thankfully, that hadn't happened yet, but it was something that always lurked in the back of her mind.
The stakes were somewhat higher, one could say.
As the line got shorter, so too did Neve's patience.
If it was up to her, she'd go clear a dungeon and use the WS tokens to buy some pizza from the World Shop. As that one guy had alluded to earlier, though, the 100, which included her, were likely already gathered in front of the portal. She didn't want to keep them waiting.
"Alright, here you go ma'am," a level 13 dark-skinned woman with curly brown hair, a bow on her back, and leather armor said as she passed Neve some lasagna on a paper plate.
"Thank you," Neve spoke so quietly the woman didn't even hear her, though she didn't let Neve know that.
With her meal in her hands, Neve walked and took small bites of it, moving through the scarred streets of Starlight City.
Everything around her was reminiscent of when the Unity Trials first began. The crashed cars, the broken windows on every building, the fallen lampposts, the holes in the ground where monsters had sprung out from.
Neve could recall it all almost perfectly. From the way her heart had pounded against her chest to the way the blood of the monsters she killed fell onto her skin.
How she survived the first few days on her own was nothing short of a miracle.
[… I've had enough.]
Her phone vibrated several times in a row.
[Ah… So, the list of the 100 players who will be entering the Final Challenge must have gone public.]
It was likely some of the people she'd cleared dungeons with were messaging her about it. So, she largely ignored the notifications. She did not need whatever empty words of encouragement they'd be offering. She just wanted to get this over with.
As she arrived at the public square where the portal was located, a massive crowd was gathered before it. The portal rested at the doors of a massive, spiraling tower. The size of the skyscraper added to the imposing feeling of the obstacle that lay ahead.
Neve finished up her meal and tossed the paper plate aside. People didn't care too much about littering anymore.
Because Starlight City ended up being one of the cities in the world with the highest number of survivors, the Forces That Be saw fit to place the portal to the Final Challenge here. So, if a player from another country wanted to participate, they'd need to come here to do so.
Thus, players from all over the world were currently gathered here, belonging to each of the guilds.
The fanatical Church's Guild, the valiant Steel Hearts, the all-female Valkyries, the enigmatic Golden Dragons, the mysterious Bloodletters, and the Council's Guild, which was a governmental organization representing the council of humanity.
All of these guilds sent some of their best players, all volunteers of course, to the portal today. And, Neve would be joining them.
Suddenly, she kind of felt out of place.
She looked to her left and found a man with silky black hair and blue eyes, wearing a set of black and gold dragonbone armor. A player by the name of John Dulan who was level 41. Belonging to the Golden Dragons, Neve knew him to be one of the most famous players in the world, a man whose clips she'd seen online a few times.
There were some other standout players. An assassin known for… not exactly leaving a whole lot to the imagination when it came to her outfit, Jessenia Malenza, a Venezuelan woman from the Bloodletters guild, could be seen sharpening her knives atop a broken-down bus.
Father Uriel, a pastor turned wizard, was off to the right, praying with other members of the Church's Guild for safety and protection.
The highest level that Neve saw was John's.
The lowest was a tall, but young-looking boy with ragged black hair standing close to her, who was only level 8 a whole year after the Unity Trials had started.
"Kinda feels incredible, doesn't it?" He asked, suddenly.
"Hm?"
"Being in the presence of these guys, I mean. They feel like they're from a different world," he stated with a chuckle and a polite smile.
"Sure... guess so."
"And yet, we're all here for the sake of humanity. For the sake of regular people. I think there's something neat about that."
"Sure... guess so."
"You don't talk much, do you?"
Neve shrugged.
The boy just laughed as he turned toward the voice of someone who then spoke up.
"Alright!" A bulky man wearing bronze armor with no sleeves and a giant axe on his back greeted them all. "Is this everyone who's going to be coming in? Better be, cause we're not waiting any longer."
[Why even ask, then?]
A few reporters were nearby. They got the cameras out as they saw that the man was about to say something that sounded important.
[NNC, huh.]
Out of curiosity, Neve got her phone out and went onto their site. They were livestreaming this moment to over 1 million viewers.
"Okay! First things first, my name's Carson. I'll be representing the Steel Hearts. If you're here, I'm sure you all understand how things work, but I'll remind you just so you're sure you want to go in." The crowd grew silent as he spoke. All of the players turned toward him as his booming voice reached every single person gathered there. "There are no cameras inside the Final Challenge. In addition, we've tackled this thing nine times already and there has never been a single survivor. So, we have no idea what's waiting for us on the other side of this. All we know is that if we finish this, all monsters in the Overworld will disappear for 10 years. That, my friends, is what we're fighting for."
It was a very good reason to want to complete this dungeon or whatever it was. Not something that needed elaborating on, and yet he did.
"Do you want to raise a kid? Do you want to focus on training? Expeditions into the lost cities and rebuilding society? Completing the Final Challenge will give you that chance. It's scary, I know that. But, think about it this way. Would you rather keep farming Activity Points, hoping you meet the quota just so you don't get punished by the Forces That Be, grinding for World Shop tokens, or would you rather give it one glorious chance at getting this shit done!? Is it the latter? Then, join me, everyone! Today, we fight for humanity! We fight for an end to this, even if it is just temporary. It might just be all we could ask for."
Some of the younger people in the crowd cheered. Neve quietly gathered her bearings. Slipping under everyone's gazes, she joined them as they began moving toward the portal.
"It's time! Let's head out!"
With those words, the 10th attempt at beating the Final Challenge had begun. As Carson had mentioned, humanity had tried 9 times already and all of those times ended with the presumed death of the players involved, since no one who ever walked into the portal came out.
Neve didn't really care that she was going to be one of them.
All she hoped for was that she'd get a chance to use the World Shop in there before she died.
She wanted to have a slice of pizza before it happened.