Joanna was so excited to hear Seth let her join his party. Seth was still insistent that he wanted her to be more useful, which was why Mia would always be close to Joanna.
The situation in the building was much better than before; there was no sign the roof was going to collapse over time. Twelve hours had passed since the game started, and there was no sign of the insect monsters trying to break through.
Mia and Joanna were already fast asleep in a room with a long sofa in it. They didn't seem to be worried about anything, even though there were probably roaches all around the building and on the roof.
Seth was still awake, not yet closing his eyes in a highly alert manner. With the help of candles, Seth sat on the floor with his hands, reading a book, a business book that he didn't understand, nor was it useful in a situation like this.
Occasionally, Seth also opened the status menu on his system bracelet, showing his EXP and GP numbers were much higher than before. However, for now, he was more focused on the thick book in his hand.
When Seth was killing time with the reading, he was startled by a thunderous sound coming from the sky, a song that could be called the floor quest theme song that came from the Skywatcher headquarters' spaceship.
The song was playing loudly, echoing through the city until people were distracted, those asleep were awakened from their slumber, and the frightened grew even more anxious when they heard it.
"What is it?" asked Mia, her voice faint as she got up from the sofa, different from the long sofa where Joanna had fallen asleep.
"I don't know," Seth said.
The man decided to walk over to the glass window, opening the curtains slightly until Seth's eyes could see outside the building. His eyes clearly witnessed a red light starting to fly in the sky, aimed at the spaceship above him.
Realizing this, Seth immediately pulled the curtain forcefully until the window was fully exposed. Mia, who saw what Seth did, immediately gasped as she walked over to him.
"Why did you open the curtain?" Mia asked, curious that the expression on her face was one of anxiety.
"Those red lights. Those are the roaches' eyes," Seth replied.
Mia, who was still half drowsy, tried to focus her attention on the direction Seth was pointing, a red dot of light that seemed to keep flying away from the city and upwards, precisely gathering in one place.
"What exactly is going on?" asked Mia, curious.
The song still sounded lively and booming, the pounding drums and tense melody making this floor quest feel like a colossal event. The music continued to play endlessly, with notification screens popping up from each participant's system bracelet.
Seth looked at his system bracelet, clearly seeing a certain ranking with a title that read 'the tentative acquisition of shards of life'. Seth nodded. It was the ranking of the participants who managed to collect the most shards of life.
"We're in fifth place," Mia said, pointing to a party with the name Seth Party.
Seth's party was in fifth place with 52 shards of life. Mia squinted. The number of shards of life was not the same as what she had counted before; from the 42 shards of life she had, it was now 52, an increase of 10 shards of life.
"But why do we have 52 shards of life? I did the count. We only have 42," Mia retorted.
"I took the shards of life from the other participants downstairs," Seth explained, speaking without hesitation.
"You took them? But how?" asked Mia, curious.
"You don't need to know that. What matters right now is that we're fifth in the game standings," said Seth.
There were four parties above Seth's group. In first place was Askelon with 150 shards of life, then in second place was Redemption with 145, then Arcada with 120, and finally Migle with 76.
Competition feels so tight to get the title of champion in this game. Askelon and Migle are groups that are actually under the popularity of Redemption and Arcada, but they can show their fangs in this game.
"There are three winners on this seventh floor, so we have to collect at least more than 100 shards of life to compete for the title," Seth explained, occasionally looking ahead at the cityscape that was no longer filled with crawling insects.
Mia pressed several menus on her system bracelet, showing the time remaining in the game today. She continued to watch it until the time on the system bracelet showed about 60 hours left.
[Game time:]
[00:59:59:55]
"There's still plenty of time left if there are no more monsters to hunt," Mia replied.
"Do you know anything about this?" asked Mia, her face full of curiosity.
Seth cleared his throat. He tried to recall his memories back when the first loop hadn't happened yet. The stronger he tried to remember, the headache in his head began to recur until the man had difficulty standing up.
"Akh!" Seth complained.
Mia already knew the symptoms. She began to help Seth retrieve the bottle of tablets containing medicine to relieve the man's headache symptoms. Mia held the bottle out to Seth. The man grabbed it and took three tablets straight to drink.
"Huft," Seth complained, his breathing sounding ragged after trying to survive the pain in his head.
"Are you feeling better?" Mia asked. Seth nodded with his eyes still closed tightly.
Seth stood back up by staring steadily at the outside of the building. He remembered very well what was happening right now, the changing of the day accompanied by the changing of the monsters on the floor.
"Do you remember anything?" asked Mia, still holding Seth's bottle of headache medicine.
"The changing days," Seth replied.
"Changing days?" asked Mia.
"Every time the day changes, the previous monster will be pulled back and replaced with another one," said Seth.
"Oh, I see. That's why the roaches fly back up because their time is up. I was right, wasn't I?" asked Mia.
"If my guess is right, then we'll be fighting carnivorous rabbit monsters," Seth replied.
Mia gasped in shock. She had pet rabbits in her house back when the alien invasion hadn't happened yet. If what Seth said was true, Mia didn't know what to do with the animals that she thought were adorable.
Seth fell silent. His eyes spontaneously saw blue-white points of light flying in the city sky. There were hundreds of them, and they looked like the round Skywatcher spaceship.
"What is it?" asked Mia, scared, with her eyebrows lowered.
"Wake Joanna up. We need to prepare immediately," Seth explained. Mia cleared her throat.
The woman walked towards the back, waking Joanna, who was still sleeping undisturbed. Just as Joanna woke up, Mia began to briefly explain what was going on at the moment.
"The roaches are gone?" asked Joanna, delighted.
Seth's eyes darted unbidden, watching the planes release something inside the city, an iron net with white-furred and sharp-fanged animals on the city street.
Their ears were long, and they did not walk by hopping. They walked like humans with sharp teeth and piercing red eyes. One spaceship seemed to be hovering over this building. Seth instantly alerted by holding his two pistols.
The rumbling sound was obviously heard on the roof of this building, so many rabbit monsters were released, making the area on the roof of the building difficult to accommodate them all. Some of the rabbit monsters fell down along with other items, including Seth's hoverbike.
"What's going on?!" asked Joanna, worried.
"Let's get out of here!" shouted Seth, running quickly out of the room.
Joanna and Mia followed him by packing their things. When Joanna was about to exit, the metal door that led to the roof shattered and fell, revealing hundreds of monster rabbits with carnivorous traits lunging towards the three.
"Kill them all!" groaned Seth.
The man began to fire forward, doing his best to kill the rabbits who tried to get close to him. However, something happened between the three. Joanna, from being a wimpy woman, now turned into a knight with a sword.
Wielding a lightsaber, she jumped into the crowd of carnivorous rabbits. Her hands were so agile with the lightsaber that Seth was amazed at Joanna's skill.
Seth walked into the crowd after the opening. Mia followed even though the woman had yet to fire a single shot at the rabbits. For Mia, the rabbits were similar to the rabbits she had petted.
"MIA, WAKE UP!" shouted Seth.
He was back to back with Mia as both were armed with laser rifles, unlike Joanna, who was seen dancing freely as she swung her lightsaber at any approaching rabbits. The woman continued to attack while circling Seth and Mia, keeping them from being attacked by the monster rabbits.
Shards of life dropped, hundreds of them. Until the last monster rabbit was killed, Mia was still trembling in fear with a sad face. Seth threw down his two pistols, spinning his body around with his right hand, directly choking Mia's neck; the man's heart filled with anger.
"Seth, stop!" said Joanna.
"Why didn't you shoot them? Is your gun just a showcase, dammit?!" snapped Seth.
Seeing Joanna break it up made Seth throw Mia's body to the side, right into the pool of blood of the rabbit monsters Mia cared about. She coughed softly after her neck was roughly strangled by Seth; tears broke out in her eyes to wet her cheeks.
"I didn't teach you to become a chicken! Those rabbits, they're monsters that want to tear out your belly. Do you get what I'm saying?"