It became apparent that this unknown terrorist organization was more cunning and calculated than initially presumed; they must have spent months planning this invasion to the smallest detail. Right now, there were only two possibilities for the identity of the terrorists that I could come up with: either the Dogma of Yallareon or the Scavengers who orchestrated this invasion.
An anxious voice came from a tall man standing next to me, "How could the world government lose to these terrorists? And those guards, how could they be so useless?"
Though I disagreed with his attitude, I chose to remain silent. As a grown adult, he seemed unlikely to change his mind. However, my friend Shan was irritated by his comments and stepped forward to confront the man. Shan, being noticeably taller, looked down at the adult.
Fixing his gaze on the man, Shan said, "The security guards sacrificed their lives fulfilling their duty to protect us, while you, as an adult, are cowardly hiding here."
The man in the black suit yelled, "What did you just say to me?"
"You're a coward," Shan responded, his irritation evident.
Suddenly, the man resorted to violence, swinging his hand at Shan. However, Shan swiftly evaded the attack and retaliated with a powerful punch to the man's stomach, causing him to cough up blood.
The middle-aged man was taken aback, but he quickly regained his composure and retaliated with a kick to Shan's stomach. However, the blow seemed to have little effect on Shan, who showed no signs of pain.
Shan grabbed hold of the man's leg and threw him towards the elevator door, causing him to collide with it and collapse, blood streaming down his chin.
"Kid, have you modified your body?" the man said, blood leaking from his mouth.
I intervened, raising my hand to stop Shan from further humiliating the man.
"He hasn't modified his body," I explained. "He practices Kung Fu."
The man glared at me with a strange expression as he wiped the blood from his face. He must have felt immense shame being beaten by a teenager. However, a wicked smile crossed his face, and he uttered, "Do you know what will happen once I open this door? I am the general manager of software development in this school. I have the authority to rewrite the elevator's system."
Damn it, this deranged man knew that the elevator could be opened from the inside in emergency mode, and he was now using it to threaten everyone. I knew that I, along with the others in the elevator, didn't have the strength to face more enemies. Personally, I was covered in injuries and had a broken, bleeding knuckle.
The man extended his arms threateningly and declared, "Once I open this door, these wicked terrorists will kill you and ravage underage girls like you, just like wild animals set loose. Haha!"
The other two girls in the elevator cried out in distress, crawling towards the man on their hands and knees, clutching his legs, begging for mercy, and imploring him not to open the door.
Amidst the chaos, there was a girl dressed in a white dress and black skirt who stood frozen, her expression filled with darkness as she clung tightly to herself, contemplating the worst possible outcome. However, Setsuna and the girl with short brown hair remained resolute, exhibiting a remarkable absence of fear.
The other man whom I was familiar with, he was a gymnastics teacher who went by the name Geralt, just observed everything without saying anything, but he started at me like wanting to see how I would handle this situation.
However Setsuna was different from these 2 girls, she cracked up and said "What a pathetic man, once you open the door. You will be killed as well."
In addition, another beautiful short black hair girl continued "Open the door, and you will be the one to be killed."
Shit, she just irritated him to open the door even more.
The pathetic man yelled, "Don't underestimate adults, I survive in this cooperative world because I use dirty strategies like this."
A once laughing girl now replaced by a neutral expression, Setsuna seems to comprehend how serious the situation is as well.
Suddenly a heavy footstep echoed in the elevator, Geralt, a muscle, tall-athletic man in a white sleeveless shirt approached the pathetic man before him, then Geralt seized the pathetic man's head tightly and smashed his head against the aluminum wall repeatedly, he screamed and begged for Geralt's mercy.
Geralt opened his mouth "What a pathetic man, you think you are smart but you are just another slave to the corporate world."
Blood from this pathetic man splashed everywhere, and the girl who once begged for this pathetic man's mercy now backed off to the corner.
This tall athletic man was my mentor when I trained how to fight alone in the sports facility whenever everyone else left, Geralt always arrived at the same time as me and one day he decided to teach me to defend myself from street fights which back then I usually got into a fight with others junior and senior more than I could count.
"Geralt, I think he lost consciousness," I told him
He responded with a husky voice "I can tell."
The scream of agony from the pathetic man stopped as Geralt released him from his grasp, the pathetic man lying down with blood-soaked on his face. I thought this man must be dead by now if I didn't intervene, fortunately, for him, he was still breathing heavily as a last resort to preserve his consciousness.
How am I being so calm in this kind of situation? Perhaps I saw this same scenario, blood and violence in the countless novels, and games I once read and played. Who would think it comes in handy in this situation? With the serenity in my mind, it felt like I could analyze and gather information easily.
The muscular man veered around to face me and said in his cold voice "You are being soft Einsamer, I teach you to be a man and you let this guy talk nonsense."
As I reflected on his teachings, I couldn't help but remember the importance of remaining patient amidst chaos. However, upon deeper contemplation, a sudden realization struck me. The most crucial lesson he imparted was the understanding that resorting to violence should only be a last resort when it comes to safeguarding others and oneself.
And at this moment, I should be using violence.
The words that flew out of my mouth were "I apologize, next time I will be better."
He trained me to deal with things violently once there was no option left, even though my analysis was different from his, I wouldn't even dare to oppose his view as I saw him as a father figure.
But does this make his view of the situation right?
Out of nowhere, Setsuna sprinted past me to kick the hand of the lying pathetic man from touching his tablet.
"Shit, this dude doesn't know when to give up." Setsuna nervously said.
During my conversation with Geralt, he seized the moment to attempt opening the door through his tablet, If it weren't for Setsuna's quick intervention, the door would have been wide open by now.
Just when I believed everything was under control, reality proved me wrong.
The man I encountered possessed a smartwatch on his wrist, functioning as a secondary computer.
His proficiency in programming became evident as he effortlessly manipulated the elevator system from an emergency to normal mode. As a result, the previously opaque black glass transformed, revealing a distressing scene of the entire city being ravaged by the soldier of masked men.
These lawless masked men were freely killing innocent civilians, without any authority to stop them.
"Shit...." Shan stuttered.
Everyone else was speechless trying not to make any sound as they saw the same savage atmosphere as me on the surface which could be watching from the bird eye's view from the screen.
To make matters worse, the door of the elevator gradually opened and revealed a corpse of students lying around in front of the gate toward a science facility that contained a laboratory for students to do their experiments.
A once noisy and crowded floor was replaced by a stink of death and silence. No one dared to make any sound, some passengers covered their mouths with terror and tears as they thought the terrorist must be still around.
I asked Geralt in a low voice "What do we do now."
"We need to find a weapon and a place to hide, the elevator does not work now." He responded with a stern voice.
A few seconds after the elevator door opened, it stopped functioning, and the electricity and the screen also turned off. Now the elevator was engulfed by darkness, only the light from outside shined in.
At that moment, I heard my tablet vibrate even though the global network was cut off and there was no signal to be found yet a new message appeared on my tablet.
[Observer from the absolute reality: If you want to survive this phase, go to the artificial garden.]
I was surprised to see another message from this unknown avatar with a cringy name, I did not think he was behind all of this either. But once I responded to his message by typing
"Who are you?" a new one appeared with the description [All signals have been lost]
Not at this moment...! So this unknown avatar could send me a text without a signal but I couldn't.
There must be a higher power at play here, does the divine judgment really exist, and is someone trying to guide me?
Once they saw I could receive a message, some of them quickly pulled out their tablet and a holographic display before them.
I looked around and everyone appeared to share the same expression as me as they tried to contact their family, authority, and friends but to no avail, when I looked at Shan's tablet, the same text appeared [All signals have been lost.]
He then looked at my holographic display coming from my tablet and didn't see the message, so he asked "Why do you look at your tablet if there is no signal?"
"There is a message here...." Suddenly when I pointed at the message, it was gone and nowhere to be seen.
I was so sure that there was a message from this unknown avatar, that I knew I wasn't hallucinating. But how come the message was no longer here?
Geralt was the first one to put his tablet back in his pocket while moving toward the entrance of the science facility.
"It is time to go, it seems like there is no noises on this floor." A deep masculine voice got my attention from the tablet screen toward him.
I asked him "Where are you going?"
Geralt shouted back "This floor is clear, since they must have killed everyone here, they must be moving to another floor."
This made sense but I knew it was not that simple, therefore I looked at Setsuna and Shan. They slightly nodded as if they could read my mind and walked cautiously beside me while I followed Geralt into the facility.
The standby people who were stuck inside the elevator had no choice but to chase after us as well, whereas the pathetic man lying on the floor unconsciously.
Blood painted the path we walked, these corpses had deep cuts, and some even were naked, exposed in plain sight. I couldn't even imagine what kind of horrible thing they went through.
Geralt said to me as he looked at the gate before him "There are over 20 main exits in this institute, but it seems like they already blocked this path. We need to find the other path."
Since he was a teacher in this school, he knew the layout of the building so well, but this skyscraper contained not only schools but also entertainment centers, supermarkets, and even apartments, therefore it was like a giant maze.
We couldn't enter the science facility and went the other path that led to what seemed like a workshop, office, and meeting room, one of the rooms contained a desk and a holographic display hovered above it, I assumed this must be an office belonging to one of the scientists of this facility.
While everyone was leaving to explore the other room, I entered this room and left its door open, then I checked the holographic display which contained so many classified files.
On the holographic display from the black compact machine, I noticed a chip that was originally embedded in a person's flesh, connected to them through an attachment on their hand. This chip, known as a bio-data chip, had now been removed from the victim's body and placed in front of me in the machine USC (Universal Serial Chip) port.
That being said, I did not let the terrific view bother me and instead focused on the file behind me. In one of those files, the title said [Replica magic.] it intrigued me so I clicked on it but I needed to scan my face and type a password to access to this file.