POV Kim Min-Jae

Nathaniel, laughing, looks so different from his usual self. His face seems softer, friendlier. He even appears handsome now.

This time Cipher seems to seriously panic and quickly starts talking, “I'll do everything you want. I won't ever talk back to you. I'll do anything, just let me…”

“Shhh,” Nathaniel just lifts one of his fingers and Cipher stops moving. Only his eyes continue to tick from side to side. The man is terrified. Nathaniel closes his eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath, a big smile on his face, “That's an interesting experience, I don't think I've ever turned off my [Focus] so totally ever since the tutorial started. The weird thing is, it also slightly affected my emotions,” he opens his eyes again and takes one more step towards the duo that is unmoving, “well, it's not like it matters.”

On the opposite side, Lily is not affected at all and continues to look at him without saying anything.

“That's it, I guess, you stepped over a line you shouldn't step over,” his eyes move back to Cipher and the pressure intensifies.

He doesn't say anything else and Cipher just continues to stand there, unable to do anything under Nathaniel's gaze. His chest stops moving and consciousness slowly disappears from his eyes, and then he dies while standing. The same thing happens to Goldie.

Both of them die just like that and Nathaniel just tilts his head, almost as if surprised, and then he chuckles, "So weak," Right after, mana fires up from him and the bodies of Cipher and Goldie explode into pieces. Not a single piece is bigger than a fingernail and the blood splashes everywhere. A lot of it hits Lily, who doesn't react even after all of that, and continues to look at Nathaniel with big eyes.

Nathaniel looks around and he seems almost refreshed, as if getting rid of something that kept annoying him for a long time. Again, he smiles, “Sophieeee,” he says, turning to the brunette sitting in the corner of the room.

A javelin made of mana immediately forms over his shoulder.

My javelin misses and embeds itself into the wall right behind Sophie, only leaving a deep scratch on her cheek that starts bleeding immediately. She is still not moving, her eyes wide, and I can see fear in them. So I turn my gaze to the person that made my javelin miss.

“Nathaniel,” Tess is standing in front of me, lightning cracking around her body and her hair slightly lifting up with lightning cracking around them as well. She is the only one able to move through my [Redistribution].

“Can you [Focus]?” she asks, taking another step and stopping just an arm's reach away from me. In between me and Sophie.

“Yup, who do you think I am, Tess? Her skill surprised me, but that's it. She was terrible at using it.” Just a few seconds were enough to find out what her skill did to me and to be able to cancel it.

“So why don't you [Focus]?”

“Because I don't want to. You know her skill didn't only affect my skill, it also did something to my emotions. It's hard to identify what exactly, but it doesn't feel that bad. But don't worry, I should be fine in a few minutes. So please, can you step away so I can kill Sophie in the meantime?”

“I can't allow you to do that,” she says firmly.

“Why? I know I'll feel much better if I do that. It's too irritating to keep dealing with her and her skill.”

“I promised it to her.”

That's annoying. “Is your promise to her more important than our promise?” I rouse up my mana a bit more.

Yet, she doesn't even flinch and continues to look into my eyes, “No, it's not. But I'm sure you'd want me to stop you, if you were thinking logically.”

That makes me laugh. “Tess, I don't want to think logically.” I put even more pressure on her, yet she fights against it.

“You're scaring people, Nat. Just look at Lily, look at Isabella.”

“It doesn't matter. I don't need them to like me. I just need to pay back what I owe.” Finally, her body seems to be getting affected by my [Redistribution] and I feel her pushing more mana into her [Lightning Armor], “Tess, get out of my way,” she won't stop me.

“This is not you, not even back on Earth, not even without your skill. Can't you see that she did change the way you think, even if it's temporary?”

Oh, that's a good point. Goldie's skills did affect some of my feelings and part of my behavior as well. I know I can turn on [Focus] anytime I want and get rid of these effects. Yet I hesitate. I know when I activate it, I'll stop and push my feelings to the back of my mind. My annoyances, my rage, my sadness that I've been hiding, all the stress I'm feeling.

My eyes move over Tess's shoulder and I see Sophie who just stands there, unable to move at all. Only her scared eyes move, staring at me. She doesn't even use her mana, probably scared of annoying me even more.

Then I move my gaze a bit lower and look at Isabella. The little girl is clinging to Sophie and also looking at me. In her eyes, I do not see fear, nor anger. Just pity as she touches me with her skill.

So annoying.

My mana moves again and while hearing the notification, I disrupt the mana around Tess. A pulse of kinetic energy then throws her away from me. With speed even faster than before, another javelin appears over my shoulder, this time bigger and with a hint of light blue mana in it, and tempered with all the anger I feel at Sophie.

I know that I'm smiling as I do so, about to throw it at her.

“Nathaniel,” a soft quiet voice sounds from behind me. The voice immediately makes me stop the javelin.

When I turn around, Lily is still sitting on the ground, covered in the blood of the exploded bodies of Cipher and Goldie and pieces of meat and bones. Her entire face is covered in blood and only her eyes shine through.

“Even you, Lily? What do you want?” You better talk quickly, I already feel the effects of Goldie's skill dissipating and reason coming back to me.

Lily then pulls out a knife from her pocket and stabs it towards her own heart.

The world feels as if it slows down as I put both [Focus] into boosting my body, dashing towards her, moving faster than my mana would be able to reach her.

Just before the tip of her knife pierces her chest, I grab her hand and stop it from moving. Then her mana engulfs me and the remaining effect of Goldie's skill disappears and I'm back to my rational self.

Right afterward, Lily slaps me and I don't dodge, only tilt my head a bit so she doesn't hurt her hand too much.

Well, I kind of screwed up, didn't I? Just a little bit. Our water dispenser is gone. Lily is pissed off and still shaking. I nearly killed Sophie. I scared everyone, and I even hurt Tess. That's quite a list.

Damn it, if only Cipher and Goldie had tried to control me instead of Lily. In such a case, I would have been able to stop. It would have been just an attack on me. But seeing them doing this to her, just snapped something inside me.

Goldie's skill was something similar to hypnosis. It used only a really minuscule amount of mana that entered her eyes and refracted the light to affect her target. To be honest, I still don't fully understand what it did. But I know enough to realize that she was probably the reason the trio rose to the top of the Hard Difficulty tutorial. Her skill even allowed her to block skills and influence people.

Sure, her usage of it was trash, and I would have been able to unblock my skill in a split second, I just didn't want to. At the time, it felt weird to not think about the consequences. It felt good.

Now, I realize how stupid it was, but it's not like I can blame myself too much. The best solution would have been to beat Goldie and then let Sophie mindblender Cipher, but yeah… things went differently.

I reach out and pet Biscuit who seems totally unaffected by what happened and he snuggles closer to me. He is already sleeping, but his warmth is nice and calming.

"It's okay," Tess says, her body already healed by Lily and she really doesn't seem to be blaming me too much, "I knew the risks, yet I did what I thought was the best decision."

Goddamn it, her being so cool makes me feel worse.

"Should I punch you to make you feel better?" she asks and immediately I lift my head.

"Would that work?" I ask.

Tess sighs and ignores my question, "I'm sure they'll realize you weren't yourself, so just give it some time. As for the water situation, we'll deal with it somehow. We still have some left."

That's it, I guess. We'll have to push on and finish the quest.

"But what were they trying to do to Lily?" Tess asks.

I pause to think before answering, "They probably wanted to hypnotize her gradually, bit by bit. I didn't notice it back then, but they had spoken to her a few times before. Cipher likely wanted a healer on his side," I shrug. "I'm not exactly sure how Goldie's skill worked."

They didn't try it on me, probably worried that I would notice. Cipher, with his perceptive skill, read people well, picked his targets, and then gradually won them over using Goldie's skill. Not bad, but far from sufficient for Hell Difficulty. Such tricks won't work here.

They made a big mistake by switching difficulties, and then they made an even bigger one that cost them their lives.