-[The Incompletes, welcome to the Primordial Origin]-
-[Please prepare for your first trial... Failure to do so within the time limit will result in a penalty]-
-[Penalty: You shall die... Good luck, Incompletes]-
-[Quest: Locate The Primordial Sanctuary, eliminate the foes, and complete yourself with a god]-
-[Time Limit Left: 13 hours 54 mins 34 secs]-
-[Please select a weapon]-
Esme didn't bother scrolling through the long list of weapons on the interface. She simply picked the one her eyes landed on.
A standard single-edged saber sword.
She couldn't waste time. Neo was probably in danger, and on top of that, she had to kill the enormous anaconda tearing everyone apart.
When she arrived, it was far from peaceful, maybe because she had delayed the pull.
However, she woke to splintered limbs, blood soaking the snow-covered mountain, and incompletes screaming for help.
Esme stood up.
In total, only ten incompletes remained. The rest in this area were probably dead.
"No, I shouldn't waste my time helping these people. I must find Neo." That thought overruled her initial hesitation.
"H-help me!!"
Even as they screamed, Esme didn't bother turning around.
Then, all of a sudden, before she had walked ten meters, the area fell quiet. No humans were screaming.
Turning around, she found all of them dead.
Only the red-blood anaconda beast remained, a thousand times the size of a human, its fangs covered with blood and fragments of bone.
It roared. Even after slaughtering the incompletes, it still hungered, and the beast lunged at her.
Esme stood firm, her fingers resting lightly along the edge of her saber.
Before she could unsheathe her blade, something else happened.
"Fuck off!!" A muscular male dashed past her and delivered an explosive uppercut, forcing the beast to cry out in agony.
Esme watched as he dodged a series of attacks. She considered helping him or continuing her search for Neo. In the end, she turned to leave.
"Get her out of here!" he yelled.
The moment Esme turned, she felt a pull, but quickly shrugged off the slender male's grip.
"What? Do you want to die?" he asked. "Come on, we have to get out of here."
Before they could leave, the muscular male walked past them, covered in purple liquid, clearly the beast's blood. Its maw had been torn apart.
Esme wasn't surprised. She figured only an awakened would be reckless enough to fight such a creature.
"You should have been halfway to Aethernox," he said.
"Aethernox?" Esme whispered, though they caught her words.
"Yeah, we're from Nether Academy. Mr. White told us to rendezvous there once we're summoned. After four hours, anyone there will leave," said the slender male. He carried himself like a scholar.
The academy had taught them about various sections of the origin and what they must do in order to avoid mass casualties, or rather, deaths.
'Just now, she was leaving while the monster killed those people,' he thought, already growing skeptical of the girl before them.
They were surrounded by mountain glaciers, and the snow beneath them was stained with blood and scattered body parts.
'She wasn't running, which means she wasn't afraid. She made that choice consciously.'
Then a lightning strike, followed by a deafening thunderclap, pulled everyone from their thoughts.
Esme knew that place, Aethernox. It was one of the locations marked on Neo's map.
She just had to get there, redraw the map, and begin tracking Neo from that point.
"Decide for yourself. Are you coming with us?" the slender scholar asked.
"Tsk, is that even a question? Mr. White said to save people, even if it's against their will... you're coming, right?" the muscular one added with a warm smile.
Esme nodded.
---
Neo's breath felt heavy and uneven, sounds echoing strangely, sometimes repeating themselves seconds later.
Instead of snow or rain, ash drifted from the sky, staining the snow-covered ground beneath his feet.
Unlike Esme, when Neo woke up, the larvae golem that had attacked them was already dead, and there were no casualties.
This was because his group was being led by senior students from Nether Academy.
The mountain path was narrow, so they moved in a single file to avoid falling.
Two figures ahead of Neo stood out. One of them was the monster of the novel, the strongest among them. Though he might appear weaker than Neo right now, the main character, Sunny, was a...
A direct descendant of Zeus, the one who would lead the entire academy to the sanctuary of the gods.
Neo felt an odd sense of ease seeing a character he had once wished to become.
"Move it, we're running late," the senior behind Neo said.
The one in front was the person who had studied the map of the origin, even though all first years had been instructed to study it.
Only a few actually did.
In the original novel, this group split apart. Half of them died, but those on Sunny's side survived.
Which meant that if Neo had woken up here in the original story, he would have been in Sunny's group.
That explained how he survived the first trial.
However, Neo had other plans. They were being led to a place called Aethernox.
It was part of the rendezvous strategy developed by the academy.
Neo sighed.
He needed to leave the group. 'What could have caused the split?' he wondered.
Then a small clump of snow fell in front of him.
As if answering his thought, a thunderous noise rumbled from above.
In the next second, massive shards of ice came crashing down from the sky.
"Holy shit... stay back!!" the senior behind Neo shouted.
In response, the students looked up and saw the incoming spikes of ice raining down.
Panic erupted instantly. They scattered in a frenzy of screams, even trampling others in a desperate attempt to cross before the mountain split.
"Come on... hurry up!!!" the senior yelled.
'So this is how it happened.' Neo glanced behind him. Those people would die, while Sunny's group would survive. He had been among them.
Neo braced himself. As the narrow mountain cracked apart, he jumped backward, as though dodging the fracture.
In the original novel, he was certain he had leaped forward. But now, he deliberately moved backward, trapping himself with the group destined to die.
Neo let out a heavy sigh.
The students around him were nothing but terrified cattle. Even the senior.
After all, the only person who knew the location of the rendezvous point was in Sunny's group.
"Shit," the senior cursed, slamming his fist against the ground, his eyes damp. "Someone... please tell me you studied the map," he pleaded, dropping to his knees, on the verge of tears.
In the end, all ten of them were completely lost. Neo stepped forward, offering them a faint glimmer of hope.
"I know how to get there," he said.
Deep inside, he has other plans for the group. After all, they were going to die anyway.