[Castle Bonus—Big thanks to Readable and RolaySalt!! (7/10)]
Alex put his hands behind his head, propping himself up just enough to send a look across the room. Sylas and the others were looking at him, but neither of them actually responded.
Alex chuckled.
“Don’t look at me like that. Aren’t we all insane? A flashing screen appears in front of us and we actually clicked yes to the madness. Then, instead of picking a nice cozy city, we picked weapons instead?
“And look at that guy,” Alex pointed at Sylas, “he doesn’t even have a weapon. It’s either he lost it and somehow managed to survive until now without it, or he was actually even crazier than all of us combined and chose that Gene thingy.”
Alex laughed to himself again, as though he was his own favorite comedian. If nothing else, the guy sure knew how to have fun.
“I’m just saying, the odds of any one of us being a psychopath is pretty high.”
Sylas raised an eyebrow. He found the guy quite funny. At least he had lightened up the mood a bit.
He was right. If they were going to be fighting together, it was best they built some rapport.
“My name is Sylas,” he responded. “You can call me that if you want.”
Alex sat up, somewhat surprised. “You actually speak! So you aren’t as crazy as I thought.”
“People with antisocial personality disorders, at least the ones you’re thinking of, are actually pretty good at blending into social situations,” Morgan said with a chuckle of his own before looking at Sylas. “No offense, of course.”
Sylas waved a hand, indicating he didn’t mind.
“I’m Morgan,” the man continued. He was quite a bit bulkier and more substantial than Alex was, and his voice was deeper. He also seemed to be approaching his forties, while Alex was much more on the younger side.
“You can call me Lauren,” the only woman among them spoke in a soft tone. She had the air of the secretary of a CEO. She might have been able to be the CEO herself if she wasn’t so soft-spoken.
She was on the younger side, along with Alex and Sylas. It seemed that they were more common in this trial because both Olivia and Cassarae were young as well. Who else but young people would be so reckless, anyway?
It was interesting, though. Given the personality she exuded, Lauren didn’t seem like the type to make this decision. But honestly, neither was Sylas.
This had always been the illogical decision.
“It’s nice to meet you all!” Alex said with a wide grin. He was almost a hair away from looking like an evil villain who had succeeded in his master plan. “I know I might be pushing my luck, but like I said, exchanging information now is probably the most valuable thing we can do for one another.”
Morgan sighed. “I get that you’re eager, but how about we feel each other out a bit more? We’ll be together for several days, at the least. There’ll always be time.
“If you give information first, and someone else is unwilling to, it’ll only strain our future cooperation.”
Alex’s expression dimmed somewhat, but he eventually nodded in agreement. Soon, he was back to his chipper self.
“In that case, let’s talk about something else to liven the atmosphere. Did you guys see those two bombshells? Especially the tall one. She was giving me dommy mommy vibes.”
Morgan covered his face with a palm, and Lauren surprisingly laughed.
Alex grinned a bit lasciviously. “You swing that way too, Lauren?”
Put on the spot, Lauren flushed a bit but maintained her composure.
“No, but I know a beautiful woman when I see one. I wouldn’t be so careless with how you speak, though. This is her village, after all. Their militia is powerful.”
Alex brought a fist to his palm. “That’s something else I was wondering about. Those militiamen don’t quite seem like us, at least I don’t think she recruited them the normal way.
“I was looking at the City Stele option before we all hopped in and it said you got five militiamen for a Common City Stele. Where do you think those people come from? Can the system just… create people?”
Alex whispered the last of those words as though he was scared others might hear him.
Sylas looked at Alex with a bit of contemplation in his eyes. This man was definitely smarter than he pretended to be, or at the very least, his candor and openness didn’t shroud it.
“I was thinking about the same thing,” Sylas interjected. “If the system can bring back extinct creatures, there’s no reason for it to not be able to create humans from scratch too.”
Alex looked horrified when he realized Sylas’ words were reasonable.
Morgan sighed. “We’re too used to pretending we’re above all the other animals on Earth when really we’re just another one of them, especially to the people of this Summoned Ascension thing.”
“Especially?” Lauren asked.
“Well, just think about it,” Morgan continued. “All this Gene stuff, Fragmented, Common, Bronze… up to Legendary. I won’t go into too many details, but they clearly don’t rank humans very highly on their lists.”
They fell into silence.
Sylas knew what Morgan meant by he wouldn’t go into details. Doing so would probably expose what secrets he did have. Sylas himself entered with a Fragmented Gene, and he was already one of the better ones.
Just look at how valuable the Bronze City Stele was to the Grimblade family. They treated it like some holy treasure and were having their three candidates use this Trial as a place to duke it out for its ownership.
This went to show just how heavy the prefix “Bronze” weighed in this world, and yet there were so many ranks above it.
Whoever had set up this Summoned Ascension probably didn’t treat humans much differently from the animals Sylas had killed on his way here.