Originally, Kairos decided to ignore the third hallway, with all of its doors. However, he also began wondering if that was really what he should’ve done.
Frankly, as nice as points were, he had no intention of staying here for any longer than he needed to. Getting points this way was frankly not what he wanted to do. From what Aria had said earlier, it was some sort of taboo to go towards the doors.
Yet, at the same time, none of them were able to advance to the next floor.
Perhaps that meant there was some sort of mechanism there.
…Though at this point, he was feeling really hungry and stressed out as well. His encounter with the person in the pitch-black hallway made him quite averse to eating, but that couldn’t change his needs.
Kairos decided to try one of the doors. Considering he had his future vision to back him up, he should be able to back out if something bad happens.
And so, Kairos walked into the hallway of repeating doors.
He didn’t choose right away, opting to walk down several more doors until he arbitrarily decided on one. After opening the door, he was greeted with an empty room that had the same flower-pattern wallpaper outside. A white light shined brightly at the top of the room.
Kairos decided to briefly extend his future vision to two seconds and see what would happen if he shut the door behind him.
The moment the door shut with a soft click, a hazy blue figure appeared on the opposite side of the room.
Kairos quickly canceled his actions, keeping the door ajar.
He rubbed his chin in contemplation.
…It didn’t seem particularly dangerous. Though he might’ve been underestimating the blue figure’s ability.
While remembering this spot, he decided to walk back into the hallway and try out the door opposite to the one he was just at. After opening the door, he was greeted with the same empty room.
He peeked into his future vision to see what would happen if he closed the door, and was greeted with countless bullets materializing in thin air and raining down on him from every angle.
Kairos hurriedly stopped himself from closing the door in reality.
He came to realize it seemed like some sort of pandora’s box. There would be some random surprise for him on the other side.
Thankfully, it seemed that his ability would actually help tremendously in this scenario so that he wouldn’t have to take any huge gambles.
Kairos was really feeling the stress at this point, once again underestimating how debilitating extending his future vision felt. Not to mention, he really should eat something.
He decided to take a break before coming back to the doors.
Upon getting back to the room where the spiral staircase was located, he saw some familiar faces.
It was Aria, Alice, and Kyle.
Kairos looked at them strangely. However, they were all paying attention to the other pathways, not even noticing he was in the same room as them.
After walking a little closer, he raised his hand.
“Um, why are you guys here?”
Almost like they were some sort of kpop band, they all jumped up before turning around at the exact same time.
Their expression was first shock, but quickly transformed into a normal casual one. Aria laughed awkwardly.
“Ah, Kairos! We were just waiting for you here to see if you were ok!”
Kairos did not respond immediately, instead opting to take a closer look at the people in front of him. They were all wearing clothes that had covered their entire body. Aria’s suit made it hard to see the body structure underneath, as it had its own structure.
As for Alice, her clothes were rather baggy.
And Kyle had clothes that were basically rags covering his entire body.
In other words, Kairos couldn’t see if their bodies were normal, or skin tight like everyone else.
“…You don’t need to come and check on me next time.”
Aria looked at him for a good few seconds, analyzing him closely. Then, she laughed.
“Ah, but we are in an alliance, no? It’s only natural to check up on each other!”
Kairos shook his head.
“There’s no need for that, really.”
The corner of Aria’s lip twitched.
“Alright, alright. So, how did your point gathering session go? And… where did you come from?”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“I tried to go down the bloody path to kill some monsters, but a guy wouldn’t let me pass unless I gave him some food, which I didn’t have. Then, I tried the pitch black pathway and was able to find a single red crystal, but that was it.”
Aria clapped her hands gently.
“Ah, so you were able to get a point?”
Kairos nodded.
“Yeah, it seemed fairly easy.”
He then looked over to the pathway with hallways and doors.
“And then I tried walking down that place a little bit.”
Alice’s face twitched.
“Why did big brother go there? It’s too dangerous!”
Kyle seemed a little baffled.
“…Did you not hear that’s how almost everyone died?”
Kairos raised his hands in the air.
“Hey, hey, I never entered a room and closed the door. I only checked it out a little bit.”
Aria smiled bitterly.
“Um, I think it’s best just to stay away from that place anyway.”
Kairos shrugged his shoulders.
“Ok, I didn’t do anything anyway. I’m going to go back now.”
Since the three were standing at the top of the spiral staircase, he decided to jump off from the other end, landing at the side.
The other three looked a little anxious but simply followed after him casually.
Kairos walked a little quicker so that he was decently far away from the others. This seemed to prompt Aria to hurry up a little, which then made Kairos break out into a full sprint.
Alice called out.
“Wait, it’s not safe to go so fast!”
Kairos responded without much care.
“Don’t worry, I have good control over my steps.”
That wasn’t exactly the truth, but he would rather keep his distance from the others.
He continued to travel down the steps, almost feeling like he was traveling down a slide, just more dangerously.
Once he eventually felt he was about fifty meters up in the air, he simply jumped off.
For a few moments, he felt the wind wildly blow past his clothes.
And eventually, he slammed down on the ground.
Kairos bent his knees, landing with one end of his spear on the ground.
Despite landing with a pretty hefty impact, the ground was undamaged. As for Kairos, he felt the shock travel through his body, but there didn’t seem to be any injuries.
After getting back up on his feet, he began walking back to his room.
Another slam resounded behind him soon enough, the sound of someone else landing.
“Wait, do you want to take a shift for sleeping now?”
It was Aria.
Kairos spared a single glance behind him.
“Not yet, I’m going to eat something before trying to get more points. I don’t even have a bed or blanket, after all.”
Aria blinked a few times.
“There’s no need to buy a blanket or bed! It would be better to get some more points for food first. After all, you can’t survive without eating!”
Kairos nodded.
“Ah, well either way I’ll go back up after having a meal.”
Aria stopped chasing after hearing that.
“Haha, ok, ok!”
She then began walking back to Kyle and Alice, who didn’t jump off. They seemed to be discussing something, but Kairos didn’t care.
As he made his way back to his room, he could overhear two people arguing with each other in the distance.
“What the hell is taking Mark so long?”
“I don’t know, he was carrying all the food we had prepared for the red crystal expedition.”
One was a man with short blonde hair, and upon catching sight of Kairos, he glared. The other was a woman that had short black hair, but it was messily cut. It seemed like she had messily cut it with a blade.
She turned to look at Kairos as well, and simply observed for a good few moments.
Kairos felt like he was being analyzed, almost like he was a zoo animal in a cage. Deciding not to think about it too much, he got back inside his room.
Unfortunately, there was no door to close, so the privacy aspect was really lacking. It definitely wouldn’t get a high rating online as a place to stay.
After taking a peek behind him, he only saw people far off in the distance.
From there he walked over to the projection, prompting it to open his status panel once more.
[Status]
[Floor Level: 1]
[Dungeon Currency: 51]
Kairos blocked it with his body.
“Open the shop.”
The same shop had greeted him, offering both food and something to sleep on.
From there, he hesitated for a second before buying the bread and water, costing him one point. Blue mana coalesced around the counter in front of him before suddenly becoming a loaf of bread and a large glass of water.
Though it wasn’t that small of a portion, it definitely wasn’t worth an entire evolution point.
He took a sip of the water.
It definitely felt like water, but there was no refreshing sensation despite him being fairly thirsty.
He then took a bite out of the bread.
It was hard, dry, and had little to no taste.
That was more or less what Kairos had expected. It did not take him too long to finish.
By the end, he no longer felt hungry.
However, Kairos frowned when he took a closer look at his body. It was rather… muscular looking.
His skin wrapped quite tightly around his muscles, not that he didn’t have any fat, but it had reduced considerably from when he had first entered this dungeon.
Kairos shut his eyes tightly.
He wasn’t entirely sure if it was his imagination, but his body seemed to get smaller after he had eaten the bread. Even if there was some sort of difference, it was an unbelievably small one.
Several red flags raised in Kairos’ mind, slowly connecting together. He began to find it suspicious that both the bread and water were formed out of mana.
…There probably weren’t any calories in mana.
Kairos hedged a bet.
That the food provided was actually fake.
…But it also seemed like the other people had been here for a while. Maybe not entirely fake, but definitely not what it looked like.
Maybe the only real food that was here, was actually the green orbs that Kairos had on him.
Kairos pressed his eyelids tightly together and took a deep breath.
Then came to a decision.
After clicking on the ‘more’ tab in the shop, he spent all 50 of his remaining currency on evolution points.
As reckless as a move this was, Kairos felt it was the right one.
Though he did it for the sake of not wasting his resources on useless things, it was more so for the mentality he wanted to take.
This place was a hellhole, and that was even relative to the fact the rest of the world was plunged into the apocalypse.
It seemed that all the others on the floor were focused on surviving before anything else. However, ironically enough, by avoiding risk, their lives were all whittling away.
Kairos had no plan to be like all of the others on the floor with him.
As for the mystery ten, they probably did something different, exploring the strange rooms. And by doing that, they either advanced to the next floor, or died without a trace. It was a gamble to follow after them, but this was the only option he saw.
Without a single dungeon currency to his name, he walked out of the room.
And he had no intention of ever coming back.