"AAHHH WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" Jasmine screamed as the door to the hallway failed to retain any semblance of active danger.
Seeing the new lack of immediate danger, Jasmine quickly resumed, "I mean… clearly we can make it through this; Especially sense you all have me!"
Ignoring her, Malric payed more attention to the front bored which had gained it's own Codex interface.
| Optional Objectives |
Protect an Allie from a fatal blow 0/10
Keep calm during the entire tutorial 5/10
Show leadership 2/10
Seeing the optional objectives, Malric realized that not only did the Codex look like a video game interface, but its logic was similar
'If there's objectives there must be rewards' He thought.
Mr. Cassidy slowly exhaled before speaking too the whole class, "I don't know exactly what is going on, but as I mentioned earlier, Please keep calm. Whatever situation we are in it will be much easier to get through together."
Leveraging this statement from their teacher, Jasmine immediately spoke out. "Sense we should all stick together, I, as the most suited for a leadership role will take charge."
"You only won because nobody else won." Filip chimed in
"That's doesn't take away the fact that, I, WON." Jasmin replied in a drawn out manner.
"I'm only following Malric. He is a much better leader"
Brayden cleared his throat, silencing the conversation, stopping Junipers support before it could even start.
"I think, Jasmine is the better leader. She has clearly taken charge quickly, which demonstrates her decisiveness." He said while pointing his hand at Jasmine. He then pointed at Malric before saying, " Malric on the other hand has done nothing to help the group so far, he hasn't even said a word!"
Not standing the slander, John stood up from the chair he had pulled to Malric's circle, and said, "What do you know? Malric has been a great leader so far, he quickly identified a good choice of actions and shared them. What has Jasmine done, huh? All I have seen her do is throw around claims of leadership without any real reason."
"Yo," Malric called out do John, "I got it from here dude, thanks for the set-up." Before addressing the whole class.
"Jasmine, while you may be the class president, that does not mean you are the best fit for this position. I believe, No… I know that a good leader is not vested with responsibility because they ask for it but because others trust them. If I fail to lead properly you can take over, but clearly a larger majority trusts me and want me to lead." Malric ended his small speach before turning to Juniper.
"Juniper, you, Filip, and Illia should block the windows too the hallway, all of them but the one on the door. John, rearranged the desks in a fortified way, or something, as best you can." Malric dished out order. During the entire confrontation the front board had updated many times before finally settling.
With the rest of the group moving about, Jasmine and her two lackeys made themselves useful looking for food or water around the classroom.
Within ten minutes, the entire classroom had changed.
The science-lab type desks had been turned on their side and rearranged to contain anyone or anything coming in through the door.
"I call it, the kill-box-o-matic! Bad stuff enters through the door bad stuff dies or runs away." John said with a big grin across his face before explaining more.
"I got the idea from that one Roman battle, or maybe it was spartan? Anyways they held off a ton of dudes with like a fraction of the amount themselves."
Away from John — who was explaining all this to Mr Cassidy — Juniper, Filip, and Illia had all finished the blocking of the windows to make sure that whatever was outside couldn't see into the classroom.
Inspecting the relatively safe environment that had been transformed from a classroom with the help of turned over desks and sheets of paper taped to the windows alongside laminated posters.
Malric stepped near the center of the classroom and glanced at the board again. The Codex interface flickered once before displaying a new line in glowing text, just beneath the objectives:
| Status Update: Classroom B-207 now designated Temporary Safe Zone |
| Group Morale: 73% | Environmental Threat Level: Moderate |
Malric's face his brow. "It's adjusting to our situation," he muttered aloud.
Juniper, arms crossed and breathing a little heavy from her work, replied from across the room, "Yeah. And it knows more about our morale than Jasmine ever will."
Pivoting on her heel with the intensity of a lighter flaring to life, Jasmine shouted, "HEY! I can still hear you!" before realizing it wasn't worth it — especially for her reputation — to argue.
As the group started to settle down, Malric stepped towards the front of the class. Standing at the blackboard, he turned around, and addressed the class, "So far, in this confusing occurrence of events, we have kept relatively calm and secured ourselves. The situation cannot continue like this. We have a limited amount of food, we don't know if there is any rescue, and we have no clue what dangerous creatures have entered the school." Pausing for a second, Malric started to unveil his plan. "In order to increase our chance of survival, we should make contact with another class as well as secure food from the café."
With an expression marked by annoyance, Jasmine tried to shoot down the idea with her concerns of, "what? Are you planning to throw some of us out there to make sure it's safe. Maybe get us killed as well? A quick and easy way to kill the competition?"
With a long sigh, Malric calmly retorted, "no, nothing like that. I plan to go myself and bring only two others with me. This way the classroom is still defended." Malric paused for a moment before ending his little explanation with, " if there are no objections, Me, John, and Illia will go down the hall too class B-202."
"Sure"
"Sounds good"
With agreement from most of the class, the three prepared to leave the class with their makeshift weapons.
John held two halves of a meter stick with multiple hardcover books taped to the ends, acting as long hammers.
Illia had opted for taking a Bunsen burner from the lab room attached to the classroom and sticking it on the end of another meter stick.
By the time they got to the final weapon there were no more meter sticks. The weapon, now wielded by Malric, was a solid metal stool.
Slowly walking through the hallway towards the corner, the group slowed even more as the approached a blood stained wall.
The wall was smeared with blood with no body in sight. A trail lead too around the corner.
Taking a second to calm himself, Malric looked at John and Illia too make sure they were ok.
Illia's face was as impassive as ever, but John's face was different than before. Fear, it had crept into his eyes. While he still looked steady of the surface, Malric could tell John was fearful of whatever happened here.
Taking his second deep breath of their small expedition, Malric said, "let's go, gotta keep going." Before turning the corner with John and Illia slightly out of but still following.
Turning the corner the scene got much worse. In the center of the hallway, surrounded by corpses of bipedal dear with skulls for heads, was a snow leopard. It's pristine white coat dyed red with the blood of it's victims.
Ready to fight, Malric held his stool like a baseball bat. Calmly staring at the now combat ready group, the leopard turned away before dashing down the hallway.
"Hope nothing bad happened too the class." John said before instantly regretting it as he took a meter stick to the head.
"No raising flags" Illia said in her usual flat tone.
Assessing the situation, Malric figured, "Mm, the snow leopard must either be friendly to humans or just us for some reason. Whatever it is we need to keep moving"
After another minute of walking — that felt much longer due to the sudden transformation from peaceful school too apocalyptic nightmare — the three had arrived to the door of class B-202.
Looking in through the window, the trio could see the students of class B-202 standing listlessly around the class.
"Somthing happened to them. Maybe a magical disease." Malric said with a serious expression on his face.
Following up, Illia said, "Mmm, zombies… probably."
"I don't care what happened, but if we stay out here…" John kicked the door with all his might. Instead of what he wanted to happen, the door stood strong. John used the door handle while continuing, "*Cough* if we stay out here nothing will get done."
As soon as the students of class B-202 heard John talk, they all snapped to the door and started to charge the trio like rabid animals.
For a moment, John and Malric froze, these were upper classmen; these where people they had eaten lunch with, people they had helped and been helped by.
In such a small school which had only around fifty ish students per grade, it was hard not too know everyone.
Stepping in through the door way, next to John, Illia poked at the closest student about to claw at John. Malric quickly after snapped out of it and threw his stool eith full force at the charging mob.
The stool few and clocked one girls pearly white skin and knocked her back into boy with similarly colored skin.
With only three taken out, Malric grabbed the small metal trashcan at the entrance. Alongside Malric's acquisition of new weaponry, John dropped his shoulder before planting it into the face of another student taking out the fourth of six.
With only two remaining, Malric threw his new trashcan at one, while Illia stepped through the two, and charged the last fiendish student down with a now alight Bunsen burner-spear.
After striking down the classmates, John immediately collapsed to the ground in a cold sweat, throwing up.
Alongside him, Malric wasn't fairing much better. On his hands and knees, Malric was shaking from murder he had just committed. Students he had known had just tried to kill him, and he had killed back.
"Those were not our classmates, those were walking corpses, those were not our classmates. Deep breaths." Malric slowly took in a deep breadth in order to calm himself down.
"We should keep moving" Illia flatly said.
Collecting themselves, the group shakily stood up and left the classroom. Stepping through the hallway, Malric thought back on the situation with a clearer mind.
'There were only six of them… the rest must have left. Maybe the next class.' Thinking it through, Malric decided they should head for the Library in room B-204