To Live Again, For the First Time!

"So tell me what happened," Nathan said, in a serious, but not imposing tone.

Theodore, who shared half of Emilin's screen with Nathan didn't say anything, but his eyes were enough to tell Emilin that he also wanted to know.

Emilin gave them both a brief summary of how she had met some suspicious people, which was the reason behind the first alarm that was set off before she continued to explain how she had gotten lost, getting her stuck in a cave due to the downpour.

"Thankfully nothing big happened with those suspicious people," Emilin added, trying her best not to overcompensate.

She didn't tell them the full extent of the incident, but it was enough for them to get the gist of it.

"Do you want me to do a thorough investigation?"

Theo had already been planning to do so before asking, but seeing as the main person involved was his little sister and not himself, it was only right that he asks for her opinion.

However, the response he got was quite unexpected.

"There will be no need. Don't bother with them, even though we didn't interact for long, I can tell they are more trouble than they are worth. There is no need for us to get involved in some mess just to satiate our curiosity."

Emilin was informing her brothers that the other party wouldn't get involved with them if they didn't stick their nose into the matter.

Both Nathan and Theo furrowed their brows slightly, but they ended up complying with their baby sister's wishes in the end.

"I guess we'll just leave it at that, but if there are any signs of trouble, don't hold back." Nathan left no room for negotiations and since Emilin wasn't particularly against it, she complied while Theo nodded.

"What's going on on your sides?" Emilin asked, shifting the focus on her big brothers who hadn't given her any updates on themselves for a while.

"Well, you remember that game I was talking about around a week ago?" Theo scrunched up his face slightly when he started speaking, which didn't go unnoticed by any of his siblings.

"Mhm, was it 200 something deaths you were on? How many did you end up with?" Emilin asked jokingly when she noticed the oddly tense mood that seemed to stem from nowhere.

Theo: [... do I have to say?]

Nathan: [*raise eyebrows* Now you do. I'm curious, you have me hooked.]

Emilin: [*Small nodding that simply expressed: Go on then, don't keep us waiting here.*]

"Well, just you know. Around 900ish. You know, around that area."

Nathan nearly burst out into a peal of laughter when he saw the blush that crept up on his genius little brother's face.

'I guess even natural geniuses like him have these moments.' Nathan thought as if he were not someone who had also been admitted to a university ranked top 5 in the world.

Emilin also giggled a bit, the last straw before Theo's entire face became a nice shade of red (◕////◕).

"Well anyways! I finished the game ok. Well, I don't know how accurate it is to say that I finished the game, but it was enough to pass the test apparently."

Theo's sheepish face went back to his previous solemn and contemplative one once he reached this point.

"That's the thing, so that Master that I was talking about, he made me an offer... but I didn't really know how I wanted to respond so I pushed it off to after I spoke with you guys so that I could ask for a second opinion."

***

It was a few hours ago. Exactly one week after the first class Theodore and Kayden had in which Master Sungcha had made a guest appearance.

The atmosphere in the lecture room was strangely both eerie and lively.

Practically half of the class was composed of panda zombies, while the other half laughed at the panda zombies so as to feel better about themselves.

If you didn't understand that amazingly perfect analogy, well that's understandable, since not everyone can understand this inspirationally poetic passage.

In layman's terms, half of this class was severely sleep-deprived due to the test assigned to them by Master Sungcha. Both Theodore and Kayden were members of this group.

While the other half had long given up on that seemingly impossible and incredibly tedious task. Those were the ones who were well-rested, but that didn't mean that they were necessarily better off as they had lost a chance to work with a Master, which is why they found the need to comfort themselves by laughing at the others.

Theodore didn't pay attention to any of this as he nearly dozes off, just waiting for the honorary professor to arrive.

"I can see from your faces just how energetic all of you are. Everyone must have liked my little game quite a bit."

Even though Master Sungcha said this the moment he came in, it was clear to all that this man was the most energetic of all.

Some of the people who were tortured by his game day and night, yet couldn't make themselves put their devices down secretly cursed him.

'How can you live with yourself knowing that the sleep-deprived children in front of you are only like this because of you?' They thought.

It already said something that half of the class didn't give up despite them not even knowing just what Master Sungcha studied or even what his criteria were for this test.

Everyone was quite determined, after all, if they were to have a class reunion in the future and one of them didn't make it anywhere while the others became billionaire software developers, well that would be awkward.

No one wanted to be the one.

"Then let's see, I'll be projecting everyone's progress here on the projector. I won't use all of your real names so as to not embarrass you to death, but do be prepared if you used your real name as your user name in-game."

Grunts could be heard throughout the room.

"I'm excited to see how it went, even I haven't gotten a chance to see the results." Contrary to his words, Master Sungcha didn't seem all that excited at all.

Master Sungcha could be seen to have clicked a button to start some system and rows could be seen to be popping from the bottom to the top of the screen.

It was slow enough for everyone to have enough time to read each row before the next one popped up.

There were 4 columns and numerous rows. The columns were as follows: Ranking, Username, Stage, Deaths.

[60th Place, On, 2.2, 407]

[59th Place, Choi, 2.3, 450]

[58th Place, Hong, 2.3, 428]

…

..

.

The room instantly got heated as the people started recognizing some of the names up there.

"Hey! Did you say you didn't play much? If over 400 deaths aren't much then I don't know what is."

"And you laughed your ass off when I told you that I had already died over 250 times, but at least I reached the halfway mark of the second stage."

"What the hell man?"

Those who had been previously mocked threw the words they had heard back at the people who had said them, while those whose usernames were easily recognized could only curse with their heads hung low.

How were they supposed to know that this was how things would have progressed?

It was too embarrassing.

The rows kept popping up and after the first few rows popped up, most people could already tell how they were being ranked. 

It was first dependent on which stage they had reached, followed by the number of deaths, meaning that they would first be ranked on the furthest stage they had reached, but if two or multiple people had received the same ranking based on progression, they would then be ranked based on their number of deaths, of course, the one with fewer deaths would rank higher.

However, that wasn't all.

There were also a number of names that were in red, in fact, most of the people in the lower ranks had their data shown in that color.

At first one may think it is because they were eliminated due to low ranking, but even the people occupying the last three places had their data in normal black.

It was a strange phenomenon and so it was discussed by various groups, none of which could come to a consensus.

Nevertheless, that chatter slowly died down once they reached the last 5 rows.

[5th Place, Samsel, 5.7, 1402]

[4th Place, Reed, 5.7, 1390]

These were the people who were seriously sleep-deprived… well, how they got there went without saying.

[3ed Place, Jenna, 9.5, 1170]

The difference between the progression of the 4th placer and the 3ed placer was shocking, nearly 4 whole stages, however, that couldn't compare with the shock that came from the realization of the gap between the third placer and the scores of the people in the second and first place.

[2ed Place, DanK, 18.9, 1072]

[1st Place, Dorii, 20.4, 999]

The whole room fell silent before a commotion broke out.