Chapter 64 - 63 : Mission # 005 Invasion

As the timer hit zero, the world flickered again. One second, we were standing in the ruined streets of our district; the next, our bodies were swallowed by the same blinding light that had dragged us away before. The arena. "Not this place again," Ye-rin muttered beside me, her axe already materialized in her grip. But this time there was no crowd, no fake fanfare, no cartoon mascots waving us into slaughter. Instead—something worse. Floating in the middle of the arena was a red eyeball, as large as a person’s head, its pupil slit like a beast’s. Veins twitched along its surface, and every time it blinked, I felt like it was peeling layers off my soul. A memory stabbed me. This eyeball looked the same as the one that appeared in the sky a couple of weeks ago. The Eye of Judgment—and now it had returned. The voice wasn’t booming or grand. It was like a whisper pressed directly into the back of my skull: "Players. You wonder why you have not found others. Why only your small groups wander the city while the rest vanish. The answer is simple." My stomach clenched. I realized what he was about to say next. "We hid them. The system divided you. Segmented you. Until now." Hana gasped softly. Ye-rin cursed under her breath. Seo-yeon narrowed her eyes, fists tightening. I clenched my jaw. So all this time... survivors had been there, but locked away from us by the system itself. "You played hide-and-seek with people’s lives. For what? Entertainment?" The eyeball blinked slowly, its pupil widening, and for a second, I swore it smiled. "Entertainment is incidental. What matters is balance. Too many gathered in one place... survival becomes trivial. Too few, and survival becomes impossible. Division maintains the test." "Test my ass," Ye-rin snapped, stepping forward. "You’re killing people like they’re disposable." The eyeball turned—or rather, it didn’t turn, but we felt its gaze shift. Straight onto her. She flinched but didn’t back away. "Disposable? All things are disposable. That is the purpose of the game." I raised a hand to stop Ye-rin before she rushed in and got herself obliterated. The last thing we needed was her charging an eyeball with god-knows-what kind of power behind it. The air vibrated. A system panel flashed into existence before us. The system’s blue panel flared in front of us: \[Mission 5: Invasion] \[Vampiric aristocrats from the neighboring district have unleashed their spawn.] \[Through infected insects, they seed your kind with hunger and thirst.] The walls of your district no longer protect you. From within and without, the invaders come. Survive until dawn and eliminate the infiltrators. Fail, and your district will fall. Objective 1: Identify and eliminate infiltrators. Objective 2: Defend the district from external assault. Failure Condition: Entire district consumed. "Infiltrators?" In-ji muttered, eyes narrowing. The eyeball pulsed, veins twitching, and its whisper pressed deeper into our minds. "Insects?" Eun-ha’s voice was small, uncertain. "Like... mosquitoes?" "Let me give you a hint, little girl." The giant eye dived toward Eun-ha and paused in front of her face. "Closer to wasps. Their sting festers. Hours, days... then flesh rots and the heart drinks blood. The turned look as you do. Pale. Fragile. Until the moment comes." My mouth went dry. So it wasn’t even immediate. Someone could be bitten and walk among us, looking perfectly fine—until the hunger hit. Then it was too late. "Clever bastards," I muttered. "They’re turning paranoia into a weapon." Ye-rin spun to me, face tight. "How the hell are we supposed to fight enemies when we don’t even know who’s on our side?" The eyeball blinked again. "That is the trial. Trust no one. Not even yourselves. If you wish to prove humanity, you will show it beneath the sun. Until then... suspicion is survival." A cold shiver ran through me. Show it beneath the sun. So the only way to be sure someone wasn’t infected... was daylight. Seo-yeon’s voice cut through the silence, sharp as glass. "So you’re telling us—anyone could be a vampire. And we’ll only know when it’s too late." The eyeball didn’t answer. Its pupil constricted, and the arena trembled. Cracks spidered through the stone beneath our feet. "Brace yourselves," I muttered, already feeling the pull. The eyeball’s whisper came one last time, heavier than the rest, sinking into bone. "Survive three dawns." And then the floor gave way. The arena shattered, stone crumbling into the abyss. When my eyes snapped open—we were back. But this time was different. When we were teleported before, we returned to the exact same time. But now night had already fallen, though it had been midday before the teleportation. Ye-rin cursed softly beside me. Mother’s hand tightened on her scythe. Seo-yeon and In-ji exchanged tense glances. Hyun-tae, who had been quiet this whole time, stood up and said, "Let’s return first and survive the night." In-ji, who was near me, whispered in my ear, "Hey... not that I want to sound mean, but wasn’t his mentality unstable when we first met him? He seems kind of calmer now." I chuckled lightly. "Maybe, unlike us, he survived the golden hell by himself. And now that we’re near him, he’s starting to recover. After all, humans are a species that depend on each other." We moved through the streets with blades ready. The air carried a strange stillness. That was when we saw them. A group huddled in the ruins of a nearby building. Seven in total. Three men, two women, one kid, and an elderly woman leaning on a cane. But something was off. The kid clutched at his mother’s sleeve, skin pale, lips almost gray. The old woman’s hands trembled unnaturally, eyes glazed, her complexion drained of life. Even the two women looked pale. Ye-rin whispered near me, "They already look half-dead..." Vampire signs. Or maybe just hunger and exhaustion. The problem was, we couldn’t tell. We didn’t need to say it out loud. We all knew. After that announcement, we couldn’t trust anyone but ourselves.