BIOLOGICAL SUPERCOMPUTER SYSTEM

Two days quickly went by, with the usual routine going on. That morning, however, things were going to take a different turn. Erik woke up at the usual hour and went to wash and wake up Benedict. This became routine, as it looked like the young man had trouble waking up alone.

"Ugh... good morning," Benedict said when Erik entered his room.

"C'mon, we are going to be late..." Erik said.

BIIIIP BIIIIP BIIIIP

Erik received a notification on his phone, which he could see directly from his eyes, thanks to his biological supercomputer.

________________________________________

SENDER: RED PALACE J.S.C

TITLE: IMPORTANT

-ATTACHMENT: 2 GB VIDEO

________________________________________

"What could this be? Hey Benedict, did you receive this too?" Erik asked while faking, having just checked his phone. Immediately, Benedict grabbed his device and controlled whether the message was there.

"Yes, what is this?"

"How could I know? I just saw the notification..."

Erik opened the message and downloaded the file; it took a couple of seconds to do this. Once he clicked on the video, the image of a man appeared.

"Greetings, students. I'm Tom Van Dyke, the current Red Palace principal. The reason why I'm sending you this message is very simple. The school board and I have decided to issue a special event for you to participate in, and there is something you must do," the man said while looking at the camera.

"The event is mandatory, and it will probably be one of the most, if not the most, important day of your lives for some of you!" the man said excitedly. In the meantime, Benedict approached Erik, who was watching the video on his phone. He was listening to it with rapt attention.

"Listen..." the man said, getting closer to the camera and starting to whisper, "Today, we are going to send you to kill Thaids!" He smiled.

"WHAT?!" Benedict shouted, ignoring that all the other students who didn't join the military yet were exclaiming the same thing, 'is this guy crazy?'

"Yeah, yeah... I know what you are thinking. I'm crazy, you are all going to die, and bla bla bla... but listen to me. Thaids near the city are not that strong, the likes of you can easily kill them, and since this would be a good learning experience, I decided to have you make a trip around the city," the man said.

"Oh, but don't worry, you can be rewarded since we will host a small competition."

In the following five minutes, under Benedict's astonished look, the principal explained the rules and how everything would work. First of all, the students would be divided into groups of five randomly selected people.

There were currently 4000 peasant-rank students inside the Red Palace, meaning that there would be 800 groups.

They were going to get a device that would count how many thaids each they killed, and a master would be nearby in case something happened.

They just needed to press a button on such a device, and the closest master would be alerted and run to help the students.

Each thaid they killed would earn the squad one point, and the squad with more kills would get a prize. The first three squads were going to win the possibility to make a weapon with the items available to the higher-ranked students, in Erik's case, the Squire rank.

The first-ranked team, though, would win a brain-stimulating or body-stimulating serum each, depending on the individual's preferences.

After that, the principals went on trying to convince the students how that would be a good experience and how they would come out with more confidence than ever before; after a short while, the video ended.

The principal gave the students two hours to prepare themselves, eat, exercise, and the like; after that, they had to go to the main entrance, where a bus would bring them to the barrier.

As Erik closed the phone, a notification arrived both to him and Benedict.

__________________________________________

TEAM 765 MEMBERS:

1) Anderson Worthington

2) Judith Wang

3)Erik Romano

4) Elena Francis

5) Robyn Farley

__________________________________________

"Anderson is my teammate; how many chances were there?" Erik said. He then turned to look at Benedict, who was still reading who his comrades were.

"Were you lucky?" Erik asked.

"No, man, I don't know any of them. They are all probably second-year students," the young man replied. "What do we do now?" he asked.

"Well, it's not like we have a choice in the matter; we must participate." the young man paused a little bit to think and then said, "You know what? For now, let's just go have breakfast. I will send a text to the others telling them to meet us at the cafeteria..."

"Good idea, I'm quite angry..." Benedict replied.

Later, Anderson, Aaron, Mikey, Floyd, Gwen, Amber, Martha, Benedict, and Erik met at the place and ordered something to eat. All of them were freaking out because of the principal's small competition, addressing him like a psycho. Of course, Erik was pretty calm, something that Mikey quickly noticed.

"How come you are so calm, Erik?" the young man asked.

Erik was munching on a pear, not particularly stressed by the situation. As soon as Mikey addressed him, he raised his eyes only to see the other eight students staring at him.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked.

"Well, we will fight fucking thaids, yet you did not bat an eye at this..." Mikey said.

Erik looked him in the eyes. He knew what the principal said was true, well... mostly. Up to a week ago, killing thaids around here was easy; Erik didn't know how the current situation was out there, but it couldn't be good. However, the fact that the masters would be around there, ensuring the student's safety, greatly reassured him, so he thought nothing about it.

"Well, I mean... The principal said we can kill them already, the masters will be around... and... we can't do nothing about it, so stressing about this matter is only counterproductive..." The young man said, leaving the others flabbergasted.

Erik was often emotional, mostly gloomy and sad. They did expect him to freak out about the prospect of killing thaids, and yet he wasn't. However, he was right; they could do nothing about it.

"Look, I don't know if this will be able to calm you down, but despite being true that we can't choose our partners, we can still regroup and hunt together. I bet your teammates won't contest this decision since safety can be ensured by being close to other groups."

"That's a good idea," Aaron said. "As the groups currently are, we have eight teams, meaning that forty people are available. We can create a defensive perimeter ensuring that each group takes care of each other's blind spot areas," he added.

"Yeah, totally..." Erik said.

"Ok, but what if the others do not accept?" Benedict remarked. Rasing concern among the group. Then Erik chimed in.

"I don't think they will and the reasons are two. First, the idea is a viable one, and despite maybe losing a few points, they will generally be safer. Second, most of them are low-ranked students, so many will at least listen to what the higher-ranked says. Since, besides me, you are all basically high-ranked I think they will do as you say. Moreover, we have Amber and Anderson, and just knowing that such powerful students will be watching their back is additional insurance. I doubt they will disagree, and even if they do, this doesn't mean you are forced to go with them hunting where they say you can simply meet with one of our groups and join us," Erik said.

"Yeah, but what if the other team members oppose this because they do not want to lose points?" Gwen added.

"Then we can simply leave them and make a group of our own. We will gather fewer points, but we will still be safe. I think that with the nine of us, we will hardly have problems..."

Everyone nodded. Despite often being a crybaby, Erik showed he could be particularly insightful sometimes.