When Vicente was being tied up by one of the gathered scouts, the one who had been laughing behind them suddenly stopped moving.
"What's wrong, Kan? Scared?"
The tallest of the three men looked at the young man who had been laughing moments earlier and saw his head fall to the ground. Blood sprayed upward from the arteries in his neck like a fountain as his body tilted backward and collapsed heavily onto the ground.
"STOP!"
Omar was about to tear off the head of the larger, dark-haired man when Karen approached, wearing nothing but the cloak Vicente had left behind, and ordered him to stop.
"If you want your friend to live, you're not going to touch anyone else here."
"And who said I want him to live?"
Omar looked coldly at the unconscious Vicente.
"Obviously, you wouldn't let one of the Twelve die. Otherwise, you wouldn't even be here helping."
Karen stepped closer and showed her left arm. The veins beneath her skin were visible, glowing in a bluish-green color.
"He's infected with a deadly toxin. It's a magical poison from one of the demons on the nineteenth floor. Everyone in this camp has been poisoned too. I'm the host. Anyone who has sex with me becomes infected, and I control how the poison acts. Every time one of the infected dies, the chances of the poison growing stronger in the others increase, since it's a shared curse. Everyone in this camp is in my hands—and now, your friend is too. Soon, you will be as well."
Omar continued holding his blade against the scout's neck, maintaining his cold gaze without even turning his head toward the woman.
"Me? What makes you think that?"
"If you don't fuck me right now, your friend is going to the grave."
"What do you want? If I kill everyone here, we'll still come out ahead if the price is only Vicente."
"Only?" Karen said. "I know you people. I know you made it this far with everyone's help. Even if he's a disgusting piece of trash, he still helped a lot with your accomplishments. I know everything about your group. We all do. Who doesn't know about the Twelve nowadays? If this were the world before the Purge, you'd be the most-followed people on Instagram."
"I'll ask again. What do you want?"
"Ah, so you're finally going to listen to me? Start by stepping away from my companion."
"You start by getting your ass down, you little bitch."
Vick pointed her spear at Karen's head. Karen didn't move and merely smiled sarcastically.
"The cavalry has arrived, but the answer is still the same. If you kill me, your friend dies."
"That fucking bastard! He slept with you and now—"
Sally turned red as she shouted from behind Vick. Both of them had awakened after Vick sensed Vicente's presence weakening.
"He tried to use me to get information. Well, I simply returned the favor and used him too."
"If we kill her, doesn't the curse end, Omar?"
Vick pressed the tip of her spear against Karen's head as all the other scouts gathered around them, including Chamt.
"Hahaha, of course not. The Sorceress is a level 58 mage. Go ahead and test it. Pierce her leg, and you'll see what happens to everyone who's infected."
Chamt said as he stepped in front of the three women.
The other scouts drew their daggers as well.
"Right away, boss."
Without hesitation, Vick pierced Karen's left thigh.
Karen screamed in pain and nearly dropped to her knees, but she smiled when she saw that every other scout—and even Vicente—had suffered the exact same wound in their respective thighs.
"So it wasn't a bluff. Fuck. Let's just leave that idiot behind."
Sally said as she noticed Vicente slowly beginning to wake up.
"The poison is adapting. He'll be fine soon, but now... he belongs to me."
"So are you finally going to tell us what you want?"
Omar finally lowered his blade and turned his gaze toward Karen.
"We want to leave this place. That's all."
"And why don't you? If you climbed up, you can climb back down."
"Hahaha! For heroes like you, that's easy! We're just scouts. Getting this far was a miracle. Out of a hundred scouts, ninety die in less than two years. Of the five who remain, they get trapped on the floors, while the other five either advance or return—but few survive. They say there are only scouts up to the fortieth floor, and nobody knows whether they're still alive. We're disposable pawns. We don't have to fight, but if any stronger monster attacks us, we die."
Karen became increasingly nervous and animated as she spoke.
"You accepted this. You knew you'd be working like this. You could have simply gone back. You were greedy."
"Fuck you! You too! But you didn't go back because you're strong. You have a choice. We don't."
Karen turned toward Vick and Sally with a look of disgust.
"Would you protect us? Do you protect the people living on the floors? Do you stay behind at the crystals? No. You just climb upward like dogs, obeying Central and never stepping out of line. How many scouts do you think have died because you didn't help them? That's right—many more will die. But we're tired of it. We saw this golden opportunity, and now we want to survive."
"Just tell us what you want already, you talkative bitch."
Sally huffed, tired of the conversation.
"You three are going with Chamt and some of our men to where the portal opened."
"So you know where it opened, huh? What else do you know?"
Vick impatiently struck the ground with her spear.
"Actually, the portal is still open."
At that moment, everyone turned their eyes toward Chamt. The man smiled as he lit a cigarette.
"They're bluffing, you idiots—cough."
Vicente tried to speak but coughed up blood.
"No, it really is open. Obviously, I couldn't give you that information for free, but since you're our hostages now, I suppose it doesn't matter."
"And what do you want with it? Do you know who came through that portal?"
Omar asked.
"No. I have an idea, though. But let's go find out."
Chamt replied as he took a drag from his cigarette.
"You just want us to accompany you there?"
Omar looked suspicious as he held his blades and kept an eye on everyone around him.
"Me and a few others are going with the three of you. The charlatan stays in Karen's care, since she's his 'master' now. Hahaha. It's like the swollen-belly scam, but without the fucking baby. What the hell does he expect from going around fucking every bitch he finds?"
Chamt looked at Karen, who responded by raising her middle finger.
"Your mother's the bitch."
"She probably should've been. Anyway, can we stop wasting time and go to the fucking portal? Who knows when it's going to close?"
"And why didn't you go before?"
Sally asked irritably, clearly annoyed at having to take orders.
"Obviously, for safety. If it belonged to some demonic legion, we'd already be dead. But with you three coming with us, our chances of survival increase."
"You waited for us here. You knew we were coming."
Omar clicked his tongue irritably.
"Of course! You're heroes, aren't you? You go wherever there's trouble."
"Okay, and considering there's no enemy or anything there, what are you going to do?"
Sally asked.
"We're leaving, obviously! The girl just told you—we only want to get the hell out of here."
"Even without knowing where the portal leads?"
Vick stepped closer to Chamt, who didn't seem afraid in the slightest.
"We know where it leads, and it won't be anywhere more dangerous than the lower floors."
"You would be able to sense the presence of powerful demons nearby, right? Assuming some of them came through the portal, and considering you haven't detected any, then there are no demons. Which means the portal is human-made. Therefore, they couldn't have come from the upper floors, because there's only your group of three above us. No scout would be capable of opening a portal. In fact, besides Central and the demons, who else could open one? Not even you heroes can."
After Karen spoke, Omar looked concerned.
"She's right. Only Central should be capable of opening portals, but never somewhere that hasn't already been opened before."
Omar's expression grew dark, and Sally became worried.
"So it could be something else? An angel? Some kind of creature from one of the floors?"
"No. We haven't encountered anything like that so far. The angels abandoned us, and the creatures on these floors don't have that kind of power or intelligence. Can't you just accept that this might have been done by humans? We're worse than demons and monsters."
Karen stared at Sally, who once again seemed speechless.
"Fine. We'll go there. And when you enter the fucking portal, you'll release Vicente from the curse?"
Omar said without wasting any time.
"Absolutely. And I wouldn't even need to do anything. Once I'm far enough away from him, he'll no longer be affected—as long as I remain alive."
"But wait, why isn't everyone going through the portal?"
Vick asked.
"If it's some kind of trap or something like that, at least some of us will survive. And I don't want to take the risk myself either. Chamt gets to do the dirty work and check it out."
Karen looked sarcastically at the man as he tossed away the butt of his hand-rolled cigarette.
"You only think like that because you have that curse. But once I'm free, I'm going to fuck you senseless."
"With your tiny dick?"
"Are you two middle school teenagers? Shut the hell up."
Sally grew irritated by the stupidity of their conversation while Chamt gathered the group that would be heading toward the portal.
Of the fifteen scouts remaining there, two women and five men—including Chamt—would go to the portal. Among them was a thin, silent man with white hair who caught Omar's attention.
"That guy over there is strange, isn't he?"
Vick nudged Omar, whose attention was already focused on the man, who appeared to be around thirty years old.
"This whole group is strange."
Back at the camp, Karen stayed behind with Vicente and the other eight scouts.
"If anything happens to Vicente, when I come back here, there won't be anything left."
Omar looked at Karen as he issued the warning.
"If we wanted to kill him, we would've done it already. Just make sure you secure a way out for us soon."
Omar and the group began walking, following Chamt.
Sally possessed the strongest sensory perception of mana among the group. She could genuinely feel that there was something to the north, in the direction they were heading.
"So there really is an open portal over there after all..."
Sally walked beside Vick, who looked bored.
"Walking, walking, and more fucking walking. I want to fight some monsters."
"You'll get your chance, Vick. Right now, the most important thing is finding out what the hell opened that portal."
The group spotted something shining behind a rocky hill.
Back at the camp, Vicente was eating some Maria biscuits, having already recovered from the poison's control.
He was sitting on a rock under the watchful eyes of Karen and two scouts, both holding their knives at the ready.
"Hey, do I really need this much surveillance? Can't you kill me just by snapping your fingers?"
The young man looked at Karen, who appeared serious.
"I don't trust heroes, especially you. I know you still have tricks."
"Miss, if I had any, you'd already be dead. I'm just a trickster, you know? The only trick I have is this one."
Vicente pulled a ruby from his pocket and tossed it toward Karen.
"What is this?"
"Are you really that much of a country bumpkin that you don't recognize a fucking ruby?"
"I want to know what you're trying to accomplish by throwing one of these at me."
"Obviously, I'm trying to buy you."
"You think we're going to let you go and free you from the curse because of this? We want to leave, not money."
"The thing is, I know how to get out of here—and in a way that's much more reliable than that supposed portal."
"How?"
"If one of the heroes gets badly injured while standing near a crystal, Central will send someone to retrieve them or heal them."
"And?"
"Then we kill those sons of bitches and go back through it."
"And you would abandon your group?"
"My dear, I've wanted to do that ever since I watched two motherfuckers die right in front of me."
"And you'd be willing to betray your companions?"
"I'm only willing to survive, sweetheart."