Hours passed. John allowed his mind to drift as he sunk into the monotony of slaughtering monsters, classroom by classroom. It was almost relaxing. Therapeutic, even. Though he had to admit that vicious satisfaction surged every time his Aurora Blade separated an insect's head from its oversized shoulders. He liked to imagine each kill was payback for all the humans—and other Earthlings—that had been senselessly slaughtered over the last few days.

He found himself thinking a lot about that, despite himself. The senselessness of it all. The wanton brutality inflicted on Earth. What was it all for? There'd been no indication of any greater purpose for the monster invasion. No sign of them gathering resources, for example, unless you counted the fact no murdered corpses were being left lying around. The only hint of seeing something behind the curtain, so to speak, was back in the spawn chamber at the end of the bus depot, where a stream of souls had been feeding into those three giant eyes, all of which were just spawning more monsters.

For some reason, he didn't think the monsters had invaded for the purpose of creating more monsters. It seemed too simplistic for a scenario involving all this complex gamification nonsense.

That was the crux of the matter, in his mind. The gamification. It was evident, at this point, that the monsters and the game-y system were intertwined in some manner. A package deal. At first, John could have been convinced that the system was a third party that had inserted itself into the situation for the sake of defending humanity from alien aggression for its own reasons. Now, having seen how the portal worlds operated, combined with how the monsters seemed to react to his 'quests', he couldn't countenance that delusion.

He was thoroughly convinced that the monsters and the system came from the same source, and he was becoming equally certain that it was all for some kind of sadistic entertainment. Part of him had understood that from the very beginning, when he was lamenting the cruelty of the system and what it was forcing people to do, taking them out of their comfort zones in the most callous of ways.

But a new dimension to it had been added, ever since the system had altered itself in real time to accommodate his Skill/Spell Combination. Before, his belief that it was all for some higher being's sick entertainment had remained, to a degree, somewhat tongue in cheek. At most, he'd thought maybe the individual or group responsible for all this just wanted to see people suffer.

Now, he was starting to wonder if it was actually entertainment. Like a goddamn game show. Some Running Man type shit. He could totally imagine a bunch of slimy demonic executives and producers standing over an eldritch scrying pool, watching him attempt his little Skill/Spell test, and, upon realising the system wasn't designed for it, ordering their subordinates to make a quick hot fix, because allowing it seemed like the more amusing option.

Maybe that was too far. Perhaps his overactive imagination was running a little too wild. But when he thought back on the stuff that had seemed nonsensical—the dumb names in the Underworld and the bus depot, the 'rules' all the portal worlds seemed to follow, the way monsters responded to quests he set for himself, the general strangeness of the monsters' appearances, this insane PvP situation that had been forced upon Watford, and, of course, the magical system that granted superpowers to those who survived the opening onslaught of the apocalypse—the explanation that this was all an orchestrated game for the sake of someone's entertainment seemed to fit.

There were other possible explanations, of course. He wasn't under the delusion he'd unravelled everything within a couple of hours of theorising. But that idea was stuck in his mind like a burr, making it difficult to consider any other.

But what does that actually mean for me? He pondered as he routinely exterminated another classroom of bugs. What are the implications?

If he was right, it was, to a degree, exploitable. Thinking about it, he already had been exploiting the situation inadvertently, with the badass character he'd adopted. When he looked back at the path he'd walked so far, he could see the narrative he'd been following. Briefly, he considered how much choice he'd had in that, but he couldn't identify any places where a giant thumb was on the scale for sure.

Still, he considered the possibilities. The times when he'd found himself pursued by masses of monsters seemed, at first, to be consequences of his own actions. At the very beginning, he'd avoided conflict unless he was confident of victory, strolling around like he hadn't a care in the world, declaring stronger monsters unworthy of his time and weaker monsters unworthy of breathing the same air as him, granting him a nice excuse to bully lesser monsters and ignore greater ones.

And then a trio of people had just so happened to take shelter in the same house where he'd been resting. What were the odds of that? Taking into account the fact that a horrifying percentage of humanity had already been wiped out by that point, how likely was it that a group of survivors would run into each other? London was a big place. Sure, there'd been a lot of people in it before the monsters came, but by then, he distinctly remembered thinking the chaos of the early hours had massively decreased—all the gunshots and screams… they'd mostly faded away. The city's population had been reduced to a fraction already.

So he had to wonder: had the monsters herded those three there, directly to him? The system evidently gave a much greater reward for "coolness" when it was performed with more people around. Had the showrunners—for lack of a better term—seen his insistence on a solo performance on the first day as unacceptable, and pushed some more survivors towards his location, to create more conflict? More entertainment?

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Similar suspicions arose around Doug's group. They just happened to escape from Watford right towards the spot where John was hiding, where it would be impossible for him not to see them? He couldn't help wondering if it was a setup, and his mind kept playing back everything else that he'd been through so far, too. Even right at the very fucking beginning, when the fast food worker he'd had an awkward conversation with had, by some miracle, ended up right next to the wheelie bin he'd tried to hide in.

The more he thought about it, the more he started to see those coincidences pile up. It made too much sense. Even the parrots he'd freed finding their way back to him, not once but twice, seemed suspicious now.

John's frown was deepening as these thoughts ran through his head, and he found his decapitating slashes growing steadily more brutal as he exterminated his way through the entire Q-R block of classes.

Considering the narrative theory, he thought back on what he'd been through so far. He could see potential threads, when he looked. Storylines. There was a chance he'd see that fast food worker again, just so she could expose that bloody awkward exchange and send his badass persona crashing down around his ears. Maybe the owners of his red leather jacket would show up in some capacity, too, though he was pretty sure they were dead, so maybe it would come up as someone recognising the jacket itself.

And there were monsters in the early hours he'd avoided by saying they weren't worth his time. Would he be forced to face them eventually? The giant centipede from back at the mansion that had called the swarm of monsters to them seemed likely to make a return, if that was the case. The crab monster from the bus depot was pretty much a certainty; it had even said so.

And speaking of enemies who'd probably pop up again: Daniel's trio would undoubtedly come back. Since the headmaster had evidently focused on dragging John away to detention, he reckoned the others would have made it out.

John swallowed. Would Jade, Lily, Chester, and Doug all be dead now, setting him up for some kind of revenge quest? Or captured, maybe, positioning John as their only chance of salvation? Or were they still out there somewhere, waiting for him to swoop in and save the day at the last moment?

He shook his head. Narrative theory or not, it was a bit conceited to see himself as the centre of the universe. If this really was all a game show or whatever, there'd surely be thousands of stories playing out all over the world. No point thinking he was the primary focus of the system's attention.

The best thing he could do right now was come up with ways to exploit it. He'd already started on the path with his discovery of quests; he hadn't put a lot of thought into it yet, but he had been thinking over challenges he could set for himself on a more medium-to-long term basis. If he was going to exploit the gamified aspect of the apocalypse…

Well, before anything he needed to figure out how it all worked. One could not exploit something they didn't understand. He'd have to run tests. Discover the rules behind it all. It wasn't an inherent set of laws that governed the universe, in his estimation: it was something set up with a set of guiding principles, and it could be altered on the fly if the overlords felt he'd come up with something interesting.

Like his actions right now. He'd essentially found an exploit that let him slaughter the insects in the classroom without them fighting back, while also not drawing the ire of the headmaster, which was supposed to prevent a "player" from doing exactly this. The paltry 50 Aura per kill showed him that the system was allowing his quasi-cheat only grudgingly.

Or so he'd thought. If he looked at it from a narrative perspective, following the thread of the potential storyline, then it might be more accurate to say that it was allowing him to farm these monsters with the promise that he was going to face the headmaster again in his attempt to destroy the portal world. This method was being allowed because it would pay off later, but it was still being slightly nerfed so his grind couldn't build up hundreds of thousands of points and make him OP.

What would happen if, say, he just left the portal world after he'd finished grinding here? There was no chance of him doing that, but his reasoning was being slightly altered. Before, he might have thought he'd be punished because it would be failing a quest he'd set for himself. Now, he wondered if the punishment would come for taking the least entertaining option. If it worked how he thought it did, he reckoned the Aura he'd lose would be equal to what he'd gained in the course of this grind, and he'd be hit with a debuff for a while afterwards.

With all this in mind, he also suspected the system wouldn't let him keep grinding forever. There'd be a limit to its masters' patience.

Luckily, this theory wasn't particularly difficult to test. Eventually, he reached the end of block Q-R, slaughtering classes 69-Q and 69-R (of fucking course), and the wall of shadowy arms at the end of the corridor faded away like the arms were withdrawing into invisible holes. Revealed beyond was a choice between a right turn and going straight. He'd already known this from Mana Sense, and he knew from experience that a new wall of shadow arms would spawn behind him once he was through, locking him into the new block.

Out of interest, he turned right and entered what turned out to block U-V, Shadow Stream billowing around him. The first class he entered was no different to any other, and, once he had his shadows covering the walls, floor, and ceiling, he went straight to the nearest monster and cut its head off.

As expected, he received no reward. John frowned. Now, he had to wonder whether that had happened because the system had already decided he'd only be able to clear one block, and his prediction had been correct, or had the system taken the idea from his mind and ran with it?

This whole thing is such a headfuck, he thought with a sigh. He moved over to the window and pressed his face into the shadows, letting him see out into the courtyard beyond with the darkness' greyscale tinge. If there was no longer a reward for killing monsters, there was no longer any point in going through the classrooms and corridors at all.

The way to bypass that was, obviously, to jump out into the courtyard. Jumping out into the courtyard required breaking the glass. Breaking the glass would draw out the headmaster.

A smile tugged at John's lips as he delved into the Aura menus.

Available Aura: 77,150

Unlocked Teleportation!

-32000 Aura

Information flooded his mind, and his smile widened.

Time for round two.

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