"Good…" Bruce murmured, sliding his daggers back into place.

"Let the next ones try."

He turned away, coat brushing against the grass as he walked, already thinking, already calculating, already deciding what to test next.

The farming had only just begun.

[You have killed AVERAGE JOE and claimed his points...]

[You have killed BROSKY and claimed his points...]

[You have killed JOHNNY and claimed his points...]

Bruce exhaled through his nose, unimpressed. "Tsk. Fools."

Their corpses lay in the tall grass behind him, sprawled in awkward final poses. Their teamwork had been decent, their timing coordinated, their movements practiced, proof that the three had known each other long before the trials.

But the gap in skill, speed, and instinct between them and Bruce was simply too vast.

Three opponents. Three kills. Not a single real threat.

The thing that irritated Bruce most wasn't their attack, it was the way they died. They didn't even use their class abilities properly. They didn't retreat. They didn't rethink. They simply charged in, convinced that numbers alone would crush him.

He scoffed. "At least make it interesting."

He opened the ranking panel. A new scoreboard appeared:

[RANKINGS]

[1] [BRUCE ACKERMAN — 5022 pts]

[2] [JEAN FROST — 3780 pts]

[3] [ARIA STORMHEART — 2566 pts]

[4] [DOMINIC SAVIOR — 2347 pts]

[5] [LUKE DROT — 2180 pts]

[6] [FRISCA FOX — 2055 pts]

[7] [DONN CHIT — 2030 pts]

[8] [BALE LAS — 1820 pts]

Average Joe, Brosky, and Johnny had vanished from the board. Bruce barely glanced at it before his attention shifted to something else entirely, the rate of change.

"…so they're killing each other now."

It was obvious. The numbers weren't rising this fast from beasts alone anymore, recruits were turning on each other, hunting for points the same way they hunted monsters. All it took was Bruce killing Ozai, and the entire balance of the trial had shifted.

He sighed lightly.

'If I hadn't killed Ozai early, they would've focused on beasts first... saved the fighting the other recruits for later.'

'But now that I took the shortcut… they're all trying to do the same.'

And that was a problem.

Because the more recruits died early, the fewer would be left alive to farm. And Bruce needed as many points as possible.

He checked the total count displayed below the map:

[REMAINING RECRUITS: 78]

Bruce's eyes narrowed. It had only been five hours since he killed Ozai, yet eighteen more recruits had already been eliminated.

At this rate, the map would soon be empty, beasts left wandering untouched because there wouldn't be enough players alive to hunt them. Even with Bruce's power, he couldn't cover a map this large alone.

"One person can't farm an entire world," he muttered. "Numbers are useful… even if they're weak."

He paused, then made a decision.

"For now… no more killing recruits."

He needed to let them fight beasts, not each other. Let them grow fat with points. Let them survive long enough for him to harvest properly later.

He scrolled down the list, searching for a familiar name.

It wasn't near the top.

Not in the middle.

Almost near the bottom,

78th — SOPHIE REIGN — 1000 pts

Bruce blinked once. Then a quiet chuckle escaped him.

"So that's what you're doing…"

Sophie had earned exactly the amount of points required to pass the trial and then stopped. No farming. No competition. No increase.

She wasn't being lazy. She wasn't falling behind.

She was leaving all the remaining beasts, and their points, for him.

Because she knew Bruce needed every point he could get. Because she knew he wouldn't accept a direct loan from her. So she was helping him the only way he couldn't refuse.

Bruce nodded silently, a faint warmth flickering through his usually cold gaze.

Persistent woman.

On the map, his red icon pulsed, but now, so did several other dots.

He wasn't the only one marked. Every recruit who had killed someone was now broadcasted just like him.

Predators. Targets. Future victims.

And Bruce stared at the map with the same expression a butcher might give a livestock pen.

"All those points…" he whispered, a slow smile forming. "Still waiting to be claimed."

He sprinted across the savannah, his footsteps light, controlled, almost soundless. In a few minutes, he crossed into a new zone, and his guess was right.

A pack of mutant hyenas roamed ahead, tearing into half-eaten carcasses of goats. Bruce didn't hesitate. He slipped in silently and butchered them with ease, clean strikes, minimal wasted motion, bodies dropping before they could even howl.

But just as the last one fell—

Swoosh!

Swoosh!!

Swoosh!!!

Swoosh!!!!

Air split.

Fast.

Too fast.

Multiple figures blurred through the field, moving at such insane speed that, to normal eyes, they would've appeared like streaks of gray lightning, there one second, gone the next.

Bruce's smile returned.

A calm, anticipatory smile.

"Well now…" he murmured, watching as the moving shadows circled him, creating a wind vortex around his position. "A wind-type beast, huh? Things were starting to get boring."

It was true. After hours of killing low-tier beasts, Bruce was beginning to feel almost numb to the slaughter, nothing new, nothing surprising, just mindless cleanup.

But now?

Something fast.

Something unknown.

Something interesting.

Those were the types worth experimenting on.

He channeled healing energy into his eyes, sharpening vision, increasing retinal processing speed, clearing blur from motion.

The shadows became slightly clearer, beasts with sharp, triangular ears, long limbs, and slim, aerodynamic builds built for speed.

"Hyenas? No. The build is too lean," Bruce muttered. "Blood Hounds? No… their ears have a red tint. These are different."

He frowned, still not fully certain.

He had done research before entering the trial, asked around at the guild, memorized what common VR beasts were known to appear. But this one… wasn't on any list.

Gray fur. No flame patterns. No blood markings. Movements too smooth, too precise.

"…wolves?" he muttered, eyes narrowing further. "Wind wolves?"

Their speed made the name Wind wolves ring in Bruce mind.

Wind wolves, maybe he guessed the name right or maybe not.

Whatever they were, they weren't weak.

Bruce rolled his shoulders lightly, loosening his grip, daggers angled downward in a relaxed but ready stance.

Multiple gray blurs tore around him in rapid, circling motion, tracing a hunting pattern.

Bruce stood perfectly still in the center.

Calm. Collected.

Almost amused.

"Good," he murmured softly, eyes sharpening. "Show me something new."

***

A/N:

Time in Vitual Reality rhymes with real world. So night time in Vitual Reality is nighttime in Real Life... So Bruce came to the guild and started the trial yesterday btw? You get?

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