"Status!" said Kathy. Her eyes widened almost immediately. "Holy shit!" she exclaimed.

Most students followed her example and a chaotic chorus of 'status' sounded through the whole room. Everyone repeated the word, with the exception of Brantley. Ethan was pretty sure he had already understood the nature of their predicament a long time ago, if his strange behavior was anything to go by.

"This..." the teacher said. "Explain this Ethan!" he said. Any vestige of levity left his voice. Finally he was starting to understand the wrongness of the situation. Ethan grinned, take that you bastard! "What is there to explain?" he said. "It's like a game. You kill monsters, you gain experience." he shrugged.

The teacher was reeling. "A game..."

"How can it be a game?" Reene's friend, Taylor, asked. "Is Reene okay then?" she asked hopefully.

"We don't know." Ethan said. "Right now, we know no more than you"

"What about your theory?" said Jack's voice. He had risen up from his corner and was approaching while playing with his knife. "You said you had one..."

Ethan sighed. Most students were gathering around him now. He was never good talking in public. It was strange how he could talk well in small groups, but if there were more than seven people, he normally becomes a stuttering mess. He took a breath and closed his eyes to ignore the other's eyes upon him. "I...I thought about it, and the only explanation I have for this is already quite bizarre..." he said. "I think we are test subjects in a VR environment."

"That's...pretty farfetched, isn't it?" the teacher said, doubtful, raising his eyebrows.

"Yes, it is." Ethan said, suddenly angry. "Got a better idea?" he growled "If you don't, then shut the fuck up..."

"This isn't how you should talk to your teacher..." he reprimanded, pointing his finger at Ethan's face.

"No, he's right, fuck you." said Jack. "You did nothing since you arrived here, it was your idea for us to look for that Reene girl, José is dead because of you" he said. "arrogant bastard".

"Stop!" a girl said. It was one Reene's friends, Isabelle. Taylor was hiding behind her. "I've seen this in a series before..." she said breathing tensely. "That's the way it goes in most zombie apocalypses. The group falls apart and everyone dies because of internal fights...We need to keep calm..." she said, with her palms standing, trying to appease Jack and the teacher.

Jack backed down and went back to his corner. His friends seemed to be avoiding him ever since he came back. Ethan decided that this was a good time to cool down as well. He was edgy since he arrived.

"You seem really worn" said Kathy. With a small smile.

"It was..." he said with a smile of his own "Tense..."

She hugged him and he let his head fall in her shoulder. It was soft, but he was too tired to care.

"will you tell me?" she said.

"Let me get some rest first." he said. "My legs are killing me."

"That's your own fault." she giggled. "You should have done sports back on..."

Ethan eyes widened.

"What?" said Kathy, suddenly tense.

"Its...It's nothing..." he said, giving a tense smile "Let's sit somewhere."

They sat side by side, resting against a wall. Ethan let his head rest in Kathy's shoulder while was trying to understand the small dent in his theory.

Why was his body, in this supposed virtual world, so similar to the one on the real world? It was disconcerting that the developers would have such profound knowledge about his physical condition. He started reconsidering the possibility that he was really going crazy.

It would do no good to him to worry over it for now. For now he would only enjoy Kathy's presence.

...

"We need to define what we are going to do now." the teacher said. The group had gathered in a half circle around him as he explained the situation. "If we really are in some kind of virtual environment as Ethan here thinks, than, what happens if one of us die? Dying may be the simplest way of leaving this place."

"Are we really in a virtual environment?" Caleb said while scratching his nose. "I honestly doubt it." he said.

"Why?" Taylor said, furrowing her eyebrows. She was hopeful that she would still find Reene alive.

"It's kinda embarrassing." Caleb said, visibly blushing "Well, how do I say this...Before coming to this world I had a chaffing between my tights..."

The girl grimaced in disgust. Caleb laughed dismissively. "The thing is..." he said "It is a recent thing. No one but me knew about it. But today, when we arrived here, I was still feeling it..."

"Eek." the girl scowled.

"Something similar happened to me" another classmate said. "I have tendinitis in both my thumbs. Never told anyone, still have it. I am pretty sure this is my real body, not some kind of virtual avatar."

"What about the screens?" Kathy said. "What can possibly explain them?"

"I think we should proceed with the assumption that death means death." Ethan said.

"Wasn't it you who said this is a game?!" Isabelle said.

"I didn't claim anything" he answered her. She was putting words in his mouth, he hated that. "I had a theory, Jack asked me to explain it, that's all."

"Calm down." The teacher said. "Anyway, we can't stay here indefinitely, we will have to move sometime." he said.

"Yeah, who's up for some leveling?" one of the male classmates said. He seemed excited with their predicament, and he wasn't the only one.

"Do you think this is a game? This situation?" Some girl said, visibly shaken.

"Game or not, there's nothing we can do but accept our situation and move on." he said.

"I concur" another classmate said. It was one of Jack's friends. "I won't stay in this fuckhole anymore." he scowled. "Me and my friends are leaving; whoever wants to come with us, get in line."

"Wait! We need to stay together" the teacher said. The legitimacy of his leadership was falling apart and he was getting desperate. Ethan smiled.

"He's right" Jack said. "The teacher, I mean" Jack scowled. He was by the sidelines until now. He looked at his friend's face and said. "We need to stay together" He said, spitting his cigar. "Lukas, you are taking our situation too lightly. There are fucking monsters out there, man..."

"What happened to you, Jack?" Lukas said "You weren't like this, are you becoming a coward?"

Jack looked at him in the eyes and said. "You will die like this, you know..."

"Hmpf..."

...

After some more discussion, it was decided that the best course of action was to explore this cave they were stranded at. Seven students were armed with the rudimentary spears Ethan had taken from the White Fetus monster, as they named it. Six of them were males and the other was Kathy. Brantley was one of the students that were left out. He didn't seem happy about it.

"What do you think you can do?" Jack said, while looking down at him.

They made a formation where Ethan, Jack and Leroy, a burly yet calm student, stood at the spearhead. The teacher seemed adamant that since he was the adult in the group, he had to stay in the middle in order to best manage the students. Ethan liked this formation quite a bit. The teacher didn't understand the value of xp points. It was a chance to get more xp and to show off to Kathy. She would be staying right behind him.

They left the small room they were standing going through one of the tunnels, towards the direction they left Jose's body. Jack, Ethan and Leroy kept their spears pointing forward. From above, their formation would look like a trident. Jack stood at the middle, but he was slightly ahead of Ethan and Leroy.

"Fucking place" Lukas said. "My jeans are already brown from all this dust"

"Shhh" Jack silenced him. Lukas clicked his tongue "What?".

"This isn't the time to petty fights, Lukas" the teacher said. "We must keep silent if we are to find those creatures before they find us..."

"It can't be that bad, can it?" Kathy said. Ethan didn't agree with her this time.

"Shhh" He shushed her "It is" Ethan said. "We can't see them in this darkness, but they can see us. They probably can also hear better than us. Their strategy last time was to hid in the stones and jump us..."

Kathy smiled "This time there are more than twenty of us, if they come we..."

"Shut up!" Jack said. Kathy jumped in fright "Godamnit..." he said, in a hushed tone.

"She has a point though?" a female classmate said. "Will they come for us with so many people together? From what you told us they seem to be a pretty coward creature..."

"We shouldn't take chances..." the teacher said. Jack clicked his tongue and kept going forward.

They walked for about ten minutes until they reached a place that smelled like a noxious mixture of vomit and blood.

"It was here..." Jack said. While looking at a cigar in the ground.

"They took the body?" Ethan asked, even though it was already obvious they did. Jack didn't dignify him with an answer. He just looked around to see if anything caught his attention. Meanwhile Ethan opened his character window.

Name

Ethan

Strength

3

Race

Error - Undefined (no modifiers)

Dexterity

3

Level

0

Speed/Evasion

2

Gender

Male

Resistance

3

Equipped Title

Perceiver of Obvious

Wisdom

3

Luck

3

He had been testing for new windows since they found out about the game-like characteristics of their predicament. He found another one that went by the name "Talents". Unexpectedly, there was something in it.

Talents

Lvl 2 Tactics

Lvl 5 Mathematics

Lvl 8 English Language

New questions raised along with that...By what basis did this weird system decided that tactics was a skill and knowledge about history or chemistry was not? What are parameters to decide the levels? Would a level 10 Mathematician would be a Nobel prize winner? Or a simple academy teacher?

For now he decided to keep the knowledge about this window to himself.

There was another one he had found. It was the race window.

Strength

1x

Dexterity

1x

Speed/Evasion

1x

Resistance

1x

Wisdom

1x

Luck

1x

It made no sense at all.