After a montary staring contest between both parties where they carefully studied each other, the handso guy with the shoulder-length blonde hair stepped forward from the group and extended his hand.
"Hey, man. You might already recognize , but I’m Felix anyways," the young man said with an amicable smile.
Hearing his words, Arc took a mont to take a second careful look at his face, before dismissing him as he could recall neither his na nor face from his previous life. That made him unimportant.
"Arc," Arc replied curtly as he took his hand in a handshake.
Felix smiled in acknowledgnt. "You must be confused as to what’s going on," he began.
’Not really,’ Arc mused.
"Just like you, we all found ourselves here after an encounter with a strange woman," Felix said with a serious expression and zoned out.
"We just finished introducing ourselves and weren’t expecting soone else to show up," the red-haired girl suddenly spoke up, drawing Arc’s attention.
"That’s right," Felix concurred.
"As you already know, our handso guy is Felix." The red-head continued, flashing a charming smile at Felix. "He’s the Warrior of the party."
"My na’s Liz," she introduced with a hand to her chest, then waved her Grimoire at him. "And I’m an Elentalist—the great mage of the party."
Then she went on to introduce every other person in the party.
The delivery guy was Jack—he didn’t really like being called ’delivery guy’ and frowned when Liz introduced him with that. His class was Hunter, hence the bow and arrow.
The girl with the long curly hair, still hugging her friend’s arm like she didn’t want her to leave her sight for even a second, was Rose.
"Hello," Rose greeted with a cute wave of her hand in acknowledgnt. Her class was Cleric. Basically, she was the healer of the party.
Lastly was the girl with the shoulder-length hair and the one the healer of the party seed to be close with. Her na was Joan. Her class: Rogue—hence, the pair of daggers. She didn’t react to being introduced but stared head-on at Arc, like she was waiting for the most important question to be asked.
And sure enough, Liz wasn’t one to shy away from such a question.
"So, we know your na is Arc. But what’s your class?"
As soon as the question dropped, everyone’s eyes instantly locked onto Arc like homing missiles. The tension in the forest increased exponentially.
Arc looked thoughtful for a mont, before he began patting around his waist and pockets like he was searching for sothing. The group’s eyes diligently followed his movents in anticipation and curiosity as to what he might pull out. Then, Arc suddenly paused to reveal his empty hands to them.
"No Class," he said with a straight face.
The group of five froze in place to stare at him with dumb expressions. At this point, Arc felt he probably looked like a wretched beggar before them with his open hands, as if he were asking to be spared a penny.
He couldn’t help but laugh sheepishly at their reaction. After all, "That was supposed to be funny," he mumbled amidst a chuckle.
Hearing this and seeing him laugh it out like it was nothing, the group began laughing after him one after the other. Even Joan wasn’t an exception; she couldn’t help but let out a soft chuckle—finding it hard to keep a straight face.
You couldn’t deny the fact that everyone of them had been living a normal life in a normal world until they were suddenly pulled out of it and thrown into this death ga. And as much as they tried to look composed on the outside, every one of them was scared.
Scared for their lives. Scared of the future. Scared of the unknown. They were frightened on the inside and wanted nothing more than to return to their daily lives. So they laughed. It didn’t matter if Arc’s joke had dry humor; they found themselves laughing uncontrollably, reeling in the montary comfort they gave each other.
The group laughed for a while before the forest fell silent once more. But they all had smiles playing across their lips—except Arc’s was different. Only one person noticed it in ti, but Joan couldn’t quite wrap her head around it.
"So," Felix finally broke the silence as his focus fell on Arc once more. "What’s the Class?"
"What?" Arc blurted in confusion, and looked at the others to see their gazes were all fixed on him as well in anticipation.
"Wait, I wasn’t joking." Arc replied, slightly amused as he pointed a finger to himself. "I really have no Class."
"What?!" The group exclaid in unison.
"Then why the hell were you laughing just now?!" Liz crashed out angrily. "Why? Because you’re useless?"
"What the heck made you think you could make laugh when you can’t even carry your own weight?!"
Though Liz was the only one hurling insults at Arc, the fact that no one tried to stop her showed they all felt the sa way.
"He really has no Class," Rose mumbled to her friend, Joan. "How is he then gonna survive?"
Earlier, before Arc had arrived, Felix had ntioned their Classes and system were a lot similar to a LitRPG, and that this world might follow a similar rule. As crazy as it sounded, to test his theory, Felix had stepped on a passing bug and, sure enough, they’d all received a system prompt rewarding them with EXP points for the kill.
So they were all aware now that the only way to get stronger in this world was by leveling up. And the only way to level up... was to kill.
But what Rose didn’t know was that her friend, Joan, had barely heard what she had said—and even if she had, she might not necessarily agree with her. Because at that mont, Joan’s eyes were locked onto Arc like a predator watching its prey, cautiously studying his reaction.
And under the onslaught of Liz, Arc neither made a face nor looked downcast. In fact, he looked distracted and kept staring into the void from Joan’s perspective.
She had always been good at reading people and seeing through them and their intentions—just like she’d read Felix to be aiming for the leadership role of the team. But for so reason, Arc’s eyes were like a blank page; there was nothing to read. Yet those eyes were those of a man who’d been to hell and back. Which was why she’d been so imrsed in studying Arc that she had disregarded the voice of soone trying to call the group’s attention. She thought they were probably just trying to calm Liz’s drama—whose voice overwheld the forest.
That was when she noticed Arc’s gaze begin to move and lock onto different spots in the surrounding forest like he was counting. Before she could make out his motive, his cold gray eyes locked onto hers and stayed, freezing her in place as a cynical smile spread across his lips.
Liz suddenly felt a bout of inferiority complex overwhelm her as she stared back into Arc’s eyes, which didn’t look like eyes any human should have.
Before she could force herself to look away, her hair all stood on end as a series of sharp footsteps broke out behind her. From her peripheral vision at another angle, sothing sharp was heading right for her head.
An arrowhead.
Swish!
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