“No. The reason I suddenly brought this up is… If I weren’t here right now, I would have died without even a chance to do anything about it. So, you don’t need to feel guilty, team leader. It’s just that we got an opportunity to do what we can… That’s what I meant.”

Suji didn’t give any response.

She was grateful that he thought that way.

But in the end, to summarize, it meant that Peace, with two children, would be in big trouble if the world suddenly ended.

That’s obvious.

It would be troublesome if humanity went extinct.

But listening to each individual’s personal narrative like this, it really made me think that each and every life was too precious to be toyed with in some bet by those otherworldly beings and all die.

We’ll die anyway. We’ll die anyway since we were born…

Still.

There was a world of difference between dying after burning your life for what you thought was worthwhile without regrets, and dying a dog’s death by some ridiculous monster.

Crack.

Saint, who had been staring blankly at the burning campfire, seemed to sense that the conversation had come to an end and raised his head to look at Peace.

Then, sitting with both legs together, he muttered as if talking to himself.

“I didn’t know Peace cared so much for his children… I’m sorry. I made you talk about it.”

“No, it’s fine. If it was something I really wanted to hide, I wouldn’t have talked about it.”

“Then what about dating?”

“With two kids, what dating? But why? Are you interested in me?”

“That’s ridiculous. No, it’s just that… You look more like a playboy than anyone else.”

“Me? I look like a playboy? No, until I joined this team, I only heard that I was handsome until my ears hurt. Ha. My life’s been going downhill since being compared to Elaine.”

Saint and Peace were not the type to make the atmosphere heavy.

Whether they were doing it on purpose or not, they exchanged words while bickering as usual, but Suji noticed that there was some concern mixed in their faces.

Even if she didn’t know all the details, she had spent a long time with them as their team leader.

It couldn’t be helped.

In this situation.

Suji let out a long sigh and reached out to retrieve the campfire item.

In an instant, the surroundings were dyed in darkness.

A world with minimal light, unseen in the city, enveloped them.

In the pitch-black darkness where it was hard to tell if your eyes were closed or open, their eyes slowly adjusted.

Suji slowly raised her head and then lay down.

Above her head, countless stars were shining like a picture, about to pour down.

There was a path of light gathered like the Milky Way.

There were so many stars that it looked like light covered by black paper with too many holes.

At this point, we don’t even know if those stars or those sun-like luminous bodies are real or fake.

Still, beautiful is beautiful.

While feeling silly for so easily feeling awe for something created by who knows who, she was consumed by the beauty.

As she lay there for a long time just looking up at the sky, her team members one by one looked up at the sky and then lay down next to Suji.

In the night sky that the four of them lay side by side looking up at, there wasn’t a single constellation they knew.

Amidst the various emotions crossing, Suji suddenly spoke up.

“Can I say something cliché?”

“Yes, Daphne.”

The answer came from Elaine.

At the name Daphne, Peace and Saint seemed to sit up abruptly.

But not wanting to let them make a fuss over something trivial, she smiled slightly and quickly continued speaking.

“I really hate it. Honestly, I really, really hate this situation. Why bet on the survival of humanity in some game, I can’t help but think they’re crazy. They say they lost 101 times and are betting again, I want to connect them to the Korean Gambling Problem Management Center.”

Suji slowly clenched her fist and stretched it towards the sky. Then she opened her hand.

The stars felt so close as if they could touch her hand, yet also felt so far away.

One thing for sure was that she had become too accustomed to this dungeon created to imitate Earth so much.

For her, who had only lived in a world with the hunter system since birth, whether she liked it or not, to escape this embrace, she had to properly break out of the shell.

‘Is such a thing possible?’

Honestly, doubt came first, but still, something had to be done.

“But as Peace said, maybe it’s a blessing that there might be something we can do in this situation. We might not have known anything.”

“…It might have been better not to know in advance.”

Elaine’s subdued voice responded to her words.

It was unlike him, who was always calm in any situation.

But it’s only natural not to maintain your usual personality in a situation like this.

Suji rolled her eyes and thought about it.

Well.

“If an asteroid was going to hit Earth tomorrow and destroy it, I’d want to know before I die.”

Peace and Saint nodded their heads.

“Me too. At the very least, I want to die with my children at the moment of death.”

“Me too. At least we can choose to die together with family or colleagues, right?”

After listening to their voices in turn, Suji turned her head to look at Elaine.

In the complete darkness, her eyes had adjusted enough to see his silhouette.

He was lying down, staring intently at her.

“What about you, Elaine?”

“If it’s really information that would cause all humans to panic, I think it’s better not to announce it.”

“You’re more conservative than I thought.”

“Because there would be another chaos before the actual destruction occurs.”

“That’s, true. But couldn’t all humans jump together and move Earth’s trajectory?”

“…Are you joking?”

“Yeah. A joke. Just, I was saying it would be nice to try something before dying.”

Suji said that and then let out a long sigh.

Talking definitely made her feel like her mind was a bit more organized.

Nothing had changed, just.

Just.

Somehow, lying here looking at the stars with these people, talking about the end of humanity, was comforting.

It felt like she had also somewhat decided on a direction for what to do from now on.

She suddenly brought up something that came to mind.

“Want to have a spacing out competition?”

“…You mean hitting blanks?”

“I’ve lived thinking that doing nothing is a waste of time. When else would we do something this luxurious if not now?”

“That’s true, but…”

“The loser cooks something delicious for the winner.”

Time stopping meant, of course, that it was impossible for external forces to create and deliver food.

There were plenty of ingredients.

The problem, if anything, was that they were all people who stayed away from cooking.

At Suji’s words, everyone lay down side by side with quite resolute faces.

“Start.”

With her word, a sudden quiet time followed.

As Suji said, spacing out itself was truly a luxury for them.

Until the first hour passed, no one thought this time was boring and quietly looked up at the night sky.

Suji, looking up at the empty sky, thought it was a bit regrettable that even the wind had stopped due to time stopping.

And slowly, she organized her plans in her head.

First, she planned to do what other conquerors of had not done.

Inform.

Inform the world that such a thing could happen.

If people knew that such a desperate situation could occur, it might have a more negative impact, as Elaine said.

But it would be different if we showed that it wasn’t a situation where everyone was just sitting idle, but that efforts were being made.

At least that’s what she believed.

And she planned to be the one making those efforts.

Until now, only methods for dealing with Waves and strategies for some monsters had been shared.

But now she planned to perfectly share the strategies for conquering each floor of the tower itself. If people from other countries could climb the tower and become excellent forces, it would be a great help.

And.

We need to extract as much as possible.

I don’t know how well they designed it, but if the ‘great beings’ had such excellent judgment, there’s no way such a disastrous betting result would have occurred.

She planned to scrape off way more than the rewards given from what they had created now.

She planned to do her best for the sake of those her mother tried to save, but from the start, Suji couldn’t respect the ‘great beings’, nor was she working for them.

Rather, in a way, they were the ones who killed her mother.

So.

First, she planned to deal with this thing called the Second Wave, and ultimately, make those guys give up everything they had and make sure they never mess with the human world again. In whatever way.

As Suji glared at the stars in the sky organizing such thoughts, someone right next to her sat up.

“Oh, did you move?”

She felt Elaine nodding.

“I can’t stand lying like this, it’s tedious. I’ll take care of the cooking, Daphne.”

“Oh come on! What’s the fun in doing it like that?”

“Here we go again, that fox.”

As soon as Elaine finished speaking, jeers poured out.

“But Daphne? Since when did we agree to call each other so affectionately?”

“I’m really getting goosebumps. Are you showing off your skin?”

“Are you crazy? It’s so dark I can’t see anything. Don’t light a candle, please! Mister! No, what should I call you. Young Peace!”

“Why am I crazy? Then isn’t it cringy to suddenly go from ‘team leader’ to ‘Daphne’? Huh?”

Everyone’s voices had more life in them than when they were talking earlier.

Suji, satisfied with that, declared the end of the spacing out competition.