'A test? What kind of test?' Luthra looked at Ralia, who looked very afraid.
[You will fight each other, when the time is up, only the survivors will become my heroes, I require half of you to be eliminated, or more, it does not matter to me.]
The crowd of students just stood there, completely shocked. No one could believe what they were hearing.
"Did she just say... kill each other?" a boy near Luthra whispered.
[To make this easier for you,] she continued, ignoring the students' reactions. [I will provide you with the tools.]
In front of every single student, a sword appeared out of thin air, it was a simple, one-handed steel sword with no decoration, floating perfectly still.
[You have twenty minutes, if at the end of that time more than half of you are still alive, I will kill every single one of you and summon a new group, begin.]
For a few seconds, nobody moved, they just stared at the swords in front of them, then at each other.
The confusion was gone, replaced by pure terror.
'This is insane, she can't be serious, she wants high school students to murder each other with swords?'
Luthra looked at his own floating sword, then at Ralia. She was pale and trembling.
"Luthra, I don't... I can't," she whispered, her eyes wide with fear as she looked at the students around them.
The huge crowd was no longer a group of classmates and strangers, it was now a collection of potential killers and victims. Luthra saw a big, muscular student from the football team looking at a much smaller girl, his eyes cold.
A boy screamed and grabbed his sword, he turned and swung it wildly at the person next to him, a girl who shrieked and fell backward.
That was all it took.
Chaos erupted.
Screams filled the white void as students grabbed the floating swords. Some hesitated, but when they saw others arming themselves, they grabbed their own swords out of fear. A boy near the edge of the crowd tried to run, but there was nowhere to go in the infinite white room.
Another student stabbed him in the back, and he fell to the floor, blood spreading out from under him.
"Stay close to me!" Luthra yelled to Ralia, grabbing his sword. It felt heavy and wrong, how could he kill anyone?
He saw a girl he knew from his math class, she was crying as another boy charged at her with his sword raised. She closed her eyes, but a different student came from the side and stabbed her attacker in the ribs.
The attacker fell, and the girl's savior, a boy she didn't even know, looked at her for a second before stabbing her as well.
'This is unhuman,' Luthra could not stop his body from trembling.
It didn't take long before someone came running at them, a boy with wide, panicked eyes, wanting to end them before they could end him. Luthra pushed Ralia behind him, raising his sword in a clumsy guard, but the boy was desperate and fast.
He lunged forward, and Luthra felt a sharp pain as the other student's sword went deep into his left shoulder.
He yelled out from the pain, and attacked without thinking, just shoving his own sword forward with all his strength. It connected with something soft, and he felt it sink into the boy's neck.
The boy made a horrible gurgling noise, his eyes going wide with shock, not fear. He dropped his sword and fell to the white floor, clutching his throat as blood poured between his fingers.
Luthra stared, his own sword still in his hand, now covered in blood. His shoulder hurt a lot, and his arm was getting weaker by the second.
"Luthra! Oh my god, are you okay?" Ralia grabbed his good arm, her face white with fear. "You're bleeding so much."
He looked from the dead boy back to his own bloody sword, then to Ralia's terrified face. His whole body was trembling, his legs felt like they would give out, but his mind was strangely silent. There was no panic, no guilt, no disgust.
There was nothing.
'I just killed him, that's a dead person on the floor because of me, I should be screaming or throwing up, right?'
He looked down at his shaking hands, a disconnect happening between his body's reaction and his mental state.
'Why don't I feel anything? My heart isn't even beating fast, it feels… calm. This is creepy, what's wrong with me?'
"Luthra, talk to me," Ralia said, her voice shaking. "We need to get away from the body, someone else will see us and think we're an easy target."
He finally looked at her, his expression blank. "He stabbed me."
"I know, I saw," she said, pulling at his arm. "But you can't just stand here, we have to move, please, Luthra."
Ralia was right, her advice was smart, but Luthra was more concerned with the strange feeling inside him, he just killed someone and yet, his mind was clear.
He needed to test this, to see if his lack of a reaction was just a delay from the shock or something new about him.
'My shoulder hurts but I don't really care, I just stabbed a person through the neck and I feel fine about it, I have to know if this is real.'
He turned to Ralia, who was looking at the dead body with a lot of fear.
"Stay right behind me, whatever happens."
"What? Luthra, no, we need to get away from the fighting, we can't just..."
"There is no 'away', Ralia, look around, the only way we get out of this is to make sure we're in the group that's left standing."
'She's terrified, that's the normal reaction, so what's wrong with me?'
He didn't wait for her to agree, he just started moving deeper into the chaos, pushing past students who were too scared to do anything but cry. Ralia yelled his name but then ran to catch up, grabbing the back of his shirt.
He was looking for a fight, he needed another one.
He spotted a large student who had just knocked a smaller girl to the floor, he was raising his sword to finish her. Luthra didn't think, he just ran forward. He moved faster than he thought he could and stabbed the bigger student in the back, right between the shoulder blades.
The guy yelled and spun around, swinging his sword wildly. Luthra ducked under the attack and pushed his own sword forward, burying it deep in the guy's stomach. He pulled the blade out with a wet sound, and the guy fell to his knees, then onto his face.
He was dead.
Luthra stood over the body, breathing a little hard from the effort, but his mind was still quiet. The cold calm was still there.
'I killed again, and I still feel nothing, no sickness, no remorse, just… nothing.'
The girl who he had saved scrambled to her feet, looked at Luthra with wide, terrified eyes, and then ran away into the crowd as fast as she could.
Ralia was staring at him, her face stuck in shock mode, "You killed him, you just ran up and killed him."
"He was going to kill her."
"You didn't even hesitate, Luthra, you looked like you wanted to do it."
'Maybe I did, maybe this is what it takes.'
He looked at his bloody sword, then at the fighting all around them, the scene was horrible but he wasn't scared anymore. He felt a dark and scary confidence growing inside him.
"Come on," he said, pulling Ralia by the arm, "The clock is ticking, we need to find more."
"Find more what? More people to save?"
"No, more people to kill."