'This… might be a problem,' Loki thought.
"Okay, I am ready to take down those monsters."
"Me too. I have watched the guards do it enough times."
"So here is the plan. You all start whacking them, and I will launch spells from afar."
"Brother, you call that a plan?"
They tried to move as one. It made sense in the hall; it did not work at the door. Too many bodies, too many classes, too many voices.
So Loki suggested otherwise.
"We should split," Loki said. His voice was calm, the kind that made a plan feel like a fact. "We have too many people. If we move together, no monsters will come near us. In dungeons, we will not have enough space to move or learn properly. And when we do manage to kill something, the EXP will be too thin to matter. That's why we should make two groups. I will lead one, and Miss Haeun will lead the other."
Heads dipped. After a moment of thinking, people agreed.
"What Mr. Loki says makes sense."
"No wonder he is at the top of the leaderboard."
As one problem got resolved, another arose.
"I want to be in Mr. Loki's group then."
"Same here, put me with him."
"Me too, please."
The hum turned bright and childish, then edged toward argument. Someone insisted seniority should decide. Someone else argued for first come, first served. Someone in the back shouted he had called dibs and earned a chorus of boos on principle.
Haeun stepped in before it curdled.
"We will do rock, paper, scissors," she said. "Single elimination. Best of three. Winners will go to Mr. Loki's group until it is full. The losers will join me. Minjoo will be the judge."
For one heartbeat, the room processed that a corporate heiress had just proposed a playground tournament. Then the energy broke like a wave.
Two quick brackets formed, and Minjoo pointed to the first pair.
"Ready. Three. Two. One."
Hands flashed. Groans and cheers answered. One of the misses crushed her own son with three straight rocks and patted his arm in consolation.
"Mother… how could you?" he said, hurt and dramatic.
"Everything is fair in love and war, my son." She tried not to smile and failed.
"Love? War? What do you mean by that?" he asked, mortified.
Sera advanced one match at a time, doing a little hop every win and trying to pretend she had not.
"I am in top form, hehehe".
Choi Min-jun howled like a stadium when his rock met Mira's paper and died. Mira covered her mouth with her fingers, eyes shining with mischief she did not bother to hide.
Between rounds, people laughed. Even the older men leaned in and started taking it seriously
Loki stood off the crush and let the noise move past him. He watched who watched whom. He watched deference and pressure and the way some smiles took effort.
"You lost on purpose, didn't you?" a woman teased Min-gyu.
"Sh-shut up", he said, a little red at being caught.
The woman's voice slid in behind Loki's shoulder and turned every muscle to glass. His body froze without flinching, and he turned slowly toward the voice.
'Enuha...'
She approached when she caught his eye. Ritual black neat. Copper hair catching firelight. Staff easy in hand.
"You are Loki, right? The leaderboard's top player," she said, warm and careful. "You look quite strong. If you want, we can party sometime. Not to flex or anything, but I have an..."
He barely heard her. His thoughts ran cold and clean.
'How did she get here. She should be in her own town. Did someone bring her or did she come on her own?'
"Now that you understand how great I am," Eunha finished, after a quick round of self-praise. "Accept my friend request so we can team up later."
A panel blinked in the corner of his vision.
He did not touch it. "I refuse," he said, voice flat. "I do not party with people unless I trust them completely. I will not be partying with you."
Her smile thinned, then returned as if nothing had happened. "You do not have to be so rude about a casual request," she said. "I was only being friendly."
He turned from her and crossed to Haeun.
"Who is she? Is she with you?" he asked, low.
"No. She is Min-gyu's new healer," Haeun said in the same tone. "She is an Epic-tier he found in his town."
"I see." He looked past her toward Eunha and Min-gyu and filed the sight away.
His simple plan had been to hit level ten, go to Kang Hyunwoo and Enuha to end both problems at once. He did not want any more interaction with them than necessary.
'Sigh, but this is also good in a way, I guess, ' he thought.
He had been enjoying his class too much, the motion and the fights. Letting the thought of revenge drift to the edges. But after seeing Eunha here, the pain of his death and the betrayal became fresh again.
'Thank you for appearing now,' his eyes were locked on her smiling face. ' Wait for me. I will be coming soon.'
The tournament finished beneath Minjoo's steady count.
Loki's groups had Kwon Mira (Assassin), Kwon Sera (Assassin), Park Ji-yeon (Priestess), Han Tae-yang (Warrior), Yoo Mi-kyung (Mage), Han Ga-yoon (Assassin), and Choi Min-seo (Assassin).
Haeuns had her father, Yoon Seung-min (Mage), Seo Min-gyu (Mage), Chairman Choi Gun-woo (Warrior), Lee Sun-hee (Mage), Choi Min-jun (Warrior), Han Do-chul (Warrior), Han Jae-min (Warrior), and Chairman Seo Chang-ho (Priest).
Loki's eyes went over his roster once.
'Not a surprise that most of the assassins won since they have higher agility, but why are there so many assassins anyway?', he thought, confused.
'Well, this is a casual hunting trip so it should work out somehow, ' he thought.
At the door Haeun told him about a dungeon her scouts had marked in the deeper forest.
"Please keep an eye on Sera for me," she said as he turned to go. "She is brave, but she is not used to this yet."
"I will do my best," he said, and moved out.
The forest received them as it always did. Wet bark, old smoke, needles underfoot. Haze between trunks like breath that had forgotten to be warm. The world narrowed to path and company.
People did what people do when the danger is not here yet. They talked.
Sera fell in at Loki's side like a small moon that knew its orbit.
"May I ask a few things?" she began, trying for formal and landing somewhere sweet.
"How old are you? Do you have a girlfriend? And what do you do in the real world?"
"I am twenty-five," he said. "No girlfriend. And I am between jobs."
"How did you learn to fight?" she continued, eyes bright. "You adapted so quickly and reached the top. It looks like you belong here."
"I trained mixed martial arts outside. GFS feels close to games, so adapting was easier. The rest is my class."
Han Ga-yoon slid up on the other side, smiling like a knife in a velvet roll. "What class is that?" she asked. "You can tell me. I keep secrets very well."
"Sorry," Loki said. "That stays private." He let his eyes move past her to catch the others too. "Keep your class and skills to yourselves unless you trust the person completely. You do not know what might happen in here."
Most nodded out of politeness, but Mira's eyes said she understood the deeper point.
Ga-yoon let the moment pass, then tried a different angle.
"Mr Loki, I think you should work for me," she said, conversational and cutting at once. "Haeun might have been your only choice till now, but now you have options. She is not the only one who can support you. I can move faster on requests, I can pay way more TLE than she can, and" She closed the distance a half step. Her voice slipped lower, soft and deliberate, each word brushed smooth. " I am much warmer and better looking than a cold block of ice. Don't you agree?"
He kept walking. She kept talking.
"She puts on a face for these people. If you were smart, you would—"
"You should stop talking," Loki said. He did not raise his voice. "Before I cut your tongue."
The threat came out more aggressive than he had intended, but somehow it felt right.
The words dropped into the quiet and rippled out through the group. Ga-yoon's mouth held the shape of the next sentence, then closed on it. Color rose at her throat. "E-excuse me," she managed, stung.
"I do not like people who speak about their friends behind their backs," he said, and moved on.
She stayed where she was, face tight, eyes dark.
The path bent left. Sera slid back in with safer questions that did not bite: whether he ate inside GFS, if he tried to sleep here, whether he preferred daggers or short swords outside class constraints. He answered lightly. It kept steps even and eyes forward.
They did not see the dome until it saw them.
"What is happening?" Sera asked, voice high and thin.
"What is that supposed to be?" Ga-yoon said, anger covering fear.
Light rose ahead like a line drawn on the air, then ran around them in a clean circle. It climbed until it vanished in the haze, the curve humming with a tone you felt in your teeth. The sky became glass. The forest became a room.
Panels blinked in front of every face.
[Proceed to the center of the dome.]
[The Ancient Gods' Trial begins in 30 minutes.]
Loki frowned at the message. The dome hummed. The forest stood very still. And the clock began to run.