World Terror 55 2Nd Penalty

While Sukehime was stalling for time outside the Nether flame array, Inside it unlike the rest of the team James did not go back to practicing, Instead he was in a deep thought, this thought has been bugging him from the very beginning the team had entered the Terror world but rest of the team seem to have forgotten about this. With a frown on his face he was intently staring at the prompt logs of his status screen.

The prompt at which James was looking at was the one which appeared informing him about the scenario and main taskline.

This prompt not only informed them about the Scenario and its Main taskline but it also Alerted them about Leon using the scenario search prop ' Nether Flame Fiends Bone fragment '. not only it alreated them about his betrayal but also about the consequence of using the Scenario search prop.

The team is now facing two penalties for the usage of the Scenario Search prop.

Penalty 1 : Scenario reward decreased by 10%

Penalty 2 : Explore by oneself

The first penalty is not that serious but still causes a huge loss to the team as the scenario clearing rewards are decreased by 10%. a 10% reduction may sound less but it is enough to decrease the grade of the reward by one level but at least it did not bring any risk or threat for the survival of the team or affect their main task. Even though James was not rich enough to ignore this penalty, he valued his life more. Therefore this penalty did not trouble James very much.

The Second Penalty was tricky, Explore by oneself ? What do you even make of it? This penalty raised red flags in James's head. It was like the system was telling the team that it had hidden a landmine in the scenario and they had to be 20 times more careful than they are to avoid stepping on it.

Fortunately, this type of penalty was mentioned in one of the books of the school library. According to the predecessor's memories this kind of penalty is not new, previously Terror walker teams have faced this penalty for using different scenario props, but the success rate of clearing a main task with this penalty could not be calculated because of insufficient data. as only two teams ever made it out to report such a penalty. Even though these two teams made it out alive they had faced heavy casualties and deaths. The surviving members had to disband their team and join other teams.

Even though both teams faced the same penalty 'explore by oneself' they faced totally different enemies.

The first team found out that one the character of the main task in their scenario was not who he claimed to be and he would kill one team member every night. unable to find out the culprit their team slowly fell apart with internal dispute. But fortunately they were able to finish the main task on the 4 day after the 3rd night, but by then they had already lost 3 team members. The remaining 2 team members after the completion of the Main task did not dare to spend an extra second in the Scenario and return to the earth. After submitting their completed task to World Terror they came to know how their comrade's died in the scenario summary prompt shown in their Status screen.

The second Team faced a different type of an situation, their scenario main task was to join the main lead and stop a group of cult people from summoning the demon but when they were about to stop the cult people their penalty kicked in and their main task suddenly changed from joining the main lead and stopping a group of cult people from summoning the demon to Joining the cult people to successfully summoning the Demon and then slay the demon. Clearly the world terror wanted them to face the Demon as penalty. Inprocess of slaying the demon their team once again joined the Main Lead shamelessly and finally managed to kill the demon. But in this process they lost the strongest member and the medic of their team. Once they got back to earth they had to disband and join other teams because their team could not find a trustworthy Medic and damage dealer.

Either case would be a disaster for the team as they are very weak, anyone one of Sukehime or Hito or Masako could easily ma.s.sacre the entire team without breaking a sweat. Clearly, the 2 penalty is a serious threat but the team could not do anything about it except be more alert.

James wanted to tell the team about the 2 penalty at the beginning but then he decided against it because at that time the team was already at the brink of breaking apart under the pressure of the terror world and the fact that one of them betrayed them all. At that time telling them how serious the 2 penalty is, would be like dropping a bomb on an already demolished building.

With pa.s.sing time even James had put this issue on the back of his head, but James noticed an unusuality a few moments ago which made him think of the 2nd penalty again.

Fortunately this unusuality was also recorded in the prompt log of the status screen, proving that James' doubts were not unfounded. James scrolled through the prompts in the Status screen, the more he looked at these prompts the more confused he became.

[ Ding! Host has received a 9 star occupation prop ' Animal Totem ']

[ Ding! Host has received a 9 star occupation prop ' Elemental Totem ']

[ Ding! Host has received a 9 star occupation prop ' Teacher Totem ' ]

[ Ding! Host has received a 9 star occupation prop ' Healer Totem ' ]

These were the prompts James read when he got the 4 totems from Sukehime, then James scrolled down again and saw the prompts he received after taking the Vitality core from Masako.

[ Ding! Host received a 7 star Scenario Item 'Vitality Stone' from Npc Masako. ]

[ Ding! Check status for further information on 'Vitality Stone'. ]

Looking at both the prompts in the log James easily spotted where the unusuality was.

When he received the totems from Sukehime there was no mention of Sukehime in the prompt, this did not look suspicious it looked like a normal prompt but when you compare this to the Masako's prompt, it raises flags.

In the prompt received after taking vitality stone from Masako it clearly mentions that the vitality stone was given by NPC Masako.

The system seemed to clearly identify Masako and her NPC status but for some reason it does not seem to identify Sukehime. Clearly it is a clue left by the prompt for them to explore the 2nd penalty.

Though the clue did not clearly mention the penalty, it was clear that it had something to do with Sukehime and her Ident.i.ty.

Then James compared his current dilemma with what his predecessor had read in the school's library and came to a conclusion that what he was facing right now was somewhat similar to what team One from the book faced.

According to Team one Survivors one of the Characters of the main task line was not who claimed to be and killed one team member from their team every night in their sleep, which they knew from the Scenario Summary in the Status screen. So, the Ident.i.ty of one of the characters was false and he seemed to want to kill one member every night in their sleep.

The Ident.i.ty problem with one of the characters in the main task was similar to James's problem with Sukehime and her ident.i.ty. As for the killing part, James thought Sukehime would not do such things as she can kill the entire team with a wave of her hand, but he still can't be sure because still 20 hours has not pa.s.sed since the team has entered the Terror world therefore they never slept not giving the chance to Sukehime to kill them in their sleep.

After all the brainstorming even though James could not solve the mystery to why Sukehime's name did not appear in prompt but one thing was clear that Sukehime was not who she claimed to be and the team was in grave danger.

James wanted to alert the rest of the team but then thinking about their acting skills he decided not to do so because Sukehime knows that they are on to her will only hasten their demise. And also because even if the team knew about this they could nothing but panic adding to James' currency problems.

So James decided to improve his strength for now and see what sukehime as planned for them. Thick of increasing strength James thought of learning the four totems given dy Sukehime.

James chose Elemental totem as he had attained a wind elemental Natural rune 'boundless wide' so it would be easier for him to master this totem first. Thinking that James used his Soul organ to connect with totem and make a copy of it.

[ Ding! Host used Moneta's Fork on 'Elemental Totem' ]

[ Ding! Moneta's Fork connected with ' Elemental Totem']

[ Alert! A harmful Inscription detected ' Charm slave Inscription ' ]

[ Warning! Requesting host not to use spiritual strength to scan Elemental Totem, Using spiritual strength on Elemental totem will lead to Host being attacked by ' Charm slave Inscription ']

Reading these Prompts on his status James cursed inwardly 'WTF!'