Bawl wakes up and sees the time is 10:30, having slept for quite a long time. Possible from waking up in the middle of the night.

  “Stupid knife holder,” Bawl says, a bit annoyed by what happened last night. This doesn’t slip by Eonni and hears that.

  “Knife holder?”

  “Hm? Stupid girl at night attacked me with a knife.” This catches her by surprise, she now realizes that Bawl survived against a knife wielder. While a blast from the monarch of the sea is indeed devastating, a knife is just as dangerous for its sharp point and capability of piercing people with strong muscles.

  “Which number did it have?”

  “Numbro?”

  “Number.”

  “What that?”

  “It’s, oh my gosh.” Eonni takes her bag and goes through it to take out her phone, she looks up numbers and shows a picture of a number line to Bawl.

  “Which number did you see?”

  Bawl looks at the picture and points to the number 7. With this information, Eonni leaves the room and looks for Alexander in the dining hall. She finds him there, seemingly thinking to himself.

  “Alexander.”

  “Hm? What’s up?” Eonni takes a seat next to Alexander.

  “Bawl was attacked last night.”

  “By who?”

  “I suspected the staff, and I was right, it seems it was the staff with the number 7.”

  “I suspected it was 7. I don’t know if you noticed, but after every murder, a staff member disappears. Look over there.”

  Eonni looks at the line-up of staff members and notices that 3 and 5 are missing.

  “And now 7 is missing. It seems that it's counting up by 2, so that means 9 will be the next killer.”

  “Will you confront them?”

  “I don’t see any other way to win. They didn’t tell us that this was the first test or how to beat it, so I assume that we need to either beat or kill the next killer to move on.”

  “Well, I can’t help you there. I’m only halfway into making my skill, and I’ll still need two days to develop it fully.”

  “What kind of skill is it?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Alexander makes a face to show that he really isn’t having any of that you’ll see crap and just looks away, imagining himself fighting a super strong foe with his turbo Excalibur.

  Eonni looks around the dining hall to see Bawl being dragged by Kid Death somewhere. Eonni turns back around and pretends he didn’t see anything.

  Bawl’s headband falls to his eyes so he fixes it and puts on more over his head, so it doesn’t slip down.

  “Why are you dragging me?”

  “Did you forget, you said that you’ll win the golden cup for me in the event.”

  “Oh, can’t it wait?”

  “No. I would shoot them dead but even then, the staff prevents me from getting my stuff back unless I actively participate and I would rather not reveal my cards so soon, so I’ll need you.”

  “I gain nothing from this.”

  “I’ll buy you black and white cookies.” This catches Bawl’s attention, and he gets up, determined.

  “I’ll win the fight easily.”

  “You better.”

  The dining hall is cleared out with Eonni and Alexander both still present.

  “Okay, so here’s the plan. We’ll follow the person with the number 9, and we’ll wait until they try to strike someone. Once that happens, we swoop in, you retrain the person and in flashy fashion, I’ll cut their head off and strike a cool pose.”

  Eonni’s face shows immense disinterest, not humored by the extra details.

  Both of them look towards number 9 by turning their eyes to not make it obvious. Eonni goes back to making her skill so she can still have it ready by the time they reach the second stage.

  Back with Bawl and Kid Death, they both walk into a room with multiple big, tall buff guys.

  “Oh, the stick figure is back. Who’s this?”

  “Since I don’t want to reveal my skills to any of your meatheads, I’ll have him fight for me.”

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  Bawl looks around and sees a magenta and icosahedron-shaped ruby, the same that was on the upper part of his tie. Bawl now notices that it's not on him.

  “Oh, I remember that. I didn’t see you didn’t have it.”

  In the center of the room is a fighting ring.

  “Hahaha, since you’re gonna fight us, here are the rules. Number one, when the match starts, you cannot leave the ring no matter what, number 2, no killing, only knockout, number 3, you can only use your skills once a match, and number 4 the only way to achieve victory is knockout. Got it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good, because I’m your first opponent.” The man backflips into the ring, and Bawl also jumps into the ring as well for the fun of it.

  “All the other men surround the ring to spectate the fight, Kid Death along the rows.”

  “I’m gonna crush you.” The man flexes his muscles to show off. Bawl clearly isn’t impressed, expressed by his unchanging face.”

  A referee enters the ring and stands between them. Bawl takes off his clothes to reveal the clothes underneath.

  “Oh, you a bodybuilder? A skintight black shirt, sweat shorts, and high compression foot sleeves. Not a bad combo. Although I don’t understand what’s up with those wristbands, I don’t really care, I’m still gonna break you.”

  “People are going to interpret that the wrong way.” Kid Death puts his hand on his face.

  “Are both fighters ready?” The referee looks towards the man

  “Yeah, of course, Manstrong is ready.” The referee looks towards Bawl.

  “Okay.”

  “Ready, set. Begin!”

  Manstrong rushes towards Bawl in order to grab him, but Bawl slaps him out of the ring, knocking him out and winning instantly.

  Everyone is shocked by what just transpired. They were expecting a drawn-out fight but instead, it was an instant defeat.

  “Was that it?”

  Another man jumps into the ring. “Manstrong here didn’t mention that you’ll be fighting all of us one by one.”

  “HUH! Don’t make up lies! Yesterday you said only Manstrong!” Kid Death yelled.

  “Shaddup. Get ready boy. I’m gonna violate you.” The man jumps towards Bawl, prepping to palm him straight to the gut, his palm seems to be glowing, seemingly using a skill. Bawl doesn’t move and instead takes the attack straight on. A shockwave emits from the attack, causing a lot of wind to blow around.

  The man at first is smiling but that smile fades when he feels a sharp pain in his hand. He pulls his hand back to reveal it to be broken with some bone shard protruding out of his hand. The man is about to cry but he sucks that tear back into his eye.

  “That’s some durability you have there. Must be your skill.”

  Bawl doesn’t respond and remains where he is.

  “Whatever, I’ll still beat you. Skill number 3, Buff Up.”

  The man gets bigger, and he starts growing more muscles. Bawl wakes up to him and grabs 2 abs of the man, this causes him immense pain because an ab was supposed to grow from between the 2 abs Bawl is holding. The man screams in pain and holds the area. Bawl slaps the man in the face, sending him out the ring, also knocked out.

  The referee is sweating.

  “HEY! GET IN HERE AND DEAL WITH HIM!”

  Kid Death is confused but quickly realizes they never intended to give him back his jewel. “Bawl beat them all up.”

  “Hm? Why?”

  All the men start to rush into the ring, trying to take Bawl down.

  “Oh, is this also a part of the game?” Bawl flexes his muscles and when the men try hitting him, no damage is done.

  All the men freeze in place, “Nice try.” He says while flexing his arms.

  All the men look at each other before jumping him, using all their skills, some with fire, others with electricity, some with a form of armor, and others with some other random skills that don’t seem that impressive.

  “Sorry for this.”

  Bawl inhales and exhales with so much force that a major gust of wind envelops the area and pushes all the men back. After the event, a man tries to punch him, but Bawl breaks his hand by catching it and then crushing it. He throws the man towards 2 other guys that attempted to jump him. More men try to crush him using their wait, but this attempt fails, and he punches them all extremely fast, dealing with them all instantly.

  “You guys aren’t that strong you know, just give up.”

  The men don’t give up against an obvious loss and continue to try and bring Bawl down.

  The moment switches to every single man defeated with Bawl sitting on top of the hill of bodies and Kid Death having his jewel back.

  “Not bad work Bawl.” Bawl walks down the hill when a man jumps out of the hill trying to catch Bawl off guard, but Kid Death uses his unique shoes and puts them at his face, below the shoes, revealing holes that look like jets. He activates them which shoots fire out of it, burning the man’s face. The man is screaming in pain, his hair on fire and he runs out of the room.

  “Wow. Cool.”

  Kid Death puts the jewel back on his tie and Bawl looks for his clothes, only to realize, his clothes got shredded, again.

  “That’s the second time.”

  Bawl cries for a moment before remembering the deal. “Where’s my cookie?”

  “Yeah. I got it while you were beating those guys up.” He throws the cookie to Bawl. Bawl catches it and consumes it extremely fast. After this, they both leave the room, the victors of this battle.

  It’s nearing the night, and Bawl carries the torn clothes to his room, with only his shoes and headband being intact.

  “What happened to your clothes?” Eonni asked, now in her pajamas.

  “They broke when I was fighting big dudes.” Eonni reaches for her bag and takes out her shirt and pants. “Your mom actually put this in my bag. She told me that you may rip your clothes in a fight because she thought those clothes were terrible.”

  The clothes are very similar to his original ones, except it's a Prussian royal orange jacket with mustard yellow sleeves, Prussian royal orange cuffs, and yellow buttons with Prussian royal blue baggy pants and black shoes.

  “Thank you.” Bawl puts on his new pair of clothes and enjoys the new look. He takes it back off however and puts them in the corner, he then puts on his pajamas and jumps into his large bean bag. Alexander stands by the door and taps the doorway, signaling to Eonni.

  “Oh, right.” Eonni gets up and puts on her clothes, she also grabs a bat.

  “Bawl, me and Alexander here are gonna do something. We’ll be back, okay?” She rubs Bawl’s head while saying this. “Okay.”

  They leave the room, and Bawl looks towards the monarch.

  “Hi.” He pokes his finger inside the cage. This annoys the monster, and it bites his finger, but he feels no pain, and even unintended, Bawl’s stare frightens the monster and causes it to roll to the back of the cage.

  It’s the night, Alexander and Eonni are both slowly turning corners in order not to be seen, each looking and every corner and filling each other’s blind spots

  They both look for number 9, hoping to catch him in the act. They continue to walk around the boat until they hear a scream.