In the Red Maple Leaf Boarding School cafeteria, the last eight Players sat silently around a dining table.
Dark green moss had spread across the entire school. Fern fronds blocked the small windows, and pale bluish-white mushrooms grew from the cracks in the walls, tirelessly giving off a rotten stench.
Everything was growing wildly with life—except humans.
At noon on June 3rd, Ms. Medina announced in a grief-stricken tone that, because everyone in the school had contracted insomnia, Mr. Tolson had sealed off the entire school to contain the epidemic.
The people inside could not leave, and supplies from outside would no longer be delivered. Everyone could only remain trapped within the deathly silent concrete building, left to fend for themselves.
Compared to the timeline in the archives, the Instance's timeline had progressed much faster, instantly turning the most basic issue of survival supplies into the Players' greatest crisis.
Although quite a few Players had brought rations, expecting to comfortably last through the next five days was simply a fantasy.
If they pooled together and calculated all the rations among the Players, each person could only eat half their fill per meal if they wanted to barely make it to the last day. And that was without factoring in the expenditure caused by activity. If the Players needed to explore or fight, consumption would only be greater.
At noon, the cafeteria only served some rotten vegetables—the last scraps Ms. Medina had managed to dig out from obscure corners.
The Players swallowed that final lunch in misery, then spent the entire afternoon vomiting and having diarrhea.
By evening, the cafeteria stopped serving dinner.
Some Players who had brought food carefully rationed out just enough dry provisions to ease their hunger. Others who had brought no food and had no connections could