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"Ugh!"

Kris felt like he was being fried in a pan. As soon as the timer announced the forty minutes of torture in the scorching slime hell, he had ended his participation. Then staggering all the way he made to the first restroom he could find with his blurry eyesight.

Once he was in, he turned the cold shower on. It was barely a relief. The burns on his skin were was so bad that it made him forget the niggling pain on his ankle for the entire time.

"Hey, Mr Yang..." it was pixie cut, crouching next to the commode in the same room. "Umm, this is the women's washroom..." Manila told in a cracked voice.

"Do I look like I care about gender roles right now?"

Manila smiled a stupid smile, before retching and puking her guts out to the drain. Her complexion was reddened and she looked weary.

He looked into the mirror to his side. His face looked no different.

The girl kept puking for as long as the burn had slowly begun to wear off from his skin, and he could feel the temperature of the water again.

"How did it go?" Manila asked him as he slumped on to the floor, deprived of all the energy.

"Accept for the fact that I felt like I was being barbequed, great."

"I bet my internal organs have the same feelings."

"You okay there?"

Manila nodded.

"So, the catalogue never mentioned anything like this..."

Manila scoffed. "Did you really memorise that thing?"

"It was supposed to be a ray of hope for a hopeless guy with a broken leg."

"Well, now you know it wasn't."

"They wouldn't have written something rubbish on the game-catalogue."

"What did it say anyway?"

Kris sighed before continuing. "Every arena harboured one or more targets of varying levels, linked to the arena through tales, could have their own will, possessions, skills etc... were even capable of plot a conspiracy against the entrants. It must mean something. We might just be overlooking its significance."

Manila sipped some water from a bottle. "Do you think the ship is a target for this arena?"

Kris shrugged. He stayed there pondering about it for a long time.

"Lets go out, will you be alright?" He said after a while.

"I feel better."

Back in the atrium they were served food and drinks. It was only a bowl of vegetable stew for Kris and Manila, while the entrants from BMa and other well-known guilds were served roasted meat and mineral drink.

"How come they get to have that?" Manila complained.

"Did you notice the servitor NCP asked our name and guild name before choosing the plate. The previous meal seemed to be a welcome feast for everyone. This one might be paid for by their own guilds or their sponserers. We are a new guild and so would have to put extra effort for a sponsers to bet on our abilities."

"Did you read that from the catalogue?"

"Yeah."

"With this, our guild is telling us to improve our performances."

"I get it, they need to feed the contestants well if they want them to keep playing. If you were to bet on someone winning the main event, who would it be?"

"Andre, what about you?"

"I think one of those C-5 guys. They are ruthless."

When they made it to the deck, the cold breeze off the ocean was welcome relief.

"It really is an ancient model though, like the ones they used to have in the last mellanium. If the target follows a tale then... maybe this ship is going to turn into a spirit ship?"

Kris chuckled. "Where did you get that from?"

"Adventures of captain sparrow, have you not read it? The books and games are quite popular. They have these cool haunted ship thing going on in one of the stories."

"Qalupalik is a name of a sea being... I am sure I've heard about it before."

"Oh, is it a game then?"

Kris thought hard to remember. But his memories were still hazy to get a clear idea. "Legends of the dark sea... was it?"

He recalled the harlequin artwork on the atrium wall.

Kris bent down to observe the ocean.  As he had guessed the ship, though a merged reality was standing still like a boulder.

"The ship isn't moving," he told Manila.

"Maybe because its not real?"

"If they could build a ship so convincingly, they could easily give it some movement to make it more real."

"You think it has to do something with the game scenario?"

Kris nodded.

"So what does Dehlima mean, any idea?"

"It means... to collapse."