Somewhere in the Universe

Not long ago

Sariel Evergreen taps her finger on the balcony in front of her, ignoring the masses of adventurers going in and out of the Adventurer’s Guild beneath the balcony. She just gazes out at the city made entirely of tall, marble buildings. Each reaching high in the sky with elves walking in and out of them.

The adventurers walking into and out of the Guild are all wearing mostly white and silver armor. Colors very common amongst elves. And the armor is all metal, with no uses of leather or animal parts at all. As is the way of the elves.

Then, after staring out from the balcony for a while, the blond-haired elf finally turns her attention to the System Broadcast menu and navigates to the latest of the new worlds the Primordial of Chaos has been binge initializing. And, out of sheer boredom mixed with her duty, she looks through the tutorials going on, looking at the total number of skills each new users’ Skill Trees have.

System Broadcast Menu

Val’s Tutorials

Name:

Possible Skills

Followers

Selam Tadesse

20

2

Emily Johnson

21

3

Raj Patel

41

17

Li Wei

4

0

Elizabeth Taylor

22

4

…

She just selects the ellipses one time after another, repeatedly expanding the menu while making the previous ones hide themselves to make room. Occasionally showing a break in the users when it moves on to a different tutorial.

But none of them particularly interest her in any way.

The most common number of skills in a Skill Tree tends to average between twenty to thirty skills in the tree. With any number beneath twenty being considered poor unless they’re simply high quality skills. And Skill Trees with fewer than ten skills are considered trash and nothing to pay any attention to.

Meanwhile Skill Trees with above thirty skills are uncommon.

But Sariel doesn’t care about those.

The people she’s interested are the one in a million people who have Skill Trees with so many skills they’re in the triple digits. Hundreds of skills.

One in a billion even in some cases. Or one in a trillion.

She, just like a lot of the other people of the universe that are no doubt doing the same thing she is, wants to see any potential recruits. Since she’s going to be the one in charge of setting up an Adventurer’s Guild in this particular new world. Even though she normally wouldn’t have a job that important with her own position in the Guild being as low as it is.

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But they can only send people below the first threshold level to the new world for now, as are the restrictions set forth by the System. And the other higher ranking members of the Guild of sufficient level have all already been sent to the other new worlds Chaos has been repeatedly initializing.

So at the end of the day, Sariel has Chaos to thank for her promotion to Branch Guildmaster.

Now though, she just feels bored searching through these numbers. Even if the search goes by rather quickly due to the only thing she’s searching for being people with three digits in the ‘Possible Skills’ section.

Until her eyes narrow in on a single section of the tutorial. One particular tutorial that has an abnormally low number of followers on the users within it. To the point that a user with over seventy skills in their Skill Tree only has a few followers when they would normally have at least a few dozen.

It doesn’t matter that the majority of the universe is most likely not looking at the tutorial due to the sheer number of them going on right now. There should still be more followers on someone with that many skills, much less the other people in the tutorial.

Strange… too strange.

She continues searching through until she reaches the very end of the tutorial’s list of users, and something shocks her so much she shouts out loud, “What the fuck?!”

The other people in the guild turn to look over at her in confusion, the majority of them knowing who she is. Which only makes it more confusing to them as she normally wouldn’t swear out loud in public like that.

She doesn’t pay any of them any mind though. Because her focus is entirely on the glowing red circle ominously rotating in place next to one particular name listed at the very end of that tutorial’s users.

“So that’s why there’re so few followers…” she mutters, only to glance to the side when she hears a gasp. At which point she realizes several people walked up to her to see what she was looking at.

Since the Broadcast Menu is one of the few menus anyone can see regardless of who opened it.

Then a commotion arises from those people, and they all begin to search through that particular tutorial as well. And before she knows it, more and more people are beginning to find the new Successor. It also doesn’t take long for people to begin linking the ominous words that Chaos had spread across the universe not long ago to this new Successor.

When he said, “I found her.”

Sariel turns her attention away from the growing commotion – one that soon begins to leave the guild and spread around the city – to look at the screen in front of her again.

A Primordial’s Successor in the world I’m going to be the Guildmaster in… I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad. But one thing’s for sure.

Her eyes narrow as she selects the Successor’s name, making a screen appear in front of her showing what looks like a teenage girl with black, purple, and red hair and black and red raven wings walking across platforms with three others. All of which are features of the Primordial of Chaos in addition to the girl’s glowing red eyes. Meanwhile shouts and voices of all kind rise throughout the city about Chaos finally choosing a Successor.

His only Successor.

This is going to be a busy world.

Unfortunately for her, it also means she’ll have to deal with the Tower of Chaos in the world. After all, there’s no way Chaos’s followers won’t be setting up a faction on the planet as well if Chaos’s only Successor is there. Successors have the blood of a Primordial in them after all, and no one has ever had Chaos’s blood before.

Sariel watches the girl for a little bit before looking up at the sky and sighing.

This’ll be more work than I thought… but what’s with that number of skills?

She feels confused at the sight of the Successor’s total number of skills. Which number a mere four.

An incredibly low number for one chosen by a Primordial and made into their kin.

The forums’ll be all over this, and the entire universe will likely know about her soon enough. So I need to make plans.

----------------------------------------

Ashley

So, yeah. That number – the one that may or may not be followers – is still on the rise.

How long is it going to rise?

It’s reached the thousands already and the broadcast hasn’t even been up for more than a few minutes.

Is that normal? That can’t be normal.

Ugh.

Well, whatever. I’ll just distract myself by checking out that Successor Menu thing again. Because I never did look through the entire thing.

Primordial’s Successor Menu

Successor Forums

Claim Gift

Pause Broadcast (Only once per broadcast)

Successor Skills

Primordial’s Orders

I try to select all of them again before finding that I can’t select any except for Successor Skills. Which proves my theory about the red and underlined ones being things I can select and the gray ones being things I can’t.

When I select Successor Skills, two different skills are voiced out by the System and run along my interface. Just like with the Skill Trees.

Except these are blood red in color.

{Unchained – As the Successor to Chaos, you may not be bound by anyone or anything. Not even Chaos himself.}

{Torrents of Chaos – Once a week you can draw Chaos Energy directly from nature itself, refilling your Chaos Energy reserves to full.}

Well those are convenient.

I think.

The first one would probably explain why that ‘Primordial’s Orders’ menu is grayed out and unusable. Assuming that menu is like some sort of directive that Primordials give their Successors. Forcing them to do what the Primordials command them to do.

Either way, the latter should be very useful.

Meanwhile the number in the corner of my interface keeps growing. Which makes me wish I could pause the broadcast again.

I turn to look at the others after crossing another bridge and ending up on the platform. Meanwhile the usual System Message plays out in my head.

{You have been granted 1 Skill Point for reaching a new platform within the tutorial.}

At this point our trek across the platforms is as silent as the dead, with everyone just looking around as we walk. They’re not even looking at me anymore, seemingly having given up on trying to figure out why they recognize me.

Good.

I almost pause after noticing a strange smell. One strongly of dog. And right when I’m about to turn my head towards the source, I hear Julie suddenly say, “Wait, more hounds.”

That has me turning towards her to see where her eyes are looking for a better sense of direction than a smell as Sean states, “Hounds?” Clearly asking for clarification for the use of the word in plural form.

Then I turn to look in the direction I find her looking, and I manage to make something out. Not much though. They’re just too far away.

“There are three hounds and four people,” she answers, making my eyes narrow ever so slightly.

And we have more people…

But that’s a lot of hounds in one place.

Without hesitation, Sean bursts into a sprint in the direction of the people while shouting about saving them. Then James and I begin to run after him, with Julie and Jack following after us, the two shouting as well. Just about being careful and waiting for them.

Meanwhile I’m running to test out my skill on those hounds.

Because there are still a few things I need to figure out about the skill.