spectator view: 26's cell.
26 slowly opens his eyes and notices that he is laying in his so familiar cell. He stands up and notices that for once everything is so clear to the point, that he gets the feeling that this is the first time he has ever been actually awake.
A few moments after waking up Azil happily says:" Slept well?"
"Could be better, how did I end up here?", he replies
Azil's smile becomes bigger and says:"The fight used up all your mental endurance and you collapsed. That little girl then called some guards to drag you back. The expression on the faces of those guards was priceless, they were so afraid of you waking up that they did not even say a word while carrying you."
26 replies with a grin:"Sure wish I could."
"This is not a dream right? 26 what did you just say?", Azil asks
"That I would have loved to see their expression while they were carrying me."
"HAHAAHAHAA, it has finally happened",Azil madly laughs.
Surprised by his reaction 26 spaces out and after a few moments inquires:"What are you talking about?"
Ignoring his question he asks:"How do you feel?"
"Quite amazing, it feels like I can do anything, but answer my question", 26 nags.
"You two have synchronized, meaning that your soul has been fixed a bit. Well it is only temporarily but it is still amazing.", Nic tiredly says.
26 turns his head to look at Nic before asking:"How long does it last?"
Nic thinks a bit before saying;"It should last three hours and another 7 minutes if you are in combat. I have also discovered when it will stay permanently."
"When!?", 26 impatiently shout.
"For every level, you gain after level 40, level 40 not included you gain one hour a day but lose one minute of extra combat time. All of this means that if you are able to reach level 65 your soul should have fixed itself. Well, that is if you are able to breach the wall know as lv 65.", Nic states.
26 walks over to the sole chair in the cell and sits on it before asking:"I just remembered, Azil what is with the whole 'wall' thingy?"
"It is a bit hard to explain and you should ask your tutor why it is like that, but I will try explaining it a bit. Every race has a 'wall' they need to overcome. That wall for almost all races is level 50, the moment you reach that level you are in a whole new realm, the reason your strength skyrockets at level 50 is mostly because you are then able to use the elite tier equipment. Elite tier equipment gives stat bonuses and sometimes even has an active or passive skill. Only a small portion of the members of a race are able to breach that 'wall". This means that their veteran soldiers average level is between 45 and 49. But there are four races that are an exception to this natural law: the Vampires, the Nymphs, the Draconians and the Undead. The "wall" for these four races is level 65. This does not mean all their forces are lv 65 because reaching that level without the suitable opponents is quite difficult. This 15 level gap gave the armies of these four races an extreme advantage resulting in them getting cursed by the gods in the form of sins. I don't remember the other races their sins but the vampires got pride and lust. "
"Wait for a second Nic",26 interrupts him,"how come this only happened now and not when I reached lv 41?"
Nic sighs:"This is only my speculation, but I think you first need to collapse from forcing your mind past its limit before the effect kicks in. This means you need to fight until you used up the hours you got from that day."
26 lets out a sigh:"Well, Let's hope the tutor arrives while my mentality is still like this since I got a lot of question in store for her."
After half an hour the sounds of three sets of footsteps and the rattling of chains. The two guards from yesterday are dragging a woman in her mid-twenties to me. She has long unkempt amber hair and a defiant look in her brown eyes.
Ela's view
In the dimly lit prison ward there are a lot of small cages that one would normally be used on smaller animals but if one looked closely at them they could see humans cramped in them. In one of these cells, a young woman wakes up and starts laughing with despair after she once again remembers where she is.
The young woman that can't move a muscle in the cramped cell starts thinking about how she ended up here.
Fate really likes to play tricks on me, doesn't it? After a year of hard work and flattering my superiors I finally became one of the four guard commanders of Timberwolf City, the human city closest to these cursed vampire-infested mountains. The city itself was originally an old abandoned hunting village, hence its name but after our arrival in this world, we players quickly regained the land from the other races and repopulated the village, turning it into one of the bigger human cities. I worked three years and finally became the commander of the third division. I thought that I finally made it big, but I got caught in a vampire raid outside of the city and thrown in this cell.
But some things are quite strange, because from what I heard from survivors that we rescued from the vampires, a prisoner normally gets his blood drained on a daily basis until he or she dies from malnourishment or they get sold to a rich vampire to be kept as a pet or livestock. Female prisoners also often get send to the front to serve their soldiers. But strangely enough, I have not gotten my blood drained even when I have been here already for a week. No use in wasting the little bit of energy I have on pondering about, let's just try to rest a bit.
After what I guess where a few hours, I get woken up be the sound of male voices. The cage opens and two guards pull me out of it. After a quick inspection, they put a collar around my neck and drag me trough the hallways. After not having walked for a week I need to strain my body to its limit to keep up. I don't dare to lag behind since it would not surprise me if they would just leave on the ground to die if I fell down.
I can fill a grim smile being formed on my lips, it seems like they finally diced what to do with me. Well, it is better than to be left in the dark, not knowing what is going to happen or when it is going happen. While walking I can see the pitiful state of the other prisoners, a few are in a near death situation, others just have a dull look and the new ones are still filled with fear and pity as they see me getting dragged off. After a few minutes, the young male guard starts talking:"Human you are a gift from our Queen to one of the test subjects and you will also serve him as a tutor. This means that you need to answer his every question and obey his every command. The guard stops talking then gropes my ass and one of my breast before saying with a lecherous smile: A small tip, don't even try attacking him if he does not decapitate you in an instant the collar will kill you before you reach him and that would be a waste of your pretty face." Seeing what happened the old male says in a low voice: What are you doing, she is the property of 26 what would happen to you if he heard of what you just did."
The young guard's face turns ugly but after a moment he says:"Like 26 knows what is going on, you have told me yourself about his pitiful mental state."
Hearing them talking about my future master I can't help but fear for my future. I mean he said he can decapitate me in an instant, what kind of insane damage is that. Maybe they are lying or don't know that I am level 53. No, I can see that their levels are 54 and 52 without inspecting them so that means they can see mine too. Well, it is not like being lv 53 is special among the vampires , maybe if I had my equipment I would stand a chance. Wait a second, they fear my new owner so maybe I can get back at that pervert by using him and what did he mean with 'pitiful mental state'.
On second thought all signs show that I will and up as a pet, so he most likely won't antagonize a guard just for a pet. Well, ending up a pet is actually the best result that I could have hoped for but why does a vampire need a tutor?
We reach a cell with a lone young man sitting on the ground. He has white, long and messy hair and the typical red eyes of a vampire, but the feeling he gives is completely different from the other vampires.
The older guard opens the door, pushes me in and mutters:" This is your new master, you get a meal twice a day, one in the morning and the evening."
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"Sit down, we don't have time to waste.": the young man orders without even looking at me.
I decide to bet it all, look at the guards and get on my knees and beg:"Master I have one small request."
Hearing this, fear flashes on the face of the guards.
He looks interested and asks:"Oh, already? Well, it looks like this could be fun so speak."
I point at the young guard and say:"This guard violated me after I had been given to you master."
He stands up and laughs:'Oh, you have been abused and now you want to try to use me to get back at him, by claiming that he offended me when he was touching you?"
Hearing this I can't help but cower in fear, seems like he immediately saw my true intentions.
He grabs a standard one-handed sword before walking up to me and laughing;"Smart girl, I got to remember this trick."
He whispers something that I can't hear and his body starts to glow a bit red before fading away again. He then walks to the young guard who is holding his sword while shaking visibly and slashes at his neck with incredible speed.
"468"
The guard his head flies off cleanly and my new master wipes the blood off his sword with the clothes of the now headless guard before ordering the other guard to clean his body up.
He then enters the cell again, puts the sword down before smiling before asking:"Anything else?"
I look at him dumbfounded, he just killed a level 52 guard in a single strike. That something one normally has to be around level 65 for while wearing good equipment, but I can see his level and it only is 44. How is this possible, does he not suffer from level suppression?
He then sits back down and says:"Seems like there are no problems anymore, so sit down we have little time to waste."
I look around and notice that there is no chair in this cell except the one he is sitting on, who is this vampire that is locked away, the guards called him a test subject if I remember correctly, just what experiment was this man part of to have such heaven-defying strength. I just sit on the ground and look at my new master? He looks at and after a moment he opens his mouth:"Now tell me about the origin stories of the races."
"He?"
His eyes turn cold and he calmly says:"Did I stutter?"
What is with this aura, it feels like he is holding a blade at my neck. With every second that passes I can see his eyes becoming colder and the feeling of bloodlust he emits becomes stronger. I scrape my throat and reply:"No, I am sorry. I just got taken aback by that request since that story is something that almost everyone knows." Shit, why did I say this, maybe he will think I called him stupid, I am such an idiot, maybe if I apologize he will forgive me.
"I am so sorry, please forgive me.", I hastily plead while I sit on my knees
He throws his back and starts laughing like a madman. After a few seconds, he looks me in my eyes before saying:"Why do you apologize, it is true that everyone knows it, most likely I also knew it, but I have lost my memories. So please tell me the story again, oh and I will be interrupting you a few times to ask the meaning behind certain words.
So after that, I started telling him the story. He interrupted me many times to know te meaning of words such as gods, sins, alliances... and in the end the story took almost an hour to tell.
26's view
I have learned a lot today from that story. It was a long and complicated story and I did not understand a lot of the words used but it is basically like this: In the beginning, this realm and world did not exist, but dozens of gods gather together to create it and called it Bellum. Each of the gods then created a single race and gave their race what they thought was most important: physical strength, magical affinity, numbers, longevity... Of course, for every merit there is a demerit and so no race was actually stronger than the other and they were all bound by this world and all had to break trough the wall know as level 50 for all of their creators were equally strong.
This "wall" existed for all but four races, the vampires, the draconians, the nymphs and lastly the undead. Their creators gave them more power but in return had marked them with sin, thus making them imperfect in the eyes of the other gods. The vampires got cursed with pride and lust, the draconians with greed and wrath, the nymph with sloth and a sin we know nothing about and the undead with gluttony. These sins gave them great weaknesses, the draconians could be hired by playing in on their greed or lured into traps by enraging them. The vampires could be defeated by using underhanded tricks and their pride would prevent them from doing the same, the nymphs are too lazy to even pose a threat and the other races could easily claim their territory and the undead consume each other and thus pose no threat to other races.
Originally these four races were supposed to each have three sins but their creators got killed by the other gods before they could finish giving them all their sins. The reason was simple, any one of these races could dominate all of the other races if they were to be completed, the last sin or sins would solve most of the weaknesses created by the other sins. Supposedly the first member, the prototype of each of these four races survived and still live on as the only completed member of their race and are extremely dangerous, each being at the demi-god level, better known as the deity level, I don't really get the strength classification, but I will ask that a different day considering that half of my time has already been used.
After this, a great war broke out and the gods started fighting, resulting in three great divine alliances. These three alliances don't have an actual name but everyone calls them by their ideas. The three are Science, Affinity, and Strength. The humans, dwarves, and the earth spirits are the main members of Science and believe that by research is the true way of becoming a perfect existence. The elves, celestials, demons and pixies are the main members of the Affinity and believe that perfection can be found in becoming closer in touch with mana. As for the members of Strength they believe that the only true way of becoming closer to perfection is by training their body to its limit and then surpassing that limit. The races part of that group are the Beastkin, the green skins, and the spirit shifters.
It is impossible to change alliances because that means abandoning your god, and the people who do that are no better than the four cursed races in the eyes of all other races. This led to many clans or groups being branded as heretics and forced into exile in the Forsaken Isles, home of the undead. The three alliances have been waging war for as long as any race can remember and it does not seem like this will be changing soon.
They even created a system to keep this war going forever, when one race has almost been defeated the deity and the god, who are two different individuals of that race, summon a group of people from their race from another world. This has been done many times by almost every race and is also what the humans have recently done. The summoned people are commonly known as travelers but this time, they call themselves players.
Ela's view
He looks at me and asks: " So you are also one of these players. There is one thing I don't get, why help them? Did they not steal you away from your old life."
"We had no other way to survive.", I bitterly reply.
He stands up and takes a sword before saying:"This will be the end of today's lessons, we will now be going to the arena for training, do you also want to train? Of course, you will get a weapon and I will try to keep you alive since I still have need for you."
Wait...what!? He is asking me, a prisoner, if I want to become stronger and even offers me to give me a weapon. Does he not fear me trying to escape? Is it because the collar? No most likely he does not even know what this collar does. Is it a trap? Well, even if it is this is too good of an opportunity to check out his strength. I smile and say:"Of course I would like to train, but I have not had to honor of hearing masters name, would master be so kind as to tell me?"
He smiles and says:"Just drop the act of being obedient, I have no use for a flatterer and I have no real name, so just call me 26."