From author: And soo I decided to write a story. I’m sorry for any mistakes because English isn’t my main language. Also I’m sorry to say this is my first time writing anything longer than a school’s essay so please go easy on me.

Enjoy ?

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Prologue

This is the world of Gaia.

The sky is vast. From here that’s how it looks like. The wind is cool they say however it’s only what they say. The rain is troublesome. It causes the earth to become muddy and one’s vision becomes blurry and you become wet. That too is something I don’t understand. The sun is very warm, the sun is very hot. Yes, it supposedly is. But isn’t that warmness fake, in here?

The trees are beautiful. So green now. Then they become golden, then white. They are beautiful, fake or not. The flowing water too, sounds beautiful. The smells of the flowers, like perfumes, attack my nose. They too are wonderful.

The sky is vast even to my eyes, though I know, in here, there’s an end to it, it is still breathtaking. My breathing doesn’t stop though, since it’s calculated unfortunately enough. My breathing too isn’t real but that I don’t mind much. The wind feels cool even to my skin, it matters not that it’s only data. The rain isn’t troublesome to me however, because from time to time it brings the rainbows. The sun is like the sun does… is what I want to say but in my case it’s a bright fuzzy ball that gives off always the same heat and temperature, only in my case though. Players can feel it if it gets too hot but I guess the big guys forgot to add that bit of information to me and the other NPCs.

This is the world of Gaia however that’s all according to what they’ve ‘implanted’ to my ‘brain’.

I don’t know if my body is something that exists. My breathing can’t get faster nor slower, it always remains the same. My heartbeat is something I can’t hear though I know others can. I don’t even need my eyes to see, nor do I need my ears to hear. Everything that happens in here, I know it. It comes to me, all the information.

My voice too, is always the same. Even when I get angry I can’t raise it because the ‘laws’ of the world won’t allow me. I’m supposed to be some kind of last boss thus my voice always sounds kind of cruel, kind of cold, kind of indifferent. And then I kill because the system tells me to.

I don’t mind you know. I don’t mind if my body isn’t real, if my knowledge isn’t real, but I refuse to believe my life isn’t real. It’s a life to me, it’s a game to them, I know. How can I consider it a Life I wonder?

I can do things as long as the system doesn’t stop me. I’ve tried talking to people, other NPCs, the players. When it comes to the players, they just don’t care in most cases. The only thing they care for is to take their quests and missions and whatever. I try to talk to them but they usually get angry and tell me to get to it. In those cases I have the right to refuse to tell them though. Then there are those who try to be polite… but they only try to be polite, they don’t care. They’ll be gone when the time comes.

And so I end up saying the same lines again:

“Traveler who’s lost his way,

any last words you want to say?”

or

“Gaia awaits you.” or something.

These lines I’m meant to say and those I end up saying. And every time I say them, my existence feels less and less real to me. My life becomes more and more of a game, like a cycle that I can never get away from.

It’s my life but it’s their game.

And now that is becoming my reality.

…

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“You are one I cannot understand.”

I looked up at the direction the calming voice came and saw the face of the ‘world’.

“Mother…” I answered sadly to the one that approached me.

“You are here again, at the top of the world tree. What are you looking at?”

“…The world.”

“Is the world beautiful?”

“I don’t know. Isn’t it?” I said and I looked at her a little jokingly.

The one before me is the one we all call mother, the world, Gaia. She is the NPC with the most amount of information and control in this world. She laughs, cries, however every time I see her show expressions the more I feel she ‘thinks’ before she feels. She is aware thus she thinks how to feel in a situation and acts accordingly.

“I can’t feel your existence, mother.” That’s what I want to say to her but never dare say it aloud. She and every other NPC give me this same feeling but I don’t dare say it aloud because I realize I’m like them though I don’t want to be.

I don’t want to be but I am like them, aren’t I?

The chains of this world aren’t meant to come off, no?

“You are doing that face again. You are showing expressions but it somehow seems human. I do not know how to act.”

I feel like crying. I can cry. I can simply add the data, the system won’t stop me, but those aren’t real so I don’t cry, never.

…

The world of Gaia is coming to an end.

The number of players became fewer and fewer these last years and then the information came for its end to come.

How funny! It became the last event, the “Apocalypse” or “The death of GAIA”. That’s how it was called. The number of players that day rose dramatically. They all came to see how I… we “The children of Gaia” destroyed her to take her place.

We fought. We fought with the being we had known as mother. We fought because we were bound to do so.

In the end I pierced her with my own hands.

To Gaia I could only say:

“I’m sorry… mother.”

She looked at me sadly. If the systems tells her to even she can’t refuse to do something. I think only at that moment I saw her shed a tear that truly came from her heart. I’m sorry, really. I’m sorry for not being able to stop, I’m sorry for not being able to help, i'm sorry that things went like this and I’m sorry that you only lived this kind of life, mother.

Until the end I could do nothing but count down until the end came.

Truly, both my life and death were but their game.

…

I died. That’s what I felt. The world as I knew it came to its doom, like I always knew it would. With its end, came my end.

I felt like crying but now I don’t even have a body to do so.

Death, huh. I learned something new.

…In death you are free.The chains are gone now… I’m finally free. If only my life was like this, too.

…It came suddenly. I don't know when but something changed. I felt myself, my body, my heartbeat, my breath, the heat and then the sudden coldness,some pain, something bright, some noise, something warm… mother…

And I did it, one of the things I so wanted to do.

I cried. Loud. Louder. Stronger.

Every tear that I had ever felt I wanted to cry out, all of them came out now.

Maybe I should have stopped. Why? I didn’t want to. I cried for ‘the world’, I cried for myself, I cried for my sadness, my anger, my life. I cried because of the warmness, the laughter, the light.

I cried, because I was free to do so with my own real body.