Chapter 3 – Welcome to the Multiverse

Similar scenes were playing all around the world after the moon shattered. Every single human, adult or child, was suddenly encased in an impenetrable bubble of white. Whether they were at home, on the road, or deep underwater in submarines. They were all cocooned and kept safe from all the chaos happening outside.

Within the first five minutes, all modes of transportation built by man, crashed. The day after, the entire planet plunged into darkness by the loss of electricity brought about by the collapse of power plants. The non-sapient life forms mutated with the sudden release of the unknown energy called mana.

A new struggle for survival ensued that replaced the existing ecosystems built over billions of years. Trees grew larger by the third day and housed stronger and fiercer beasts. None of the pets survived until day four. They were either mutated or killed by those that did.

By day six, most signs of human civilization vanished. Replaced by overgrown trees and vegetation, the cities looked like tropical jungles with occasional ruins. But for all the horrors faced by the animals on earth, a worse fate was dished out to humans.

Stuck within the safety of their impenetrable shells, their souls were left floating outside their bodies. Unable to die but unable to live either. By the end of day one, all the people who could decide for themselves had done so.

Luckily, the children were placed within the cocoons of their parents who had to make the decision on their behalf. However, they were all stuck. Some had heard of the white room torture before. This was that, but much worse. With no physical body and a floating consciousness, they could not even vent their frustration on anything.

Whenever someone asked to be let out, they all got the same response.

All sapiens will be released at the same time when the modification process has been completed. Please standby.

About 80% of the people had chosen to take genetic modifications. Of these the majority went with physical enhancement. 15% of the population chose not to take the enhancement and got a starter kit for their troubles.

Only the last 5 percent figured out something wasn’t right and were subjected to the persuasion protocol. In other words, pure torture. But this pain went beyond the physical realm. This was pain inflicted directly on their souls. And hence 3% gave in and made a choice within the first hour of the pain. The remaining gave in within a few hours.

Only two souls hung on for days with sheer stubbornness, the boy named Aenon and a monk living in the mountains of Nepal. And so, the days went by before finally the first pieces of moon rock touched down. And yet, no humans emerged from their shells. By this point, if humans emerged, the chances of their survival would be bleak since most creatures had grown exponentially stronger.

At the end of the month, something happened that was considered taboo by the denizens of the multiverse. The monk’s soul shattered like the moon above. The karmic ripples that were sent out by this grave violation travelled much faster than even light and reached the System.

Soul fracture detected at the boundaries of Sector 5Z-4856. Deploying Overseer unit to location.

Within moments, a male humanoid figure wearing a featureless white mask, and hooded robes appeared at the borders of the solar system. As he gazed at his surroundings, he noticed a slight distortion of some kind that was attempting to hide whatever lay within the solar system. He noticed that the field was also restricting ambient mana from entering as well. With a casual finger flick, the bubble burst like it was never there.

“Much better,” the man stated calmly in a deep, aged voice.

With just a cursory glance, he located the source of the ripple and headed towards the third planet within this isolated solar system. What he witnessed surprised him. A cloaked planet with sapient life forms all stuck in limbo.

As he was busy looking around the world to find the broken soul, he came across something even more unforgivable. A corrupted node. Someone had subdued one of the nodes the System used to seed new planets and added some new restrictions and protocols to it. It was a grave violation he rarely witnessed during the thousands of years that he lived.

He immediately reached out with one hand and pointed towards the blue and green planet. All fragments of the moon that had fallen to the surface started rising. Even the fragments that had escaped the planet’s gravity were pulled back. As the pieces gathered, the corruption within the node tried to self-destruct. But it couldn’t do so under the Overseer’s control. Eventually all the fragments were gathered before vanishing into nothingness.

Just one piece was left. The Overseer teleported to a location on the surface with 4 cocoons. One of which had a shard embedded in it.

“Interesting,” the Overseer stated before looking at the sky and sending out a message to the System about all his findings.

With the job done, he took one last look at the cracked cocoon with a shard sticking out. The shard was losing its color, going from red to dull grey. He turned and walked away.

“Things are getting interesting indeed,” he said in an amused tone.

………………..

Aenon

Time lost all meaning to him under the relentless pain that his soul was being crushed under. He did not know how much longer he could survive, but he refused to give in. This world had taken everything from him. His parents, his sister, his childhood, and even his freedom. But his free will wasn’t something he would ever give up.

The hollow robotic voice kept repeating the same damn line over and over. It would have been infinitely easier to just give in. But he refused each time.

Persuasion protocols will end when points have been distributed.

At some point during the onslaught, he detected something foreign at the outer reaches of his soul space. He had determined that his soul space was spherical in shape and had rigid walls. He had tried slamming into said walls to try to escape the pain but failed.

He felt the shell he was in cracking as the foreign object started piercing its way in. The pain went up several folds as the cracks spread and he could make out a sharp pointed object, almost like a red crystal, enter his space. A blue smoke started leaking in along with the crystal. The smoke started circling his soul. The pain reduced to manageable levels after that.

For the first time since this ordeal started, he was able to think clearly. The smoke, whatever it was, was shielding him. He got a vague feeling of familiarity from it but could not pinpoint what the feeling was. He observed the blood red crystal jutting in through the wall. It was moving at a snail’s pace, but the cracks spread exponentially for each millimeter the shard moved in.

He got a disgusting oily feeling from the crystal. He felt his anger rising at the object but try as he might, he could not interact with it. His soul simply could not touch it. He felt a tug from the blue smoke in the direction of his avatar. Trusting whatever this thing was for now; he moved his soul towards the floating body.

Following the guidance of the blue smoke, he entered his avatar and felt safe again. The pain was almost negligible here, but he was unable to properly control the avatar. It felt like trying to maneuver a puppet with slippery and elastic strings at first. But with time he gained better control until eventually he was able to move around freely. The smoke was now wrapped around his hands, like boxing gloves. Getting the hint, he smiled and started whaling on the thing causing him so much pain, the shard.

Initially, the punches showed very little effect, except the shard gaining blue specks within it with each punch. Eventually though, he observed tiny hairline cracks start to develop along the jagged edges of the shard. After what felt like forever, the shard finally broke and fell within the white space before the wall crack sealed itself. He could still feel some residual cracks on the surface if he ran his hand along it. The blue cloud was all but gone at this point, getting soaked into the crystal.

Tired and exhausted, he collapsed as his soul left the body, but he realized the pain was gone too. He did not even have the energy to celebrate as his soul floated around with a hypothetical smile. His surroundings had not changed except for the red and blue rock floating around.

Ding

“Uh oh, not again,” Aenon thought as he heard the familiar sound that had triggered this nightmare. A new window with a red background appeared along with the robotic voice from earlier. But it felt different this time. It sounded distant but also felt like… there was more of it.

System Announcement

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Greetings, humans of planet Earth. It has been brought to my attention that certain parties have attempted to restrict the natural integration process of your world into the multiversal collective and hinder the growth of its native population. Since this goes against the System’s core directives, all such restrictions have been purged and the defective seeding node has been confiscated.

Since the status of your planet is not conducive to survival, all humans from Earth will be moved to a grade-E planet along with some basic resources. A tutorial period of one year will be granted during which no offensive action can be taken by a sapient being against any Earth native, except by System approved entities, such as Arbiters. Severe penalties will be incurred by any party in violation of this safety period.

Furthermore, all humans below the age of 10 will have their tutorial stage delayed with full System granted protection till maturity. Please standby for transport.

Aenon felt a strong tug that dragged his soul, and before he knew it, he was standing in a large Colosseum-like structure with thousands of people of different ethnicities and races, wearing whatever clothes they were in back on Earth. Which was unfortunate for those who had none. Other people willingly shared some extra clothes to help.

Unfortunately, the idiot trio from earlier were next to him, looking as confused as everyone else. The only difference was the muscle brain had gotten more muscles, while the fat dude was in much better shape. Aenon and the girl looked the same, but the redhead had a weird silver box in her hands.

As soon as the sudden shock of the situation wore off, loud shouting erupted all over. But Aenon had eyes only for the hulking figure staring at him with pure malice. Aenon realized this problem was far from over.

There was also a bright yellow exclamation mark floating at the end of his vision. But try as he might, he could not interact with it. It kept pulsing every half a second demanding his attention.

“You are dead meat kid,” the jacked-up idiot made a throat slitting motion with his thumb.

The girl was looking between them with wide eyes in bewilderment. She obviously didn’t know what had happened the last time between them.

“What happened to you Mike? You look different. And where are we? Who is this kid? Is my brother’s prank not over yet?” she started her usual barrage of pure nonsense.

“Relax woman. We are going to be fine. Just look around you and let the men handle things,” Mike said with a sneer.

“Woman? What is going on here? You are not Mike, are you?” she said while backing off from the hulking figure.

Aenon calmed himself and looked away. There was no point arguing with the moron. He might as well just try to figure out how to get out of here and deal with him when there was less of an audience.

“You dare ignore me?” the man bellowed like a bull and charged at him.

Just as he was about to counter, Aenon noticed a thin bubble-like field around the man. In fact, it seems to be around everyone. So, he relaxed and stopped moving. He had an idea what it was but wanted to see the outcome.

The moment the raging man collided with his field; he was flung back at double the speed. He was dragged a solid 25 feet before he came to a stop. A big yellow triangular marker appeared above the unconscious man’s head.

“Ah! What a wonderful display of pure stupidity, am I right?” a loud booming sound erupted from above, snapping everyone away from their conversations.

Looking up, they saw a creature floating high above the crowd. There were no distinguishable features to classify it as a man or woman, even though the creature wore no clothes. Its skin appeared to be a black liquid, and its hands and legs were far longer than typical human appendages.

But the most horrifying feature was the face. It had nothing on it except a large mouth that was grinning wide to display its serrated teeth. Chaos erupted in the crowd as people started screaming and trying to get over one another to get away from under the creature.

“Oh, come on folks, no need to panic. I don’t bite,” said the creature with a feral grin.

This caused more screams and cries from the rampaging crowd. The reaction seemed to delight the creature as it started cackling like a third-rate villain from a movie. Aenon observed the crowd and merely stepped out of the way if someone was about to run into him.

Since the building had no visible exit, the crowd eventually settled near the outer walls. That left only two people, one of whom was unconscious, and the creature in the middle of an open field.

“What do we have here? A brave challenger ready to face the beast?” the creature declared enthusiastically.

“I have no intention of challenging you,” Aenon just kept staring impassively at the creature’s featureless face.

“Is that so? Aren’t you scared of big scary monsters?” the creature smiled wider to show its deadly maw.

“Looking at that crater there, I don’t think you can harm me. And if you can get past this barrier, I doubt I can do anything about it. So no, Mr. big-scary-monster,” Aenon said with a grin of his own.

After staring silently for a full minute, the creature stopped grinning and said, “You are no fun, you know that?”

The creature then started glowing and transformed right before their eyes. The skin turned a golden color, and the limbs retracted to a more human scale. The face turned into a wooden mask before the creature took it off to reveal a stunningly beautiful face.

As the body transformation finished, it became obvious the person in front of them was a female clad in form fitting leather armor. If she was born on earth, there was no doubt she would have been a supermodel or actress. She looked to be around Aenon’s age and the only feature that made her look inhuman were her ears. She was an elf.

Aenon found the entire process fascinating. He wondered whether he could learn to do that too. He must have been staring too attentively, since the elf turned to him with a smile and said coyly, “Like what you see?”

He deadpanned and stared back with no reply. The elf chuckled and turned away to address the crowd.

“Sorry about that, people. It was classic shock therapy to snap you out of whatever delusions you may be trying to convince yourself with. ‘Oh, I must be dreaming’, or ‘this must be a prank’, or ‘no way this is real’. I have seen it all twice before and will surely see it again. Even now about half of you will probably refuse to believe what I am about to say. But here is the cold hard truth, your world is gone. It’s not coming back. And there is nothing you can do about it.”

The crowd stared blankly at the sudden declaration. Aenon knew those looks. They were the looks of people who had lost everything. The crowd reacted in every conceivable reaction possible. Some broke down and cried, some started yelling after realizing they were up against a teenaged girl and not a monster, and some just looked around for someone else to take charge.

As the yelling grew louder, Aenon was hit with a feeling he had seldom experienced before – Fear. Not the afraid-of-the-dark kind of fear. No. This was more primal, more raw. Every single human froze instantly. No one could breathe. Even the unconscious idiot suddenly sat up like a bucket of water was poured on him and froze like a deer in headlights.

The elf girl started speaking again in an icy tone, “Don’t make me make an example out of one of you. I am a System Arbiter. If you think the little shield is going to protect you from me, you are grossly mistaken. Now shut up and listen. Or. Else.”

The last words were said with so much malice, everyone felt their blood freeze a bit. And just as suddenly the pressure was lifted, and everyone but Aenon collapsed to the ground.

“Now, let’s start with the explanations, shall we?”, the elf clapped before smiling brightly.

And so began an hour-long explanation of what was to happen now that they were no longer on Earth. An explanation accompanied by such silence and attention; it would make any schoolteacher proud back on earth.

The gist of it, from what Aenon understood, was simple. All humans were divided into large groups such as this and were assigned an Arbiter whose role was to oversee the tutorial. This Arbiter had overseen two such tutorials and so knew quite a lot about it. They would be further divided and sent to a village populated by System-summoned people from different worlds who would run the village until the earthlings were strong enough to govern themselves.

The villages would be scattered all over the new planet with nothing but wilderness in between. There would be certain larger towns and cities, but no one would be sent there. Instead, they had to become strong enough to go there themselves. Travel between the villages and cities would have to be set up by the humans, who would now be called Players. If they were brave enough to face wild beasts and harsh environments that is.

“A few things to keep in mind before you embark on your journeys. The System is always watching. I am not sure what kind of world you come from, but in this one whatever the System decides is the law. You follow it, you prosper. You cannot or do not want to, your life will be living hell,” the elf finished her speech and looked over the crowd. “Any questions?”

Aenon raised his hand, “Three questions. What is your and the planet’s name where we are being sent? Why did you say what this moron did was stupid? And how do I know what the System’s rules are?”

“I like your directness,” the elf smiled brightly while observing him. “My name is too long for you to pronounce. Its short version is Allie. It is customary to use Titles when you address someone in the multiverse, so Arbiter Allie will do just fine.”

No one dared interrupt the elf, so she carried on, “The planet you are going to is not named yet. At the end of the tutorial, the strongest amongst you will choose the name. And as for the rules, the system will let you know if you are on the verge of breaking one through the Interface. Heed the warning and you should be good.”

She pointed at Mike, who was still sitting on the ground in a daze, “For instance, you all saw the red text before you came here. It clearly said any violent action by a sapient against a native from Earth was prohibited. It did not say natives can attack each other. Hence, it was stupid to attack you. However, those rules do not apply to me since I am an Arbiter, after all,” she winked at Aenon as she finished her explanation.

Well, that was a relief to know since that meant he wouldn’t have to keep looking over his shoulder for a while. Now the only question was how to get out of here, and how to address the annoying exclamation mark blinking in the corner of his vision.

“Oh, one last thing before I send you on your way. I was informed that all of you used System points, SP for short, during the integration process under duress. That was a big mistake on your part. The points given by the System are exceedingly rare and hard to achieve. To give you an idea, it can take the average person about 2 years of hard work to get half the points you guys just wasted. You could have achieved that by merely working out for a year. SP are better spent on skills instead,” the elf casually stated. The whole crowd was stunned briefly before erupting into angry shouts.

“What do you mean?”

“Give me back my points.”

“We were not told about this.”

“The pain was intolerable. I had no choice.”

“How will you compensate us.”

The elf looked on with pity before unleashing the same mysterious force as last time, but this felt worse than before. Everyone except Aenon collapsed to the ground again. The elf eyed him with a hint of annoyance before addressing the crowd.

“Silence! You did have a choice. Even under duress, under pain, with little info, you could have chosen to resist. Giving up was your choice. If you learn nothing about the System during your pitiful lives, do remember this – the System rewards effort and strong wills. Choosing the easier way is not something that the System deems worthy of reward. The first 200 points given to newly integrated worlds are to prevent the massive loss of lives the process brings about. Since you are being sent to an E-grade planet with a tutorial, consider yourself compensated.”

The pressure was released only after the elf finished speaking. As Aenon looked on, he saw the resignation in people’s eyes. But some people were showing signs of hope too. Hope at what the new world would bring. As people gradually got back to their feet, they prepared themselves mentally for what was to come. Looking at this change, the elf smiled and waved her hand before disappearing.

Ding

Prepare for transport to the Grade-E planet. You will have 60 minutes to look over your interface.

Aenon smiled as he prepared for his new life. The only thing he wanted with it was freedom. And it looks like he might manage it after all.