“Will he be okay” is all I hear as my consciousness returns to me my eyesight blurry a blinking red light in the bottom of my peripheral vision “Yes Seargent, he’s coming too now if you look over at the bedroll” I hear from the most mesmerizing and exotic accented voice I have ever heard.
As I slowly get up I feel a pain in my side and look down, I'm shirtless with a bloody bandage wrapped around my ribcage. I go to press the area where the bloody seepage is the worst, I almost black out from the pain that seems to radiate from the wound that steels all of my senses and breath from me.
As I start to come to again for the second time in thirty seconds, that melodic voice speaks to me directly again, “I wouldn't touch the corruption again or it'll spread even faster Mr. Forrest” I look up into the most exotic looking deep hazel eyes I have ever seen as I take in the rest the gorgeous women, she has medium brown hair, and is a head shorter than Sargeant Daniels who is standing next to her, I realize her head is more ovalish than a normal human and she has some extremely pointed ears.
“Holy shit you're an elf” I can tell from her snarling facial expression that I just made an extremely faux pass and as my eyes widen even further, she holds up a hand stalling me from saying anything.
“Elfin Mr. Forrest, this will be the only time I tell you, as you were not conscious When I had to correct the Sargeant in front of the rest of your group. My race is of the Elfin, elves are what your world call Dark elves, they are cousins to elfin in the since that during the last integration attempt to our worlds child more than two thousand years ago our world was invaded by another, and tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people were taken from us and turned into the Dark elves, any race who has been tainted by a system from far off that survives the transition is considered dark, grey, alabaster or any other term related to a white greyish skin coloring. What your world seems to misinterpret about dark elves is their skin color is not black its grey. That derives from the system mana that has tainted their home world system has destroyed the melanin pigmentation from their skin."
“Now on to what we should do about the corruption infecting you, my advice is to get rid of it, but because I've always cared about people making informed decisions, I will tell you the upside and downside of letting the corruption take hold, my only question is if you want the positive or negative first.”
I looked at her with widening eyes because in the past fifteen years I've read so many books between isekai and litrpg it could overfill an entire small room library in a personal three-bedroom home where the third room was nothing, but a tiny library and I've never heard of anything like this before. “I'd rather end on a Highnote mam so give me the negatives first.”
“Ok, so first and most important this corruption can and is more than likely going to kill you, this corruption is a world on a similar level to this world or to simplify your grandfathers world, second if you do survive, the next close to a month will be extremely difficult for not only you but your party members because not only will you be bed ridden but they will have to leave a few people behind when they go and gather resources and experience to protect you, third there is only me and my two apprentices who are seeing to one of your party members at the moment, I will be forced to stay beside you because what you will go through is beyond what my apprentices can do, I will not be able to help the rest of your party, I will be required to save any and all mana for healing you and trying to force the symbiosis between not two systems but three. One from your world, one from our world, and one from the world that is attempting to invade us. The meshing of your world and ours will be easy because again this world is the father of the world you come from. But because you still haven't truly gained any experience and leveled up here it's going to make the integration between the three that much more difficult."
"And because I will be focusing on you, if someone in your party becomes truly hurt, as in my apprentices can't handle their condition even together, I will be forced to choose between you or them. Which is the reason I would rather you get rid of the taint instead of trying to mesh all three together. I have never lost somebody I was healing in my twelve hundred years of being a cleric of Detaria. Your condition can turn from everything is meshing together well to your almost dying in a split second, which is the reason I would have to choose between them and you if you go from good to bad.”
She took a deep breath and looked me in the eyes with a seriousness I've rarely seen in my life “And the second to last negative but is repeating the first is from all of our records from this world and our sister and cousins worlds around us this is an extremely difficult thing to not only survive from but for me to even attempt, the only reason I'm giving you a choice is because Detaria isn't given me a choice, they gave me a quest to attempt and I repeat attempt to mesh the three systems together in at least one of you or your party members, the only time Detaria doesn't give a choice with accepting quests is if it's for the betterment of Detaria as a whole. And I won't tell the last negative until after I state the positives is because you won't understand” she quit talking and continued to stare at me with a look of determination and pity.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
I opened my mouth to speak but she interrupted me before I could say anything, “after I tell you the upsides you need to make a choice quickly, the corruption has spread to the point where we won't have a choice anymore, I got here just a few minutes ago when I originally woke you up.” after she finished her ultimatum I quickly interjected “I can't make a choice without Seargent Daniels here mam, he’s kind of our leader” all she did was simply look to her side and nodded and Daniels who had been in a chair in the corner the whole time nodded at me.
I looked back at the cleric and nodded silently telling her to continue. “The positives outweigh the negatives if you survive by leagues, first, because Detaria is your parent world all experience you earn here from killing beasts or monsters is more than doubled, but they are a lot stronger than what your world will go through, let's say someone from this world killed a non-corrupted hog, they get an even hundred experience, now turn that hog into a corrupted hog, and because the person who killed them is only meshed with Detaria they won't get the full exp because the hogs body isn't fully of this world or any world that is close by, that is why it's called corruption, they’d get at most seventy five exp but more than likely less, now somebody from your world kills said hog, they get a little over two hundred exp because our creatures are more powerful compared to their equivalent of y'all's world, the mana or energy density is higher here than it is on your world, now turn that hog into a corrupted hog and you will receive the same exp we would receive for killing a regular hog, now let's say the person is from Detaria but meshed with the corruption, and kills a corrupted hog they’d get the normal seventy-five exp for killing it plus anywhere from an additional fifty to a hundred exp for the energy they’d receive from the corruption because technically it's not corruption, it's just the energy signature of the originating worlds planet trying to conform to the beast or person its apart of, no different than two different races trying to donate blood to each other, it's possible but it's a difficult process and can do more harm than good. Now let's say somebody from your party who is meshed with your system, our system and the corruptions system, they would get more than double the exp from both systems so roughly four hundred exp, and the last negative is the most simple but most difficult to explain, because your world is on a lower level then then not only Detaria but the world the corruption originates from, leveling up takes a harsher toll on your body, where usually if someone from Detaria where to level up it would take roughly five minutes, they were born from this worlds energy, someone from your world leveling up in Detaria would take anywhere from half an hour to an hour for their body to acclimate to the higher density of energy, now someone from your world who is meshed with all three worlds it would roughly take two to three hours depending on the how well their body meshed with all three worlds energy, this is only a hypotheses, but since your meshing all three at the same time I'd guess it would take two at most, and the meshing would probably take at most a month to complete, now I'm going to the other room for a couple of minutes to let you and sergeant Daniel's talk”
She seemed to deflate after that long winded explanation and got up and left. I looked over at Daniels to find that he was sitting down with an extremely pensive expression on his face, as he looked up and met my eyes he simply states “That was a lot to take in, but the gist of what I got if you decided to mesh with all three systems was you could die, it's going to be extremely painful for you, it takes her out of healing others if her apprentices can't handle it, but if you survive you’ll level up twice as fast as us when we're leveling up twice as fast as most people on this world and you could be our ace in the hole almost like special forces for the American military”
I flinched hard at the end of Daniels summary because I attempted to move in the bed to get more comfortable “God that fucking hurts” I force out of clenched teeth because it's one of the most painful experiences I've had in my life, just imagine someone taking a stake and stabbing you in the stomach while twirling it around and that's pretty much what I felt except at the last second I felt a burning pain that seemed like it was spreading from the entrance wound to the very core of my being I hear running footsteps and blink and I'm staring into the Gorgeous hazel eyes of the elfin, she looks over to Daniels then back to me and simply states
“Make a choice now are you meshing with the corruption or am I purging it from you” I look over to Daniels and he simply states “It's your choice man, this is your life on the line, but I'd rather not be without someone who I know I can count on Heavy Hands” and just looking at him I can see the sincerity of his words, he truly believes he can count on me, the pain doesn't go away but my awareness of it almost halves, I just smirk and look at the elfin in the eyes and grit through my teeth “lets mesh all three together”
The Elfin's facial expressions turn from shocked, to anger, to relieved and everything else in between and finally to calm acceptance as she lays her hands directly on my bandages over the wound. I feel an extremely sharp pain, and then blissful oblivion.