“Child, what makes your eyes appear like newly shattered glass? The world? yourself?” A heavy, masculine voice filled with vigor seemed to light up the dim, dirty, cramped room as the owner of the voice stood menacingly in a puddle of blood and dismembered limbs. His thick frame blocked whatever little light came from the small, opposing windowsill.

A young boy sat in the vermillion flowing puddle below him, his small arms clutching his legs like a fetus. The boy glanced up at the man, his ruby eyes devoid of any life. Now devoid of any semblance of meaning, his purpose now completed.

“Take this mask and change yourself. Trust me, the world surrounding you–your very perspective, will change too.”

The man took out a metal mask strapped to his waist and handed it to the boy. His expression was unreadable under the visage of the night.

The boy wondered what the man's expression looked like behind the harsh cover of darkness, probably disgusted like all the others the boy thought, as he gazed down at the dismembered body of what was once his father.

He didn't feel anything from the act, after all, he was a bad person. Perhaps that made him bad too.

“Hahahaha, cmon now. Kids should smile more and shouldn't look so dead in the eyes!” The man laughed as he bent down to the boy's eye level.

The man's smile was dazzling, and at that moment to the boy, seemed to eclipse even the sun's dreadful rays.

It hurt more than the burns fresh across his healing face, the fact that maybe he was wrong. Maybe not everything was hopeless after all.

Still, he wanted to change. At least, just for one person, he wanted to try.

Feebly moving up his hand, he grasped the metal mask before him. This was how Alicent Ruby's destiny changed completely.

“Guild Mas—Alicent! We are running out of time.”

A woman shouted loudly at the members currently seated in the large open hall. With eight seats empty, three people sat down around the ten star pointed table with varying expressions.

The woman who had spoken up sat up abruptly, bringing attention to her tall, robust frame. Standing at nearly 190 feet, she was clearly an uncommonality amongst women. A bewitching beauty was perhaps the best way to describe her, a trap for men was another. With mature, alluring curves, she lacked the ‘professional’ attire other members wore, wearing daunty, flashy clothes that highlighted her charms. Fixing the frames on her glasses, she expectantly looked at the man at the forefront of the table.

“Relax Camille, the Phantasmal Item, [A Bygone World], has long since been activated. Whatever forces threatened us before…more than likely no longer exist here.” The man who responded, Alicent, sat at the only pointed edge that contained a golden seat. His words seemed to melt into the hearts of all those around him, hypnotically soothing. Plastered on his face was a silver mask, his white hair bleeding off its edges.

He threw a twelve-sided dice softly into the center of the table. As soon as it reached the table's center, it shattered into countless pieces.

[Phantasmal Item - A bygone world has been destroyed]

The familiar ‘voice of the world’ echoed only at the most significant of universal encounters spoke softly into the ears of everyone present, proving that the phantasmal tier item had indeed completed its task, a once all powerful item now returned to dust.

“I-I see. Those fucking useless humans!! Next time I see one ill rip It to shreds!!” Camille shouted as her fist slammed into the pearl white table. It was made of material strong enough to withstand her insane strength.

Her anger was somewhat justified Alicent thought, after all, they had gone through great lengths to integrate with them when at the peak of their guilds strength they could have easily, silently crushed them one by one. An option offered by one of the old guild members which Alicent had heavily dis-favoured. Most guild members knew of Alicents ‘disposition’ towards humans already.

Did he feel regret? Burning anger similar to Camilles? No, he barely felt petty emotions like that anymore. He simply acted in what way his current position and worldviews allowed–the current guild master of the Unbranded Guild. An underground guild that was founded by the ‘Rejects’ of their world, monsters, the cursed, they were known by many names. The only place that housed being such as themselves. Their only home.

Ignoring Camiles rather uncommon burst of anger, Alicent stood up, his beautifully crafted white suit covering his chiseled but slender frame, and began walking towards the last member at the table, a young girl who had been sitting down patiently without uttering a word. His only remaining blood, his sister, Alice.

“Guess we didn't die after all.” She said drearily, her ruby eyes and long white hair a copy of her brothers, she clutched tightly at the stuffed rabbit doll in her arms. A gift from her brother when they were young, during the darker days when hiding thier toy was they only way to keep it. Sadly, its current form left a lot to be desired as the years had worn away at its form, leaving a stuffed doll that looked rather eerie, with a missing eye and limbs.

“Good for you brother.”

“No, for us baby sister. When will you stop with the self-hate, after over a century?” Alicent replied, petting his sister's head as she nuzzled up against him, like a cat to its owner.

A hundred years, that was how long Alicent and Alice had been members of the Unbranded guild. As immortal half-monsters, they would live far longer so much as they were not slain.

“As long as brother is fine, then life isnt that bad I suppose.” Alice replied in her usual tone of voice, almost fleeting, temperance–as if it could disappear any second.

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His sister had never truly gotten over her resentment and inferiority complex towards humans. A hundred years had passed and yet he still could do nothing to fix this. Another failure.

“Guild Master, with all due respect. Maybe we should call up the remaining guild leaders.” Camille cut in. She had recollected herself, The calm and composed camille finally returning. Alicent himself couldn't blame her for her loss of temper. Her race made falling to emotions extremely difficult to handle, honestly, she did a good job controlling it majority of the time.

“...No, they barely managed to hold on for me to complete the items cast requirements. I'll meet them personally on the lower floors.”

“The higher digits are certainly dead.” Alice chimed in in her usual morbid fashion.

“...Again with the negativity Alice.”

At the end of the day, intellectual monsters or not, monsters were still monsters, and strength was the only way to determine not only who would lead them, but their own internal rankings. After all, this was a gathering of creatures that each individually could shake up an entire city, destroy a team of S ranks, or even single-handedly clear impossible-level dungeons. They all had a strong ego and Alicent was their leader, chosen through pure strength that bested all within the guild.

“She's not entirely wrong Alicent, the chances of ‘two’ and ‘four’ being defeated before the cast was completed is incredibly low. As for members six through eight—”

The forces that had attacked their hideout were truly that powerful. Even though the unbranded guild had not been a ranked guild, this was only because it was underground, the true strength of the guild was close to the peak of their world. A coalition, and of the three strongest guilds, Blackfire, holy sanctuary, and Nodes Ear. Working together they had backed Alicents guild into a tight corner, completed with a masterfully tacted night raid.

[A Bygone World], a phantasmal level artifact at the level of the gods, in which only three existed in their own world. Capable of bending space and time to travel across worlds or perhaps even dimensions. Twelve uses.

That was the number of times it could be used, and its destination location was always random, or perhaps how to properly control of the artifact was still unknown. Either way, with only one use left, it had never been used in the hundreds of years it had floated from civilization to civilization. Becoming more of an ancient relic than an actual artifact.

Could they be blamed? Using the artifact meant you could truly never return to your home world. Now they were in a world that could potentially be completely uninhabitable for monsters, or worse, devoid of any life.

“Status check, member checkup, area scouting, then meeting to discuss our plans. In that order. It's the most efficient plan to firm ourselves into this new land.” Alicent said.

Alicent marked the status or system as the most important step in the plan. After all, there would be no point if the planet they wound up at had no ‘system’. In their old world, although much research had gone into the understanding of what was known as the goddesses creation, there was was still much unknown, like a path that just continued endlessly the further you walked along it. What was known however, was that it was responsible for the otherworldly abilities and creatures that walked the earth. Weather the power that such a system granted individuals was a blessing or a curse, was a question with many answers.

Both Camille and Alice understood this and quickly followed his commands to also check their own statuses.

Status.

Name - Alicent Ruby

Age - 115

Race -

Level - 200

Health - 400000/400000

Mana - 5000/10000

Stamina - 10000/10000

Race Skills - Passive

[Daywalker]

[Mystic Eyes of Authority]

[Immortal Being]

[Blessing of the Crux]

Race Skills - Active

[King of Eternity] - Lv 50

[Essense reversal] - Lv 50

[Starscale Transformation] - Lv 50

[Bloody Dilemma] - Lv 50

[Usurpurs Command] - Lv 50

General Skills

[Siscon] - Level 20

[A hundred faces] - Level Max

[Leaders insight] - level 22

[Analysis] - Level 20

Looking at his status screen, two things caught Alicent by surprise. First, there was no longer a capping on any of his skills except a hundred faces or in particular, his Race Level. What did this mean? There was the possibility that the max level was higher in this world, which in itself was a blessing and a curse. He would need to proceed with even more caution. But why is the hundred faces skill maxed out? Alicent quickly concluded that perhaps his insight in the skill had instantly maxed it out in this world as well.

The second change was the change in the number of passives and race skills allowed. In Alicents old world, you could only ever have four passives and five actives at one time, a lot of strategem went into play on skill evolutions and skill selections to ensure that the five skills selected were optimal for the class or race. yet, now there was no number to indicate a max skill selection.

This isn't good. Alicent thought to himself. If they were stuck with five skills and the people outside in this world had an unlimited selection of them…

“We're going to die the second we step outside–Either by being hunted down one by one and ruthlessly tortured to death by crappy humans or killed by a native creature that's at level one thousand or something. We're done for, I'm going to enjoy one last crepe before we die.”

Neither Alicent nor Camille bothered to respond to Alice's outburst of negativity, they had long since both given up on such things.

“Guild master. What are your plans? May I suggest a solution?”

“Go ahead, Camille.”

Out of all the seated members of the guild, Camille was the only one that Alicent had asked to stay by his side as he activated the Item. Not because she was particularly powerful, but because of her extremely useful Passive skill for situations such as this [Perfect Endgame].

Shifting her glasses, a special grade magic item that boosted the effects of her passive - Elgar's eyewear, her sapphire green eyes began to tinge bright green as she calculated the most optimal path for us to get out of this situation in one piece.

“First we should scout out the area with a small exchangeable scouting group, your low tier familiars should do the trick Alice. Then, after gathering some information, sending a small group of two or three to scout out nearby inhabitants, if one exists. We should also have the guild only other phantasmal item on hand, just in case of the worst.”

Although what she had brought up was more or less aligned with the game plan Alicent had thought up, it was good to know that it was the most optimal solution for their current situation with such limited information. The only weakness to the skill was really just luck, for example, they could go outside and immediately be swallowed by an unknown level 1000 creature as Alice had mentioned.

Speaking of Alice, she was currently licking her fingers of her devoured crepe as her other hand messily entered a black vortex [Abyssal grasp]. A skill that gave the user control over the void itself, Alice had wastefully stored crepes and other sweets within its space, after all, the food would never spoil or in this case, melt, since it lay frozen in time/space.

Alicent had stopped feeling certain things over one hundred years ago. Whether it was his guild, its members, or his abilities, he wondered if he truly actually felt anything towards any of it. He acted like he did, he thought that if he acted long enough, he might actually grow to truly care for them like he did his sister. But did he even care for his sister? Or was that as well, selfish attachment.

Alicent gently lifted Alice’s small frame onto his shoulders as he walked towards the elevator with Camille by his side.

“I'll definitely get cream in your hair, brother.”

Yet here they were, in a separate world, some members possibly dead and all their power and authority gone. Yet he still felt nothing.

The emptiness in his heart he thought he had somewhat filled up–was still there.