-One year later-
"You can take whatever you like from this room"
Said the somewhat plump dark skined Ashradian merchant.
In the room stood three blue headed women and one blue headed girl. They looked around somewhat surprised by the merchant's words.
The room they stood in was beautiful, even the most simple tea cup was engraved with beautiful designs while there were also were golden spoons and forks on the table in front of them.
"I want that carpet!"
Shouted one of them, who was wearing the most revealing desert dancer outfit in the market.
She was Blue the diva who they had met at the northern mountains.
The carpet she was pointing at was the one hunging on the wall behind the rich merchant.
It had a beautiful design of a peackock taking flight, something rather strange but the colours and beautiful making of the carpet couldn't escape Blue's upraising eyes.
"Are you sure you don't want something else, how can a stupid carpet be enough to repay the great deed that you have done for me"
The rich merchant said, with a friendly smile that could flautered the heavens.
"Girls, this carpet would go really nice with my room, I hope you don't care, right?"
Blue asked the other girls who were next to her.
One was Galaxia, who didn't seem to care at all, as she was still looking around, having found nothing of interest, the other was Lidie who submissively nodded, not daring to speak against her, the last was little brown whose hair was now blue for some reason, but she was more interested in playing with two plushies than the quest reward.
The merchant wasn't looking quite well right now but he didn't say anything further.
Lidie could see that with a heavy heart, the merchant took off the carpet from the wall as he offered it to Blue as a reward.
The moment they stepped out of the shop, Blue unrolled the carpet and commanded "Fly".
The three next to her were left dumpstruck, not really understanding why a carpet would fly.
"Girls from now on, we need mounts no more, we will be flying on this magic carpet"
Inside the store, the rich merchant had already contacted with a group of assassins to retrieve his magic carpet and a distance away from the town two figures riding on camels were looking at the flying carpet that silently disappeared into the distance.
"You really suck at predicting the future"
one of the two figures said.
"Why you..."
Time wanted to curse out loud, but he quickly calmed down, he was now at an age that anger and stress caused only problems to his health. If not for the newest capsules having been developed at the time before he died he would be dead by now.
Of course for him who could foresee the future he knew that he would be alive till now and long into the future, His problem however were three people, first was Darknym whose future didn't exist, second was Lidie who could aslo see the future, but the third was the reason why he could foresee only a tiny bit, little brown's future was like a bomb ready to go out at any moment, even Darknym himself admitted his innability to foresee her actions but he didn't really care since he was too sure of himself, which made Time even more angry.
The two of them have been after the girls for a year now, while it all started with Galie appearing in front of all the reporters abducting Blue in front of all the people, many people said that it was all set up and everyone agreed, but few knew what had happened in reality.
Even Darknym was in the Dark in this matter, but the two behind it were probably Galie and Brown, since Lidie gained nothing from this and Brown was Blue's half sister.
In the months they had been tracing their steps they had finaly arrived to the Ashrad Continent, more than half the continent was desert with no life at all, even travelling in the desert could only be done mounted on camels or giant lizards, although there were also horses, called mounts, these creatures looked like horses but lacked eyes and a tail. Mounts were the fastest means of transport but needed lots of food and rest, something that only usable for travelling short distances between towns and villages.
Camels were the only way to travel long distances, while giant lizards were the toughest mounts, even if you encountered monsters the giant lizard had high chances of survival. Giant lizards however were slower than mounts and still needed as much food, needed rest and cost more than camels.
Although Darknym didn't seem to care at all about the situation, he just travelled behind Time sometime helping him taking care of a monster or two. In the begining Time had started with a large group of people, but in time they divided since they couldn't foresee which direction they would take.
Time had sent key members to some spots trying again and again to find Blue.
You might ask why didn't he teleport through the Guardian system, well it's simple, she had never told him her ID, even when she was a child she had never seen him as all children are sent to school and Divas are raised in an even more strict and elite environment, learning even more things and going through too much.
In truth if Time wasn't a really powerfull fortuneteller he probably wouldn't be able to tell which of the Divas was his own daughter, or even if he did have a daughter with Merry at all.
The two of them changed direction and went after the carpet, after of course casting a haste spell at their camels in a desperate attempt to catch up.
Of course the main reason for it was the same reason as to why no one in ashrad uses flying mounts.
Because flying is even more dangerous than crawling in the desert dunes.
one day after another group arrived at the town, the leader of this team was a man sitting on a rather strange mount(blind horse creature).
"Progie, where's your mommie now?"
Asked Max as he and his group travelled forth towards the far reaches of the desert dissapearing into the night. The only sound they made being Red's nagging, leaving behind a rather irritating feeling.
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Simon's POV
-some day A Year ago-
Simon was running away from Kaj who was trying to kill him, although he was a godlike figure in Allastar and he could get away with a single flick of his fingers, but he was not in the virtual world at the moment.
Life as an almighty virtual god was boring, really boring but the main reason behind his boredom was that he could do anything, anywhere he went Kaj went behind him, even toilet was under her surveilance. If he ever looked at another woman Kaj would instantly fall on him and beat him up.
But the worst thing was that he forgot himself in a patrol and was now going to earn a good beating in the real world.
If before he was slow and tired by just walking, but now he was running for his life. The first hit he suffered made him regret glancing at their partner's ass. It was his misfortune being in the same group with two beauties and his wife while on patrol.
It was fortunate that she hadn't shot him in the head and just smacked him in the face.
In a moment the both of them reached some strange intersection, they were patroling the underground power factory at the moment and there was nothing but robots working on maintaining the facilities.
They looked like humans but they were nothing but androids or so they were told.
Since the sky Island had left they had only the two areas to patrol, their town or some other town and their underground facilities.
In their game of hide and seek they reached a dead end, Simon was nothing like a grown adult and in his panic he shot the lock open and went inside.
Kaj could do nothing but follow inside the dim lit room.
Sneakily and in her distressed state a kiss was stolen by Simon who was somewhat excited by the atmosphere. This was the real world and this was their first real kiss, their skin touching one another was something unusual for both.
"Die Guardian scum!"
A voice came from the door and shots were heard, Simon didn't even have the chance to see what hit him before he lay there on the floor with Kaj in his arms, Both dead in seconds.
You could call this misfortune or lack of vigilance on duty but this was something rather rare.
To begin with, in the huge facility to find a person was already hard, even harder to find a rebel, but some way or another a rebel found them first.
All revolutionairs are burning with a flame of hatred as they have some reason to hate the system.
-Sometime later-
Simon woke up as if from a nightmare, his body didn't excert any sweat but his mind was in upheaval.
At first he thought that it was all a dream but then he noticed that something was strange. He tried to move his head but his body wouldn't comply.
He was wearing something on his head that blocked his sight and he couldn't feel his body at all, well not entirely but it was more like it was numb or something.
He could tell that he was walking and from time to time he would feel his arms and fingers working at a rather tactfull pace.
He didn't know to laugh or to cry, but in reality he could do neither of it, he had completely lost control over his body.
-days or months later-
Simon had at last accomplished something, he could blink, just this strange action gave him great happiness.
At last he could feel even the slightest of things, this almost negligible action was a hope that he could escape from this nightmare.
-Hours or days later-
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Simon was feeling pain, an indescibable pain, a pain as if his body and soul were being teared apart, a pain almost signaling his death.
Suddenly in his agony he felt a strange sensation, it was as if he could see again, images of his surounding was visible inside his mind.
He could see the facility he was patrolling before, or so it seemed like because of the strange machinery and the androids walking here and there.
By now he had figured out that he had been turned into one of those android workers, even in his wildest dreams he wouldn't have thought that those seemingly metalic android hid humans inside.
-Present-
He couldn't tell how long it was but he had become sick and tired of his situation, he could see everything going on outside but he could do nothing to interact with the outside world, not until now.
Today was rather strange as all of the so called drones had to pass through mentainance or so it was called.
The truth however was quite grim for him as his body walked towards what seemed to be a lava pit.
It was a large cylinder full of liquid metal, it was used for recycling, it was a rather tedious thing to diferentiate metals and the other components so the refined hot metal would seperate and sent to diferent containers.
It was at that moment as his body walked to its doom that his stress reached a new height, through great pain his body suddenly stoped just before jumping off the platform right into the liquid metals.
behind him where some other drones that looked somewhat damaged, some even lacking a hand or a foot. There was a reason why they were sent to the resycling facility, or rather two.
To begin with their bodies had begun decomposing and there was little that could be done about it, after all they died in the real world, not inside their capsules, and their body had already begun decomposing before they were found.
The second reason was that there were just too many drones, far more than needed to be, in other words, the less productive drones were sent for recycling.
simon with his psychic power could see the bottom of the lava pit, there were remnants of bones and some stones or something that failed being dissolved by the hot liquid metal.
With great pain and only by relying on his will alone he begun moving his body, moving backwards, one step at a time.
They say that if you gave a monkey a millenia of lifetime, it could even learn how to read, so how couldn't Simon by now not somewhat understand how the circuits in his strange metalic suit work.
It was because he did something to the circuits that the whole metalic frame had stoped moving and now he tried to do the oposite of what was happening and it somehow worked. It was fortunate that he had watched closely what each circuit did and now knew full well how to make the metal frame of his drone body moved.
His psychic powers had somehow awakened anew as he now was walking in the drone suit out of the facility, he went towards the city, to the place he once called home, he had but one Idea in his mind "Revenge".
It took him ages to reach his place and inside there was nothing but his old capsule, it was rather common for empty capsule rooms to exist, after all only Guardians were allowed to birth children into the world, something that silently diminished the world's population.
In truth most people didn't care since from long ago overpopulation was a problem unsolved in ages which now was easily ignored as there weren't enough guardians who even wanted to pass through the process of giving birth.
There was a reason for that, called birth simulation, which the woman had to pass through, it was a nighmarish procedure very few women would want to pass a second time, after all the new generation of people were too fragile, having lived all their life in a completely safe virtual reality, the faintest pain in the real world would seem great to them, mostly because of their real body being in synch with their underdeveloped muscles and skin.
In other words most people other than newborn childre, most of which were trained as guardians from birth, everyone else were weak, terribly weak like Simon.
Simon was now in front of the capsule and with great difficulty opened the hatch and entered into the virtual world.
If anyone saw how he looked like in the virtual world they would scream "Ghost", his skin was rather dry and pale like a zombie and his eyeballs were missing out of their sockets, he had multiple holes all over his body and his from where different metals and wires normally passed.
Simon could see quite well with his non existent eyes but what he most wanted to do now was take revenge. Only problem was from whom and how.
Simon like a ghost from the past entered Allastar, there he was god, but more importantly, there he could find Darknym.
If he found that man, maybe he could even do something about his situation, just maybe, after all he had once been sent to Darknym's capsule room and knew that he was not a simple man.
Simon appeared in Allastar and without a second though begun trying to find Darknym, of course it was impossible for him to locate him but he easily found Lidie and the rest of the girls, there was no question that they would become his best bargaining chip, but he knew full well that only Galie had some value, for the rest he didn't care, but how to make Galie a hostage was something he couldn't think about.
"Just give her what she wants most"
The little devil on his shoulder said.
He had created two smal AI, one little devil and one little angel for ideas, after all he had long found that the Devil was a rather well made AI so he dublicated it into a good and an evil AI advisors.
"Why don't you just ask her for help"
The little angel contradicted the devil.
The two opinions were rather handy when dealing with people after all one could advise him on how to do something the good way and the other a more underhanded way to achieve his target.
Simon of course knew that Darknym was nowhere near as nice as a person, so he needed the Devil's advice on how to deal with another Devil.
Days passed as he and the little devil were designing their plan, the Devil's data were enriched with all of Simon's knowledge of the outside world and now their plan had taken a more solid form.
The angel was always speaking of how to make the plan less crafty and a more sincere aproach, but his opinions were completely disregarded.
Now a week later the plan was finaly set in motion, all starting on the surface of Allastar where the demon Domina's strange Glass cocoon begun to crack, silently unleashing into the world an even greater terror than before.
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Zephir and Verina's POV
Zephir and Verina were the only ones who remained of his former demonic horde, since all the others who bore his Demonic armor were turned to ashes.
Of course that was because Domina had all of Simon's memories and thought of them as trustworthy, the closest thing to a friend.
They were rather surprised to see everyone else die but since this was the virtual world this matter only left a large sence of disatisfaction in many of the players' hearts and after listening to Blue's interview they all decided that Domina had just sold them out. Of course one good thing came from all this, players could now begin as demons in the demonic realm and slowly evolve into powerful demons trying to break into Allastar for a second demon invasion.
Only Zephir and Verina however were now left on Allastar and they spent their days relaxed without worries, even their patrols were bribed away by zephir as he knew the ins and outs of the Guardians.
Zephir was a Demonic Dragoon while Verina was a Leech Queen. Both however looked like normal humans with some special features like wings and horns on Zephir's end and tentacles on Veriana's.
They had long ago abandoned the demonic armors but since they were demons and their strength was too high, most weapons simply broke after a few uses.
They were too frail for them to use, even Zephir's most trusted sword was no diferent than a toothpick.
After all his demonic arm was far superior than a sword and his resistance and defence far surpased what an armor can give.
Demons were no simple monsters, even if someone killed him he would just be sent to the demon world and with his power it wouldn't be long before he returned or so he thought, after all he had seen the posts of players that started in the demon realm and knew a little about it. Demons didn't need to eat and any foot they ate just added to their demonic energy which was used to trigger stronger attacks and evolution, it also worked as health points.
They could only curse when their calm was disrupted by Domina's awakening. They were even readying for their first child's birth as Verina had passed the simulation and still agreed to it. Without a second thought all they did was leave Allastar for good and they were probably the first two who did so as the npcs begun spreading chaos about an oncoming disaster and the end of the world making some other normal people also abandon Allastar as it was too stressfull and not as fun as before, but to their horror they found out that they couldn't log out anymore.
Anyone who entered Allastar was not held there with no way of getting out while death inside the game was not an exit, they just revived as if there was nothing wrong, but most of the people thought of it as nothing more than a bug of the system.