The struggle was always very real for the people closed up in the slums. They formed communities and small villages so that they could support each other. Food was always little, as even when people planted crops the soil didn’t offer much with everything that it offered being taken by the more powerful slave owners.
They stood united to protect themselves from the threat of the Slave hunters as well as other communities and the quite common deranged fellow. The village right next to Jhin was essentially a small, not blood connected, family. All newborns were shown all the care the grown-ups could give. It didn’t matter who the parents were, everyone had some contribution.
The elderly though spent most of the time with the kids in the big tent in the center of the village. It was the most stable and safe structure amongst the bunch and it acted as a center in which the elderly and the children spent their time while the strong men and women went out to search for food, maybe steal something, protect and patrol the village and work on anything else that needed to be done.
These young men and women were really strong. Jhin was a tall human. He reached more than 190 cm tall and he rarely had to look up to meet the eyes of others. Thankfully for his pride, he still didn’t have to do that but when he talked with Talisa during the nights, they spent near his hut he talked to her near eye to eye. She was tall standing proudly at 185 cm. Making her one tall woman, which fit perfectly with her warrior image. Which she was. There weren't too many animals inside the walls but every now and then the gates were opened on purpose to let packs of predators in. It was a way for the guards to clean up the population in the walls, and the villagers had to fight them off to survive. That was how Talisa had gained the scare on her neck.
Everything Jhin had learned about this place and its creation was information that he had gotten from Talisa. Almost every single night for the past month Talisa had sneaked out of her tent and had come to speak to him.
Talisa was a person that had been born and raised inside the walls, but even then, her kind-hearted and curious nature didn’t change or falter at all the atrocities she experienced. She had been the only person to approach him in the two months he had been here. A companion was he least expected it. He was happy to have her though since no one else seemed to be willing to approach him as she did.
The sun had risen just like any other day. People were up and about, the scavengers already on their morning visit to the ‘Dump of Life’, as the older men called the garbage dump. Others were scouting around for anything that may have happened during the night. Maybe some slaves had run away and died or some people simply died of starvation.
It was on this very usual day, fa from peaceful to any normal human but the norm for residents of the Slums. The ground started to shake. The infants were the first ones that sensed the tremors soon followed by everyone else. Small items started to fall right away but it didn’t take long for the more unstable huts to start toppling over.
“Earthquake!” Jhin heard one of the villagers yell as everyone rushed out of the tightly packed village and onto the side where Jhin had built his home. A home that was destroyed at the same time the tremors started. He had barely managed to get out without having some log fall on his head.
Jhin, as well as the villagers, didn’t have the time to rage out their homes disappearing as the ground started to crack. A huge slit opened in the earth, almost perfectly straight. It Cut the Slums as well as the city almost in half as it reached the harbor. The wall crumbled and the gate fell as it unhinged. It crashed down to the ground along with its supports.
Jhin was caught right at the edge of the parting, he lost his balance and was flung forward into the air towards the villagers. He hit the ground and rolled a few times before coming to a stop. He wasn’t hurt, just disoriented. Talisa, to the surprise of her fellow villagers, broke out from the group and rushed to Jhin’s aid. She bent down and picked him up from the armpits.
“Thanks…” Jhin grabbed her shoulder and thanked her for the help, now that they had gotten a safe distance away from the opening.
The shaking and the tremors and the thundering sounds of the earth breaking apart though didn’t stop. As all villagers were forced to their buts, gravity seemingly increasing, the piece of land they were standing on suddenly started flying upwards. It was one of the first.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Everyone looked on incredulously as they soared up the clouds and witnessed pieces of land forming islands that separated from the blue ocean. Small and big, no matter the size the islands flew up. A thing so impossible that a lot of people fainted right there and then. In only a matter of seconds, their island stopped moving as all of them jumped into the air a little as the sudden stop of the island’s velocity didn’t affect them.
They kept seeing more and more islands reach the same height and stop, a lot more though stopped further down or up with size not being a factor in where they ended up. It was at that moment though that everything went black. Not just for Jhin but for every conscious being on earth.
Not because the sun was missing but because everyone fainted.
From this black nothingness, a small dot of light appeared. From a small dot, it expanded. In less than a millisecond the whole world was filled with light again. Jhin ‘woke up’ and looked around. He wasn’t where he had been previously. Near the village on the field of dirt and grass, Instead, Jhin and everyone else near him had been ‘transferred’ in a big hall.
The hall was so big that Jhin didn’t know it was a hall since he couldn’t see the walls nor the ceiling. All he could see was a huge shining blue board that simply floated in the air.
Jhin was now, along with hundreds of thousands, millions, and probably much more, people. All were looking at that board in the air. At first, it didn’t have anything on it but soon enough white letters appeared on it.
Welcome People to the United World Hall!
As you probably noticed some changes occurred in the world you knew.
We are Three different worlds and as of right now We have become united as one!
From now on you will be living in this world. We hope that you adapt soon enough.
Good Luck!
The words disappeared soon enough and only one more word appeared.
‘Status’ said Jhin in his mind as he read the word.
*STATUS*
Name: Jhin
Race: Earthen Human
Vitality: 9/10
ATTRIBUTES:
Strength: Good (6.5)
Agility: Above Average (5.75)
Toughness: Good (7.5)
Intelligence: Good (6.5)
Fortitude: Great (9)
Sense: Below Average (3.75)
Jhin as well as Talisa, from the way she was mumbling the things she read on the status page, was quite perplexed by the pieces of information he got. It turned out that more species of Humans existed since he had to be specifically mentioned as ‘Earthen’.
Below that he understood why his vitality was not a perfect 10, it would have to be because he hadn’t been eating well the past month, nor sleeping either. Meaning that generally, Vitality signified how healthy a person was at any given moment.
Below that he looked at his Attributes. The numbers weren’t weird nor was he dissatisfied with the results he was being shown. Instead the rating of Below average till Great sounded weird to him. He was Average compared to what?
Right as he was questioning that in his head it was as if the screen came closer to him as an explanation appeared right up close and personal.
The rating comes from the average Attribute values of your race.
It didn't take much more than that for Jhin to understand, as well as to know that the Status page provided explanations. And it took even less for the world to turn black again as the next moment Jhin and everyone else had returned back to where they had been. Thousands of meters in the sky in a newly formed Sky Island made up of parts of the land to the Pristine kingdom.
The Industrial quarter of the city had not come up with them. as the part of the land that had shot up had cut the city in half, though the palace was standing tall just as usual on the west side of the city. Its magnificent peaks could now be seen through the fallen wall. Albeit slightly damaged it still was a true beacon of luxury and architectural mastery.
Along with the changes to the landscape near Jhin, like the huge cliff right to his east, only a couple hundred meters away, there had also been plenty of other changes made to the land that was from now on an Island.
Most notable though was the huge green mountain that had suddenly popped up in the northern corner of the island. The land near the Capital had been known for its relatively flat and grassy wide plains. Instead though what they currently saw was a mountain, probably a volcano with snow at the top and lush greenery at the bottom that. And that was only as far as apparent landscape changes went.
To te west of the island, two ginormous towers stood proud and tall. The towers were made out of pure white building blocks and both were donned with huge domes at their tips. One Dome a rich deep blue and the other a thick dark red.
It had been made clear and apparent to everyone on the island that all three different worlds congregated here. With Earth on the southeast, one other world to the North, and the last to the southwest.