Chapter 2

“Sounds like you came from a relatively normal world.” Derrick walks slightly in front of me on the path that he says will lead towards the nearest town. “The name of this world, like I have mentioned earlier, is Regnum Umbra. Legend states that the name comes from the first empire that once ruled the entire world. The empire was so vast that not a section was unexplored or uninhabited. The empire came to an end when monsters beyond what humans were capable of defeating showed up, not without them trying at the very least. Decades passed and humans were barely surviving, there were only a few colonies of humans that had grouped together underground, traps upon traps guarding the entrances, warning systems, that if you looked at them the wrong way, set alarms off.” He takes a deep breath and continues

“One day, an entire settlement disappears from the face of the planet. No one knew where they went and even their belongings had disappeared from the cave they were living in. The remaining settlements feared for their lives as they thought that this was the work of a powerful monster. Days pass, days turn to weeks and weeks quickly turn to months. No word was heard from the missing settlement, so they assumed they had all died. Years pass and many people have died, only a single merged settlement remains, a measly seven hundred people left alive. One fateful day, all remaining survivors lost all hope. A monster had breached their defences, this monster was more dangerous than any they had seen before, large wings covered in scales. Liquid fire seeping from its mouth, dripping and melting the stone beneath it as it walked further into the cave.” Derrick smiles and continues leading me on the long path.

“The creature moved deeper and deeper into the cave, hearing the crying of children, the heavy breathing of anxious adults and those who had accepted their fate. The creature moved forward with a smile on its face, crawling forward with four legs, a long tail with scales all the way down and a spiked ball like end. The monster had made it to the final room, where everyone was currently staying, wishing that the monster would leave.” Derrick stumbles on the road almost falling over, I walk over to him.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I just got distracted, I know it isn’t a long story, but I have a hard time focusing on the story and walking at the same time.” He straightens his back, “We have a long way to go until town, I can still tell the story, but we will have to chance travelling at night. Although, I’m almost done, and it is a short story, so we won’t lose too much time if I keep telling it and we just walk a bit slower than we have been.”

“My vote says that you continue since you say the story is almost over, I don’t know how dangerous night is, but by that time, I shouldn’t be a pushover, right?” I say this with a smile and Derrick shakes his head.

“I’ll explain that to you after I finish the lore of this world.” Derrick takes yet another deep breath and starts walking forwards, continuing our journey towards the town he said was in that direction.

“The monster was walking in the main room, its sharp teeth showing to scare those that were in the room. Out of nowhere, a sound likened to that of glass breaking was heard near the entrance of the cave. The sound causing even the monster to look back and see what was going on behind itself. A group of armed men and women were standing there, a wide smile on their faces. Some were less humanoid and had varying colors of skin, some wore heavy armor and some wore long robes. Some people carried swords and other had long staffs with shining gems of various colors. A few hundred people walked down in to the cave. The monster had frozen in fear at the sight of this group of people. Like a dog that was scared, it shoved its tail between its legs and whimpered. The front people in the group that had been dressed in armor, carrying sharp looking swords, they sliced at the monster and it quickly perished.” Derrick smiles and looks off into the distance, the roofs of some buildings could be seen, but they were incredibly far away still. Derrick then continues his story with a sigh.

“After the crying of the children stopped, the armed men and women walked forward to greet the human survivors. One man that had lived through scout duties had recognized several of their faces and told everyone that these were the people from the missing settlement all those years ago. The smiles on the faces of those that returned was supposedly brighter than the sky had been in years. Those that returned shared their experiences with the remaining survivors of the planet and some were skeptical, but seeing how easily they sliced through the monster that had them wondering if the world was going to lose its last survivors, they had very little choice but to believe them. They had been taken to a world and were stood before a being of such immense power that no one was able to look at it directly. A gray colored screen had appeared in front of their eyes, and no matter where they looked it stayed in their vision. The screen had told them that they were the first ones to test this new system, and what better place to test it than in a dying world. Many years had passed for them, grueling years, with death being a common occurrence. People fought with each other over riches and power. The system changed as they grew more powerful and found more things wrong with the system. Exploits went unpunished as more updates to the system passed, more complex and abusive exploits in the system were found, the higher being was pleased with this as it gave them the chance to thoroughly test the system that they had created. The exploits became harder and harder to find, but it was too late, they were already incredibly powerful, high levels, evolutions and leaps of physical and magical powers. Eventually, they figured out how to travel between worlds and their first stop was the world they had all been born in to.” Derrick grabs a metal flask from the bag that I just noticed at his side. He takes a sip and offers some to me, “You must be thirsty after walking for a while. Have some.”

“Thanks.” I take the flask in my hands and notice that the metal feels cold. I pour some of the water in to my mouth, it was cold. After I get a few mouthfuls, I hand the flask back to him, a thought suddenly coming to mind. Was it poisoned?

“No problem, I’m going to continue the story now.” Derrick puts the flask back in to his side bag. “After the people explained where they went and some of their experiences, the god-like being appeared in front of everyone, as they were forced to look away. It then gave out an update to the system, changing the color from gray screens and black text, to gold with black text. This was the first real version of the system. The survivors eventually left the cave and explored the newly devastated world. With the majority of humanity dying, the people that knew all of the technological advancements had been lost, so the world had pretty much hit reset. ‘Regnum’ represents the kingdom that once ruled and ‘Umbra’ reminds us of the shadow that was once cast over humanity. A more literal translation in our old language meant ‘Kingdom covered in shadows’.”

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“Hm. I’m not too sure about ‘Regnum’, but I know in my world the translations were slightly different from the old languages I knew.” I comment and walk slightly behind Derrick.

“Many things are possible. I guess the possibility that you came from a world similar to this one before the fall of humanity also exists with so many worlds falling to this one.”

“Worlds… falling?” I tilt my head and try to think of what this means.

“Well, there are two reasons you arrived here, you either died or you travelled here willingly.” Derrick turned his head to look at me, “I don’t believe that you travelled here willingly, as you are so young.”

“I don't know. I remember having had a normal day, I was working, then I was here.”

“Heart stopped, meteor hit, explosion, building collapse. All common causes of death that people have before coming here. We get at least one transmigration a day and about ten reincarnations a year. That was the most recently recorded statistics released by the guild, in our area…” Derrick pauses, “So that’s all I can say for the statistics.”

“One a day?” I stare in awe, “How many cheat powers are there? This must be a really broken world.”

“You misunderstand how this world works. Let’s start with something simple. You came here to this world in a relatively peaceful area without much fighting. This area of the world is mostly peaceful with very little going on in the way of territory wars. Now then on to the big thing; this world is so vast that even if you spent every day walking for the rest of your life, assuming you never got tired and your lifespan was infinite, it would take about ten thousand years at our current speed. Assuming every step we take is about one meter, give or take, if we take... say ten thousand steps, that is roughly ten kilometers. We can travel ten kilometers in a day, we take ten thousand years that would be thirty six and a half million kilometers around.”

“S-s-six million!” my jaw drops.

“That’s all just rumors though. No one in this general area will know how large the actual world is because the further you travel from this point here, the stronger the monster and beasts get. Same with the people. As well as the fact that the further out you get, the more fighting there is between people over what land belongs to who.”

“Hold up, hold on for just a second and let me wrap my head around all this.” I rub my forehead with my right hand. “The planet is that large and people from here don’t know of its size, yet claim that measurements to be true.”

“Travellers are things to you know. People from far off lands coming here for a change of pace.”

“You say that, but earlier you said that people from farther out are much stronger with more absurd gifts. Maybe not the gifts part, but it is only what I can assume.”

“I apologize, but I can only tell you what I know. I don’t know why they come here, I don’t know why they don’t just murder us all, I don’t know how we can live when we are surrounded on all sides, at all times.” Derrick looks at me with an expression of sadness for a brief moment, only for it to be quickly replaced with a smile.

“I’m sorry I made you think of that.” I frown, “I think I get the basics though. This world has a levelling system. The farther we travel the stronger the enemies get and the distance to travel becomes larger and larger. People are born with gifts if they are natives of this world and traveller from other worlds, like myself, get these gifted to us when we appear through some means or another?”

“Close enough for now.” Derrick nods his head. “Not everyone is born with gifts, and some gifts are ‘useless’. I say that carefully because everything has its use, but some will never be used in a person’s entire lifetime. An example being that you can levitate air. If it created a wind of any kind, it would be useful, but it just makes air weightless. An example of another ‘useless’ gift is turn air into air, or water into water. Nothing changes, but you have used your gift. Some gifts evolve, and very rarely they will never evolve. No one knows the requirements to evolve their gifts, but sometimes, they are really straightforward.”

“I see,so there is a chance my gift won’t evolve and I will stay just as a measly overpowered? Oh how horrible.” I place both of my hands on my cheeks and fill my voice with an immense amount of sarcasm.

“Overpowered? No, you aren’t.” Derrick shakes his head, “I was getting to explaining that, just had some other information that you needed to understand before I could move on any further with this topic.” Derrick looks at me.

“I won’t be overpowered? How so? I gain levels every time I take a step! I must be almost level six thousand by now!”

“Don’t shout.” Derrick looks around worried. “The day is getting late and monster will start to come out soon.”

“Sorry.” I lower my voice, and look at the sky. It had started to turn slightly red. “Will we make it to town before nightfall?”

“Unlikely, but shortly after nightfall we should be able to get through the gate, when we reach the top of this small hill, you will get a better view of the town we are going to be getting you settled in to.”

As Derrick said, when we got to the top of the hill, I indeed got a view of the town.

The town had a few tall wooden buildings and a large amount of stone buildings that were no taller than two floors. The roofs were all stone and wood, clay tiles with wood supports to be exact. It was hard to tell from the distance we still were and the wooden fence surrounding the village, but it seemed like there were quite a few people walking on the streets still.

“I’ll now explain why you aren’t overpowered yet.” Derrick speaks up, bringing my attention back to the road I am walking, rather than the town in the distance. “When you open you status window you would see right now that you have roughly… you said level six thousand, you would have thirty thousand points left unassigned.”

My eyes nearly fall out of my head. “I can’t assign my points, so I am basically a level one.”

“To be fair, you can’t assign your own stat points. The system does it automatically for you, but you have to pick a specialization, and from there, the system best decides how to split the points.”

“In order to tell the system how to assign the points…”

“You need to see the status screen.”

“Ah…” I let out a long sigh. “So for now I am a level one with a fancy decorative number? It must be like a fantasy story where the first letter is nicely decorated, I bet the one looks fancy as fuck.”

“You aren’t exactly a level one either though.” Derrick points to my feet, “Otherwise, you would be so tired and your feet would be bleeding from walking so much, the pace we have been walking at is slowly increasing as time goes on as well, meaning that you are still having basic stat gains from the level increases. Maybe a point every ten levels.”

“Is that from my gift, they impact stat gains?”

“Of course they impact stat gains, some gifts only change stat gains. Say for a strength gift, it may put a certain amount of points towards strength every level up or after a few level ups.” Derrick looks up, “If you level up by walking, maybe it has a passive increase on your speed and dexterity. Maybe a few points to strength here and there.”

“I see… how do we test if I gained any of that?”

“Run.” Derrick uses an absurd amount of strength and pushes me forwards at high velocity, I try to keep my legs underneath me, but I fall flat on my face.

Welp, this will be loads of fun, won’t it?