Skyler looked at the newly-made corpse beside her with mixed expressions. It was hard to comprehend that within the next few minutes, she would join him in the afterlife, if there was such a thing.

Since dying was a rather boring affair, Skyler inspected the man’s face, the mechanical section seemed rather beautiful to her now. The cold metal looked extremely pure and masterfully crafted.

It was then that the man’s mechanical eye suddenly opened.

Stunned by the sudden movement, Skyler froze for a moment, looking into the mechanical eye.

It was now that she heard a buzzing coming from the device, sounding almost like a drill.

Hearing the sound, Skyler wanted to leave the area, sadly, things weren’t that easy for people about to die.

“AARGH!”

Skyler screamed as the mechanical eye suddenly jumped up towards her. A number of thin metallic wires wrapped around her head before she saw the drill on the back of the eye spinning rapidly.

The following minute could only be described as excruciating to experience or witness. Bit by bit the mechanical eye replaced the original biological one, causing Skyler to faint and reawaken multiple times, extremely close to the doors of death.

Then, when she finally thought she truly could not live any longer, and her remaining eye began to fall closed due to exhaustion, she heard a voice speak within her head.

|Link Established.|

|This world and many others are in constant threat of calamities. You are now one of the heroes that fights these calamities head-on.|

|Become a pillar of strength for humanity so that, one day, all calamities may end.|

Besides hearing them, Skyler could feel these words within her mind, she could even swear she could see them in blue windows before her eyes.

“Quickly retrieve the body of the chosen one, if we can extract his link our strength will improve by leaps and bounds!”

The final thing Skyler heard was Roland ordering the other mages around, then, just before the mages would’ve spotted her, she disappeared into thin air.

---------------------

“Where am I?”

This was the first thought Skyler had after waking up. She could see blue skies above her, and she could feel the blades of grass against her back.

And then there was this smell as well, the smell of grass, the smell of nature. It was unlike anything she had ever smelt before.

For Skyler, this was something special. She grew up within the city from when she was young and had always lived within pollution, she had never truly been amidst nature before, the only thing that was even vaguely comparable was the park at the northern part of the city, but that place was always overcrowded.

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After getting over the way the sky looked and the grass smelled, Skyler knew it was about time to figure out what was going on. She no longer felt the wounds she had suffered before, other than the fact her shirt was torn, there would be no way to tell she ever was hurt.

Thinking back to before she woke up was confusing and Skyler felt her thoughts shift around the matter, not recalling everything that had happened right away.

But when she got up to see where she was properly, Skyler almost felt her legs go numb as she saw yet another astounding sight. Some of the sounds she ignored before, now came back in full force to amaze her. The slashing of the waves, the water flowing onto the beach not far away from her.

After calming herself further, Skyler quickly took in her surroundings.

She found herself on a small island of a hundred meters by a hundred meters. There was a small door on top of this hill that didn’t seem to lead anywhere. Two of the sides of the island had small beaches while the other two had some rocks that kept the water away.

“So now what?”

This was the only real question she could ask herself here. No matter what way she looked she saw nothing but the endless ocean stretching out into nothingness.

It was now that she thought back to the words she heard, the words she felt when the man died.

‘You are now one of the heroes that fights these calamities head-on.’

After remembering this line, Skyler thought back to the way her mysterious predecessor fought the dragons on his own, taking down a bunch of them. Then she thought of his final words, his seemingly crazed request towards the skies to transfer his ‘link’.

Suddenly recalling something, Skyler ran towards the nearest beach, looking at her reflection.

It was as she feared, one of her eyes had been replaced by a metallic one and the skin around it was now also metal.

For a few minutes, Skyler looked at it in the reflection before walking away without expression.

Right now she didn’t know what the eye was, whether it was a parasite or a gift, this was a basic example of having insufficient intel.

Right now Skyler was back in the mindset of three years ago, trying to suck in as much information as possible without drowning and using that information to her benefit.

For now, she decided to assume the ‘link’ was a good thing as it was her only potential link out currently. Since it got her into this place, it should be able to return her.

“Uh...link?”

“...”

“I wish to end the calamities.”

Even though her first words didn’t seem to have any effect, as soon as she established her intent on ending the calamities, a voice appeared within her head once more.

| World of Endless Calamities had been activated. Would the user like to receive the comprehensive tutorial? |

Seeing how her words seemed to have woken up this mysterious link, Skyler didn’t show any surprise as she made sure to pay attention to every bit of information she could get.

“Yes.”

| The World of Endless Calamities is a system created to aid others in destroying the devil’s calamities. As long as a hero continues to defeat calamities, they will be gifted more power by the system, morality is unimportant.|

| A multitude of systems are in place to help you survive as the calamities become more threatening. Failing to destroy a calamity will have dire repercussions. If you die while fighting a calamity another will take your place. |

After hearing all this being said, Skyler took in a few deep breaths, she knew there was some extremely important information that was said in these lines.

‘Morality is unimportant’ was one of the lines she was wary of. What it seemed to mean was that as long as you defeated the calamities it didn’t matter what else you did or at what cost, you just had your one objective.

But before Skyler finished her train of thought, one more line appeared within her head.

| There are twelve hours left until the first mission. User has been gifted a starter pack. |