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On top of a planet with a snowy mountain peak as its sole feature, a gargantuan wolf woke up from her deep slumber. Ariandel, the mother of all the snow wolves, stood proud from atop of the cliff, overlooking her subjects that awaited her return.

To oversee the invasion wasn’t an easy task for her. Frankly, she was shocked to receive the task from the system out of nowhere.

[Task completed : Lead the invasion of a tutorial. Once accepted, you will enter a hibernation state, and your consciousness will split to each one of the tutorial’s sectors.]

[Reward calculation in progress, please wait.]

A wolf-like grin crept up on her snout. She’d met a lot of interesting individuals from her invasions, including those who were granted a blessing from the deities. They were all as powerful as she’d expected; the difference between those who were blessed and those who weren’t was night and day.

Even when her strength diminished from the split consciousness, she didn’t expect the one-sided beatdown she had with the blessed ones; Their power-ups were exaggerated from their low G-rank status. The light’s chosen was the one that she felt was the most impressive, as she knew exactly what kind of boons Uriel’s blessings gave to those it had blessed.

And then, there were two that she felt were the opposite of the light’s blessings. One was the only one who she felt was the most curious, Zane Black, and the other was the kind of things she hated the most.

That ‘other one’ had killed every other player that he’d met, granting him extremely inflated levels and achievements, and as she expected, his deed earned him the blessing of the Chaos, Azazel. Those types of individuals were always unpredictable, and most importantly, they could never be trusted with anything.

Bryan Ghoulborne.

Azazel’s involvement with the players always caused a ripple throughout the universe. Fortunately, there were others who were related to deities that detested Azazel, so there should be some semblance of balance to their kind once they were reunited.

Then… There was the Deathborne.

To say that the Deathbornes were rare was an understatement; They were anomalies that first appeared when the Death assimilated the shadow into itself. Deathbornes were assumed to be the result of a side effect from the process of assimilation, but as time went on, everybody started to think otherwise. It didn’t help that Ezekiel went mute after its assimilation.

Until this day, Nobody knew what happened to it. Not even its most loyal subjects, who vanished along with Ezekiel.

There were theories that the system wasn’t happy with its interference and it was punished for it. That made the most sense according to Ariandel; Deathbornes were known to possess the essence of Death themselves, meaning that they didn’t need Ezekiel’s permission to possess the Death Affinity.

Obtaining one, however, was a different story. There were only a handful of cases where deathbornes acquired one, and they only did so after years and years of searching.

Over time, The system put more restrictions on what the deities were allowed to do. She’s heard stories from her mother where Deities were allowed to outright kill those they didn’t like; Fortunately, that didn’t last very long. Then, the system stopped deities from forcefully injecting their essence into an entity, which had happened to one of the Light’s chosen.

Right now, they were only able to communicate and bestow their blessings.

Ariandel howled on the mountaintop, rousing the attention of her subjects once more.

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“I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with this… Sorry, Reghan.”

Julie was forthright with how she felt, and I grinned.

Reghan closed his eyes, sighing, as the time ticked down. The mood of the cheering masses turned to apprehension; Naturally, All of them hoped that the contents of the colony chest would alter the course of their lives.

As for me… I wasn’t too excited about it. The contents of the colony chest would most likely contain extra potions or common equipment, if I had to guess the contents based off the naming of the chest; Things that were useful to the masses, not necessarily for the individuals.

A potion alone could determine the life or death for most of the players here. I knew firsthand how game-changing any of those was. Of course, those would be beneficial for me too, obviously, but as my health and stamina stats skyrocketed, the efficiency of each potion dropped significantly.

Also, the system just had to force the leader to monopolize the rewards of the chest. No matter how much they trusted Reghan, there would always be some kind of doubt in their hearts when he had so much control over the pylon and chest.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Luckily, I never planned to rely on that chest in the first place.

Reghan walked over to the pylon with his gaze locked on to the anxious masses, “The contents of the colony chest will only be used for the betterment of our defenses, and nothing else!”

His speech did little to relieve their worries, but honestly, no one could’ve done any better than him.

My eyes then spotted a massive object falling from the skies above. It was the chest, obviously, but I did not expect that it’d be as massive as how it looked. The others soon noticed the chest too, their faces were mixed with hope and trepidation.

The ground cracked as the chest smashed against the floor, causing a massive shockwave that blasted the dirt away as it eventually settled in front of the pylon. Everyone had their hands up to shield their eyes from the impact.

As the dust finally settled, we witnessed a chest the size of a container erected in front of us in mint condition. No blemishes, no dust, no scratches, just… perfection.

[You are unable to access the colony chest.]

Reghan watched the chest in silence. He didn’t make any move to open it at first, only deciding to do so after I called him out.

His hands touched the surface of the steel, and then, the lid of the chest opened. A blue radiance seeped through its opening, filling the scene with its azure radiance; Almost blinding me from the sudden increase in brightness. It wasn’t until a few seconds passed before my vision returned, but then, the chest had vanished.

In its place was a massive holographic sphere that floated a few feet off the ground. I felt the air current twisting as it collided against the sphere; its size was about the same as the chest before, with similar coloring.

[Storage nexus : Use to access the colony’s storage space. You do not have the rights to access this storage unit.]

I guess our rewards are in there?

Murmurs from the crowd resurfaced as they each attempted to interact with the nexus. If the rewards were indeed, in there, then the only person who had full access to it at this moment is Reghan.

Sharing the access to the storage could cause a lot of problems down the line. Not only the person he allowed to enter the storage had to be someone he trusted deeply, but that person would draw the ire of the others who were already in an uneasy relationship with Reghan’s group.

But man, saying that I didn’t desire what was inside that thing would be a huge understatement.

Glancing over to where Julie was, I noticed that she shared the same kind of curious look too.

The whisperings from the crowd eventually waned as their eyes collectively gathered around Reghan’s confused figure. Whatever decision Reghan made next would be contentious to everyone, and I had never been so relieved that I wasn’t the one who was given the right to choose for a long, long time.

“I’ll share the access to those who had contributed a lot to the defense initially, then, once we know what is inside, I’ll make another decision.”

The crowd remained silent. Most of them knew that this would be the most likely outcome. But a few eyes were distracted from a system message that appeared in front of their eyes, and those were almost exclusively people that I was familiar with.

[Administrator Reghan morris has granted you the access to the storage.]

“Reghan…” I switched my gaze to him. “Are you sure?”

He shrugged. There was little to no hesitation from his expression.

I looked around to check if Julie and her party was granted access too. The answer was more than obvious from their expressions.

“What about us?”, one of the guys from the crowd yelled at Reghan. I couldn’t see his face all that well, but even if I could, I didn’t think that I’d recognize who he was. “This is unfair! We did what you asked us to do!”

One by one, the once silent population were voicing their complaints towards Reghan. We all knew this would happen; Reghan’s reaction being that of complete indifference. He was sick of dealing with their grievances after all the fighting that he just went through.

Ignoring the crowd, I accessed the storage system. I expected that I’d be transported somewhere else or perhaps that sphere itself would change its shape, but what I experienced was nothing of that sort.

It was a strange feeling. I could still move and act normally, but there was some sort of overlay on top of my field of view, like how the system displayed my status page. Everything that was contained in the storage was listed here, yet, that wasn’t the most impressive thing about it.

The system somehow ingrained the contents of the storage straight into my brain.

“Potions… Armors… Weapons… Basic skill books…” Julie mumbled the contents of the storage out loud, drawing the attention of the others around her. My initial hypotheses was right, the contents in this sphere catered towards the general population and not towards the individuals.

But that didn’t undermine the importance of the potions. The basic health potions here were the exact copies that was dropped from the dungeon. The interesting ones came after that; Included in the storage was Mana potions, Regeneration potions, and a potion for each of the sub-attributes. They each grant 5 points to each attributes for 30 seconds respectively. The armors and weapons weren’t shabby either, they were a class above the common equipments one could get from the pylon store.

The skill books were good too, unlike the rest of the contents here, there were only 5 variants of them listed in the screen. [Dash], [Empower], [Meditation], [Analyze], and [Charge].

Only five skillbooks… These would be the hardest to share.

It was nice to see the things we could take from here, but there weren’t nearly enough stuff here to give out to everyone. If the choice was in my hands, I would give the armors and weapons to those who proved useful in fights, but doing so would divide our current group even more than it already is.

“We have to talk about this.” Reghan called out to the few who were given the rights to access the storage. None of those who weren’t allowed to look inside the storage knew of its contents yet, so they didn’t know the significance of what we got.

The potions looked interesting, but the one thing I wanted the most was one of the skill books. [Empower] or [Meditation]. Dash was quite similar with my shadow-step, only with a longer cooldown. Analyze was somewhat useful, but at its common rank, they were only able to detect the level, health, and stamina of an entity.

Charge is only useful for a mage. It increases the potency of the caster’s spells by 10%.

[Empower - uncommon : Consume 20% stamina. Increases your strength by 20% for the next 15 seconds.]

[Meditation - uncommon : Enters a regenerative state. Triples regeneration until you wake up. Usable once a day.]

One of them… I want at least one of them.