Marlon woke up with the sunlight streaming through the wooden shutters of his room. He hadn't felt this good in ages. Clean, with a full stomach, an uninterrupted night in a bed that was more comfortable than anything he had ever known.

The only shadow was of course the dull pain coming from his heart, a pain that he could not ignore in any way.

Ten seconds...that's how long he managed to ignore her pain before she remembered him. Immediately his face closed, his thoughts grew darker, and his resolve became as solid as a diamond. He took a deep breath and stood up, dressing quickly before heading down to the common room.

Even the breakfast that the innkeeper brought him was not enough to distract him completely. A divine smelling porridge accompanied by slices of bacon and a very bitter drink that he didn't know.

"Excuse me, what is this?" he asked, pointing to the cup in front of him.

The innkeeper looked at him strangely, as if he came from another planet.

"That's Kelkoa, young man! Haven't you ever drunk it?"

Marlon shook his head in response and slowly sipped the bitter, full-bodied beverage. It tasted like coffee, with a slight acidity that almost refreshed the palate, and from the innkeeper's reaction, it was something common in the area, and the young man savored every sip.

Once he finished his breakfast, he got up and headed for the exit as the tavern keeper called out to him.

"Hey, Selia came by early this morning and wants you to meet her at the training grounds. You take the path to the right of the inn and continue to the stockade. It's just outside the village!"

He then opened the door and thanked the man, then the young man followed the instructions he had just been given while taking deep breaths. He would never tire of the clean air and the vibrant smells that tickled his nostrils. Marlon could smell metal and leather mingling with the lighter, floral notes of the flowers in front of each home. He could see the birds flying over the houses, chirping and doing incredible twirls.

Was this really a representation of a poor village? To him, this place had more riches than anything he had visited in his former life, despite the lackluster technology.

"Haha, it was easy to kill those bastards, right? One that lures them in, the other that blasts them! Come on, let's go see the NPC and get on with finding more quests!"

"Yeah clearly, and again, we wasted serious time with this crappy spawn! Not a cat in miles, seriously! But i have to say, i never played a game this realistic. Major milestone here in technology! And being a beta-player has its perks."

Marlon's blood ran cold when he heard the voices talking. Instinctively, he leaned against the wall of a house and made himself as inconspicuous as possible. A trio walked past him, paying no attention to the young man, laughing and talking about the various rat executions they had done. They wore the same white clothes as he did, and weapons, as damaged as his, hung from a kind of leather belt that they must have made from the skin of rats. And they had made bundles from the same material.

He was almost angry that he hadn't thought of that, but he couldn't help but frown as he watched the trio shamelessly jostle the townspeople on their way to Selia's house. Townspeople were certainly NPCs, but this attitude spoiled the beauty of the place, defiled it in some way.

Once they passed him, he started breathing again and his brain was racing. He wondered where the other players were? Well, dear, here they are!

Hearing their discussion, he was almost certain that Loki had something to do with his solitary appearance. There were three of them and they seemed to have met from the beginning.

However, something else was troubling him. He came out of the recess of the wooden house and immediately went towards a young lady who was walking on the main road.

"Excuse me, I wanted to ask...are the wheat fields to the west the only ones around the village?"

The young woman's cheeks began to turn pink as this beautiful man spoke directly to her. Small and plump, she exuded a shyness that was more than charming with her hair falling down her back and her almond-shaped eyes of an unusual grey color.

"Well...no, Akranio has six stretches of wheat to support us. There's one to the west, two to the south, and three more to the north."

As soon as he finished his sentence, Marlon had already gone back to the training field, the trio of players have left in the other direction, towards Selia's house. His brain was racing. They must have been hunting in a different field than Marlon, or he would have seen them. What troubled him now was that he had an opportunity to advance several steps by killing these players, thanks to Loki's Blessing. But he had his doubts...

The game was ultra-realistic, and again, that was a weak word. He had to meet some sort of instructor before he could progress with his class. So if he killed the players before meeting him, wouldn't that be counterproductive? He was wary now, and his instincts told him he was right.

So he put aside the killing of the three players for the moment and focused on his next destination. Perhaps he could get some answers from Selia about an instructor on runes. He reached the fence and waved to the two guards on duty, who nodded and stepped aside to let him pass. Selia had to warn them of his arrival and his appearance, so he thanked them by passing in front of them and by returning their greeting.

As he left the village, he was once again impressed by what he saw. A large plain lay before him, and part of it was laid out, with mannequins on wooden stakes and a few giant tents set up here and there. A few men and women seemed to be practicing, hitting the targets in front of them with precision and force with large wooden swords. Their movements were synchronized and gave off an almost palpable sense of power.

Behind this plain was a huge forest whose end could not be seen from where he was.

Marlon recognized Selia's figure in the distance. She was walking in front of them, shouting instructions and pointing out the slightest mistake. The young man shuddered. It was a good thing she wasn't his instructor, but he had to admit that she had incredible charisma. She must have been a real predator on the battlefield!

The woman looked up and saw the young man coming towards her. She then barked a last series of orders and came to meet him.

"Revenge Drelor, how are you?"

"Very well, thank you, Huntress. The innkeeper told me where to find you, so I came to see if I could be of any use to you?"

She looked at him again and seemed to think for a few seconds before answering.

"There are many things you could do for Akranio, indeed. We have quite a few problems to solve and not a huge amount of passage, as you must have realized."

Marlon wanted to test something and didn't hesitate to put his theory to the test.

"Yet I spotted three adventurers on my way to see you. They looked like they were returning from a rat hunt as well."

Surprise sparkled in Selia's eyes.

"Ho? that's more foot traffic than we've had in months! I didn't think the quest I sent on the road to Delia would have been so successful...I'll check on them later, Father will know how to keep them busy while I wait. Come on, I have to check something. »

She turned around and headed toward one of the training grounds with a quick step, leaving a flabbergasted Marlon to follow her.

This game was so realistic that even the NPCs did as they pleased. He inwardly blessed himself for remaining humble and courteous with her, otherwise, everything would surely not have gone the same way. Who knows? Maybe she could have even refused to reward him?

Having verified his theory on the absurd realism of Neo-Life, he hastened to follow the Huntress, wondering what she had in store for him. When they arrived on the field, she dismissed the two men who were training like crazy, and Marlon had a very bad feeling.

She took their two wooden swords and threw one nonchalantly towards the young man who caught it in flight more by reflex than by will. Then without wasting a single second, she dived towards him and struck a violent sword blow from top to bottom which was clearly intended to split his skull in two.

Purely by luck, he managed to raise his and block part of Selia's attack. But she had put too much force into her blow and he could not contain her. The sword fell on his skull and the shock burst his scalp in a dry noise. A violent pain radiated in the head of Marlon and he made a jump back to avoid any new attack, his vision having been troubled under the effect of the impact.

Blood began to flow down his face and his vision turned red. The pain awakened the hatred in his heart, and as the Huntress lunged at him again, this time horizontally, he threw himself into the attack.

Surprised, she could not prevent the young man to be found against her and at the same time to completely stopping his attack that she had carried too far. By finding himself completely stuck to her, Marlon made two things almost simultaneously.

The first one was to catch her dominant arm, the one with which she carried her attacks, to avoid that she hit him again. Immediately, he pushed a cry of rage and by releasing the weapon which he held in his still free hand, he tightened the fist and struck with all his forces the jaw of Selia, inflicting her an uppercut worthy of some professional boxing fights.

He distinctly heard a bone break under his blow and the Huntress barely took a step or two back, Marlon feeling as if she was hitting solid wood. But she paused, not continuing to attack him, a new glint of respect in her eyes.

He wanted to continue to fight, he wanted to hurt her, to break her bones and tear off her limbs. But the fact that she stopped made him aware of his immediate surroundings, his anger flowing back like a wave retreating after breaking on the dry sand.

They were surrounded by the fighters who had been practicing a few seconds earlier, and some had not a wooden sword but another, a sharp metal one, ready to attack the young man. Their eyes were dark and their hands clenched on their weapons to the point that their knuckles had all turned white.

Their exchange had lasted at most a dozen heartbeats and yet they had all responded. It was what one could call exemplary responsiveness. Selia waved to them and everyone visibly relaxed. A woman dressed in grey broke through the crowd and walked towards the woman before putting her hand on her face and closing her eyes while speaking in a guttural and incomprehensible language.

Immediately a white light shot out of her hand, and Marlon was surprised to see it. Was it healing magic? He was sure of it when the whitish glow faded and Selia smiled at him with all her teeth, without a hint of resentment in her eyes.

"Damn, you suck at swordsmanship, but I have to admit you have a hell of a punch! You almost broke my jaw, which is a feat for someone so young, and your hold was well executed! Summary but effective! Well done!"

She came to him and held out her hand as a sign of reconciliation.

"Sorry, I wanted to see what you were capable of. And you pleasantly surprised me. That rage! If you use it correctly, you will go very far Revenge Drelor!"

He blew for a long time, much more to stem the hatred that had taken over his heart, and now wanted his opponent dead, than out of fear of the Huntress. He managed to regain control over himself and shook Selia's hand, probably a little harder than necessary, but she had it coming.

"Don't ever do that again..."

She was surprised by the coldness and danger she felt when Revenge spoke to her, but she merely nodded solemnly.

"Sorry, I am not a great diplomat. Anyway, I want you to know that you were qualified and more than qualified to help the village of Akranio. I had to be sure you weren't a failure."

Her answer had been brief and to the point, but she meant it. To help them, they needed someone who wasn't afraid of death, but more importantly, someone who was willing to use a lot of violence to accomplish their goal.

Around them, the crowd had dispersed as quickly as it had gathered, with only the caretaker remaining before them. At a sign from Selia, she walked over to Marlon and reached for his bleeding skull. The young man did not flinch and raised an eyebrow when an intense heat radiated from his wound, a soft and benevolent heart.

It lasted only a moment, but when she finished, his wound was gone. He didn't feel any pain anymore, and he even had a strange impression that his hatred had slightly subsided. He also pointed out the latent pain he felt in his wrist, having surely broken it while hitting Selia, hence the sound of bones cracking during the fight, and she healed that wound in the same way. Once her task was accomplished, the healer disappeared as quickly as the rest of the group of fighters.

"Well, now that we've had our fun, do you want me to explain what we need?"

Marlon nodded but asked anyway:

"There's just one thing...I'd like to gather some knowledge about the use of runes but I'm not from the area and don't know anyone. Could you maybe help me?"

Marlon had switched from being formal to informal, but given the context, he wasn't going to continue to take too much heat from Selia. Firstly, given her character, she would not appreciate it. Secondly, fighting so violently broke barriers, even if it had not lasted long. It was no longer a question of pretending.

The Huntress didn't seem to be offended at all by Marlon's behavior, quite the contrary.

"Haha, it's a good thing you asked for this! One of the tasks I need you to do is about a local hermit. His name is Drevos and he lives in the Forest of a Thousand Miles, right behind us. This guy is not a Grandmaster, but he knows quite a bit about different types of magic, including Runes!"

The young man's eyes lit up at the mention of the Runes.

"Don't get too excited. Your mission will be to go and check on Drevos. He was supposed to come to the village two days ago to supply us with medicinal herbs but we haven't heard from him. He lives a day's walk away in the heart of the forest and some of the creatures could be a problem for you. Let's go back to the village and I'll explain in more detail."

He followed Selia to the village and wondered if he would run into the trio of players. Given the behavior he had witnessed from them, he was curious to see what would happen. They arrived at the red house and didn't even have to walk past the door to hear the shouting from inside. Insults and name-calling were clearly visible.

Not looking worried at all, the Huntress opened the door and Marlon followed.

The spectacle which was offered to him was then of such a comicality that he could not prevent himself from laughing openly. Even Selia had an incredulous smile on her face.

Two of the three companions were lying on the ground, completely unconscious and having been beaten up copiously according to their bloody physical state and what looked like massive hematomas on their faces. As for the third one, he was on Selia's father's lap, his ass in the air, and he was being spanked, his backside having almost turned purple under the effect of the repeated blows.

"You...respect...the...people...who...invite...you...into...their...HOUSE!" the old man chanted at the frantic pace of the blows he was distributing on the player's purple buttocks, accentuating the power with each new descent of his hand.

He cried hotly and begged the old man to stop, but nothing helped. At one point, he fainted, probably from the pain, and the Huntress' father had to decide that enough was enough. He tossed him aside like a bag of cement and got up, rubbing his hands together, a satisfied look on his face.

"Can you explain?" the Huntress asked her sire.

"Those shitheads thought the time was long, so two of them started being insulting and dismissive of me. But most of all, they thought they could clean out the closets in the house without me saying anything! You little bastards! I taught them what respect for elders was," he finished by spitting on the floor.

Once again, the young man blessed himself inwardly with his foresight. He might otherwise have ended up like those three players prostrate on the ground.

Selia made a sign to her father and he began to drag the troublemakers into the room where Marlon had been received the day before. One of them came out of his torpor and became agitated before receiving a well-placed slap from the Huntress who calmed him down immediately.

He could not imagine the mental state they were in. If they had expected to find a classic game, they had made a big mistake, and it would surely cost them dearly.

Selia sat at the end of the table, assuming an intimidating posture, and her father lined the players up side by side, shaking them into consciousness. Once everyone's eyes were open, bloody but open, the Huntress spoke to them in a chilling tone.

"Who are you and why have you made trouble for me?"

The first one to speak did so in a humble, honeyed tone.

"We are sorry for our behavior...we were just returning a quest that was entrusted to us. The field rats gave us a hard time, but we made it."

The woman looked coldly at the man who had just spoken to her, but eventually, she opened a drawer in a chest of drawers in the back of the room and addressed him again.

"Where is the evidence?"

The young man hurriedly unpacked the leather pouch from the bundle the old man had brought with them and placed on the table ten rodent ears identical to the ones Marlon had brought back.

Without adding anything, the woman threw the purse containing the coins to him, and with a nod her father gave the repentant gambler a card similar to the one he had in his inn room. The other two thieves snapped out of their daze and looked with disgust at their friend, who hurried back into the entrance room, bowing and repeating his apology to the old man and the Huntress. That was the smartest one. One of the staying players then spoke up, loaded with anger.

"But you think you're dreaming! An NPC bitch thinks she can do whatever she wants? Damn, guys, it's just a fucking game! So you bitch, come and apologize right now and maybe I'll decide not to rap..."

The rest of his sentence was lost in unintelligible babble. Selia had pulled a knife out of nowhere and thrown it with such violence that it went through the rude man's throat and came out the other side before going into the wall with a thud. A geyser of blood erupted from the wound and the player's eyes went wide as he fell to the wooden floor.

Marlon was not overly surprised. The dying man had simply been stupid and now he was paying the price. One less life for him. He was now gurgling on the ground trying to stop the flow of blood, but after a few seconds the disturbing sound stopped and death came to him without further ado, a puddle of blood spreading out beneath him. What bothered him more was the certainty that if she had used all her strength on the field a little earlier, he would be as dead as a doornail.

The last man had turned considerably pale and was looking at his dead comrade. He wanted to speak, surely to follow the example of the one who had escaped, but he was not given the opportunity.

"Father, gag him and bring him to the public square. We need to make an example of this kind of character. The other one had the presence of mind to apologize right away, unlike you and your comrade. Besides, what kind of people do you think we are? NPCS? I am Selia, the Huntress of Akranio! And behind you, my father, the former General of the Bloody Legions of Forgeciel! You should have cut your tongue out as a sign of penance!"

The young man then thought that even the NPCs did not know they were in...impossible to push the realism further...right?

As the old man dragged the survivor outside, Selia glanced at Marlon and asked him point-blank, a calculating look on her face:

"Would you do me the honor of executing this bastard?"

He didn't even hesitate before her request. Four people show up in the space of twenty-four hours and three of them behave like bulls in a rut...even he would have doubts in his place and it was a good way to verify that they were not acquaintances.

"With pleasure, Huntress. Anyone who insults you is my enemy..."

An almost playful smile appeared on Selia's lips and she nodded as she headed for the door and motioned for him to follow her. He didn't hesitate and walked out of the house, avoiding stepping in the puddle of blood from the corpse.

Only a few seconds later, they had arrived at the main square of the village.

A crowd had already gathered around a wooden platform, on which Selia's father was standing, holding the villain by the hair.

Tears were now streaming down his cheeks and he looked so desperate that Marlon almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

The Huntress climbed onto the structure and waited for Marlon to do the same before addressing the crowd gathered around them, while other residents were still trickling in.

"People of Akranio, I stand before you to set an example today! This has not happened for a long time, but this man and another came to my house today, insulting my father and stealing what did not belong to them! I took pity on one of them and gave him a quick death! As for this one, I wanted everyone to remember one thing: mutual respect is not optional in our house!"

She looked at Marlon and pointed at him.

"Here is someone who respects our rules. He was not afraid to defend himself against me this morning but never disrespected! He really wants to help us! So I will do him the honor of carrying out the punishment. If anyone objects, let them say so now!"

Of course, no one said a word. They didn't know Marlon, but Selia's word was more than enough for them. Their gazes were hard and merciless, a stark contrast to what Marlon had seen since his arrival in Akranio. There was a deathly silence around the dais and the Huntress held out her sword to Marlon. He suspected that the gift of execution was not entirely without motive. It would remove any doubt about him.

She spoke a little more softly so that only Marlon and his father could hear her.

"With your sword, it might be difficult to cut his head off. Do it quickly and well, no need to drag it out."

Marlon nodded and felt a slight anguish grip his heart as he grabbed the Huntress' sword and stepped behind the kneeling player. The hilt of the weapon was made of a bluish metal that reflected sunlight like a prism and the blade looked like it could slice through anything.

The player's head was resting on a wooden log that had been used a few times, judging by the darker color of the wood and the many cuts in it.

The young man was going to be able to test his theory, so he closed his heart to any emotional interference. All he had to do was think of his mother dying in front of him. He took a deep breath and raised the weapon as high as his arms would allow, the entire crowd watching the movement of the sword.

Listening only to his cold anger, he brought the blue sword down with a mighty swing and almost felt a pang of pleasure as the blade sliced through the player's head and sank into the wooden log.

The head fell and rolled a couple of times before stopping and Marlon was still surprised that he didn't feel anything other than anger and excitement at the sight. He knew that his heart was not dead yet, because he still felt things.

But when he gave free rein to his rage, nothing could reach him anymore. As if a titanium wall protected his conscience from the horror he had just committed. Kill or be killed...a credo he would do well to adopt permanently, especially in this new world.

The old Marlon was well and truly dead, for never in his previous life could he have accomplished what he had just done in the space of two days. To feel this sense of power was something new, but he felt deep inside that he had been waiting for this all his life. A new man was being born, and he would not bend to anything or anyone this time.

As he continued to wonder inwardly and the crowd cheered the executioner who had just meted out justice, a strange thing happened. The blood that gushed from the severed neck of his victim rose into the air and formed a symbol that Marlon could not recognize. It lasted a second or two at the most, and everyone fell silent in front of the more than unusual manifestation. Then the shape disappeared as it had appeared, and the young adventurer felt that he now knew by heart the pattern he had just seen.

DING

The murder of IamAfuckingProBastards has triggered the Blessing of Loki. You learn the runic word Race. To understand how to use it, you must find a competent instructor.

Selia put her hand on his shoulder, and with her eyes shining with hope, she asked him:

"Would you be a descendant of the Archmage?"