Prologue

 

Have you ever been hungry? 

 

No, not that kind of hunger where you’ve been working out all day and are looking forward to a big bowl of soup and meat when you get home. Where you can smile and laugh with friends.

 

I mean the kind of hunger you get when it hurts to even move.

 

Where your skin is pressed against your veins and you’ve already sold off the children and executed the elderly.

I’m talking about the kind of hunger that makes you look down at your best friend's corpse with dangerous eyes, before ralphing up the little water left in your stomach.

 

That’s how we were when it all began.

 

They called us bandits but that’s not really the case.

 

You choose to be a bandit, to put your life before someone else’s but that isn’t what we were doing.

 

We were survivors. 

 

My beautiful little grand-daughter and wife were already dead and my best friend had joined them. Our fields had been barren for years and what little life left there had wilted away in that god forsaken heat.

 

None the less the damn noble's tax collector still came and took what little was left of our belongings. 

 

He chopped off little Rosie’s hand when she refused to give over her mothers bracelet. 

 

“You should be grateful our lord didn’t see fit to take you instead!” he sneered over her even though we all knew the only reason he didn’t is because she wouldn’t have lasted the trip without falling to starvation anyways.

 

We are told that we should be grateful to be born into this world, that with enough strength, intelligence, and willpower God will see fit to bestow upon you titles and levels to grant strength enough to even slay a dragon! 

 

What bullshit. 

 

To gain power one needs money and food.

 

We are farmers, and failed starving farmers at that. Nobody has broken a level cap in years and those that do quickly leave to join the army or a mercenary troupe to go to the country's outer reaches.

 

To level you need to be blessed with someone’s life essence or have a title that circumvents that process. Titles like that can only be granted by a city noble I had never seen and no farmer would ever be given, and to take in life essence requires killing someone. And like I said, we’re just farmers.

 

I’m just a farmer.

 

I’m just a survivor.

 

Title Gained - Survivor

 

Infamy Increases!

 

Title Gained - Mercy Killer

 

Infamy Increases!

 

Title Gained - ********

 

A Dark God sees your struggle and laughs.

 

Infamy Increases!

 

Access to Life Essence through monstrous acts has been granted.

 

Race Altered - Ghoul!

 

Infamy Skyrockets!

 

Access to Status Screen granted!

 

Messages I had never seen before run across my eyes as I puke onto the ground, my stomach retching and my vision blackening.

 

I feel tears pouring down as my only living friend’s body smiles, his lips still forming his last words, a desperate plea to the last of our small struggling town.

 

Survive.