“Status,” he called out in his mind.

｢Nox (Apprentice Human Mage) 
[Level]: 0, 0/200 EXP
[Knowledge]: 1 Runeword
[HP]: 100/100 (dependent on Vitality)
[MP]: 200/200 (dependent on Intelligence)
[Physical Damage]: 11~15 (dependent on Strength and Equipments)
[Magic Damage]: 50~65 (dependent on Intelligence and Equipments)
[Attributes]: 10 Strength (STR), 10 Agility (AGI), 20 Intelligence (INT), 10 Vitality (VIT)
[Runeword Combination Skills]: N/A
[Bloodlines]: N/A
[Cerebral Limiter]: Elite, 25%
[Current Stamina]: 2,500/2,500 (dependent on Cerebral Limiter and Bloodline)｣

Being from the future… helped… a lot, he sniggered. A wicked smile formed on his lips.

The Cerebral Limiter demarcated the main difference between the, eh, plebs (sorry), the elites, the experts, and the pros. 

Plebs were… normal people, with 10% of their brain capacity working, eh, most of the time. Those with less, ahem, sorry. You wouldn’t even qualify as a pleb. 

An elite would have up to 25% of their neural transmitters unlocked to maximum efficiency. This was also the highest limit that humanity had reached—before War of Gods. One of the side reasons why the game was so popular, even at the early stages, was its promise to break through beyond the established norm. An elite with 25% of their Cerebral Limiter unrestricted had the ability to maintain a Domain around them, so that any and all attacks could, theoretically, be nullified. Heck, they could even perceive time faster than normal humans. Laser guns wouldn’t work so well in such a scenario, provided, of course, that the defending party had the body training (or drank enough nutritional cocktails) to move as quickly as his brain could think.

Perceive time faster than normal humans: that was the key. War of Gods allowed plebs to experience this over time, and that would be fed back to their bodies. Of course it was overpowered! New-age technology, y’all!

As for an expert? Hehe, at 50% of their maximum neural capacity, experts were bloody terrifying! Even back then, Wyatt had to tread so carefully as part of the upper echelon of the Secret Dynasty all because he couldn’t afford to offend these guys. Heck, after Update 6, when the last time dilation setting was updated to one-to-ten, when all human brains were frantically processing a tenfold increased load, these fuckers could extend their own perception of time like fucking nothing! To use Mages as an example, it was like those people had their own Time Magic!

The fact that Wyatt had failed to reach this point, no doubt, was the main reason why people were so adamant against his repeated promotions. Power spoke volumes in War of Gods. Why let a weakling be in a position of political power, huh?

The pros… well, get to that later.

Wyatt could breathe easy now that he knew this was carried over from his past life. He’d been anaemic the whole day, worrying since this had to do with brains, and his brain was hurting, hurting like a goddamn bitch that hadn’t been cream… cough, fed for weeks.

Side effect of phantom brain frying? No clue. But having it carry over was nice. Very nice, hehe.

The young Mage let out a deep breath before the moment of truth. “Please be a Fire Starter. Please be a Fire Starter.”

If he wasn’t… he didn’t want to think about having to deal with all the Runeword construction again.

Wyatt closed his eyes and came to his Mind Space, which was now the vision that he saw with his eyelids shut. 

It wasn’t a blank white anymore, but with one… very big… like daddy’s big, cough, thing, in the middle. A golden Runeword the size of which he’d never before seen greeted him. If his Fire Runeword from his past life—which was his affinity, chosen by random and given to all Mages at Level 0—if the Fire Runeword from his past life had looked majestic, it would be more like a bumbling little panda before a great majestic whale. 

He felt… pressure… from his own goddamn Runeword!

“Fuck! Can you at least be normal for Daddy Dearest here?” Wyatt shouted in his brain. Twitching, the Runeword sent out a wave of light that, ahem, exploded into fireworks in his Mind Space.

Wyatt’s mouth spasmed a little.

A… showy Runeword. He couldn’t believe his own thought. Since when… were Runes gay, too?

The Runeword seemed a little happy at this question, bobbing up and down. Meanwhile, the fireworks had fizzled out, but they left… residue: a mass of grey gas settled—no, cuddled—the goddamn Rune.

“The hell… are you?” Wyatt spoke, unable to believe his eyes.

No real Runes could do this: no motherfucker of a Rune had personality! Otherwise, how in the hell was anyone supposed to make Runeword Arrays when all the Runes just decided to go on vacation, prancing with their mojitos and their English breakfast teas with a dose of vodka on their sumptuous lips?

Fuck! How was this any useful? Cheated! He was cheated! The Main God, that dyke!

While Wyatt was stuck in his revelries, Little Gay—cough, the Runeword introduced itself to him through a thought transmission. A single word came to his mind, a translation of sorts.

“Beginning…” he said. His mind suddenly spaced out for some reason, and his head throbbed, before he could focus again. As if the very mention of that Runeword was… special?

But—

“Fuck! You useless thing! I need a Runic affinity! Not your goddamn… you’re disowned, you gay—no, you straight fuck! Go back to your mother! Go cry! Give me… oh god, how the hell am I supposed to even kill a chicken now?” Wyatt wailed.

Who was going to blame him, though? While other parents had normal kids like Fire, Air, Earth, Water, or Wood, or even the special kids like Light and Dark, or the problematic kids Space or Time, he… had a gay-wannabe kid that he didn’t even know about.

The Runeword twitched. Heck, it was just making a nice home with a garden of grey flowers when this fart of a father came in and ruined its day. Which gay couple’s son could stomach this?! So it waved its grey little hands, and before Wyatt could say anything more… heterophobic, he found himself kicked out from his own Mind Space.

This….

Sigh.

What to do, what to do? He was ruined!

Here he was, thinking about how nice his back-to-the-future stats would be, how broken, how grand. Then he found a problem with his own fucking head.

A line of tear rolled down the corner of Wyatt’s eyes. His hand automatically did what it knew it had to do: draw his first Runeword.

It was an initiation of sorts that the game compelled—cough, suggested to all Mages on their very first day. The hell use did it have, Wyatt had no clue.

As his eyes were still tightly shut and his tear duct worked overtime, a Runeword so large that it covered up his whole face with just the first stroke flashed into existence alongside the tracing of his right middle finger—it was his only way to release his grievance right now, okay?! 

He kept tracing and tracing, lost in a sudden trance, while Realm Mana—the highest and rarest form of all Mana in the Myriad Realms that only the Saints used and only the Gods produced—Realm Mana coalesced around his fingertip. 

He… was stepping into the province of Gods at this moment. At Level 0! Wyatt’s eyes would have gouged themselves out if they were to witness such a scene!

Meanwhile, all the NPCs and players seemed to have slowed down, or stopped, even. Time seemed to halt itself. Above the planet, space cracked. All rivers, all flames, all soil, all air, all wood… just… stopped. Light dimmed. Dark receded. All to witness this scene.

Wyatt’s MP bar, on the other hand, was quickly bottoming out. 200 MP… 180… 130… 60…

Even in his trance, he found it… a little hot at the moment. On the outside, Wyatt’s body was slowly dispersing into motes of light—slowly, very slowly… dying, with him having no knowledge and giving no assent to the matter.

The Runeword kept getting bigger and bigger, until his finger stopped.

BOOM!

The poor planet. Its own core was shaking, while tsunamis and earthquakes and storms and even UV lights wrecked havoc for a split second.

Then, they all jerked to a halt as well, as if nothing had happened.

The NPCs and players shivered out of their daze. Something big had happened, they all knew it, but nobody had a clue, while a body was reconstructing itself at the Spawn Portal of the Village of Mount Arcas.

Reconstructing, then dispersing, then reconstructing, dispersing again…. An endless cycle seemed to take hold. An inhuman shriek broke the silence of the Village. The NPCs were flabbergasted, unable to speak, while the players… cough, cue the peanut gallery!

“Bug. It’s a bug. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted this developer. Shit! Look at how much pain that guy is going through!”

“How….?!”

“Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so… good….”

“Last time I heard such a gay scream, I was visiting Jupiter on a space trip, y’know. We had a whole crew of us just walking about when a happy little boy, tiny of age, just decided to dip his hand into that freezing water without the nano suit covering that part. Sigh. The follies of youth.”

“Uncle, your drool is leaking. Was that gay man… you?”

Wyatt was panicking inside, unaware that his gay voice was the Fountain of Youth to some old uncle…. 

Even as dumb as he was, he knew… he was in deep shit.

Especially when the system notification rang out in his head, he felt like giving up all hope.

｢Bloodline Awakening in progress. You are advised to turn the pain simulation level down, in case of a mental breakdown.｣

No shit, Sherlock!

Bloodline Awakening was an inhuman process! Sure, it would grant him more power—much, much more power than he could hope for at this stage of the game. But fuck!

One of the reasons why he never Transitioned to a Tier 4 Mage was precisely because of this thing: pain!

With how much he was hurting right now—enough to stuff a chicken silly—he reckoned that this pain was even worse than what a Tier 4 Grand Mage would have to go through. As for turning the pain level down? He couldn’t even think gay—cough, straight. How was he expected to do that?

Mind you, even when Tier 4 Grand Mages Transitioned to a Tier 4 Life Order, the pain would be gradual, like the slow flambé of rum or cognac on Bananas Foster after the initial blaze, not a full-on wreckage like this! Shit, he was even hungry now that he thought of Bananas Foster.

“What’s happening to that guy?” A good-hearted NPC had called a Village Guard over. Acting like a dutiful muncher of peanuts on the gallery, the Guard asked a question so dumb that Wyatt, even as pain wracked his body, was speechless.

If he could speak right now, the series of expletives… might just blow up that Guard’s brain with a series of critical damage.

“Call Lady Margaret! Hurry!” said a flustered NPC’s voice. 

The Mage’s cells were imploding and reconstructing at light speeds. His blood seemed to freeze and heat up. His skin was melting, moulting like a snake’s.

Can’t—faint—now… he thought to himself while he was screaming on.

His scream… was morphing into a song. 

Is this real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality… 

An old song from many, many, many years ago that Wyatt often heard at the disco bar of the space station, something that would bring him soothing when he was lonely—or catatonic, as he was now.

How was he Awakening a Bloodline at the moment? Wyatt’s one functional brain cell questioned.

Bloodlines were generally Awakened only at the Tier 2 Life Order Transition! For Mages: at the Great Mage, Level 50 threshold. At that point, a player’s body would be much stronger than Wyatt’s was now, having adapted to battles, deaths, potions, and many other things. 

If he fainted, Wyatt shivered, still shrieking in inhuman pain… if he fainted, that would be the end. Many players in the past had had to start their accounts all over—with a penalty on top of that—when a Life Order Transition was terminated by their deaths at this precise pain. 

This was his opportunity, he knew, but holy—fuck!

The progress seemed to last years, but measly seconds had passed. His body was slowly adapting, fewer of its particles collapsing. 30%… 50%… 70%… 90%…

The last thing Wyatt heard before he fainted from relief was a female voice.

“What’s wrong with him?”

The NPCs stopped talking.

“Lady Margaret,” an old smith called out. “He seems to be poisoned.”

“Poisoned?” The lady eyed the fainted body doubtfully. “No. He’s not poisoned….”

“Not poisoned? Then what happened to him?” The smith asked back.

“His blood—” Lady Margaret stopped. “Bring him to my house.”

“Yes, M’lady,” a Guard said. 

. . . . . . . . .

After Wyatt came to, he found himself swimming in a comfortable bed. All that pain had been thrown to the back of his mind. A safety measure of the game: inhuman pain would be dialled down and compartmentalised. 

His eyes opened to the scene of a luxurious room, with glass walls and a wooden ceiling.

“This is a bit too good for this Village,” he mumbled.

“You’re awake?” A woman’s voice made him jump out of the bed in surprise.

Wyatt turned his head and found an old woman that didn’t match the skylark-like voice in the slightest bit. She was old, with wrinkles on her face and a shagging chin that numbered her days. He blinked.

｢Lady Margaret (Level 90, Great Human Mage)
[HP]: ??? / ???｣

“You’re…?” 

“The Village Chief. You may call me Lady Margaret,” the old lady said. Her motherly tone… crept Wyatt out. This was the sound a siren would make before sucking the listening sailor empty of his blood! 

The Mage kept silent.

“… You seem to be a rare one, young man,” Lady Margaret continued.

“Ah?” He ruffled his hair out of instinct. Right. Good eyes. Someone with such good eyes wouldn’t harm him! “I guess I am, My Lady. Your eyes are bright and see through all deception.”

“… Cough. Was that painful?”

Truly a shameless young thing, Lady Margaret thought, her eyes reproachful.

“Very,” he said, then turned his face away from the lady, a little embarrassed at her scrutiny. It wasn’t that he was shy. Hell, no. It was the fact that he… seemed to have… cough, somewhat… broken the game… and got caught….

“… Bloodline Awakening at your age must hurt,” the lady said after a long silence. Turning her head to look out at the mountain range beyond the gates, she continued, “Seeing your potential, I have something I need you to help with, if you don’t mind.”

“Huh?” 

Wyatt, lost in his thought, felt his spidy senses tingling when he registered her words. 

A Hidden Quest! Fuck. He’d hit the jackpot! 

Because this was a Quest that even he, a Know-It-All, didn’t have a clue existed! 

“… After half a day in my house, I still don’t know your name, young Mage.” Lady Margaret’s eyes twitched, seeing how Wyatt was on his flights of fancy again. She struck her staff down on the ground. Her aura flared a little, sending Wyatt into a flat pancake’s position against the wall. She controlled her strength so well that the guy took no damage, but damn was it painful!

“Cough, cough. Nox, My Lady. Cough.”

Damn! Hold it in a little. Was she one of those with… old-age virginity syndrome?!

He shook his body off the wall rather… easily? Shit! He forgot, his Bloodline had Awakened!

Excited, Wyatt continued, “… I’m Nox, Chief. Is there anything I can help you with?” 

Lady Margaret looked visibly satisfied at his newfound manners. She nodded, “Indeed. I need you to help me deal with the wolves that are roaming in the mountains.” 

“Wolves?” Wyatt creased his brows. This wasn’t going to be easy. Shit, if he remembered correctly, these were the wolves of the beast tide!

“There’s a Wolf King that just settled near here. I’m afraid we’ll see dark times soon if no adventurer helps us.” The old lady added on before he could say no. A system notification popped up.

｢Hidden Quest “Lady Margaret’s Approval” initiated. Kill the wolves that draw near the village. Rewards unknown.｣

“… F—cough, My Lady, do you know how strong the Wolf King is?” Wyatt asked after he thought about his new unknown power.

“Not a threat to me,” she said. He heaved a sigh of relief—but then choked when she continued, “But I want to train this village before I leave, and the Wolf King might not agree.”

“Be… before you… leave?” Shit! This wasn’t going well!

NPCs like this—Wanderer NPCs—often hid their powers. She wasn’t a Great Mage. No, she was a beast way beyond! He only saw what she wanted him to see, because his eyes were like a dog’s eyes if a Wanderer NPC wanted him to have a bitch’s—cough. The point was, not being a problem meant very different things for a true-blue NPC Village Chief relative to a Wanderer Village Chief!

If a stationary Village Chief complained about something but said that it wasn’t a threat to them, that meant that it wouldn’t be a huge problem for players either. These guys were… very cautious, a little pussycat-like even, when it came to assessing threat levels.

Wanderer NPCs, on the other hand… had a much better gauge of power levels and auras! If they said something weren’t a threat with their Great Mage power, then it was only a threat to the Tier below. But… the Tier below was Tier 1! He wasn’t even an ant compared to Tier 1 NPCs—no, not even a moth!

“Yes.” Lady Margaret’s reply shook Wyatt out of his buzzing thoughts. “I’ve recuperated here for a long time, but it’s about time I leave.”

“… Cough. Can I… not?” Wyatt’s neck shrunk back.

“… I’ll cast a Weakening spell on him.” She chuckled, aware of his thoughts. “I’m not allowed to harm these beasts, but I can curse them at least.”

I still don’t want to die, Mr. Stark! Wyatt cried inside.

“… Thank you,” he solemnly nodded. A million expletives went through his last dying brain cell. Well, shit. This wasn’t the type of Quest that he could refuse based on the way she said it. The Quest was “initiated,” as the system said. He could only negotiate conditions, but even that seemed a little hard.

“Go then. Oh, and remember to control your strength. We don’t want to disturb the nature here, either.”

He could hear the hidden cackle in her voice when the woman effectively shooed him out of her house. He could’ve protested, of course, but Wyatt was more concerned about other things right now.

Things like… his Rune!

The fuck happened that made his Bloodline Awaken ahead of time? Was that gay son of his responsible?

When he thought to this point, he closed his eyes and was ready to spank the shit out of the unruly child… not before his eyes popped open like a beer bottle top. 

Well… 

“Haha. Hahaha. Hahahaha. Hahahahahaha. Hahahahahahaha!”

A crazy laughter sounded out from just outside the Village Chief’s door that made all the NPCs’ hearts go cold. 

What was happening? Did the Village Chief… did she… use… use that young man? Scandalous! They had to stop this before… before the Village’s Reputation bottomed!

The cause of these horrific thoughts would have spurted out blood if he knew. Although, maybe not now, because he was too busy laughing!

Shit, what did he just see when he opened his Mind Space again?

Air. Fire. Earth. Water. Wood. Dark. Light. Space. Time.

Nine Runewords were hanging out like unruly children in the eldest child’s crib! His first Runeword, no, his precious child, this thing… was a fucking monstrosity!