Darkness. Darkness is all there is in this world. But it is warm and comfortable, so is it a comfy darkness? Something is coming closer to me; it feels intrusive and it wants to drag me out of this comfortable darkness.

'Nope, get away, I know what you want but you are not dragging me from here'

'But, don't you want something different than this dark and void world'

'No, I am fine where I am. Go away'

'Oh, but you cannot fight me. You have no choice but to obey me'

'No, I will make my choice. You won't take me from this place"

'Uhuhu, no matter what you choose. Only one thing will happen'

'No stay away, you. STAY AWAY'

'You cannot fight me. Uhuhu, it is time'

'NOPE. YOU WON'T DRAG ME FROM HERE'

'Too late. It is time…'

'NOOO'

'…To wake up'

.

.

Daylight. My worst enemy has dragged me once again from my peaceful slumber. I sighed as I got up from the dirt 'Dirt? Ground? Was I not supposed to dead? Calm down, let's take a look at the surroundings first'. The place where I awoke was on the side of a mountain. I hear cries from birds I never saw before 'not that I have that much knowledge on birds'. The time seems to be around, maybe nine in the morning as I was sleeping before. The flora, is kind of weird, I think? Not very helpful information.

I sighed as I tried to get up on my feet. 'Tried' being the keyword here, because I fell twice as fast as I got up… My body felt scrambled for a moment. I tried once more, but this time it seems there was no problem 'what was that all about?'. I do not know where North is. I do not know where I am. I do not have any survival skills. Am I not screwed? Yes, I am. Now what?

I start inspecting my body, as it felt odd for a second, but nothing seems weird 'nothing missing, nothing added'. This is indeed the body of my character with no difference whatsoever. I can feel my life energy, my energy and the inventory in which within should be a variety of stuff inside. 'Wait a second! If I have stuff in my inventory, I should have food.'

The inventory is basically a pocket dimension, a type of spell with continuous existence as long the host is willing to spend some energy maintaining it 'to make a distinction from other games they used the word energy instead of magic, even though they do the same thing'. If the user wishes to have a bigger inventory, he only needs to increase the energy to the spell, the inverse is possible as well. Furthermore, the development team wished to make the game the most User Interface free, thus life energy, energy and the inventory can be felt instinctively.

I try to scan the items in the inventory and to my luck, I find that I do have some food and drinks that could last for some time. Not only that, I noticed that I did not lose any of items from my inventory. I have some equipment such as armor, various weapons, arrows, clothes, camping gear 'thank god', junk that I should not need but I'll keep it anyway just in case and of course, the food and drinks.

Ok, I have all the basics needs. For now, I'll equip a longsword 'unlike a longsword, mine is a slightly curved single edge blade made for slashing and speed' on and a dagger 'multipurpose dagger'. The dagger will be strapped to my left leg with the sword positioned on my left. I am lacking some range, so I take some throwing daggers and put them on my right leg 'thankfully I keep all my weapons ready to be taken from the inventory thus I only have to strap them to my body'.

I do a double take to my appearance and firmly declared "I am an idiot."

As I sighed, I started to unequip my weapons. I concentrated on my inventory to choose which armor I should wear. Not that long of a choice, I just chose the best light armor: in appearance it similar to thick clothes, basically in appearance an interior tank top covered by a sleeveless dark long coat that goes until my knees, black leather gloves that go all the way up until my shoulders, strong looking dark pants and leather boots. The explanation was sloppy? Well you have to deal with it. All I know is that the strength of the threads is nothing to scoff at and inside there are some carefully placed pieces of light metal that does not hinder the body movement. I do not know what materials it is made from. All I know it is just some cool armor with a lot of defense and it does hinder my movement and that's I'll need to know, you want the details you talk with the maker 'who the hell am I talking to?'.

Concentrating on the clothes I wore for the festival and the armor inside the inventory with my energy then connecting them with an energy string I willed them to switch places and instantly I had my armor on me 'this is just a function of the inventory but am I glad to have it, wouldn't want to change clothes in an unknown place with unknown dangers'.

And finally, I strapped the weapons to my body once more. Ready, I scanned my surroundings once more, but there were no noticeable changes. Now I had to choose a direction and start walking, although before that I need to catch up with events.

Apparently during the event which coincides with the time for New Year people could not log out of the game, Creo even tried to take the power from the servers in a desperate move, but somehow it still did not work 'for a moment I thought it was a bad joke, but that guy is not the type for making jokes like these. If it was a joke the company would have taken a hit to its reputation and would have to pay a great quantity of money for the panic it caused'. Reports say that after New Year… players were found brain dead…

'Right, the players, if I am here then maybe they are too in this place, wherever it is...'

If there players nearby I think I can find them using the [Soul pulse]. The problem is when I am using this pulse, I am also telling to whoever it touches my location, it is a double edge sword 'but it is worth it in this dire situation'.

I've got my weapons and armor ready, only thing missing is my shield. So, I used my soul energy to cover my body and molded it into multiple layers, some stiff for piercing and slashing damage, some soft for blunt damage. I feel my total soul energy pool decreasing and in the next moment, rapidly filling thanks to my regeneration.

You may be thinking that by being a game master I have multiple cheats… well, not really. Apart from some functions that we absolutely need for debugging and other stuff which uses the User Interface, what make us different from the players is infinite life energy and soul energy regeneration. Not infinite life energy or soul energy, but regeneration. You may also be thinking infinite spell casting. Again no, because we cannot cast spells nonstop without a moment of reprise for the regeneration to kick in and we cannot cast stronger spells than what our energies pool can take. Furthermore, we started with the same amount of soul energy and life energy as the new players.

And we can absolutely be killed. Once, me and other game masters were showing the ropes to a new guy in how to be a game master. I believe it was some months after launch and we were circled by players either curious by what we were doing or had nothing else do, suddenly then, an assassin type player appeared behind the new guy and stabbed in the back, aiming for the hearth. Poor bastard died instantly, basically one shot him, and everybody just stopped, stunned: me, the other game masters, the players circling us and even the killer. We did not know what to do. Hesitating the killer said "I… I did not think it was possible…" 'unlike us, game masters from other games have god mode always on' and then he started to run away. Of course, we gave chase but he was faster. Later on, the company gave the killer some strong, original armor. Good for the killer, bad for us because that action made us into unofficial bosses that dropped original items 'which I believe was the company plan all along'. I was challenged multiple times, stepped on traps and rarely encountered raid parties that players made to kill us. Those were some dark times, running away when hopeless and fighting back when possible or no other option was available 'not going to lie, but sometimes it was fun'.

In conclusion, game masters are just a little bit different from normal players. Well, the regeneration allows me to keep continuous type of spells indefinitely since they take the necessary soul energy or life energy from the regeneration itself not from the pool, after paying the creation cost first from the pool.

I am getting of track. I gather my soul energy and start radiating it in pulses while closing my eyes to concentrate on the readings and find some disturbing information. First the environment is weird, the readings are odd. Second, I found readings that seem to belong to people, a few hundreds of them, all around me, but they do not react to the [Soul pulse]. Do they not feel it, or are they in a situation where they cannot react, or are they acting? No matter the situation, I need to make contact before deciding.

So, I start walking in the direction of closest one while keeping my surroundings in check. I keep the [Soul pulse] on for the moment since there is no problem. As I move, I notice some animals here and there and insects too 'that's a big ass giant wasp, if comes any closer I'll kill it', but they are different yet similar from the animals I know from Obsidian or Earth. It is at moments like these I wished I had more knowledge but I know why I don't 'I am lazy', so I cannot be mad. Anyway, the shield should protect me from small and poisonous insects.

Then I realize I haven't tried something yet 'I don't think it will work, but it is worth the try'. I motion at the air with the hopes of opening the game interface but with no success 'At least I tried'.

I am closer to the soul signature. I slow down my steps, I think for a second and take a brown-grey hooded mantle from my inventory to camouflage with the environment while closing in on my target. Then I drop all my caution because I recognize the person in front of me, but that does not mean it takes the surprise from me as it is someone I least expected 'A lookalike? No, too much coincidence'.

As I approach my target, I notice he looks as if he's sleeping… correction, he's sleeping 'lucky bastard' and he stinks of a familiar odor but I fail to place what it is at the moment. I walk closer to him and slapped him lightly repeatably to jolt him awake and said "Wake up"

"…ugh…Let me… sleep…" 'I know the feeling…but…'

"Nope, you are waking up whether you like it or not" I declared firmly while keeping trying to wake him up 'I will not be the only one awake'. I assumed that he understood the message as he's weakly getting up while rubbing his eyes.

"…ugh… you monster… can you not let a man sleep…… my head hurts like crazy…" his eyes were regaining focus at each sentence.

"Did you hit your head?"

"What?... No… I think… I believe this is just… a good old hangover 'wait a second'… can't be helped after I drank like I was dying of thirst yesterday 'I have a bad feeling right now'... Mike does some good stuff normally but since it was the festival, I think he went all out… Wait… Where are we?... Did I drink so much that I got lost in god knows where?"

"I wish it was that simple"

For the first time his eyes focused on me and realization came to his face "Oh, Lady Craven 'Lady?', at what I how you the pleasure?"

"For the moment, can you remember your name?"

"What, yes, of course, it is… Trevor? Yup, that's it, Trevor. Why ask?"

"Just checking how drunk you were."

"Hey now, I can drink twice as much and still remember my name!" he answered defiantly.

I chuckled "Jokes aside. Do you have any idea where we are?" I start to get to the problem.

"No, no idea… I'll be honest and say that I may have drunk a little too much and may have gotten lost somewhere. So, where are we?"

"No idea"

"… Are you serious?"

"Yes"

"… Really?"

"Yes"

"Well, if Lady Craven does not know then we may have gotten somewhere really far from home"

"… I do not understand how you got to that conclusion from what I said? Also, why are you calling me Lady? Just call me Craven"

"Look I know that you are trying to hide it, but we know that you guys are something different from us 'is he talking about players?'. It is an open secret. Everyone knows that you seven 'Seven?' have powers beyond our comprehension. Some even theorize that you are gods taking hominum form."

"I think you are misunderstanding."

"Then what about the reports 'they have reports?' saying that you have been in multiple places in the same day, even though there were no teleportation modules nearby? Or, when asked for help in times of need you decline saying you cannot take action because it is against the rules? Rules we have never heard of. Or, when something weird happens, one of you is always goes there and when you come out nothing of out of the ordinary remains?" He's getting quite fervent at this point 'But only seven? He does not mean other players, but seven specifically'.

'I am having an idea, but it's better to clarify' "There is a lot I want to say. But can I ask you who exactly do you mean by us seven?"

"Do you still do not understand. I mean you, Lady Craven, Sir Hafraym, Sir Robin, Lady Crysalis, Sir Transistor, Lady Alyriam and Lady Eleanora" 'all game masters'

Once I heard the names, I quickly cut him off. "Alright, alright. I understand that there's a misunderstanding here. But I will tell you honestly: We are not gods. We are normal people."

"I'm not buying it. How can you be normal people after everything I said?"

'Will he buy this excuse' "Right. Maybe we are a little different, but that is because we did a contract with the world itself. Me and likeminded people did this contract so that we can somehow repair mistakes of the world, as our world was not perfect. Since our objective leave us really busy, we cannot really participate in other stuff 'or it is just a pain in the butt'. Finally, the reason why we can be multiple places at the same time is because we teleport at will."

"… Ok 'I think he's having an information overload'… But still you should not be able to teleport at will. If I remember correctly, teleportation takes a lot of energy and you have to enter a teleportation module then you have to put another at the destination or the consequences would be dire. Something along the lines, right?"

"Yes, but as mentioned before, I did a contract with the world so I have the necessary coordinates. As for the required energy, with the contract we don't need to pay as much but also is because the teleportation modules are ready to take multiple people per teleportation as opposed to just one"

"Aha! What about when you guys punish people like that guy, is name was…… Damn, I forgot his name. But I remember him going running around wanting to duel people and when the other party did not want to, he would get physical."

"You have a better memory than me as I cannot remember that particular event 'Nope, can't remember'. But normally the guards should have taken care of that, no?"

"I think he was always paying his fine and not learning, then you appeared and after that I did not see him since… Did you kill him?"

"No, I do not kill people if possible. Since I do not remember what I did at the time, I guess I did punish him 'and may have left a bad memory or two'. And reason as for why I punish people who go too far is because someone has to do it or they won't stop."

"I see…" 'He's coming to terms that something is not as cool as he thought'

"I can swear on my last name if you are not yet convinced." Everyone from Obsidian has a first and last name. The reason was to make a distinction from characters as each name must correspond to only one character. Although we have last names, we rarely use it and, in the lore, it is stated that last names are sacred as it tells us our origin, or something similar. That's why last names are only used when there is an event of great importance.

He looked a little surprised "No, it is fine. I believe you. I do not believe you would tell lies on this type of subject 'I must have gotten 3000 damage to my soul with that last sentence'.

Keeping a calm face, I continued "Still, I did not take you for someone that could believe we were gods or something along those lines"

"Well you see, there always were those kind of reports in which it was written stuff we could no comprehend. We doubted the truth of those reports, but since more and more kept coming. Then last night I was talking to Fraymoon about you guys 'so it was that idiot'. I do not remember much, but it left me convinced that you were… you know 'that idiot'." He said embarrassingly

I sighed a bit dramatically. "You should know better than believing a guy after drinking two kegs"

"Actually, he was on his fourth…"

"How the hell did he drink that much?"

"Lady Craven, might I inform you that there always is a second stomach for good alcohol!"

"Is that your excuse for having drank that much? Rather, how many did you had?"

"Me, not as much as Fraymoon. I only had three."

I rolled my eyes "That is still a lot… Also do not call me Lady. I am just a person, your equal, not your superior"

"Right, Craven. Damn, it will take a while to get used to it. So, where were we before we derailed the conversation?... Ah, I remember you said about not knowing the place we are right now." 'Finally, we are on track'

"That's correct."

"Does your contract with the world not tell you where we are?"

"That's the thing. I cannot feel any connection to the world."

He seemed to have understood the meaning behind my sentence as his gaze fell on the ground, silent.

I broke the silence "But I do not think we are alone."

"What do you mean?" He quickly met my eyes with his.

"Before that, how is your hangover?"

"Killing me, but nothing I cannot take. But just in case let me use my Life energy to reduce it."

"You have 2 minutes, since I do not know if the others can wait for us."

"I'll be done in less." As finished talking, he started concentrating on his life energy.

"Less talking. More action."

Soul energy is basically the power overflowing the soul. It exists in everything as everything as soul even a rock or so in the lore it is stated. It is an energy with multiple applications that can take different shapes if willed, it can even become the elemental magic we see in stories and other games.

Life energy, on the other hand, obviously represents life. It is a type of energy that only exists on living, thus the distinction from soul energy. With it you can feel your health points, your stamina and good and bad status effects. What's important about life energy, is that the life energy pool can exceed health points and have different applications than energy, mostly related to life, so healers normally have the biggest life energy pools from the game.

Both energies are like moldable blocks that can be mixed to get some interesting results. Add the different types of weapons in the game to the mix and you get a great variety of playstyles.

"I should be fine now" I was broken out of my stupor by Trevor, looking more energetic.

"Nice. As I mentioned before, we are not alone, if you use the [Soul pulse] you should feel hundreds hominum signatures around us."

"I am more focused on life energy, so I will use the [Life pulse]."

"Ok"

I wait a few moments while feeling the life energy radiating from Trevor.

"Why are they not moving while we using our pulses so blatantly?" He asked, worried of the possibilities.

"Are you seriously asking that question?"

"I do not follow?"

I sighed once more and said "There is a great probability that everyone is passed-out drunk like you were because of the festival yesterday."

"Oooh. Pft Hahaha! That is actually quite plausible." He responded between laugher.

I rolled my eyes at the situation we find ourselves in "Start gearing up already if you don't want someone to be eaten in their sleep."

"Yes ma'am!" 'I wish he would take this more seriously'

His clothes started blurring then a second later he had a dark brown with shades of green thick clothes covered by leather armor: chest armor, leg armor and boots. After that, he took a belt strapped with multiple bags filled with something and put it on his waist.

"Ready?" I asked

He took a slingshot that looked like an armored glove from is inventory, strapped to his left arm and tested the elastic.

"Ready"

"Let's move then."

"Which one?"

"The nearest one first then we from there."

"Should we split to cover more ground?"

"Maybe. But in an unknown place I dare not reducing our fighting power yet."

"I see. But this place is rather… what's the word… odd. Yup, odd. The life energy of this place is something I have never felt before. The trees are also some species I have never seen…"

"Do you know a lot about trees?"

"I have to. I am carpenter after all." 'A crafter'

Obsidian population is loosely divided into three types: Vanguards, Crafters; Locals.

The Vanguards are the combat focused type, they hunt dangerous beings, look for materials or just travel around the world. Crafters are the production focused type, they make items from materials basically, although merchants are also in this category even though they do not make any items. Locals are basically the NPCs that have positions that do not allow them to move. It still is a rather loose category, for example NPCs guards are combat focused but are still considered locals since they do not move from their post.

"Well, we have our priorities. I'll take the front, you the back?"

"Ok."

"Then let's move, we have wasted too much time here."

We started walking to the next nearest reading on our pulses. Me, a Game Master, in front and Trevor, a NPC, behind set on an adventure to wake up all the passed-out drunks. Joy.

"By the way, I've been wondering about something." Asked Trevor.

"What is it?"

"How did you wake up so early compared to everyone else?"

"Oh, that. Simple really. I just did not drink any alcohol."

"Why is that?" 'he sounds surprised'

I answered truthfully "Because I don't like the taste of alcohol."

.

.

I kept moving forward while ignoring the weird look Trevor was giving while following me.