Chapter 2: Beginning

He walked out of the shadows and made a few steps forward. He then looked at the world around him.

Ahead, far away in the distance, the vast sea disturbed the full moon's reflection with its waves. Above it, a fresh breeze gently pushed the clouds away, revealing a majestic night sky painted with countless stars.

A delicate wind blew through the plain's grass and agitated the leaves behind him. The forest at his back had trees he had never seen before, displayed in a disordered formation that was proof of men's absence.

Where in the world was he? That was neither the guild base nor his room.

He felt his head spinning. He took a step back and leaned against a tree.

In his view there weren't anymore the windows displaying the location, the time or anything of the ones he always kept open.

He felt the temperature of his body rise and his legs struggle to sustain his weight.

He raised his hand to wipe away the sweat on his forehead, but the hand he saw wasn't his. A thin hand covered in a black glove was substituting his own, and the fact that he could feel it as a part of his body made it even more terrifying.

His heart begun to race faster and faster, his entire body was shaking and he felt his stomach aching.

He immediately looked at the other hand and realized in horror that it was in the same condition, that his whole body was in the same condition; a foreign body had substituted his own.

What was going on? Where was he? What had happened to his body? Who did this to him? Was he hallucinating? Was he still in the game? But how could he be in the game if there were no windows active? Midnight should have passed by now, so that couldn't possibly be the game; or could it? But the server should have been shut down at midnight. Did the forced log out fry his brain? Was he in a coma? Was he dead? Was that a limbo?

As his vision begun to darken and his consciousness was about to fade, he closed his newfound right hand in a fist. He tightened it as hard as he could, trying to focus thought the storm of questions in his head on what he had to do.

He raised his arm high; he then slammed it down on the leg, punching it as hard as he could.

The pain was way stronger than he expected, quickly moving thought the nervous system from the leg to his brain. Once there it overwhelmed his mind, forcibly interrupting the vicious cycle of answerless questions that kept forming in his brain and bringing him back to reality.

He begun to slowly inhale and exhale, intervals of five seconds.

The heart slowed down and returned to beat at a normal pace. The body temperature returned normal. His vision clears once more.

He kept regulating his breath for a few minutes. His body wasn't shaking anymore and the pain in the stomach had vanished. The head wasn't spinning anymore, he wasn't sweating and strength had returned to his legs.

He sat down, leaning his back against the tree while regaining control over his emotions. He closed his eyes. He listened to the waves slowly fading on the beach, the wind constantly moving the grass and the leaves.

Nothing else was there, just him.

He had regained his composure; he was once more in control of his emotion.

With his mind lucid and fully functional, it was now the moment to analyze the situation he was in. Last thing he remembered was to be playing Yggdrasil on the last day of the server, he went to gather items for the guild leader's project but got delayed. He had do wait until the very last minutes before the end of the game and then tried to reach the guild, ending up in that place.

He currently had no idea of where he was or how he got there.

The thing that concerned him the most was however the change which occurred to his body. He had taken only a quick look of himself, but it was clear that the body wasn't his own.

He raised his right hand and looked at it. The glove seemed to be of extremely high quality; it was probably made out of some kind of leather, but he wasn't knowledgeable enough about such argument to get anything more. He grabbed it by the fingertips and uncovered the hand.

It was far slender than his, with fingers much longer than the ones any human had. The skin was deep black, extremely flexible and sensible, but at the same time hard on the touch and quite resistant. Each finger ended in a long and sharp nail, curved toward the inside and resembling the ones of a talon. There was also a golden ring on the index; it had a wider side on the back of the hand with inscribed a symbol he recognized at first glance. It was his [Ring of greater invisibility] back from the game.

Linking the ring to his character, the unknown body immediately became familiar; it was his Yggdrasil's avatar.

As he tried to touch his face, he found his mask covering it. From the inside it was completely transparent, and it was so light that he didn't even realized he was wearing it until that moment.

He instinctively checked if his other items were there. As he felt the cloak on his shoulders and the daggers hidden below, he had a short sight of relief.

He had the items of the game and the body of the game, but was he in a game?

He observed closely the world around him, gathering every single detail his eyes could grasp.

He looked at the grass, its individual strings all separated from one another, a smell he hadn't experienced for so long. He felt the fresh wind on his body, its unmistakable sound, the hardness of the tree behind his back, the realism of the night sky and the details of everything he placed his sight upon.

And then, stars. He had seen them just once in his entire life when he was a child, he would have never hoped to see them again. When he first saw them, only a few were visible; but there the night sky was covered in every corner.

No matter how much his brain wanted him to believe otherwise, that was undoubtedly reality.

As he wore back his glove he couldn't help but wonder how could he be using his game avatar in a real world. Which led to another question, was that world the one he came from?

He looked again at the sea, no ships within sight were sailing.

He couldn't see any port, construction or any form of landmark that could identify that place.

He observed once more the majestic night sky above him, without recognizing any of the constellations his father taught him to find. Nothing of what he could see was a valid proof of him being at home.

He decided to stand up and go looking for sings of civilization. Remaining there wasn't going to give him any answer, but where there were people he was confidant he could find out something about the place.

In front of him there was the beach, behind him a forest.

Common sense would suggest to reach the beach and look for footprints; by walking close to the sea a ship could pass by sooner or later, and by walking long enough you would encounter a city. If in need of food it would even be possible to attempt fishing. Anyone looking for people would have chosen the beach under normal circumstances; but being dragged in an unknown location, without instructions, the body of a video game character and weapons weren't normal circumstances.

If there were people nearby, he wanted to observe them first. And if a problem arose, he wanted to have something to cover his escape.

He turned toward the forest and entered the woods.

He needed to find a landmark, anything that could be able to tell him more about his location. Being it the reality, the game or anything between, as long as he knew where he was, he could plan an appropriate approach.

Walking in the forest wasn't as hard as he thought it would have been. He was able to move with much more freedom than he used to, and he had yet to experience any symptom of fatigue.

He went on looking for signs of any kind; signals left for travelers to indicate a path, a small road or a campfire. His first priority was to find and observe other people without being spotted.

He kept walking through the woods, surrounded by trees of all sizes. Some were surprisingly high, towering over the others by tens of meters, while others were even smaller than him. Wherever he looked, he couldn't find more than two plants of the same species in a single place; every point of that forest was completely unique.

He could see the dens of small animals and nests high in the trees. On most trunks there were moss, ivy, mushrooms and other plants he never had occasion to see. A large majority of the surrounding vegetation was completely unknown to him.

While he was walking and trying to identify the local flora, he finally came across the thing he was looking for; a trail.

It was a small route, merely made of small rocks that covered a width of about two meters. The grass that came out of it was shortened by the repeated passage of people over a long period of time and gave little problem to any eventual traveler.

By the look of it, the road wasn't maintained in any meaningful way; however the fact that the grass was so short suggested that many people traveled on it quite often, perhaps even on a daily basis.

He decided to follow the path toward his left. Wherever the road led to, many people were there, and the direction was the one opposite to where he remembered the sea to be.

While walking, he kept theorizing over his current situation. Regardless of how he looked at the problem, he couldn't find any rational explanation. He was sure that he would have been able to tell any dream apart from reality, he didn't even awoke regardless of the sharp pain he felt while punching his leg. He heard it was the perfect way to end a dream, but the fact that he felt no more pain seemed to validate the dream hypothesis even more.

Assuming it was a virtual world and he was still in a game of some kind, it would be both forbidden by the law and even impossible to recreate such a level of details on all the senses. But even assuming what was happening to him was real, there were too many thing he just couldn't believe. As unlikely as it could be, he could accept that something like being teleported in another place or a massive change of his body could happen in an instant without him realizing it and without receiving any explanation; but it was straight out meaningless to make him look like his game avatar.

Both really and fiction had strong points, but they were one the antithesis of the other. The only thing he could do in such a situation was to behave like the theory that could led to the worst possible outcome was the correct one and meanwhile obtain more information to elaborate a more reliable theory. For the moment, he was in a true world.

The flow of his thought was broken by a four meters tall sculpture on a side of the road. It was made out of white stone and poorly crafted. The passage of the sculptor's tools was visible all over the work and many details were merely carved on the surface. It was a massive statue resembling a four-legged beast with wings and a long tail, sitting in a majestic pose on the posterior legs. If he were to trust his knowledge of fantasy settings and symbology, it was clearly the representation of a dragon; there were however some differences between the sculpture and the dragons he had seen in games, legends or other fictional works.

The slender long neck that characterized the fire-breathing beasts wasn't present, the head and the body had so little space between them that he wondered how such an animal could even look behind had it been real. While the legs and the tail were covered in carvings that should have represented scales, the rest of it was covered in disordered little curved lines. It was probably an attempt of the artist to give an impression of fur. It had two pairs of bat shaped wings, the ones closer to the head were larger and there seemed to be scars in many points, the others were instead smaller and were attached between the larger ones. The head reminded him of a huge imposing deer mixed with an alligator, with his jaws larger than normal and the frontal eyes of a predator. On the base there were five symbols displayed in a straight line. They did not seemed to be decorations and strongly resembled some sort of writing; needless to say he had no idea what language that was.

He now had something that resembled the landmark he so strongly desired, and he knew even less than he did before. As far as he knew, that kind of sculptures were neither in the game nor in reality, so his situation had become even more uncertain.

He stopped in front of it and took a closer look. He was in the middle of a forest, walking on a path that many people likely traveled over on a regular basis and there was a four meters tall stature for everyone to see. There had to be a reason.

Saying that an artist made it and just left it there was possible, but it was far from realistic. He couldn't come up with a realistic situation that could force someone to move such a heavy object in a forest and just leave it there.

He stepped down the path and took a look around the sculpture. The vines seemed to be regularly removed. Whatever it was, someone cared for it.

It could have been the grave of an important figure of the past or a shrine for a local god, but there didn't seemed to be anything suggesting an offering of any kind. It probably had some sort of functional purpose. It could have been a territorial delimitation made to inform travelers of a location's beginning which used such creature as a symbol or something close to that, but it was just too big to be only used to warn travelers.

He turned away from the stone dragon and resumed his journey. He would learn more about it once he found someone of the place.

As he kept walking, he analyzed over and over what insights he had up to that moment. There were too many variables he didn't knew and he had so little information, making a theory now was like betting all the money on a single horse and just hoping him to win.

The more he followed the path the more the forest changed. He had been walking for a long time and in the last hour the trees had become father from each other. The moon's light now penetrated deeper into the woods.

It was hard to get a precise idea of the time in the forest. He thought he probably had been there for about two hours, but it could likely have been even more.

As he was lost in his thoughts, he heard something in the distance. It was a continuous sound that reminded him of the noise that couldn't be avoided wherever there were many people in a single place. It seemed to come from not too far behind the road's next turn.

He looked around to make sure no one was there. Once he was certain to be alone, he left the road and entered the woods so that he could follow the path while remaining unseen.

As he got closer to the noise's origin, it became stronger and clearer. He could see the light through the trees and a structure that seemed a long stone wall. He covered the remaining distance leaping from cover to cover until he reached the end of the forest and looked ahead of him.

Now that he was close to the exit, he could clearly see the sky again. It was dark, but the sun seemed to be about to rise. The sound he heard before came from a city a couple of kilometers ahead of him. It was surrounded by high stone walls and he could see two gates from his location. The walls were too high to peek in and the entries were closed. There was no moat around the city, so the entrances were just huge doors about ten meters tall; but they seemed extremely sturdy, made out of thick wood and reinforced with metal. No one was outside at the moment, but there were points protected from the sun and the rain on both sides of each gate that seemed meant to host the guards.

Outside the city there were just tiny farms, divided in lots of small fields and growing many different products. There were no signs of people currently being there.

Even though the city was close, he could hear the sound of people on the inside. Hopefully, the doors would open once the sun rose.

He waited for a change to occur, something that could give him any hint of the place. He remembered to have seen that kind of walls in history books, more precisely the chapters about the southern European middle ages. Under normal circumstances he would have just assumed it was an historical city which served the purpose of touristic attraction, but that didn't went well with neither the closed gates nor the change in his body. He had to wait and see what was inside before making assumptions.

The time went on and the sun still was nowhere to be seen. As he kept waiting, his mind wandered with no precise direction. He thought about the game shut down, about the transfer in the game body, about what he was supposed to do if that day he hadn't been dragged in an unknown place. As he kept thinking about random topics to make the time go faster, a thought crossed his mind with more clarity than the others.

That whole situation would have been way easier if he could at least see the city from above.

His mind remained on that thought for a couple of seconds, unconsciously elaborating the possibility with what he had done recently. It was then that a hypothesis crossed his mind.

He looked under his cloak and saw a little sack attached to his belt. He opened it and slowly placed his hand inside.

He felt something cold there; something that he could only came close to describe as solid smoke. He took it out of the sack and looked at his hand; he was holding a sphere made of black mist, leaving behind a track of darkness wherever he moved it.

Like he had done so many times in the game, he used the sphere to draw four V shaped symbols in the air. Once he was done, he placed the mist back into his sack.

He hesitated before pulling back his hand. Looking at the symbols he drew unnaturally floating in the air without loosing their shapes made him briefly question his decision.

As he finally took the hand back, the drawings morphed in the four birds he saw not too long ago.

The newly formed crows landed on the ground and looked at him, awaiting orders. They were undoubtedly the same [Odin's crows] he used to summon in the game, but there was something different about them.

They were alive.

A creature summoned in the game, with the exception of golems and similar monsters, had a couple of animations that were meant to give an impression of life; however a creature rarely had more than three animations. The crows in front of him were instead constantly moving without following any sort of pattern. He could even see them breath and close their eyes at irregular intervals.

Another detail was that they were each different from one another.

He had summoned the same creature four times, as such in the game he should have been in front of four identical creatures. But the ones in front of him had slight dissimilarities between them. One kept his head a little lower than the others, one had the feathers slightly longer, one had darker feathers than the other three and the remaining one was keeping his head slightly on one side.

They weren't just alive; they were four entirely different creatures.

He weighted the options. He had actually been able to summon creatures from a game in the real world using an item. The question now was, were they magical crows that obeyed his commands or just four birds staring at him?

"[Fly: Pattern 01D. Direction: 12. Distance: 300]"

The four monsters opened their wings and left the ground, fling toward the city. As they went away, he tried to come up with a way of using the summons' special skill.

"[Share senses]."

He said the words, and nothing happened. He couldn't help but to feel disappointed, he had hoped it would have been easier.

He then tried to think the command instead of pronouncing it aloud; but the result was the same as before. He tried to focus on the crows and to think about their senses, but the result was still the same. Nothing.

He tried other approaches. Theoretically, if he was able to summon them, there had to be a way to use their special skills.

He focused on the individual crows. He tried to speak to them in his head. He tried to imagine the result he wanted and many other approaches he read about in countless fantasy books.

Every approach produced the same result. Nothing.

In the end, there seemed to be no way to use the crows' skill. Regardless of how much he wanted it, it was… want it?

He willed himself to see through the crows' senses with no intermediary passages or complex methods. He just tired to use the ability without thinking about how the ability itself worked or how he controlled it.

Then, the skill triggered.

He was still watching the city from where he stood, but at the same time other images appeared in his mind, images seen from above.

Through the crows he could hear the sound of the wind, see what they saw. He could feel the cold of the night sky above him, as well as everything the summons experienced. He felt like he himself was flying, unbounded to the ground and free. It was likely the best thing he had ever experienced in his entire life, flying in the sky.

After a few moments of joy he focused back to the task at hand, gathering information.

The layout was like the one he remembered from history books. The city was divided in multiple circles, result of its slow but continuous expansion.

The inner circle was higher than the other ones. Built on a small hill, it stood above the remaining rings. It was the old city and the part that in the past used to host the ancestors of the now important members of society, as well as the structures and locations that allowed the city to function.

The ring below was the result of the city's first expansion. Usually they were built due to the increasing city's wealth, which caused people to flow in. The layout was ordered and relatively livable. There was space between buildings and the streets were large enough to host markets and let carts pass through. It was the side of the city build to host a large number of people that let money flow in.

The last ring was, unsurprisingly, the worst section of the city. While the first was reserved for the rich historical families and the second was for welcomed people, the third ring was for the ones that had nothing to offer.

It was a layout so widespread in the middle ages that he could even describe every ring with a single glance.

He gave individual mental commands to the crows and made them land in different areas of the city. One for the lower rings, two for the first.

Saying that the first ring was clean were strong words, but at the very least there weren't excrements on the ground and he didn't feared the crows to sink in the mud.

The buildings were made in stone and seemed quite ancient, probably there wasn't anything built in the last half century.

A few people were going around the badly illuminated streets and some windows were being opened, eager to welcome the rising sun at any moment.

What he immediately noticed about the city was something he suspected from the moment he discovered to be able of summoning the [Odin's crows]. The lights on the streets were torches attached to the walls, the people walking on the streets were wearing large colorful and anachronistic clothes with feathers and jewels, the houses had no light coming from within and there wasn't any sing of objects created after the first industrial revolution.

It wasn't a city from the middle ages; it was a city of the middle ages.

In the center of the plaza, on the top of a high pillar, there was a replica of the monolith he saw earlier in the forest. Saying replica did not made the sculpture justice, it was definitely the other way around.

This one was a true masterpiece, perfect in all details and with proportions that were more realistic than the other. Instead of carvings, the sculpture was finely crafted and the crude stone had been replaced with marble.

He made the crow fly on one horn and from there he looked at the other structures. He was surrounded by highly decorated majestic constructions, buildings that gave the impression of being social gathering zones and administrative structures. That was very likely to be the most important zone of the high ring.

He ordered the second crow to fly thought he streets and look at what kinds of people were there. The few he saw were all humans; none of which wearing masks, hoods or covering his face in any way. If he were to go there, he would undoubtedly stand out.

He kept the crow searching for peculiar people and in the meantime he shifted to the one on the middle ring.

The streets were dirty, but it was still possible to walk without sinking in the mud. The scent of the excrements at the corners of the streets was barely detectable, covered by the strong smelling goods the merchants were proudly exposing.

He moved the crow from stand to stand, looking at the goods in display.

He saw a large majority of the merchants arrange vegetables, most of which he had never seen before, while a smaller portion of them sold unusual goods of every kind. He saw a carpenter selling his craft, a merchant with pots of every size and shape and even a stand filled with colorful spices.

He landed on it and looked at them closely; colorful plants hanged attached to strings, wooden walls separated small mountains of powder with different colors and there were plates filled with herbs of many shapes.

His crow barely managed to dodge a rock thrown by the angered merchant and flew toward a higher location as menaces were shouted at him.

From there, he took another look at the market.

Many people were heading in the same direction, toward a large construction at the end of the street. He made the crow fly closer to take a better look at it.

Close to another replica of the same sculpture, he saw the structure surrounded by a constantly increasing crowd. It was entirely made of wood, but even if it was poorly made, it gave the impression of having been there for a long time.

It had a simple design; a large base a little more than one meter tall, five thick poles with an height of about three meters on the top and a not very sturdy looking small stair which connected the base to the ground.

It wasn't however the structure which caught his attention the most, but something next to it; something that made him realize his careful approach had paid off.

There were about a dozen large cages, roughly one meter high and two meters wide, each one containing about nine people in rags and shackles.

It was clear what the stand's goods were; slaves.

He made the crow fly on the roof of a nearby building so that he could observe undisturbed what was about to happen. If in that place slavery was an accepted concept, he had to know as much as he could about it.

He lastly moved his attention to the crow in the outer ring.

The streets were covered in mud so deep that he was glad the crows could fly; even if he was only observing thought their senses, he had no intention of touching the ground as long as they were connected.

Excrements of every kind were left everywhere, even in the middle of the streets. Many people were sleeping outside rotten large boxes made of wood that, according with how generous the observer was with the definition of building, could be called homes.

A malnourished man whose scent of alcohol was somehow even stronger than the surrounding stench was looking at his crow as if it was the most delicious thing he had seen in months. He made the crow fly away before the man could get too close; he then headed toward a structure slightly taller than the others.

Only one word came to his mind.

Slums.

As the sun rose, light slowly irradiated the city. The night's end was the beginning of the activity for any medieval population, and that seemed to be the case even there.

People left buildings in all the rings as their day had begun.

He shifted his attention to the crows in the central ring. If he was to find information about that place, the rich part of the city was the right place to start. Knowledge was a luxury few could afford in the Middle Ages; it was likely the same there.

The first ring had way more people going around than he expected. He looked for someone important among them, someone in charge, someone who had to know more than the others.

It didn't take long for him to find a suitable candidate to be his man. In an area where people ran in every direction with scrolls in hand and hurried expressions on their faces; a man walking leisurely, holding nothing, with more jewels than anyone else he saw that day, followed by a gorgeous girl and four armed men carrying spears, stood incredibly out from the others. As he commanded one crow to follow him, he kept analyzing this target.

He had a physique that strongly resembled an egg, with short arms and legs, though he was still a human. It was unclear where the head ended and the shoulders started; the neck was marked by a medallion that probably hanged down from it. He wore a red outfit with golden adornments that made him look more like a Christmas decoration than a man.

However, external appearance aside, it was the behavior of those around him that showed his social influence.

Everyone, as hurried as they seemed, found the time to stop and greet him with the upmost respect. They all followed the same steps: approach, remove whatever garment they kept on their heads, slightly bow looking at the floor and saying, "Greetings, lord Obister".

He followed him until the lord slowly reached the walls that separated the inner ring from the middle one. Once he reached the gate, all the guards kneeled in the same way he saw dozens of times. Mere seconds after his arrival, the man in the shiniest armor approached him. After a brief discussion, the captain gave the lord additional guards and opened the gate, watching the group going to the other side.

He made the second crow fly up to gain an overall view of where they were heading. If they kept following that path, they should reach… the slavers.

He shifted his attention back to the crow at the slave auction, the plaza was filled with people and men were opening the cages behind the structure. They were about to start.

The lord arrived shortly after and had his escort open a passage for him. They stopped a few meters away from the structure. A few people were between them and the slaves; it probably wasn't appropriate for a noble to show himself too eager of something. The girl following him was standing at his right, just two steps behind him, while the guards were forming a strong protective circle around him to prevent others from approaching.

The slavers took the first set of goods from the cages and led them on the structure. They forced them with their backs to the poles and tied their hands behind, blocking them in position. One of them tried to fight back, desperately pushing the slavers with all his might with little to no result, while the other slaves had already completely lost their will.

That slave wasn't like the others, he wasn't like anything he had ever seen. He wasn't human. He was a goat man, a satyr.

He couldn't stop looking at him. Everything he had seen of that world was mostly possible, but tied to a pole there was an inhuman creature. And most of the crowd seemed to be completely unsurprised.

One of the slavers went to the border of the structure and faced the crowd. He was wearing an opened blue long jacket with far too many buttons. He had some jewels that gave the impression of being poorly crafted imitations, and a diagonal scar went from his forehead to the cheek. He was dressed better than the others, but it seemed to be more like a costume than actual clothes.

He raised his hands to get the crowd's attention and begun his speech.

"Greetings, my dear costumers. I thank you all for coming here today to the slave auction of Vajar Keel. We are offering you the best slaves from all around the continent, from the dwarves of Azerlisia to the agrandians elves; if it walks on this land, we can provide it.

Today, we are all graced by the presence of our esteemed governor; Lord Obister Vaf Ancool."

Cheers and clapping rose from the audience and the governor raised a hand to calm the surrounding people while smiling warmly to all of them.

Meanwhile, he made a mental note of the supposed existence of elves, dwarves and the geographical locations just mentioned. Second-hand information from an unreliable source in that context was akin to garbage, but he would verify them later if given the chance.

Once the cheers came to an end, the speaker resumed his introduction.

"Today my friends, today is not just any day. Today is the day that you are presented with an opportunity you will only get once in a lifetime. Today, it's the day we are offering you the rarest slave there is."

Lord Obister, up to that moment seemingly uninterested in the surroundings, gave to the auctioneer his full attention. As much as the governor was trying to hide his desires, it was clear he was interested in what was about to be introduced.

"Far from here, in a mysterious country known as the Slane Theocracy, there are men capable of wonders."

In the crowd where was no one whose sight wasn't fixed on the structure. It seemed that many people knew exactly what the product was, and the speech served well the purpose of increasing their hype as much as possible.

"Those men have stepped in the realm of dragons. They are the only creatures in the world able to do what only our lords are capable of. They are… magicians"

Sounds of stupor rose from the audience as the auctioneer stepped aside to show the slaves to the crowd. On the poles there were five slaves. Aside for the satyr, they were all humans. The one in the middle, the interest of everyone in that place, was a helpless young girl.

She was about sixteen years old, though she seemed a couple years older. She had long blond hairs and blue eyes. Her clothes, which revealed too much of her body to be tasteful, were most definitely an idea of the slavers to make her look more appealing.

Her eyes were red for the tears and she blankly stared at the void, completely broken in the spirit.

"This attractive young girl is what they call a "Cleric". She swore herself to her gods and they gave her the power to heal any wound. With her at your side there is nothing you shall fear, even on the brink of death she will rescue you.

The power of the gods is yours to take. Today, one of you will return home bringing with him the rarest slave of the continent."

He paused for a moment, making sure all eyes were on him and that his words were lingering in everyone's thoughts. He looked satisfied at the results of his speech and begun the auction.

"The starting price is 300 gold coins."

Offers begun the very moment he finished the sentence. Everyone was eager to obtain the magical slave. Lord Obister kept raising his hand to increase his offer while other wealthy-looking men answered by increasing in the same way. The price had increased several times the original value in just a couple of minutes and didn't seem to be slowing down. The auctioneer knew how to do his job.

The governor raised his right fist over the crowd.

"Incredible my dear friends. His Excellency, lord Obister Vaf Ancool, have offered 500 gold coins more than the last offer, reaching the outstanding price of 4000 gold coins. It's the first time in the city's history. What an outstanding man.

Everyone, let's show lord Obister all our admiration."

A loud cheer arose from the crowd and went on for minutes. The governor did nothing to stop them, his offer was probably beyond common sense and he would take in every second go glory.

Once the noise lowered enough to let the auction resume, the speaker faced the only other buyer wealthy enough to still be competing for the product.

"Lord Gerber, it would appear the governor has decided to win this auction no matter the cost. What do you wish to do?"

Everyone's attention went on a well-dressed man holding a cane. His eyes were crossed by doubt as he looked at the girl bound to the pole. He hesitated a moment before acting; but when he rose his fist, his eyes were filled with determination.

"Incredible gentlemen. Lord Gerber el Nehim has beaten the newly established record of Lord Obister, reaching the outstanding offer of 4'500 gold coins. This man is becoming a living legend my dear friends. Let's show how proud we are of him."

While everyone in the crowd was cheering at him, he shifted his focus on the other lord. The governor wasn't cheering; neither were the guards or the girl at his side. His face was so red that almost matched his clothes. He couldn't allow that, and the auctioneer noticed too.

The slaver made eye contact with the governor and displayed a smile that could have been considered beautiful had all the teeth been in the right place. He called an underling that was next to him and whispered something in his ears, covering the content of the message with the crowd's noise. As everyone's attention was on lord Gerber, the henchman approached lord Obister's group completely ignored by everyone else.

The lord made sign to his guards to let him pass through and he listened to his boss' message.

In the meantime the cheer had finally ended and the speaker resumed his job, buying time for his man to complete the task.

"I have been doing this job since I was just a boy. But as long as I can remember, I have never seen such an epic auction. This city has truly been blessed with such extraordinary individuals."

The crowd had long reached the point where they would cheer whenever the auctioneer made any form of compliment. This additional interruption gave the henchman the time he needed to leave the governor's side and let him think about the message.

The slaver made once more eye contact with the lord; and as he smiled, he concluded his speech.

"But let's now see how such a legendary contest is going to end. Dear governor, do you have another offer or do you declare yourself defeated?"

If before he was being subtle in his words, now he had completely given up in hiding his intentions. The crowd went silent; all eyes were on the lord. He made a theatrical half step forward, cleared his voice and concluded the auction for the cleric with a dramatic tone.

"I offer 6'000 gold coins"

His voice was firm and clear, perfectly audible from everywhere in the silent plaza.

For a long moment, no one spoke; it seemed that no one could even realize what had just been told. The auctioneer did not loose his smile; on the contrary it became even larger. Then, a man shouted. The others were quick to follow.

The crowd was cheering so loudly that by comparison before there was silence. Lord Gerber lowered his head, both his hands tightly closed into fists. Lord Obister had a satisfied expression as he watched his defeated opponent.

In his personal opinion, the auction was tricked. The slavers probably accepted an offer from the governor and some privilege in exchange for paying the difference between what he said and what he was willing to pay.

The slavers untied the girl and brought her to the new owner. A guard grabbed the chain and led her inside the human ring, so that the governor could test his new investment.

He gestured one of the guards to come closer and ordered him to wound himself. The guard then removed his gauntlet and he sliced his short sword to create a cut over his palm. The other guard pulled the chain to make the girl come closer.

She looked blankly at the wound, then raised her hands and placed them close to the guard's injury. Then she invoked the spell.

"[Heal light wounds]"

A pure light originated from her hands and irradiated the injury. The blood immediately stopped coming out of the hand and the cut closed in a matter of seconds. Everyone attention was on the spell they had never seen before, witnessing a miracle with their own eyes.

The crowd had fell in complete silence since the moment the girl raised her hands; as for him, he hadn't lost a single instant either. It was exactly as it was in the game: the same gestures, the same animation and the same result. One spell he knew in the game had just been used in real life.

As the governor left the slave auction, he switched his visual back to his own body and looked as his hands. If the girl was able to use a game spell and he was able to use game items, maybe he was also able to use his character's skills.

As he did before with the crows, he thought of another game skill. He chose one he used often, one that wouldn't attract undesired attention.

"[Dark world mantle]"

A cloud of darkness generated from his hands and enveloped him. Now covered in magical darkness, he activated the [Shadow glide V] class skill and raised a couple of steps from the ground. Then he flew up, rising high in the sky.

He looked below. He saw the exact same thing he saw earlier through the crows' eyes, but at the same time it was entirely different. He was actually flying.

It was the same difference there was between seeing a landscape and a photo, between calling someone and seeing him in person. It was incredible.

He flew toward the city; and once above it, he kept flying. He activated all his speed increasing bonuses and watched the ground below him changing so quickly that he had mere moments to look at something before it disappeared from his view.

He saw forests, lakes, mountain chains and plains. He flew above large cities, rivers, deserts and swamps. He had never moved that fast, not even in his old world.

He felt free, like never before.

As he flew in the sky, he thought once more about what had happened. How he ended up alone in an unknown world that allowed game mechanics to function and… Was he alone?

He stopped in the middle of the sky.

Why did he think so? If he was there, other players might be as well. At the very least some of his guild mates could.

He took out from below his cloak the golden medallion they used to communicate. He kept it in his hands and thought about whom to call. He wanted to contact someone he was sure would have waited until the end of the game without disconnecting, possibly someone that had already gathered as much information as possible on the current situation.

As he activated the medallion magical effect with a name in mind, light formed above it. It kept changing form, waiting for the one on the other side to answer.

He spent a long moment like that, waiting to know if he was alone or if someone else shared his condition. Depending on the answer, he would take different approaches on the situation. If he was alone he would have to bear all the risks and work with only his resources, but in return he could also take all the decisions by himself. If there were other people, they could share resources and responsibilities, making it however harder to act independently. He also had to consider if the others were people he could work together with or not.

The medallion suddenly took a fixed form, creating a human like shape on it that interrupted the flow of his thoughts. The creature showed by the light was a hybrid between a human and a crow. He was wearing a long robe that covered his whole body and on his heads there were several marks. He was holding an open book in his hands and there were several others floating around him.

After a short moment of silence, the tengu wizard spoke to him.

"Raal Saar? Is that you?"