It did not take long for the orb to show a picture of a strange space.

The bright space had other orbs of lights floating on their own.

“Hey!”

Adam heard someone calling him and wanted to turn in that direction physically. But strangely, instead of moving his head, only the image he was seeing turned in that direction, as though he was physically in this orb space.

“What took you so long to get here?” asked the voice with an annoyed tone.

Adam saw that the sound was coming from a nearby orb. “I just woke up! Do you know where this is? How are you speaking through a ball of light? What are those shadowy creatures?”

“Strange, everyone has been awake for a while, but anyway, I’m not sure where this is or what those things are, but you look like an orb too. Everyone who enters this space can only communicate through their innate orb and take its shape. I’m Mike by the way.”

“Adam, but an innate orb? You mean the light orb?”

“Yeah! If you use the appraisal facility, that’s the name given to it. Also, apparently, we’re on an island and there’s around 200 of us. Some lady said she could provide everyone with food and water if they move their innate orb to her location. She said everyone should wait a few hours before starting to move so that more people are informed, and it would become safer to move together at the same time.”

There was a lot of info to take in and a lot more questions came to mind.

“Appraisal facility?”

“Yeah, you can activate it by thinking about it or saying ‘appraisal’ mentally, but only after you leave this space can you really do it.”

Adam was interested in this appraisal screen but held down his curiosity and continued to ask Mike further questions.

“How do you move the innate orb? when I touched it, it seemed to be stuck in its’ place.”

“You should already know how to instinctively do it once you connect with the orb. Anyways, start preparing to move, since it would be a lot easier for everyone to move together than if we move one by one. Prepare a weapon like a stick or something and look around your area if there is water or something edible, everyone will move when the shadowy fog recedes, and the creatures are weakened.”

“How do you know the fog will recede and the creatures will weaken?”

“I don’t know, this is all the information I was told to disseminate, once you’re done preparing come back here and wait for any innate orbs that light up and inform them if they have not been informed.”

Adam looked at the innate orbs all around, there were some who were closer to him than Mike’s orb he was communicating with.

“Hey, are the innate orbs in the space the same distance away from each other as the real world?”

Adam inquired Mike while estimating the distance between himself and Mike to be around a couple of dozen meters.

“No, it’s not a one-to-one comparison. The distance between you and me is much closer here than the outside, but I can guess your location from where your orb is in the space. Though the orbs are closer to each other in the space, communication is still restricted by the distance, so there are orbs that I can’t communicate with because of distance but you can. Therefore, we need everyone to keep propagating this info from one orb to another. “Mike explained.

After getting so much info, Adam began to wonder about something and asked Mike.

“By the way, this lady you keep talking about, did all this info come from her? Do you know her name? Why are you trusting her?”

“Don’t know her but I was told from a neighboring orb that she apparently knew a lot already. They told me that the lady visited some people too. But in terms of trust… even if she lied about something, gathering together is better than being scattered and dealing with this strange situation by ourselves.”

“She went out?”

“Yep, at least that’s what I was told. Her orb is supposed to be the one with a few close neighbors, you’ll find it if you look to the left of my orb. “

Adam was able to notice an orb that was semi-isolated where Mike was talking about.

Adam wanted to ask why that orb had no neighbors, but the conversation was cut off when both noticed a new innate orb appearing next to the mysterious lady’s innate orb.

“What is that?” Adam asked.

“It seems the lady is escorting her neighbors to her location.”

After getting some answers and thanking Mike for the help, Adam left the orb space to begin to prepare to move.

After mentally commanding to leave the space, the image of the space started shrinking and his vision returned to normal.

Adam refocused on the orb and felt like he could control it as though it was a part of him. While holding on to it, he successfully brought up the appraisal screen like how Mike said, an opaque panel was projected on the orb.

Innate Orb (lv 1)

Owner

Adam Amani

Energy

95/100

Facilities

Orb Space Connection

lv 1

Appraisal

lv 1

Purification Dome

lv 1

Looking at the 95/100 units of energy, he remembered that Mike said that it was at full capacity when everyone first awoke here.

Adam had a strange feeling, it was as though the orb was a part of him and he could feel the purification dome, which was keeping the dark fog out, was exhausting on the innate orb to keep it active. if Adam had to describe it, it was as though the orb was “another him” and the facilities were limbs he could command and use.

Adam also noted that if the orb were to be exhausted, he would be in a very precarious situation.

The orb space connection should have also an effect on energy, but he is still unsure how much it costs to stay in the space, nor did Mike mention anything about it.

However, there is an odd detail that the mysterious lady was propagating, apparently, the info on the appraisal panel was full of question marks when everyone first woke up.

Mike explained that appraisal works off people’s “general knowledge” and that means names could change if the “general knowledge” is improved on a particular topic, which was a rather weird concept.

But thinking about when he woke up and the dream he had, Mike said that everyone experienced the same dream, but the dream he described was somewhat different than the one Adam had.

Everyone saw a dark space and saw those eyes that popped out of nowhere. The described dream ends after the “purification dome” completely collapses and everything is consumed by the dark.

In Adam’s dream, on the other hand, there was something or someone else in the purification dome behind him. There was also the pale golden sphere that appeared which then transformed into a vast golden bright sphere, that he could only describe as a sun.

Adam stood there for a while thinking of the golden sun.

‘Why do I get a familiar feeling from it?’

Adam closed his eyes to better remember the golden sun, but what was strange, is that the memory slowly was becoming more and more vivid. Until Adam opened his eyes and could see his hand dimly glowing golden.

Adam looked at his hand for some time and was sure that this was the same light he saw in the dream, but dimmer.

Adam looked at a pebble next to him. He was not sure whether it was instinct or what, but he picked it up and tried enveloping it with the gold light. The gold light came out of his hands and wrapped the pebble.

In the next moment, the gold light expanded and took the shape of the pebble, then gradually solidified and became a tangible copy.

“Amazing!”