Their duel was nothing like anything I’ve ever experienced in this world so far. A real battle between equals. Esteemed Generals of their respective Kingdoms. And truly on another level from any of the other Dwarves and Elves present.

Both blindingly fast and unbelievably strong, they ravaged through almost the entirety of the inner stronghold without restraint, smashing through countless walls and numerous structural pillars that stood in their paths. Their mass destruction nearly caused the very mountain to collapse in on itself. The fierce battle continued for what felt like a few hours, but in actuality it only lasted a few minutes. And it wasn’t until their battle spilled outside—to the center of the outer stronghold—when they finally came to their second standstill since they first started fighting, as they both stood bloodied and battered amidst the frigid mountain air.

“Well fought, General Silverfoot!” Illiveyl spoke lively, “You truly do live up to your Great Clan’s name!” spitting out the blood that had gathered in his mouth afterwards.

“Your praise means nothing to me, elf!” General Silver scoffed, dismissing Illiveyl’s words while tearing off a broken piece of his armour onto the ground, “And do not dare think this little respite means I am anywhere near close to being finished with our battle!”

“On the contrary, I believe we are finished here.” Illiveyl confidently stated, gesturing to the corpse-filled battlefield surrounding them.

“What—” General Silverfoot finally took notice, and all he could see was the lifeless bodies of all his soldiers lying on the bloodied snow-covered ground. “M-My battalion!?! H-How could they have all been taken out by so few!?” Directing his attention to the six elves casually conversing with themselves from along the walls—each partially injured in their own right, but all still ready and eager to fight if needed.

“If your Kingdom were not so blindly distracted by Humans directly encroaching to your south, you may have stood a chance if more troops and your Kingdom's Legion were deployed here beforehand. But as an attack from the hollowed west never even occurred to you Dwarves, especially one from us so-called feeble Elves, you’ve been severely and painfully outsmarted and outmatched on this day.” Illiveyl conveyed in a very condescending tone.

“Why you annoyingly arrogant piece of—“ General Silverfoot stopped himself from angrily charging as Illiveyl gestured for him to stop.

“Ahh...Do you hear that, General?” However nothing but the blowing winds could be heard, “Oh, right. Well allow me to inform you.” Illiveyl knowingly smirked and revealed, “Our reinforcements have just arrived.” At that moment, 100 elite elven troops came swiftly striding down the stronghold’s main hallway, with 300 more troops scouring the whole interior for any surviving enemies and to secure the stronghold as theirs. And before he knew it, General Silverfoot found himself overwhelmingly surrounded and completely subdued by the 100 elite troops.

“Urgh! You cowardly elf! You don’t even have the dignity of a General, warrior, or a man to finish our battle yourself!” General Silverfoot shouted angrily, struggling to break free but to no avail.

Sheathing his sword, Illiveyl smiled in amusement and approached the restrained dwarf, saying “You are sorely mistaken if you honestly believed that we are in anyway equal. For you see, General, you have always been nothing more than an invaluable prisoner of war in my eyes. And for that reason, I forced myself to hold back quite a bit to ensure I didn’t accidentally kill you with my arrows or my sword.”

“Wyvern shit!” General Silverfoot let out a fake laughter, openly expressing “Us Dwarves may be endlessly greedy, and the Humans insatiable gluttonous, but you Elves and your delusions of superiority and grandeur are truly beyond compare!”

Illiveyl chuckled at the words, rhetorically asking “Why must you other Races doubt us so? Simply because we've lost our Royal Bloodline and none of you have?" but General Silverfoot responded by spitting blood in his face. Illiveyl simply let out a sigh and wiped the blood from his cheek, and said "It would seem a demonstration is needed for you to know your place, General. So allow me to show you the laughable difference in our power...” Appearing on top of the walls in the blink of an eye, Illiveyl ordered his Trinity Archers to retreat, and they immediately complied and dropped back down to the ground. At the same time, Odelia, Zebeyeyl, and Lady Ilzt passed through the crowd of troops, just in time for them to witness Illiveyl begin to display his true power. “Trinity Fusion Mastery, Final Arrow—”

The vivid memories abruptly ended there without warning, and I suddenly found myself, as well as the other Players in my Guide, surprisingly seated back in the rows of our Guide’s section. “What the hell!? What happened!?” I exclaimed to myself, a little disoriented like everyone else seemed to be. “I think I was about to see something really amazing, but I can’t believe they just ended it like that!” Feeling slightly irked at the missed opportunity.

Though before I could properly collect my thoughts, Cullen called out “Oi, mate! You’ve only gone and done it!” and I looked ahead to see him, as well as Penelope and Ravi approaching from the rows below, “You actually won it for us all on your own! What a mad lad!”

“Uh, I guess so, but forget all that.” I said, dismissing his genuine praise, “You guys saw it too, right? The real history of the siege?”

“Of course we did, but the least they could’ve done was translate it for us.” Penelope answered first, questioning “Like what was even the point of showing us any of that if none of us could understand a word they were saying?”

“Yeah, but at least the fights were fun to watch.” Ravi optimistically pointed out.

“Wait, you guys couldn’t understand?” Tilting my head in curiosity.

“Obviously, you’ve only been in this world for a month, you know?” Penelope remarked, “I mean how did they actually expect us to learn Dwarvish or Elvish in so little time to understand what we saw?”

“Well if we reasonably think about it, I don’t think they did expect us to understand what we saw yet.” Cullen surmised, but seeing our lost looks, he explained “Think back to what we just saw. They’re memories, right? Specifically new memories gifted to us, but our memories nevertheless, which means we simply need to recall them, yeah?”

And trying to recall the memories again, I could vividly remember everything that happened in the siege once again. “Huh, what do you know, Cullen’s right.” But a mind-blowing revelation suddenly came to me, “Hold on, if I can recall these memories this vividly, maybe I can…” and I lost myself in thought while continuing to partially listen.

“You see, I think they intentionally hid the exact details of the history from us.” Cullen figured.

“Let’s assume that’s true, why give us the memories in the first place then? Why not just never give us the memories at all?” Penelope argued.

“Here’s my theory about that.” Then Cullen began to explain, “Those memories were a reward from a Hidden Quest, but seeing how it’s an Event Quest planned by the Admin and the Guides, it’s obviously more important than other rewards, right? Now the real problem is the amount of Players who receive the reward simply thanks to others completing the Quest for them—like ourselves for example. So what I’m thinking is they more than likely decided to just allow everyone who completed the Hidden Quest to see the memories, but those who actually put in the effort to understand what they saw, well those are the ones truly deserving of the real knowledge of Novus’ history.”

“My thoughts exactly, Cullen.” A voice suddenly spoke from behind us.

“C-Crystal! Where’d you come from!?” Cullen stuttered in surprise, as we all turned around to see a High Elf woman towering over us from the row above—she carried on her back the same lantern staff from before.

“Over there.” She answered casually, pointing to the rows at the top.

“Wait you lost though, so how did you see the memories?” Penelope questioned, “I thought they were rewards from the Hidden Quest?”

“That may have been the case, but thanks to Xander and his Party recklessly charging in at the very start, we surprisingly completed the Hidden Quest by just capturing and interrogating him for information.” Crystal explained.

“Ugh...those morons.” Penelope groaned, rolling her eyes.

“Anyhow, to narrow down our thinking further, we should obviously be very keen on everything the two Leaders spoke of and did during the siege. And considering how unbelievably strong they both were, it’s entirely possible they could give us some insight into something as significant as their powerful Classes—or if we’re lucky enough, maybe they'll even be clues to secret potential Quests we can discover.”

“Wow, her train of thought is pretty much spot on.” I thought, thinking back to some curious things the Generals mentioned, “But assuming at best the Players can learn the languages in a few months, it’ll still be a while until they finally discover all that information for themselves.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Penelope said, stepping up on the same row as Crystal to be on the same level, “You can’t come up and talk to us like we’re on the side now. You know you were just our enemy, right?”

“Oh that’s bygones now.” Dismissing Penelope's concerns as she stepped down a row and unexpectedly hugged my arm, saying “Besides, I'm not particularly fond of the idea of going against Eyes ever again." adding, "Plus he showed me something amazing about him I can’t ever forget...”

“H-He what!?” Her words caught Penelope off guard.

“My man.” Ravi held out his fist for a fist bump.

“Mate, don’t tell me it only took that long to win ‘cause you were too busy with something else, were you?” Cullen grinned widely.

“No guys, it’s not what it sounds like. She’s just—”

“Yup, and now I just can’t help myself from being absolutely obsessed with him.” Crystal teasingly smiled.

“Okay, don’t you think you’re being a bit much?” I asked her.

“Not when it comes to someone as special as you, Eyes.” Giving me a mischievous wink.

“Hmm…” Penelope hummed in curiosity while she looked around and said, “Hold on, Crystal. If there really are no hard feelings, why the hell is everybody staring at us like that?” Bringing attention to all the surviving Players in our Guide glaring in our direction.

“Well to be accurate, they’re not staring at us, they’re staring at Eyes here.” Crystal demonstrated by dragging them away from me and showing that I was the only focus of their ire and fear.

"They 100% watched me kill everyone while they were dead." Then I laughed at the irony, “Even though I technically saved most of them, they only see me as the psychopath who heartlessly killed not only them, but who also murdered the Players who stayed dead after the slaughter in the banquet.”

Crystal and the others walked back, and Penelope said “I don’t understand. Yeah Eyes killed everyone on his own and was already hated before this Event started, but some of the things I can make-out from their conversations just doesn’t make sense.”

“Like?” Cullen asked.

“Well they’re saying not only did Eyes savagely kill them, but that he actually found a way to kill Players during the Event and somehow prevent them from being revived by 13.” She relayed the info to the others, “Which doesn’t make sense, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t…” And Cullen pondered the idea.

“Well maybe there was a glitch in the System or something? Oh, and maybe that’s why Pocket’s body never disappeared like when we watched Xander’s Party take out some of the Players at the start?” Ravi reasoned.

“Could be, but don’t you think 13 or the Admin would’ve fixed it and revived the dead Players by now?” Penelope argued. Though as their Party tried to understand what was going on, their conversation, along with the constant malicious voices from other Players began to irritate me; and so left the area for some silence—even convincing Crystal not to follow me if she ever wanted my cooperation in the future.

Nothing about the Waiting Hub changed from before the Event started, but as our Guide was the first group to complete the siege, every other section apart from ours was completely empty. I walked around for a bit, wondering what I should do while I waited for everything to conclude, and I remembered I had a new Title I didn’t get the chance to read yet. However when I opened the Menu, I was surprised to see a new option appear in it.

[Character] [Skills] [Inventory] [Quests] [Social] [Homestead] [Player Shop]

“When did the Player Shop get there?” I still clicked on it even though it was greyed out, and as expected it didn’t open. “Well it looks like it’s unavailable right now, but it’s probably gonna open up when the Event is over.” I figured; then deciding to ignore it for now, I brought up the new Title I missed.

Siege Victor: Achieving victory in the First Event held by the Administrator for the benefit of the Players, you are rightfully acknowledged to be worthy of receiving guidance from your Guide, and will later be gifted aid during the Second Event’s endless onslaught in the upcoming future. Gain ‘???’ for the entire duration of the Second Event.

“So there’s another Event happening in the future? But why hide what I gain with those question marks? Could it spoil me for the next Event or something?” I scratched my head in thought, questioning “And what exactly are they planning for us Players? Is this really all just for their entertainment, or is there still some other reason they’ve kept from us?”

While I aimlessly walked around the Waiting Hub a little longer, all of the sudden Players appeared in a bright flash a few sections ahead of me. I could see most of them were in a large argument amongst themselves about how they loss the Event, though I did spot a few who had questioning looks on their faces. “Those ones must be the ones who won and finished the Hidden Quest.” I deduced, raising my hood up to not draw attention to myself as I passed by.

Yet someone still approached me from behind and said, “Looks like I wasn’t the first one to finish this time.”

“Oh, it’s just you, Lavie.” Recognizing her voice.

"Yup." She walked herself beside me.

"Well if you're already here, I take it the Event was a piece of cake for you, right?" Inquiring how it went for her.

“Says the guy who finished before me." I nonchalantly shrugged in response, and Lavie replied with "But I think it went well enough for the most part; though it was quite boring if you ask me—much easier than any of the fights I had in the colosseum. Although you know, something strange did happen to me while I was fighting the other Players in there.”

“Something strange happened?” My ears perked up in curiosity.

“Yeah, almost as if something inside of me took over and forcefully stopped my body from finishing the other Players with killing blows.” Lavie described, “I was practically frozen in place and forced not to move. It wasn’t until the Players willingly got out of the way of my attacks that I was finally free to move again. And as a result, I had annoyingly to capture each Player one by one and have my teammates kill them instead.” She then spoke sincerely, “Though honestly, Eyes...in those very short moments I was frozen, I never felt so helpless in my entire life.”

“That’s a feeling I know all too well…” I quickly shook my head of those thoughts and said, “I can relate to the feeling, but maybe knowing will give you some relief." Telling her, "The thing taking you over happens to me too, but to be more accurate, it's a Hidden Effect of your Earring of Salvation.”

“Is that what that was? I guess that should’ve been my first guess when I felt something so unfamiliar come over me.” Lavie said, rubbing her earring with fascination; then asking “Does that mean your earring causes you to freeze up in place too?”

“Uhh...not exactly.” I muttered under my breath.

“Oh? Yours is different? Well that does make sense since we did pick different choices after all.” Lavie became noticeably intrigued, “Though go on; I told you mine, so it’s only right you tell me yours.”

I let out a sigh and told her, “My body gets taken over too, but instead of stopping me from killing the other Players...it forces me to kill them.”

“That’s it?" She asked, not fully grasping the severity of the effect, "I thought it would be far worse consider yours is the Earring of Annihilation.”

“I don't think you understand.” Clarifying, “When I’m forced to kill a Player I attack, they don’t just die and get revived later on. No, it’s more like their very existence gets annihilated and erased from this world entirely.”

“What?! That can't be true, can it?” Lavie was in complete shock, however she suddenly remembered something and said, “I didn’t think much of it at the time, but after learning all this about our earrings...well I forgot to mention something else that was strange that happened in my Event.”

“Something else?”

“Yes, it was after I captured the last few Players in the Event and brought them back to the encampment.” Explaining. “Since there were no more Players left to go hunt down, I just stayed nearby and watched the rest of my team kill off the last few of them. However the strange thing is, all the Players who were killed anywhere near my vicinity, well their bodies never disappeared in a flash like everyone else’s did." She then asked in concern, "You don’t think that has anything to do with my earring’s Hidden Effect too, do you?”

“I could lie to you, but that was most definitely part of your earring’s effect.” But I decided to point out a potential silver lining, saying “Who knows though; if my choice of Annihilation is annihilating the Players in a way, then maybe your choice of Salvation is saving them in a way, don't you think?”

“Hmmm...let me get this straight. You’re forced to kill Players you attack, while I'm forced to stop myself from killing Players I attack. Then with that logic, if you're supposedly erasing their existence, then am I preserving their existence? But that doesn't explain why them being dying near me prevents them from being revived does?"

"Like I said, who knows how this all works." I cluelessly shrugged.

"Hahaha..." Lavie suddenly laughed wholeheartedly.

"Lavie? You alright? Did I missing something?" Looking around while being confused of her sudden laughter.

“No, no it's nothing, Eyes. I'm...I'm just glad I'm not alone in this world." Smiling brightly with genuine joy on her face.

"I know exactly what you mean..." Noticing a few more Guide sections filled with Players returning from their Events.