Tio leaves Ryan's room as she finishes explaining the basics of the Mercenaries Guild to him. As a Mercenary, you receive a rank that reflects how strong you are or thought to be. The higher the rank, the better paid but more dangerous the job. Pretty generic in Ryan's opinion but there is something else that is important. The location of the Mercenaries Guild you sign up for is the only place you can receive jobs. With this, each Mercenaries Guild has their own people special to their facility and if you have some of the strongest Mercenaries, your Guild as a whole receives better jobs. There are even some Mercenaries Guilds that specialize in certain types of work, ranging from Assassination, Monster Hunting, to even helping build houses, and the one Ryan has joined is combat oriented. It is ranked 4th among the combat Guilds and is known for having the most promising young talent. An example would be its lastest Rank A Lilabelle and now Ryan.

Tio also explained how the ranks work and Ryan finally realizes how high of a rank he received. The ranks go alphabetically from E to A, E being the worst and A being the best. Beyond that is the special rank of K and G, which only are given to Kings, K, and people who are strong enough to kill a Level S beast, being G. The monster levels go from E to A as well, with having the special class of S. Since a Lycanthrope was only a Level C beast, then Ryan can barely imagine what a Level S would be like. Maybe they are similar to the world bosses from the first game. If one those would ever appear in this world then a lot of people would truly perish.

Having the time to think about all the new information, Ryan sits down on his chair by his desk. His room has a queen-sized bed, a closet, an armour rack, a bookshelf, a desk with a chair, a lamp with some oil, but doesn't seem to have a bathroom. He will have to ask about that later. He turns the swivel chair towards the desk and decides to look through the drawers to see if anything was left for him.

'More lamp oil, a small feather duster, and a rag huh. The basic essentials, that's good.'

Ryan looks at his lamp as he can see the flickering of the flame as if it were dancing to an exotic tune. The fire reminds him of one of his best friends, Edward, who was a God as well. Flashbacks of Edward and him fighting against the Immortal Army of Lanthier race through his head. The fight that created the first God, the God of Fire.

"Edward behind you!"

Edward expertly dodges the flashy blade with a quick weave of the head stabs his sword backwards, connecting with one of the Immortals. It lets out a loud screech as Edward ignites his sword with black flames. The Immortal falls to the ground as the fire continues to devour it until nothing is left but ashes.

"Thanks, Ryan. This event is truly terrifying. Thousands of players have turned hollowed trying to beat the event but it seems it is just us now."

"Yeah, my healing has kept us alive but not for much longer. No matter how many time we strike these Immortals down, they just come back. I guess that is why they are called Immortals."

Two Immortals rush towards Ryan but he hurls a massive lightning bolt and obliterates the two as the sound of thunder echoes throughout the battlefield. Seeing that he has run out of Focus points, Ryan tries to tell Edward to retreat but is met with a blade to his back. As Ryan sees the sword of an Immortal go through his chest, he can feel his Health go down to 1. Edward sees Ryan get backstabbed and rushes to his aide. With a quick cast of his left hand, a fireball is cast and thrown into the face of the Immortal. The Immortal reels backwards and Edward gives it a 'This is Sparta' kick and sends it flying into three other Immortals. The Fireball begins to grow on the face of the Immortal as Edward picks Ryan up and walks away with him. As the Immortals get off each other, they notice the still growing fireball but it is too late. The fireball explodes and causes an explosion that leaves a crater 10 feet wide, leaving signs of life. With no more Immortals in sight, Edward puts down the injured Ryan.

"How are you alive?! Their backstabs one shot our tankiest players!"

"Hahaha, Tears of Denial never fail me you know?"

Edward realizes that Ryan had cast Tears of Denial before the fight and begins to laugh. Tears of Denial save you from any attack that will kill you and leave you with 1 Health Point left. Edward has made fun of Ryan several times for casting it since it costs a lot of Focus Points and he has never seen Ryan even come close to ever needing it.

"I guess it came in handy this time huh?"

"Yeah it did, now time to heal up and lea-."

Ryan's sentence is cut off short by an arrow hitting him in the head. His body goes limp and disappears completely in front of Edward. As seeing he is the last one left and all four of his closest comrades are dead, Edward feels hopeless. The flame of the fighting spirit inside of him is practically nonexistent, but something is different. He has never seen any of his friends die before and it's only a game plus he will meet then again at Firelink, but something is welling up beside his nonexistent fighting spirit. The feeling of anger and despair. It has welled up so much that it is about to burst. While having these emotions stir up inside of him, the Immortal that shot the arrow decides it is time to take out Edward and head to the nearest town to murder its inhabitants.

Edward hears the sound of an arrow draw back from not just any bow, but the one that killed his best friend and comrade in many battles. Hearing this is enough to make the pure rage inside of him explode, and rejuvenate his fighting spirit into a wildfire. Fire begins to spread in small places on his body and Edward's eyes have turned a brilliant yellow. He looks at one of his hands and realizes what has happened to him, he has become Cindered, something that it is in the lore of the game that granted power equal to the Lords of Cinder from the Dark Souls series.

Power begins to fill Edwards body as he can feel an inseparable connection to what is known as fire. The Immortal sees this and lets the arrow fly before Edward truly grasps his powers but it is too late. Edward continues to stare blankly into nothingness as the arrow races towards him but explodes and turns into ash before it reaches him. This small explosion was followed by an explosion of the whole battlefield, completely turning everything within a mile into ash and soot. Ryan was watching all of this with his death cam and witnessed his friend become the first God.

"Frew! We are having dinner in the cafeteria! Since you don't know your way I'll take you."

The muffled voice of Tio was heard on the other side of the door and snaps him out of one of his fondest memories.