Restricted Sector

Building 5

Level 2

Holding Cells

9:45 pm, Monday, 13th April 2043.

"Here you go," Akari said as he dropped the last set of books onto an already mountainous pile, forming a great wall. A crop of silver, silky hair barely stuck out behind the wall, the rest of the body buried under an avalanche of books.

A shirtless Taiga arose from the pile, pushing the books aside. The young man was a lean, nineteen-year-old, but his heavily scarred body made him look much older than his age. "Morning Aki-chi,” Taiga greeted in a light, almost sing-song voice. “When will you take these off me?" The young man questioned as he pointed at a silver bracelet tightly bound to his right wrist.

"You know when," Akari flatly replied. Despite his harsh tone, there were traces of guilt in his eyes as he looked at the young man whose life he had personally twisted. "You have a week. Finish reading, then report to me."

"Che. Boring," Taiga joked as he fished out a pair of glasses from under a host of books and put them on. He actually did not need glasses, but he liked to use them when reading. "A week is too long. I'll finish these in three days." He adopted a reading pose and zipped through the books at inhuman speed.

Akari watched the rapidly turning pages with mixed feelings. "Behave this time, and I promise to let you out within the compound." Akari left the room, and the door slid shut behind him.

Outside the room, Yukino had her arms folded across her chest as she regarded Akari with curiosity in her eyes. "Who is he?"

"That's right. You were not here during the first phase,” Akari muttered as he loosened his necktie. He motioned for her to walk with him as he made his way down the hallway. "He is the first success of the Rebirth Project."

"Impossible,” Yukino instantly rejected with a stunned expression. “The reports said they were all failures. Isn’t that the reason we started this project?"

A shadow crossed Akari’s face. "That was the official report,” he said. “However, there was one success—no, one survivor. The process had a severe side effect on his personality, and he was deemed a failure."

Yukino noticed the troubled look on his face. This on a man who did not flinch when faced with the deaths of several people. "I thought HQ's policy on failures was disposal."

"It was,” Akari agreed. “But I convinced them to let him live for research purposes."

Yukino bit her lip, a troubled expression on her face. "Why did you lock him up so far down? I didn’t even know he existed until now."

"The largest side effect is extreme aggression,” Akari revealed. “In only a month, he killed four orderlies and one scientist."

Yukino’s brow rose as she recalled the young man in the room. “That boy? Murder?

Akari glanced at Yukino with mirth in his eyes. “Don’t underestimate him. That boy has killed more people than some soldiers on active duty.”

Yukino’s eyelids trembled, and her mouth opened wide in shock. “And you want to release him now? What changed?"

"The virtual games,” Akari replied. “I'm hoping he can vent his rage in there and maybe find a friend or two."

Yukino turned to him in shock. "Did you just say, friends? You?"

Akari ignored the rude remark and replied, "I am not a monster Asagi-san. I have friends too." He stopped at the elevator doors and turned to her. "By the way, I've been meaning to ask you something."

"Yes?"

Akari gave the woman a once-over. "What's with that get-up?"

Yukino was cosplaying as a nurse with a short miniskirt and high heels no self-respecting medical practitioner would wear in a hospital. "Hehe, you like it? I'm going to check in on some of our gamers in the ward."

Akari shook his head in disbelief. ‘I guess it's true that geniuses are idiots.’ "Take it off."

"Oh my! Seki, you pervert,” Yukino coyly teased as she backed away and wrapped her arms around herself.

A vein popped in Akari’s head, but he managed to hold back his rage. Instead, he adjusted his glasses and said as he entered the elevator, "That's not even funny." As the doors slid shut, he added, "Besides, I like my women mature."

Yukino glared at the shut elevator doors and shouted, "Seki, you idiot."

Residential Sector

Building 3

Floor 4

Hunched over a computer, a girl pounded away at her keyboard, while occasionally sipping from a steaming coffee mug placed beside the keyboard. A cable ran from her laptop to a hidden plug on the full body Virtual Drive. Jade downed the contents of the mug, wincing at the disgusting, sharp taste. She manipulated the lines of incomprehensible code to achieve something, frantically awaiting a certain prompt.

ACCESS GRANTED

"Yes!" Jade rejoiced. The prompt meant she had finally broken past the final firewall. Genaco’s main systems were nigh unhackable, but by using the connection through the Virtual Drive, she had created a backdoor into their systems.

"Now, show me your secrets." Jade began to download the relevant data into her virtual drive. Judging by the sheer size, and the excruciatingly slow download speed, it would take weeks before she got anything she could analyze, and probably months before she found what she was looking for.

'That done, I guess it's about time I got serious about the game before they begin to suspect.’ Due to a rather slow start, she was still level 17 in a world where some people had already begun to encroach on level 40 and beyond.

Jade checked her system one last time to make sure the download was undetectable, and more importantly, untraceable. Satisfied by the results, she climbed into the virtual drive.

Kerta,

9:23 am, 5 th Ryanem 1091.

Kashi walked out of a shop, feeling satisfied with himself. He had just spent almost all of his savings to acquire the items he estimated he would need for the next three months. Thanks to the little wolf doggedly stalking his every move, Kashi knew he could not venture into the higher leveled areas to quickly level up. His plan, therefore, was to raise the direwolf until it could stand side by side with him. Then together, they would start leveling quickly.

Bert taught Kashi the different ways a monster could level in the wild. After failing to add her as his pet, Kashi realized his only option was to let the little direwolf hunt and kill by herself. The proud direwolf absolutely refused to be his pet, even if it helped her level fast. After understanding the situation, Kashi set out to buy some necessary materials.

First on the daeben’s list were several raw materials for crafting. This included wood for sculpting; paint for painting; materials for sewing, metal for crafting weapons and several ingredients for cooking.

The second set of items Kashi bought were the various tools for the trades. A basic sculpting knife; a single needle; a scrapbook and a paint set, and finally an iron pot for cooking. These were the basic toolset available to outsiders to the various professions, but for his purpose, they were more than plenty.

Kashi dropped the raw materials and tools at the shops he had worked at. The daeben’s extraordinary ability had earned him a great deal of respect in these shops, and as a result, there wasn’t too much fuss when he asked for these items to be kept for him. The only items he left with himself were the cooking, painting and sculpting materials.

When he was satisfied with the placement of the items, Kashi beckoned the little direwolf, "Come on, it's time to earn your meal." He really didn’t need to, as the cub followed him wherever he went. Kashi made his way over to the adventurer’s guild and picked up a few low-level quests asking for rabbit meat.

Kashi exited the city with the cub but made sure not to stray too far. After surveying the landscape, he muttered, "Let's start with some rabbits." He pointed at a small group of rabbits that were playing nearby and ordered the cub, "Go kill one of those, and bring another back."

The beast’s fur rustled in wild excitement as she looked at her prey. She rushed to attack a little fluffy bunny but failed miserably. The rabbits sensed her approach and scampered off before she could make it. After several consecutive failures, she returned to Kashi who was drawing something on his sketch pad with a rumbling stomach. She had not eaten in over twenty-four hours, and the hunt had drained the last of her energy. The cub nudged Kashi’s leg and expectantly looked up at him.

"What's this. Are you hungry?" Kashi questioned as he looked down at her. "Here, eat this." He placed a brown substance on the ground.

The cub sniffed the strange food, but she could not make out any distinct smell. The cub sent a warning glare at the daeben then took a bite of the weird food. Less than a second later, she gagged and immediately spat it out!

What was this?! She had never tasted anything so bland and disgusting in her life. It was worse than eating the earth! At least the soil had flavors.

"Hehe," Kashi chuckled as he looked at her horrified expression. "That's called stale bread. You want to eat something good, then catch some rabbits." Kashi snorted and returned to his sketch. "Until then. You will eat only stale bread."

'Demon. This elf is a demon. ' The cub sobbed as she wolfed down the sandy bread, trying as much as possible not to taste it. 'I will definitely kill you.' She swore and ran back to the fields with grim determination. It would never eat anything that nasty in its life again.

While his little companion was off training, Kashi completed his first drawing. It was a sketch of a random landscape he imagined.

New Stat: Art

Art: A gift in the understanding and practice of beautification. Art increases the aesthetic and practical beauty of meals and products.

Improves when you see, hear, smell, taste or touch beautiful things, or create artworks.

New Art Skill: Artist (Beginner Level 1)

An artist can capture moments in a single moment. Emotions impossible to express through words can be conveyed to millions in the form of a painting. Be careful of the power you wield.

Go out there and make the world a beautiful place.

Improves when you draw or admire artworks.

Art Rankings: Ordinary  Fine  Masterpiece  Grand  Magnus Opus

Kashi smiled when he saw the pop-up. This confirmed one of his speculations. Art, just like Crafts were specific stats that improved the efficiency and properties of products related to them. Just as an artist like him got the art stat, a merchant would go for something similar to speechcraft.

Invigorated by the stat message, Kashi decided to experiment a bit. "Draw this," he instructed while picturing a fox in his mind. A bright light encompassed his hand and guided it across the page. Kashi let out a wry smile when he inspected the finished diagram. The drawing looked less like a fox, and more like a mutated cat. Next, he pictured a circle, and as expected, the light guided his hand to draw a perfect circle. Finally, he chose to draw the fox manually.

When he completed it, a message popped up.

Your expertise has increased in Artist Skill.

Your expertise has increased in Handicraft skill.

‘Good.’ Kashi thought as he sketched out a terrible drawing of a dog. He checked his skill window and was not surprised to see the skills had not increased. Finally, Kashi drew a picture of a beautiful portrait of a cat playing with a ball of yarn. This time, his stat points did increase.

From the little experiment, Kashi confirmed that similar to weapon skills, craft skills had an auto assist function that helped Summoned to create products. However, it was also possible to manually create them, and depending on their beauty, it might increase the stats quicker. It was a peculiarity of all Genaco Gaming products that all their games rewarded those who manually performed tasks higher than those who relied on the system.

Kashi took a short break to examine his stat table. Due to his time as an apprentice, his Crafts stat was at a respectable 39, whereas the newly gained Art skill was still at 4. Stat points could not be allocated to these stats, so if he wanted to increase them, he could only rely on his skills.

Name

Kashi

Alignment

Neutral

Level

14

Profession

None

Title

Wolf Slayer

Fame

0

Infamy

33

Health

1990

Mana

313

Ki

2176

Vitality

60

Stamina

64

Wisdom

17

Intellect

10

Strength

66

Agility

82

Dexterity

53

Endurance

Phys END

14

Mag END

8

Charisma

10

Charm

10

Stealth

23

Instinct

12

Fighting Spirit

24

Leadership

11

Crafts

39

Art

4

Luck

29

Attack

Phys AT K

307

Defense

Phy s DEF

150

Mag ATK

164

Mag DEF

144

Resistances

Poison Resistance

0%

Ice Resistance

0%

Electricity Resistance

0%

Light Resistance

0%

Fire Resistance

0 %

Dark Resistance

0%

With this at the back of his mind, Kashi started drawing several cute pictures of cats and dogs. Some were colored, while others were black and white. Two hours later, the daeben received two notifications. A few hours later, he received a notification.

Skill Level Up! Handicraft Skill (Lv. 5  6)

Increases chance to auto-complete common works by 50%

Increases attack power with melee and long-range weapons. (+5% ATK)

Increases attack power with fists. (+5% ATK)

Skill Level Up! Artist (Beginner Lv. 1  2)

Increases chance to auto-complete Ordinary works by +20%

Enables you to auto-create more complicated patterns.

Reduces the rate of failure.

Yes!

Just as Kashi rejoiced over the skill increase prompt, the little wolf came over with a dead rabbit caught in her mouth. She dropped her catch at his feet, and the daeben was intrigued by the fact that the full rabbit corpse remained. When Summoned killed monsters, the bodies usually ‘shattered’ into light petals and left behind random drops.

Kashi decided to carry out some experiments in the future. At the moment, he complimented the cub, "Good job."

Kashi took out his cooking pot and a set of ingredients he had bought from his inventory, then set about making a simple rabbit stew. Rabbit stew was a low-level dish, and the daeben doubted the game system would heavily penalize him if he made a slight mistake.

New Art Skill: Chef (Beginner Level 1)

No battle can be fought on an empty stomach. A chef’s job is to ensure the populace is not only well fed but pumped and ready to face the day’s challenges.

Go out there and fill the bellies of the world

Improves when you eat, smell or cook meals.

Art Rankings: Ordinary  Fine  Masterpiece  Grand  Magnus Opus

Thirty minutes later, Kashi finished cooking the stew and inspected the new prompt. Intriguingly, the game system considered the chef skill as an Art skill. Kashi stored this information in his head as he served himself and placed the wolf's meal in a little bowl.

A ghost of a smile played on Kashi’s lips as he watched the cub greedily devour her meal and smacked her chops in delight. Evidently, she was quite hungry as the plate was soon empty. She looked up at Kashi who relented and her another round. The daeben wondered if this was how Suzuki would have felt if he had a pet - minus the cub’s desire to kill him of course.

Oblivious to Kashi’s thoughts, the direwolf rolled over and belched after eating her fill.

Kashi chuckled and regarded the cub. "Hmm... I can't keep referring to you as it. How about a name?"

The cub sat upright and looked at the daeben, curiosity overriding its usual glare. Wolves did not name themselves as there was no need. They instinctively knew who was speaking to whom, so the use of names never took root.

Kashi tapped his chin and muttered, "How about Kuro? Black, like your fur."

A sharp, angry growl told him what it thought of the name. The direwolf refused to accept such a lazy, generic name.

"Apologize to all the Kuros out there in the world," Kashi joked, but the direwolf turned her nose to the sky, leading the daeben to think of how they met, and its unhidden bloodlust. "How about Ga Kira? It means 'My Executioner.'"

The cub silently stared at him as the bloodlust returned to its eyes.

"I'll take that as a yes,” Kashi said with a wry smile. “From now on, your name is Kira. Now come on, I need to return to my world for a bit." Kashi packed up his things then made his way back to the city.

Kira followed closely behind him, deep in thought about her new name.

Suzuki’s Room,

Undisclosed Location.

10:45 pm, Monday, 13th April 2043.

Suzuki opened his eyes and removed the helmet from his head. He got out of the machine and set about his routine to energize the muscles that lay dormant during his dive.

An hour later, Suzuki concluded his training and took a much-needed shower. He got dressed in a pair of black denim jeans and a white T-shirt on which was drawn a hawk holding several arsenals. Hoping against hope, he checked the desk drawers for the first time and smiled when he saw his sketchbook was in there.

Suzuki noticed some other books he did not recognize, but he ignored them. He grabbed his pencil set and communicator, tucked the sketchbook under his shoulder, then left the building.

The spring night breeze was cool and soothing, and the moon was smiled down upon the world. It was a perfect night to sketch.

Suzuki could not pinpoint the moment in his childhood he began to love drawing. But the simple act had a strange therapeutic effect nothing else could bring. If fighting in the game was a way to vent his anger on the world, then drawing was his way of calming the tempest in his heart.

Suzuki unlocked his new bicycle then went for a spin around the large compound. After searching for a while, he stopped at a park close to the restricted area. The park was built around a pretty fountain located at its center. Several benches were placed neatly around for people to sit and cool off.

Suzuki sat on a bench and started out on his sketches, starting with the fountain in front of him. He did not keep track of how much time passed. While drawing, he tended to completely block the world out. This was why he did not see the teenager who walked up to him.

"Nice drawing." An unfamiliar voice interrupted Suzuki’s sketch of Jade on her bike.

Suzuki looked up and saw a young man man with dirty silver hair, and a pair of unnerving yellow eyes admiring his drawing. "Thanks." He chose not to show his initial unease. He knew how much people hated being ostracised just for their looks.

"Heeh? You're not scared. Or are you just pretending?" Taiga asked with a smirk, bending down till his face was only inches away from Suzuki's.

"I see nothing to be afraid of." Taiga's provocation triggered Suzuki’s stubborn streak. Right now, Suzuki could be faced with the terminator and still refuse to back down.

A loud siren blared from the restricted sector, and Suzuki's brow rose in question. "Is that-?"

"Damn. They found out." Taiga cursed as the sounds of approaching footsteps drew near. He dove behind the bench, where he was shielded by the small hedge.

Three of the suit-wearing guards Suzuki had encountered on his first day ran up to him, tasers at the ready. "Did you see anyone suspicious run by here?"

Suzuki’s brow rose. "You mean the guy with the silver hair?"

Behind him, Taiga’s brow also rose. "...."

"Yes!” The guards impatiently demanded. “If you know where he is, spit it out!"

"Of course. He went in that direction." Suzuki pointed right in front of him. "Last I saw, he ran past the fountain."

"Good. Spread out!" The leader ordered, and his men dashed forward, chasing the false lead. The man looked over his shoulder and glared at Suzuki. "You should go to your room. This man is highly dangerous."

"Why, thank you for your concern," Suzuki said with a smile that degenerated to a smirk once the guard left.

Taiga exited his hiding spot when his pursuers left. He looked at the silent teen and remarked. "You didn't sell me out."

"Don't get me wrong,” Suzuki cautioned. “I just don't like them."

"Fair enough. I'm called Taiga. What's your name."

"Mato Suzuki."

"I'll remember it. See you later Sukki-chan," Taiga cooed as he ran off.

Suzuki watched him leave, confused by his familiarity. "Ah, the mood is ruined. Might as well go sleep." He left the field as a cloud blocked the moon's smile from the world.

This was the first meeting between two people whose fates were entwined in a spiral of bloodshed.