More than a year passed in boredom and it was now the fateful day.

The day of my escape, to be precise. The plan had already been made a long time ago, and now I just needed to actually make it work. Until now, I “excelled” in the experiments so dear old Aizen thought I should be placed in a better facility. Meaning I would be taken somewhere else. Today.

‘Yeah, no way this is suspicious.’

Of course, since nobody knew what was going to happen except me, it was entirely normal. Though transfers were usually suspicious anyway, now that I thought about it. Whatever.

About my abilities, nothing actually changed. Again, no Mana in prison. What I did gain though, were some damn muscles. With a lot of time on my hands, I did a lot of exercise, not even mentioning the fights they made me participate in. I also had some killer forearms, courtesy to carving everyday.

Oh, and I managed to do some good stuff with my Trait. I could somehow deactivate the immunity in a part of my body (and all of it) then do some mumbo-jumbo and activate some of the toxins I gained immunity to. As it turned out, those toxins were still present in my system and I could activate them anytime.

And it was so good! Now I had some actual defense for when chaos unfolded. I mean, I did know how to fight but frankly, it was at the level of a street thug.

Right now, I was being rounded up, along with some other who fared better and would be transferred along with me. None of us looked normal anymore. I didn’t want anything to give me away so I let a few after-effects of the poisons show. A big patch of my skin was blackened and full of wrinkles, while my eyes had some cloudy black stuff in them. It kind of impaired my vision but my acting had to be 10/10.

And that wasn’t the worst part. I couldn’t actually control my Trait to show symptoms on its own so right now, I was controlling it to avoid those regions. It did drain quite a bit of my concentration, but I would get it all back when the act was over, and it helped a bit to train my control. Anyway, not much longer and I could stop.

Escorting the group were none other than my good friends Alinna and the World’s #1 Bodyguard.

They didn’t bother to put anyone to sleep, just some basic cuffs and a portable System jammer thingy. Similar to the one in the prison, it blocked any information from going out of the area through the System, just that this one was a portable version, with a smaller range and fewer slots.

Since there were only ten captives, it was just perfect.

So after we accepted the prompt we left. I always wondered why Alinna, being so high-up and so powerful would escort us nobodies. From all the stories I’ve read and using my big boy intuition it was probably some sort of training for discipline and all that, since she was a bitch anyway.

Anyway, it didn’t matter. We left the same way it came in, through the endless winding tunnels, much-too-lively town, past the gates and into the wilderness. No big flying boat this time, only plain walking.

A cool thing about the Beast World was that its vitality was amazing. You could cut a tree or even a forest and it would grow back in a few days. That also meant no roads, unfortunately for some. So we took a dirt path through the woods, under the shade of some plain looking trees.

We walked for about an hour or so, (I suck at assessing time so don’t count on it) when our escorts stopped. I was about to make a cheeky comment and ask what was wrong, but the last thing I knew was something coming at me and I was out cold. Lovely!

I awoke to a cacophony of sounds, the prevalent ones being screams, yells and grunts. Looking around, all I could see were bodies and blood, belonging to either guards or prisoners. Trusting my instincts, I stayed down and played dead.

Actually, when I was sure nobody was looking I grabbed a knife and put it on me, before taking some blood from a nearby prisoner (thanks buddy, I’ll remember you) and spreading it wherever I could on my body.

Ten out of ten camouflage. I knew it normally wouldn’t work, some eeasy spells and they could detect my life force but I was counting on the fight to keep them busy.

‘Anyway, whatever happens happens.’

After a while the fighting died down and I opened my eyes just a little bit to see Alinna and Drag supporting each other, both full of blood and… ash? Yeah, some fire spells.

No way in hell did I think I could take them on even if they were like this. So the act went on. They then chugged some liquid - a recovery potion, probably - and didn't even bother to check if anyone was alive. With a "whoosh" they were… gone.

And I could feel something bubbling up inside me. Something beautiful. Something… new.

I could feel it. Freedom. I actually wanted to cry. And I was close to it, but no tears came. I couldn't even remember the last time I cried, to be honest. Sometimes, it was pretty unnerving, wanting to shed even a single tear but literally being unable to. I got over it at some point but I could still remember the feeling.

The whole situation was weird, but certainly a good one. And kind of confusing. What now?

-----------

I lied down for a while, staring at the azure sky. I loved it, but I had stuff to do. I was sitting next to a hypothetical gold mine, and wild beasts weren't very friendly, especially when talking about a pile of juicy meat.

With a happy sigh, I got up and stretched, then I did something I always wanted. Raising my hands to the sky without a care, I yelled as loudly as possible.

"Woohoo!"

"Damn satisfying. Now time for work," I smiled.

Those bodies weren't gonna get looted by themselves so I chose the most good-looking one, one of the guards who talked a bit with Drag, making him possibly the highest-ranking. Standing above the body, I put my hand on it and a screen appeared. Now I was getting giddy. I'd seen this before, but now it was my first time.

Looking at the blue screen and the small boxes on it, I gave a mental command. It instantly disappeared and an identical one appeared again.

With a smile, I checked what I got. Five boxes at the top, along with a load of other ones separated, some containing stuff and others not.

I finally got an inventory! You see, every person had one, even the poorest convenience store worker. But not everyone could use it.

How it worked was that you had five boxes at the top, meant for storage devices - usually rings - each having a dimensional space in it. The System combined those spaces, giving you one big dimension, so if you had five rings, each with five cubic meters, you would get 25 cubic meters of space.

It didn't give you anything special, just that you could combine those spaces and get a big one, instead of placing objects in each one separately. It also gave you the option to see each item in a box instead of using your mind to access the ring. Pretty cool.

A bad thing though, was that if you were killed anyone could just come to your body, touch it and with a mental command everything was gone. Nothing was stopping you from wearing the rings on your body anyway, just that the killer would need a longer time to loot you.

Not a problem for me, why would a dead man care what happened to his stuff? At least I wouldn't.

It seemed like the System promoted looting, since you could also take any system function that the dead person had in the same way. In this case, the guard captain guy or whatever had a clock function. Now I could tell the time! Hell yeah!

With that done, I went to the rest of the bodies, leaving the prisoners for last anyway since I didn't have any high hopes.

Same thing, touch the body and take everything. Sadly, there were no other goodies except the stuff in their inventory, which I didn’t bother to check yet. Among the prisoners there were three who had hunting knives, and one that had… a spoon? Each to their own, I guess.

That done, I sat on the guard captain and thought of my plans from now. Too bad, my contemplation barely started when I heard rustling in the bushes all around me.

“Yeah, I’m out, see ya,” I shot up and ran as fast as I could.

Fortunately, whoever was there had a bigger interest in the bodies than me.

—-----------

After about ten minutes, thinking I was far enough, I stopped and plopped down near a tree, almost panting my lungs out. Good thing I did at least a bit of exercise in prison.

The uninvited guests interrupted my thoughts, but I was honestly thinking of going back to the town. Yeah… I didn’t really want to go back to that place but chaos was the best opportunity to steal some stuff.

Indeed, I was crazy, but no way I would pass up an opportunity like that.

The bodies I looted didn’t have anything too special, a tent, some weapons like knives and swords, a few sets of armors too heavy for me, some food and drinks and… Mana Crystals! Yes, the ones from stories, the ones that contained pure Mana and could be used in all kinds of ways.

And it worked the same here. Mana Crystals could be used as currency, fuel for all kinds of spells and all that good stuff. They couldn’t be used for raising your levels, like in some novels, but they were still damn useful. And cost a lot.

Granted, the captain guy only had ten Small ones but damn, was I happy.

Oh, I also got some money. For money though, it worked a bit differently. The System had a special “storage” kind of function for it. Any System currency would be stored in it and would be displayed in a corner of the screen. When you wanted to pay for something you just had to will the System to make the payment and you were done.

Anyway, inspection done, I got ready for the road. I found a hatchet, some shoulder pads and some light armor in one of the rings so I put them on. I kind of had a history with hatchets so I chose it since it was the one I knew best.

While I was inspecting my body I noticed the scarred patch of skin was good as new. Turns out my Trait worked by itself while I was asleep. My eyes were cured too, now that I thought about it.

All done, I got up and headed back towards the literal place that has kept me captive for more than a year. Lovely.

Sadly, I didn’t have any superpowers like everyone else so the trek was long and boring. Which kind of got me thinking, ‘Should I turn back or not’ but I stuck with it. When I finally got back to the town, it was complete and utter ruin, just as I expected. I sneaked into a close bush and watched… nothing. Somehow I missed all the fighting in this life.

The wall that once stood there was now rubble, and any houses near it were now dust. The outside perimeter was devoid of any living things, any fighting now having moved deep inside. Not to mention that big beautiful boat collapsed in shambles in the distance.

I made my way through the rubble, keeping low and scouting for anyone left behind. I moved to the first body and inspected it. It was one of the inhabitants, dressed in simple jeans and a white t-shirt. It was crazy to think one of these normal-looking people could fight Mages throwing fireballs around.

I touched the corpse and grimaced.

“Shit.”

There was no inventory. They looted everything.

Change of plans, I actually had to kill someone to get loot. I sighed, but nonetheless moved on, still taking the body in my storage, along with every other one I saw. A little surprise for later.

It took quite a while for me to traverse the fallen buildings, sneaking around rubble and keeping an eye out for any goodies left behind. Of course, they didn’t actually loot everything, I found some inventories, actually containing some good stuff. From about ten bodies I acquired about 50 Magic Crystals. No idea why the townspeople had more than a guard, but okay.

Anyway, I got to the plaza with the tower in the middle, and I could finally see the actual fighting. Two gorilla-guards stood in front of the circular building, muscles bulging, ready for action (yes, that’s what I named them, bite me).

On the side were hundreds of guards, assistants from the experiments, the people living in the town, along with Alinna and Drag, all with their weapons out. Alinna wielded a rapier, while her bodyguard had a big-ass sword, the one you usually see in anime. Each had crystals and some glowing stones embedded in them.

On the other side there were about a thousand soldiers, a hundred Mages clad in yellow, (piss-colored yellow if you ask me) and four gorilla dudes.

The ones in robes were the kind of Mages that only trained their Cores and usually only launched spells from their fancy wands. They were also the type to never shut up about their riches and always complain about the lower class.

Right now both sides were staring at each other. Alinna was apparently yelling something at their leader, one of the robed Mages, while that guy was yelling back.

Sadly, no magic hearing for me so I couldn’t hear anything. Though from how it looked the talks weren’t going well. And I honestly didn’t even know why she was trying, they were already in the heart of the town, only an idiot would stop at this point.

And as I predicted, the invaders’ leader launched a lightning bolt straight at the Red Bitch. Unfortunately, Drag got in its path and blocked it using his huge sword.

Then everyone… stopped? Goddamnit, just when it was getting good. When I was wondering why, the ground rumbled. Something was definitely happening, but I didn’t know what. It seemed like they did, since everyone looked panic stricken. Then, like it was coming from Hell itself, a green flame emerged from the tower entrance and blew the defenders away.