A frozen battlefield was laid before me.
And in that frozen battlefield 2 people before me.
One of them, most likely dead, was lying in her own pool of blood, while the other was leaning besides crumbled pieces of walls and floors.
In front of me was a screen with some choices left before me.
[You have returned. Please choose one of the following options:]
[Resume]
[Restart]
[Return]
I know that return means awakening from the game, while restart enables me to start all over. But would it have killed Ez not to have spoiled one of the alternate endings for me by hitting restart before he woke from the console?
But that is not the thing that grabbed my attention. The problem is the bunch of icons and the two words I can see in the corner of my vision.
There were two sets of icons: one for buffs, the other for debuffs. Each buff also had a timer beside it. However, one of the problems was that the icons for debuffs outnumbered the icons for buffs by 52. Along with that 99% of the numerous debuffs had the infinity sign on it. About 50 debuffs with the infinity sign.
The next problem was the 2 words in the corner, 'Insane mode'.
Pulling up the recent conversation log (I suddenly took notice of my unusual appearance and skin color, which soon led me to realise I don't recongnise this specific race Ez was playing.) I understood the numerous debuffs were the result of the endgame battle that just happened, between the hero 'Arthur' and the Main playable character.
Sighing I chose the option restart, which took me to an empty and white but familiar background.
[Choose Difficulty]
[Easy]
[Normal]
[Hard]
[Nightmare]
[Terror]
[Insane]
I was already bored living the past few decades of my real life in easy mode, this time I want some challenge at least in the game world. Although calling it a game world is a bit of a lie, as there is nothing pretty much separating this game world form the reality, including the flow of time, other than the reality is in a different realm compared to the game world.
[Insane difficulty is chosen]
[Choose your desired race]
[Human- The basic of all races.
Innate Talent- Jack of all trades. Gives a boost when picking up a new skill, till you are considered an average in that skill.
Innate Skill- Breed like rabbits. Due to this innate skill, you will find human almost everywhere you go, hence the reason you are treated as a neutral party in all settlements, until your actions dicate otherwise, either positively or negatively. Note due to this skill, you have a high fertility rate.]
[Elf- You know the tree huggers who always gets captured.
Innate Talent- No idea why they are so arrogant. Due to this innate talent, you will have more resonance with magic. Note due to the arrogance, you easily piss off everyone.
Innate Skill- Hold your head high in pride. You are able to easily charm, persuade, and intimidate anyone and anything, without even talking.]
An innate talent was available for everyone, while innate skill was only something available to the players aka the main character to use.
I scrolled through the other races along with an option to create my own race.
But suddenly my eyes was drawn to a black-skinned race.
[Demon- Trope wise the race of an endgame boss.
Innate Talent- Long live the Demon Lord. Lifespan is counted in thousands; hence all their skills, physical strength and magic develops extremely slowly until they are at least 1500 years old. On the bright side you can just outlive your enemies by hiding in a cave.
Innate Skill- Run! All beings cower at your sight making it much easier to terrify everyone. Note due to this skill everyone and everything hates and fears you, causing them to attack you at sight. This rule also applies to your own race as well, except they dislike you instead of outright hating you, and won't attack you unless provoked (which is easily done).]
This is a new race, along with that it is the one that Ez had chosen to play.
Interesting.
The talent and skills provides more of a disadvantage than an advantage.
The skill essentially locks me out of trading or interacting with any other races. If I remember correctly there are only 599 demons left by the time the main storyline starts. The main character along with the hero partners up to defeat these 598 demons and their leader. And all of those demons are at least 9000 years old, thus being adept in transformation magic to make it easier to trade with others.
If I remember right all main playable characters are born at the same time as the hero and given only 15 years to train, before the main storyline starts. This means by 15 years I have to be at least on equal footing with the hero's sidekicks at least.
The innate talent basically negates any amount of training I do, during those 15 years, basically leaving me more useless than a peasant. Unless I just sit and wait 1500 years, after which my training speed will pick up, which will be boring in itself.
As I was about to leave the race behind and choose another race, I remembered the frozen battlefield I saw when I entered the game a few moments ago.
Along with that, I remembered the conversation Ez had with Arthur the hero from the conversation log.
'You eradicated the majority of your race and destroyed everything we BUILT TOGETHER!!!'
That meant, he had somehow managed to convince both the hero and the demons to stop fighting and come towards an alliance, and somehow built something together for the rest of the world, with that innate skill and talent.
A grin wriggled its way towards my face.
This was what I wanted. A challenge.
Yep let's do this.
[Demon Race is chosen]
[Game start]
It was dark.
I opened my eyes to see the dark abandoned village in front of me.
Demons, also known as the true children of the world.
They are given birth by the combination of negative lingering emotion, high mana rich environment along with an absurd amount of luck and miracle. Hence the reason why there are only 599 demons in this world for the past 1100 years.
Excitedly, I stood up. I wobbled a bit with my black baby legs.
'Here we go. Time for some challenge!'
I stretched my baby legs as I prepared to start my grand journey.
Suddenly the world paused as a bunch of notification appeared in front of me.
[Insane mode penalty activated]
[No save and load.]
[No inventory]
[No map]
[Learning skills is purely dependant on your personal talent along with whatever boost or reduction given by your race skill or talent.]
[Every time you are hit by an attack, you will permanently lose 1% of your current stats. This is the case inconsiderate of how weak or strong the attack is.]
[Every loss you suffer(whether in a fight or a game), will result in a permanent application of one debuff.]
[Fainting, being unconscious, losing control of the body and sleeping will result in rapid degradation of a random skill followed by a debuff of 'skill training effectiveness reduced by 25% for 3 hours'.]
After reading the information on the screen I only had two words rolling over my head constantly.
'The fuck! The fuck! The fuck! The fuck! The fuck! The fuck!'
Especially the 5th penalty. Even attacked by flies or mosquitoes meant losing 1% of all current stats permanently, not to mention the other penalties stacking on top.
And to say that Ez actually reached the endgame and defeated Arthur with all this penalty. And that too only with 50 permanent debuffs, meaning only about 50 losses.
Now I was pretty sure Juliet won't be happy for too long.
Forgetting all that I carried on. I wanted to see how long I can go on.
-----------------------------
{Ez PoV- 1 Week later}
I walked out of the underground facility whistling, towards Ellis and Luke who were standing inside the store.
"Let's go." I said while throwing one of the successful product- not prototype- towards Luke, for him to carry.
Catching it he turned it around before looking at me in confusion.
���Your highness, may I ask what this is?" Luke asked while twirling- the small sphere the same size of a seed- around .
"That there is one of our successful products, an improved live transmission device, with a range of more than 100 meters." Hearing my answer Ellis furrowed his brows.
"Your highness, what do you mean by 'range of more than 100 meters'?" Ellis asked in an obvious state of confusion along with a rising level of worry and concern.
It was obvious that he slowly started to connect the dots that Albert had fooled him that time when he told Ellis that he was the reason I got hurt when we came back from the grey zone.
"Live transmission device that we have currently are only able to transfer the transmission within a 100-meter range.
Anyone outside of that range will not be able to see that transmission. Hence the reason why I was always inside the academy during the graduation exam, in order to monitor for any cheaters.
However, with this device, range won't be a problem anymore." I stated while walking towards the court, while obviously sensing the controlled anger and rage radiating from Ellis.
"Your highness is it possible to send transmission more than the 100-meter radius, without your device?" Ellis asked just to clarify that Albert had indeed tricked him.
"It is possible to extend the radius to 10 kilometres." I answered him, as his rage cooled off.
"However, to do that you will need the transmission device to be stationary along with having 5 immobile 10 meter tall booster equipment's set up within the 100-meter initial range.
It kinds of defeat the purpose of using the transmission device for field missions, where agents are on the constant move with the transmission device. Hence the reason we only use these transmission devices only for monitoring, like during the graduation exams." I shattered his barrier holding off his rage.
Even Luke could sense something was wrong with Ellis now.
I could sense that Ellis was struggling with the choice of telling me the truth or not.
However, time waits for no one... (except for those able to control time perfectly). And currently, I don't have access to that sort of power, which I used to, hence the reason I increased my pace towards the court.