"These are the other seven. And our goal is to become the next Great Patriarchs and given your reactions earlier, we agreed to include you in our plans, so that we can have the best possible chance of getting closer to that title. But for that, we have to explain you all the specifics, that we have found, about this war, the rules about the chip and the next ones that will come soon."
Well, I have to admit that a lot of questions just popped into my mind. But one in particular caught my attention: Why the two of us?
What do we have more than the others that they choose us and above all, they really trust them so much that they think they have a chance to win this war.
I admit that my goal is also to win this war, but it would be utopian to believe that I could win it. There are almost 20 billion of us on this planet, which is only 1/20,000,000,000 chances that I will come out alive.
So to expect 10 of us to make it out alive is just absurd.
"I'm sure you must have a lot of questions, but before you ask them, I'm going to enlighten you on two or three points of my plan. Well then, I'll start by telling you everything I know about the specifics of this famous chip.
...
He explained to me many things I didn't know about this chip.
The first: No matter how serious the injury, as long as you don't kill the person in front of you, nothing happens.
The second: Breaking public property intentionally leads to direct death.
Third: If you create a "contract" with your opponent, defined by precise rules, killing him will have no repercussions on yourself.
The fourth: Removing the chip the hard way, leads irreparably to instant death.
And the fifth, which seems to be more of a supposition than an actual fact: In a very small number of people, a "mistake" would have been made and they would have a second chip planted in the other wrist. This would create strange phenomena in their bodies, such as the understanding of a second language, certain parts of their bodies starting to change and even reaching a certain mutation of their limbs. But all this is just rumours, nothing concrete.
But I must admit that learning all this has really helped me a lot. Even if I'm sure he's hiding something from me.
And my goal is of course to find out what that something is.
"I really thank you for teaching me all this, but I still have a lot of questions I would like to ask you.
"Yes, no problem, I'm listening."
"Earlier you said that you knew that new rules were coming, but how could you know that?
"Well, it goes without saying that their message was not clear, and that they were implying something. Do you agree with me?"
"Yes, I too had this feeling of lies or ulterior motives when they spoke. But to think that they are making up new rules, you have to have a very good imagination.
"Yes, we too were in the same state as you when we came to this conclusion, we thought it was totally absurd, but on reflection we managed to find at least 3 new rules that could appear in their next speech.
The first one, which seems rather obvious, but which they didn't specify, is that all 8 of them will participate in this "Final War".
The second one, it may seem very hard to do, but given their technology I think that when the war starts we will all be scattered all over the world. We haven't figured out how they're going to do it yet, but we think it's within their grasp.
The third one is going to have something to do with that chip. Earlier I told you about these transformations that would happen when someone has two of them. Well I think everyone will have more or less that and unlock some kind of 'power' or their body will have an extra feature.
And finally a fourth one, but this one I was the only one of the 8 of us to know until today. It will probably sound totally irrational, but I noticed that we didn't know any historical facts that were noticed more than 500 years ago. So before the year 0 we don't know what happened on Tarria. So I have come to believe that every 500 years the 8 Great Patriarchs start this "Final War" again for some reason I don't know. That's one of the reasons why I really want to win this war, to find out what is behind this "Final War" and who these Great Patriarchs really are.
"Your first three rules all seem feasible to me, but for the fourth, I am very sceptical, as are your seven companions around me, they too seem just as baffled as I am.
"His reasoning holds true."
Once again, I was totally surprised when I heard Alia say this sentence.
She, who seemed to be totally uninterested in this speech, proved the opposite by approving this rule straight out of a science fiction book.
"Wait, Alia, do you really think this rule makes sense?
"Not really in terms of the form, but the substance seems totally plausible to me. Why is it that we don't know anything about our world before the year 0. Well, that's when modern writing was invented, so nothing could have been written before then, but we don't have any records of anything, so it seems really strange. So I do think that this war must be repeating itself every 500 years, but for some reason that is still unknown at the moment.
"Phew, I'm glad someone has the same view as me.
But after teaching you all these things about war, I do hope you will give a positive answer to our request."
"Before we accept your offer of a deal, I would like to at least learn more about you and your teammates."
"Oh yes, of course, it's only natural.
So, I'm Shanlen.
Shanlen - Introduction |
- Gender: Male.
- Name: (Unknown) Shanlen.
- Age: 22 years old, born on (Unknown).
- Height: 1.75 meters.
- Weight: (Unknown).
- Hair / Colour: Light blue hair, shaved on the sides and back and waving from left to right on the top of his head.
- Eye Colour: Crystal blue.
- Physical Characteristics: A very well sculpted body.
- Clothes : Black sports shorts, white t-shirt and black tracksuit (the zipper always stays open), and white shoes.
- Strength: Almost superhuman strength (able to break a shoulder by simply squeezing it in his hand).
- Abilities: (Unknown).
Leaving his incredible strength aside, he looked like a normal young adult. This does not seem to be the case for the 7 around him. Some of them look more or less normal, but others don't really look human anymore.
"And as for the 7 people you see here are, Chauk, who is furthest to the right. To his left is Menelle. To the right of Menelle is Ojoth. Then to my left is Isobe, next to him is May, to his left is Vasoros and lastly Rujin.
Well, now that the introductions are made, I hope to have your support during this war.
He may turn this sentence in the nicest possible way, but it is still a threat that forces us to accept his agreement.
But then, joining them is not such a bad idea since these 8 people will be mere pawns that I can throw away without the slightest regret when the time comes.
But before that I have to do everything to get along with them.
So I stood up and stretched my arm over the table towards Shanlen and said.
"We accept your agreement and we are now part of your team.
In return, he also held out his hand and replied.
"I am glad you accept."