!! SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT: AGREEMENT.
He listened for more, to see whether the System would expand on that agreement, but he was met only with silence. The System was capable of reading his thoughts – or so it seemed – and interrupting whenever it saw fit, but it was making it clear that such interruptions would not always be useful.
Cautiously, Vol reviewed his options, and took in his situation. He looked down on his clothes, noting their torn state. He recalled the spears that he pierced him, falling dead on the icy cobbles, as he felt the eyes of Oliver Patrick burning into him. That hadn't been a dream, had it?
!! SYSTEM REMINDER: YOUR WISH HAS BEEN GRANTED. FULL HEAL GIVEN. ALL WOUNDS, MINOR AND MAJOR HAVE BEEN CLEANSED FROM THE VESSEL.
Vol listened again. He grunted in acknowledgement. No other explanation could make sense. His clothes were frozen with his own blood, red, and terrible. His body heat must have been absent, at least for a time, if they were to get themselves in such a state.
Now, as he stood, in the brief window of winter sunshine, he felt the blood thaw against him, resuming the coagulation that it had attempted before freezing.
His clothes were a horrible mess. The fur coat that he'd worn as he'd fought was all but unusable. It clung to him by the barest of threats, and with every swing of his axe, the tears in it had accentuated further, until now, it barely clung to his arms.
His shirt underneath it was no better. Wool spun and thick, it would have kept him warm, if he wasn't quite so shredded. With the thin layer of sweat that had coated his body from swinging his axe, he was even more sensitive to the winter wind as it blew through the ruins of the town.
Glancing up at the sky, he saw that the sun had already reached its zenith. It was past midday. There would be a few hours of sunlight left – if he was lucky, and the snows didn't move in – before the air temperature would drop even further, and they'd be plunged into one of those terrible, freezing winter nights.
That would kill him, Vol realized with a start. Alive he might be now, supposedly by the will of the System but he wouldn't remain that way much longer.
He had but one question for the System, before he fully accepted it.
"What God granted me this blessing?" He asked.
!! SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT: ANSWERS RELATED TO SYSTEM ORIGIN LOCKED. DEFAULT ANSWER GIVEN: YOUR WISH HAS BEEN GRANTED.
He grunted in reply. Of course, it wouldn't be so easy, but he didn't mind that, not as much as another would. He hefted his axe up, and spared the village a perfunctory glance, looking for anything that might be useful.
Vol had grown up knowing the power of the Gods. He'd seen it in his brother, Jok. They had sparred together when they were youths, and while Jok was always stronger, being so much older, there had still been an element to his strength that Vol could dream of reaching, that he could understand.
That changed when he received Varsharn's first blessing. When his training and his victories in battle had been enough that she had rewarded him, his strength exploded, as did his progress. He became a different person, virtually overnight, by the will of the glory that he'd won.
Only the finest warriors received Varsharn's blessing, and it immediately set them apart from their peers. The Stormfront men worshipped a different God – Claudia, the Goddess of Progress. It was said that Oliver had been blessed four times by her already, and was well on his way to his fifth. That was what gave him his strength.
And so, with such an understanding, that for a warrior to be strong, he must suffer, he must train, and he must impress the Gods. Vol did not question it. If the God that blessed him did not want to be named, then, so be it, but he knew it to be a blessing from the Gods regardless, just like what his brother had received.
"Finally," he murmured to himself, truly accepting the fact now. It wasn't what he'd thought receiving a blessing would be like, but it did not matter. The strength was there to be proffered, and there was even a promise in it for him. The slaying of Oliver Patrick.
He recalled his death, he recalled those golden eyes, and he reaffirmed his promise to himself: he would be the one to take Oliver Patrick's head.
Chapter 2 – More Than An Ordinary Man
After coming to terms with the System, at its most basic level, Vol's survival instincts began to kick in. He wandered through the debris of Bolrif, startling crows as they feasted on bodies, and he looked for something that he might be able to use.
Clothes were where his primary interest lay, but everything was a mess, frozen. To dry any of the clothes out – even if he wanted to ignore the blood – it would have taken a few hours before the fire. A few hours that he did not have.
He'd made a mental note of both of the quests the System had delivered him. Again, those were not things he questioned. In the Yarmdon tradition, Varsharn had sent many warriors on quests, in return for her blessing, and her strength. It was how the Goddess herself grew to gain the following she had. This was no different to that, he thought, but simply on a smaller scale.
Food, and clothes, those were what he kept an eye out for, as well as the shelter that the first quest demanded he find. He was glad there, that at least the System's wants, and his own wants aligned. He did not much feel like dying again.
The more he walked, the more his mind began to wake up, filling itself with the thoughts of battle, as it attempted to process them, and the shock that came along with it. Death was a recurring theme, as his mind struggled to wrap his head around just what had happened. That sinking feeling, the slipping into the void, the weakness that came when the spears pierced his organs, and the pain.