Some time passed after all of that, eventually all six of us ended up sitting around the central living room area. I had to admit however, the seats in this place were comfy as fuck, they would actually change to fit the user's overall body shape the moment that someone sat on them, in fact they even had various functions such as a massaging function or a temperature control function. Honestly...after months of my true body being trapped underground and unable to move much at all, well, let's just say that a relatively simple massage was the closest thing to heaven that I've felt in a while.
Anyway, we were all slowly getting to know each other over this period of time, eventually however the topic of the Trial came up, a topic I wasn't entirely comfortable with. Thankfully no one really went into too much detail about their overall experience in the Trial, however it was clear that some had it easier than others. Actually Lucius and Gringus seemed to have had a relatively pleasant experience overall, in fact Gringus only described his task as slightly frustrating while Lucius seemed to have had an actual good time overall in his Trial.
As for Iris and Brain, well, Iris seemed a little more reluctant to say much at all, however it didn't appear like she had a very good time overall. Brain on the other hand was a little too talkative to be completely honest, and considering that Gringus looked rather horrified by what he was hearing I decided that I didn't want to know what he was saying.
As for myself, well, just like Sapphire I decided not to say anything at all, Iris seemed to be the only one that actually understood why that was. A fact that actually made me suspect that either the others had never seen the Alien movies or they simply didn't have them in whatever universe they had come from previously. In all honesty I had to admit to myself that I was a bit envious of both Lucius and Gringus however, I knew it wasn't something they had control over but I couldn't help it.
Thankfully the conversation was cut short, mostly because it was around this time that Decker would return from wherever he had wandered off to, in fact it had taken him quite a bit longer then I had originally expected for him to return. Anyway, he hadn't returned alone however, oh no, he had actually come back with who I suspected to be the other Mentors of this little group of ours.
(Well...this is quite the range of interesting characters...) I hummed in thought as I took a glance around.
"Good to see you are all here safe and sound."
Yennora, she was Gringus's Mentor apparently, she was also the first to speak out of the bunch, and honestly, she seemed the most mature and level headed out of the group in my opinion. Moving on though, if I had to guess she was some kind of dryad, or maybe some kind of nature spirit, I didn't know exactly. Her skin was a pale green and her long "hair" seemed to be made of thick brownish roots with thorn covered vines wrapped around them. Additionally she had pitch black eyes that shimmered like obsidian stones, she also had almost shark like teeth and was wearing a rather beautiful dress made of red, orange and yellow leaves.
(Bad Carmen, bad Carmen...) I berated myself internally while averting my eyes away from her rather large "assets".
A-anyway, a second later a rather upbeat and excited voice pulled me from my thoughts. "We should have a party to celebrate!"
This rather excitable person next to me was apparently called Anna and she was Iris's Mentor, and boy did she have a lot of energy. As for her appearance, well, her form was that of a creature that resembled a very large female saber tooth tiger. Her fur was goldish yellow with Indian like markings across her body that glowed with an ethereal blue energy. Also of note were her amber and orange eyes as well as the layer of jagged golden crystals that ran down her spine to the tip of her tail.
"I believe that such a thing would be rather ill advised, after all the young ones may find the loud environment stressful considering the turmoils and challenges that they have more than likely endured." A robotic sounding voice mused with a slightly flat tone to it.
ED72, or 72 for short, is the Mentor of Brain, and in all honesty I could only assume that this was done on purpose as they had no brains that could be eaten. This was mostly because ED72 was a robot, a rather futuristic robot with four arms and mechanical blade-like wings made of dozens of small diamond-shaped panels that were folded neatly behind their back. Their face, which had no mouth, was mostly taken up by a large v-shaped, lime green coloured visor. As for their body, well, it was made up of several segments and parts that looked relatively slim and aerodynamic over all, they were mostly coloured black and green in colour with some dark red highlights here and there.
"Fair point..." Anna sighed, however she was somewhat hard to hear over the booming laughter in the background.
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, as wise and considerate as ever my mechanical friend!"
Basil was next, and oh boy was I not expecting to see a giant dinosaur human hybrid thing today. Sitting comfortably on a nearby sofa was what I could only describe as a mixture between a human, a Carnosaurus and Stegosaurus. He had a massive grin on his face and was wearing armour made of leather, metal and animal fur, armour that looked somewhat like a mixture between Mongolian and Nordic armor from medieval times. He had the head of a Carnosaurus with brownish green skin, large dorsal plates coming out of his back, dark green reptilian eyes and a tail that ended in a rather brutal looking thagomizer. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that he was Lucius's Mentor as well.
Finally we had Malice, the Mentor of Sapphire and the only one who hadn't said a word since entering the room. Honestly I couldn't tell if they were mute or just didn't want to speak, in fact I had no idea if they were male or female either. Anyway, they looked like some kind of demonic black knight from the middle ages, their armour was jagged and eerie looking, and yet it was also somewhat worn down and damaged in various places.
Oddly enough however, they had various mechanical devices such as monitors, tubing, wires and metallic augmentations, all of which had seemingly been implanted and surgically stitched into their darkly coloured armour. They even had some kind of microphone translator thing wedged into where their mouth plate should have been for fuck sake. In the end however, all of this made it look like they were constantly on life support, as if they'd die the moment they took their helmet off.
(I wonder if these were what they all looked like in their past lives or not...) I mused in thought, however I was soon brought back to reality a moment later.
"Hey, hey you." Anna whispered while lightly tapping my side with her tail. "Your Decker's little tag along right?"
"Y-yeah."
"Did the sign work? Wasn't it adorable?" She asked with stars in her eyes.
For a second I just looked at her confused until a realization hit me. (Ah, she's the one that suggested for him to hold that little thing.)
"It made him look far less intimidating, if that's what you were going for anyway." I admitted causing her to puff up her chest proudly.
"I knew that it would work."
Before she or I could say anything more however, Yennora once again spoke up. "Now then, I suppose that we should start things off with answering any questions you may have at this time." Before we could all speak up at once though she quickly raised her hand to stop us. "One at a time please."
"C-can...can we go back to our old worlds...?" Sapphire asked first, a fact that earned her several sympathetic looks.
"Yes and no" Yennora sighed while shaking her head slightly. "Don't get your hopes up though, to go back to your old world you'd first need to find your original universe in a sea of infinite other universes."
(Yeah...that's about what I was expecting.) I thought to myself, in the end I was mostly unfazed by the information, although some of the others looked pretty down in the dumps about it, not that I couldn't really blame them for that.
"Do not threat, in the future you may gain abilities and powers that may help you find your original universe, unfortunately such an event may take quite some time for you to reach." ED72 mused, causing Basil to nod his head in agreement.
"Indeed, although you should be more concerned about your quota, little ones."
"We have a quota?" Lucius asked a question that all of us newcomers were rather curious to get an answer for.
"Yes, you have a quota to meet, basically if you don't complete a specified number of missions within a certain time frame you'll, well..." Yennora said but hesitated to finish her sentence.
"You'll die, permanently this time." Decker clarified bluntly, a fact that earned him a glare from Yennora not that he seemed to care much at all.
"Do side missions also count? Or is it just the main missions that count towards it?" I asked and Anna was the one to respond this time.
"Both do in fact add towards your quota, yes."
(That's good to know I suppose...)
Anyway, next up to speak was Brain, not that I actually understood what he was actually saying mind you. "Brain brain...brain? Brain brain?" ( °ヮ° ) ?
Thankfully there were some people here that could understand him. "This whole thing is a system that was put in place to stop large numbers of people from just lazing around doing nothing of use." Yennora answered the first part while Basil answered the second part.
"As for the number of missions you little ones must take on, well, it mostly depends on your rank."
"Rank you say?" Gringus hummed with a curious tilt of his head.
"Indeed little one, indeed." Basil continued, still with that large toothy grin of his. "Some of you may already have a bit of knowledge about something called the Essence Of Change, for those that don't however, well, we'll go into more detail later but for now just know that it's rather important to say the least. Anyway, to put it simply, the more powerful your Essence Of Change becomes the more your rank will increase."
"Social, Regional, National, Continental, Planetary, Celestial, Sub-Galactic, Galactic, Dimensional, Universal, Multiversal, Omniversal, and finally, Singularity." Decker added with a yawn. "That's all of them in order if you were wondering."
"The higher your rank grows the more objectives you must complete within a designated period of time. Additionally, as you increase in rank and proficiency, the time required of you to complete all of these objectives is greatly increased as well." ED72 hummed, causing Yennora to nod her head as she spoke up next.
"Basically, as you are currently the lowest rank possible, you have to complete around fifteen missions every year or so. As you continue to rank up and advance that amount will obviously increase as well but so will your overall time limit."
"Is that in Nexus time? What I mean is, if you go to a world for several years will that affect your quota? I ask this because I'm assuming that time works differently in the Nexus." I asked with a somewhat concerned look.
"Good question." Anna chuckled before answering. "To put it simply, yes, the time you have to get the missions done only applies to how much time has passed in the Nexus, so you could spend years inside of another universe and come back and still have time to complete your quota."
(Huh...not as bad as I thought it would be.) I hummed but Yennora soon began to speak up once more, in fact she was about to drop a massive bombshell on us.
"Things will end up changing somewhat if you eventually reach the Dimensional rank somehow, although you don't have to worry about that for a very long time. Mostly because only around five percent of Alternatives actually manage to survive until that point and those that do usually take a few thousand if not hundreds of thousands of years to achieve such a high rank."
"A...a few th-thousand years?" Sapphire stuttered and I could tell everyone else was just as surprised by the revelation.
"Oh yeah, you're all basically immortal now." Anna said while chuckling at our reactions. "Well, by "immortal" I mean you just won't die from old age, you can still be killed."
(Well...damn...I was not expecting to suddenly become immortal today.) I muttered internally.
"Brain...brain brain..." ( ºΔº )
"What are you so shocked about you brain eating buffoon? Your undead, you wouldn't age either way." Gringus hissed causing Brain to look as if his mind had just been blown.
"Bra...brain?" (▪︎_▪︎)
"You really are an imbethal, aren't you?"
"Brain." (>ω•)
"So...so we have basically just been given eternal life for doing, well, nothing at all really?" Iris asked while ignoring the two idiots in the background.
"Aw come on, I wouldn't exactly say that you got it for doing nothing." Anna purred. "Each of you did survive your individual Trials, even if some of you had a slightly harder time than others, you all still had to struggle to survive whatever challenges you may have faced."
We all just took a moment to just absorb that information before I decided to break the silence. "And what exactly is the Essence Of Change used for?"
Yennora seemed to perk up when she heard that. "It has four primary uses of note." She mused while holding up four fingers. "Firstly, it allows you to slowly weaken and break The Chains Of The World..."
(Good to know that Goldy wasn't bullshiting me about that bit of information.) I thought to myself while ignoring most of this first part as I had already heard it before.
"Secondly, it acts as a kind of camouflage."
"Camouflage?" Lucius echoed with a puzzled look, or at least I think that was a puzzled look, honestly it was hard to tell.
"Yes, you see most gods and other powerful entities don't exactly like it when Alternatives barge into their universes unannounced and mess with their plans as well as the destinies of those within their worlds." Yennora explained with a slight smile on her face.
"Basically though, you can think of most gods and other such entities and forces as over protective storytellers, storytellers that really don't like it when someone comes along and fucks with the narratives of their stories and plots. Of course that isn't always the case, however the camouflage is still there to make sure that it is far harder for any such being to find and identify you through various means." She paused for a second before continuing with the explanation. "This is mostly because any changes that an Alternative makes to a universe is incredibly difficult to reverse, even those who can move through time and space would be hard pressed to undo the chaos that an Alternative can create."
"Can we move this along?" Decker huffed, causing the green skinned woman to roll her eyes at him.
"Thirdly, it can be used to defend yourself against the Essences wielded by the other three Concepts, in fact if you're stronger then your opponent you may be able to completely subdue them with relative ease."
"A little warning before we continue, be careful when you release your Essence from your body as it can have...well, rather interesting effects on your surroundings." Anna chimed in, causing me to wonder what these "effects" were.
"Indeed." Yennora hummed before returning to the explanation at hand. "And finally, it can not only be used to enhance the strengths and effects of your body and Gifts as well as any Artifacts you may have but it can also be used as a kind of substitute for other mystical energy sources. For example, things like spells which require magic to work can also be powered by your Essence."
(Great...more stuff to add to my ever growing list of things I need to figure out how to do.)
"If I may ask ma'am, what pray tell are these "Artifact" you speak of?" Gringus asked, an enquiry that was soon followed by another.
"And who exactly are the followers of the other Concepts?" Iris mused with a questioning look on her face.
"Artifacts are weapons, devices and tools that can be obtained through the System Shop, some are incredibly useful items that can heal almost any wounds or diseases while others are galaxy destroying weapons of mass destruction created by Chaos themself." ED72 responded with a relatively calm demeanor.
"Brain brain?" (O_o)
"Yes indeed, I said galaxy destroying."
"Damn..." Lucius muttered and I couldn't help but nod my head in agreement.
"As for the followers of the other Concepts, well, I'll try and keep this limited, after all, explaining them all in detail would take quite a while." Yennora sighed before getting to it. "The Four Concepts are Chaos, Order, Death and Balance. As for their followers, well, obviously the followers of Chaos are us, the Alternatives, and our main mission is to destroy the status quo, to shatter both fate and destiny."
"The followers of Order are the complete opposite to us in every way, they desire to connect all things to fate and destiny, to shackle everything to a script that can be easily controlled and regulated. Death is, well, Death, its followers are all mostly mindless killing machines that just want to destroy everything and return reality to an endless void where nothing exists."
"And finally there is Balance...the followers of Balance are rather complicated and secretive, in fact we barely know anything about them really. All the information we actually have on them however is this, they want to stop any one Concept from out competing the others, also despite their numbers being relatively few when compared to the followers of other Concepts they are all incredibly powerful." She breathed, finally finishing her explanation.
(She didn't really give much info about them, however at least I now know the names of the other Concepts.)
There was a bit of an awkward silence after that, I wasn't as surprised as the other five newly manifested but that was mainly because of my experience with Goldy. Anyway, after a while Anna broke the silence when she pulled several small crystalline objects out of nowhere and tossed one to each of us, said objects were both electric green in color and rectangular in shape.
"Consider this a small gift to congratulate your survival of the Trial"
"What exactly is this?" I asked confused as I looked at the object in my hands.
"It's the currency used by Alternatives, you can make more of them with Warped Ether." She hummed with a smile.
"And what pray tell is it called if you don't mind me asking?" Gringus asked and this time Decker was the one to respond.
"Most people just call them Shards, however you can call them whatever you want."
"Brain brain brain?!" (✪ω✪)
"Individually they would each be the equivalent of around one thousand Shards, although once you learn how, well, you'll be able to fuse and unfuse them to increase and decrease their individual value." Decker answered with a slight shrug.
"So I would be able to take this and split it into two separate ones which both equal five hundred each or something like that?" Iris asked, causing Yennora to nod.
"Correct." She muttered. "You can also store them inside your system access panel, once you learn how to open it that is."
(Good to know I guess.) I thought before gesturing with my hand to get Yennora's attention.
"Yes?"
Taking a second to think on how to ask my next question I decided to just come out and be rather blunt about it. "What exactly do you want from us? Decker said there were benefits to all this, however I'm not stupid enough to believe that's all there is to it." I hummed, causing everyone's attention to turn to me. "I apologize if I'm wrong about this but there's no rule or law in place that says you have to treat us as nicely as you have been doing, right?."
"Indeed, you're right, there is no such rule saying that we have to treat you with anything close to kindness, in fact we could just ignore you all for the most part and we'd still get the benefits for taking you in." She Responded with a slight smile on her face.
"So why? I'm not the type to believe that you're doing this out of the goodness of your heart."
"Decker my friend, your kid really gets how things work around here!" Basil laughed, causing my Mentor to shake his head in annoyance, not that I was paying them much attention at the moment.
"Well, there is one reason that comes to mind." Yennora hummed without changing her expression at all. "You all may one day become powerful enough to repay the debt for our help in these "formative" years of your's."
"Was that answer satisfactory?"
"It will do, for now..."