The sun felt nice and crisp on his body. The sounds of the ocean calm him... The sand under his feet feeling more vivid than it felt at a real beach. He walks further and further into the ocean... Towards the sun, as it sets. He feels the waves, crashing against his legs... He died hours ago, in a hellish, traumatic experience. He doesn't understand why he's stuck here, but he doesn't mind. It's quite a nostalgic place. The sun finally goes, and the moon comes up, the moonlight brightening the sea, making the water shine with a brilliance unheard of by most. It was but a figment of his imagination, but, it was truly one of the most beautiful scenes to have ever been imagined by him...
Basta. The Guildmaster of the guild, Bastard's Mistake. Ranked 9th on the Top One Hundred Exors List. Berserker. Fucking strong. And owner of the skill, 'Multiplier', which allowed his stats to multiply in the formula (stat x n) where Stat referred to, as obvious, his stats, and n was the number of enemies he killed.
'Man... Lisa, Em, and Annie would've loved this place.' He thinks, remembering his wife and two children, who, sadly passed years before he did... 'I wonder how the guild's doing... I hope Noah can handle being the guildmaster, now, since I'm dead, and everything. I still had a lot to teach him, but... Oh, shit. Am I really worrying about that shitty genius? He'll be fine. Maybe. Even geniuses have their limits... like me... Of course an SSS-Tier Tower would break me... lucky i even completed it. Oh, right, fuck was with the shitty system. (Die for the reward)... Ha. Like that cruel bastard would ever give a single person the reward for an SSS-Tier?' He laughs... Right until a notification appears.
(Item: Mistake Stone will be forceably used. Please, stand by.)
'... the fuck? That's not... Wasn't this just a dream, or something?'
(Sa...Ve... The... She... Help... Find... L.... Kill... Julius.)
'Bitch, what?' He exclaims in his mind. 'Is this bastard ill? And, who's L? Lisa? No, well... maybe? My darling was a genius, so... maybe? Another thing, who the fuck is Julius?' A few questions like this ran through his mind.
Suddenly, a flash of light appeared in front of his eyes, and then it all went to black. He couldn't feel anything, just his own voice and his brain. He had no form, at this point in time. It stayed like that for a while, so Basta decided to count the seconds... which quickly turned to hours, then days. Then came the first month. And the next. Then a year. And he kept counting. Simply counting. He might've lost track somewhere, but he just assumed a set amount of time happened and moved on. Year two, he started hearing voices. Year three, he goes a little insane... Year four, five and six were rough. After that, it was calm, and he kept counting. At year twenty of the pitch blackness, finally, a message appeared in front of his eyes.
(Humanity has fallen. Game Over.)
"Game Over... motherfucker." He kept on counting.
(Mistake Stone has been used, User will now be killed if he makes the mistake of... again)
"Mistake? I made a lot, try to specify, little bitch." Basta laughed, already highly tired of this bull-
______________________________________
The sun hit his eyes, now... a bit diffused by the curtain... It was cold, thanks to the AC...
'Mm... Wait. Cold? AC? What happened to ICER unit?...' He got up and looked at his hands. 'Uh... these look around 6 inches smaller...' Basta was confused. Why was he smaller? He looked around... His surroundings look like how they did a while before he began playing games for a whole month... "Wait a fucking minute... Holy son of a bitch!" Basta shouts. "System!" A notification appears in front of him.
(System functions unavailable till start of game. Please try again when the Gratismark occurs. Till then, please try to form an optimal bodily state.)
'Gratismark? Wasn't that what the system called the day the towers appeared?' Basta thought back to the oldest notifications he remembered... 'Hmm... Guess that leaves me...' He checks the calendar on the wall. 'Roughly 200 days? I could try to learn a martial art in that time, since those who knew martial arts began with a skill and a title from the start... what were they, again?' Basta tries to recollect...
'I forgot the names... but the title was one that increased strength, dexterity, and endurance by five... and the skill was a passive one that increased EXP gain by 10% and allowed users to master PRAC skills faster... It'll be amazing, later on. Plus, you even got a different skill for every martial art. Taekwondo got a pretty ok PRAC skill, Boxing got a passive which increased Damage, yadda yadda...'
PRAC skills are skill that require practice to master, and could evolve when one reached a certain degree of master with them. For example, Swordsmanship would become Advanced Swordsmanship at 60% mastery, and, 100% mastery would lead you to gain the permanent skill, Sword Unity, a broken skill that allowed the sword to move in union with the body, and make it bend to the user's will. If Advanced Swordsmanship gave you the ability to manifest and manipulate aura, Sword Unity would allow you to do whatever you want with the sword aura, the only limit being your imagination.
There was only one downside, that being that you had to improve your mastery with hard work. There were no shortcuts like adding points or spending gold, which is why skills that help improve the speed of PRAC skill mastery were so important.
Basta got up, and walked out his house... and breathed... 'Ahh... air was once this clean? Mana must've really messed it up...'
He then proceeded to run to his nearest gym.
'Can't do the same shit as last time now. Why would I play games when I'm going to be in one?' He laughs, and stops in front of the door.
"Baron Gym... Shitty name, but it works, for now." He observes, before he walks in, greeted by the receptionist. "Welcome to Baron Gym. Wanna get buff? Fill out this form." Was the deadpan, sad, monotone greeting, and then she went back to scrolling Outstagram Bits... Basta took the form and filled it up. He gave it to the receptionist, paid her, and walked in... to go straight to the punching bags. 'Been a while... wonder how these'll do? I should look up videos...' He takes out his phone. 'What was my password again? Was it... no, no... Maybe... nope. not her either... Who was i dating?!' Basta tries to remember the last girl he dated before the Gratismark, out of the unnecessarily long list.
'It's shit like this that makes me regret my old fucking wannabe Casanova days... Why the fuck did I date 12 girls a year for the past twelve years of my fucking life? Oh... right. The fucking curse... Haha...' Basta recalls how every girl he ever dated had some horrible shit done to them within a month...
Girl 1, Ava, cute, sweet girl, good grades, liked football. Got shot up in a school shooting, also the day Basta was sick. Girl 2, Natasha, tall girl, gorgeous, weak, but really smart, dated a five foot tall Basta when she was six foot one. Got hit in the skull with a metal baseball bat, by her uncle, bled out. Girl 3, raped. Girl 4, only her and her dog left, everyone else in her family killed. Girl five, dad killed mom in front of her. Girl 6, Her dad was betrayed by a business partner, got chewed out, company stolen, went broke, drank poison, and tried making her drink it too, she lived, he didn't...
'I was, no, probably still am, a walking time bomb... fuck did I want a girlfriend for? Was i a sociopath or something?' A new set of questions rose up in Basta's head. 'The last one... died in Gratismark, I think... I should just break up with her. Maybe then she'll live, right?' Basta suddenly got a call, from the name Marie... "Basta, hun... where are you? I'm at your apartment door." She says as soon as he answers in a sweet voice.
'Fuck. Marie? She was nice... I don't think I wanna use the "I'm cheating on you" excuse... Maybe "We don't click anymore?" No... That's just a lie, she knows it. Aha!' "Mmm... Hey... Marie... Yeah, uh... I've been thinking, about, us, y'know... and, you're great, no, you're amazing, actually... Smart, beautiful, Sweet, Intelligent, but... I'm not. I think you're too good for me..." Dividing Slash. "Plus, I heard Daven liked you, and that just makes things a little awkward... And, Daven's a great guy... I think he'd be better for you... Than someone like me, y'know?" Piercing Stab. "I'm just a weak, short, idiot... And.. you already know about the curse thing... I just... don't wanna hurt you, or Daven, or myself. Anyone... please... I think we have to break up. And, we can still be friends, right? It's your decision, in the end, but, please, listen to the ramblings of this idiot who cares about you so much..." Fatality.