A bright golden light slowly flooded the darkness that was Kalen's vision. The light overwhelmed him. It's shine grew brighter until it felt like it would tear a hole through his eyes.
'My eyes?' His hands hurriedly gripped his face in what he could only describe as unbridled agony.
"Aghhhh!" Kalen forcefully pried his hands away from his head in an attempt to see his surroundings.
'Fuck…' He surveyed his evenironemnt as his vision slowly started to return.
Kalen began to identify familiar objects around him. A marble counter, an elegant sink, bath, and flooring all adorned in lavish gold finishes.
'How many times…' He dredged up what little energy he had in him to look up in front of him.
What greeted his sight was a beautiful oval mirror, and fixated in the middle was a reflection of a pale boy with short straight black hair and deep purple eyes locked with his own gaze.
The eyes of the boy in the reflection shined as a flash enveloped Kalen's vision once more.
[Name: Cordan Ranlen
Race
Age<17>
Level<9>
HP<100/130>
STR<12>
AGI<16>
INT<7>
MANA <200/200>
~
Trait
Skills
Perks
]
Blood was dripping from his nose and falling to the cold, smooth floor with a pitter patter.
"And I thought this couldn't get any shittier."
Memories flashed through Kalen's mind. This cursed turnout of events all began with that horrid game.
Trials of Artriad. An inconspicuous offline RPG game that wasn't too positively or negatively received on the market on release, but was appreciated nonetheless. It was popular due to the stringent constraints it placed on the player base and its elevated difficulty.
The game took place on the continent of Artriad. It was a magical-fantasy setting where you created a custom character and were inserted into the storyline. Each character was unique as the save was deleted upon death.
Upon the request of a goddess you set out into the world to oversee the completion of various quests and missions as a hero. These quests would work to keep the plot in check and ensure the safety and stability of Artriad. However the quests would scale to absurd difficulties that eventually deterred the majority of its players from the game in late stages.
Kalen Reynolds had innocently purchased Trials of Artriad when he was younger and was undoubtedly spurred by the competitiveness of the game design. He grinded the throughout his highschool years but found the game dry and lackluster by the time he began approaching college.
How Kalen so dearly wished that only his loss of appeal inconvenienced him. But exactly 4 years after the game aired on a day he could never forget, as he was browsing his computer about to pack it for college he was dragged into Trials of Artriad through the screen of his monitor.
A young 19 year old Kalen was abducted from his familiar Earth with family, friends, and responsibilities to the harsh and unforgiving world that was Trials of Artriad along with the sickening voice line upon character creation: "Child, you are among the chosen. Remain steadfast in faith. Grasp your path with this sacred blessing. Take hold your fate, mortal. Deliver salvation upon Artriad."
These words marked the start of Kalen's endless road of suffering.
But being kidnapped was only the beginning of Kalen's concerns.
Kalen, or rather Cordan now, was summoned to Artriad among with 11 other players. This wasn't the first time either to the misery of Cordan.
To Kalen's understanding, each summoning was diffferent. Each time seemed random and there was no telling who you would possess. From a random side character to one of the main protagonists, each was a possibility. Ever since he had first been summoned into a body of this world, he had been tirelessly striving to reach the last stage of the game in the pitiful attempt to return home.
The first summoning, he pushed his limits. Constantly eluding death and struggling for survival in an attempt to save Earth, but ultimately failed to prevent its destruction in the end. However, upon the death of the world, he came to find out that their beings were inexplicably bound to the world.
And upon destruction, the goddess would reset the timeline and he would be forced to slave all over again for the sake of the world while possessing another random character of the game.
Through continuous play throughs, the 12 became capable enough to consistently amass appropriate power regardless of their summon.
However it meant next to nothing in the face of the Trials of Artriad.
There was still death. Overwhelming death.
Cooperation was prioritized in the beginning, however failures repeated and death seemed just as inevitable despite them pooling all their resources together.
No matter what, all routes seemingly ended in death.
Only to be forcibly revived and made to die again.
Faced with such a bleak reality, the players' minds began to diverge. Some went about the storyline with their own unique methods, some fell to lunacy, while others simply rotted away trapped in time.
Death stacked upon death and the minds of the players reached a breaking point eventually. Faced with their futile actions and their minds whittled down, the players became inherently hostile towards one another with little regard for life in such a meaningless stasis. Made to experience an eternal limbo between life and death.
And in such an environment, surrounded by enemies and threats…
Kalen had come to possess Cordan Ranlen. A mid rank noble in the Kingdom of Vlania.
While this might seem harmless, someone like Kalen who was deeply familar with the intricacies of this game knew.
That for the first time, he had come to possess someone who already had one foot in the grave.