Grim-reaper

It was all "too much" information to process and Jake sat there dazed as he was contemplating everything. Not to lie, a part of him was excited, this was a game after all and he had expected this but an even larger part of him was scared. Being stuck in a cold iron cage was hardly something he thought was "fun". 'Who are they to do that to me?' he thought to himself, as he tried hitting the cage he remembered that he was weak, weak enough to be on his death bed, and that's exactly what he thought when he looked at himself. His entire left arm was made out of bones, the rest of his body was so thin that you could be mistaken to believe he was a skeleton but he was not.

It was dark in the room, pitch black to be exact, Jake should not have been able to look at himself but because of the shock, he learnt a new skill. Because of the unique scenario, he was in, he unknowingly unlocked his first skill the second the lights turned off. Jake would be none the wiser to realise that he had a weak night vision active right now. As Jake was wondering he eventually noticed a few boxes at the bottom right corner of his vision. As he focused on one of these boxes, the UI popped up. First, a friends tabs popped up which Jake thought efficient, and thought that he would have to add his friend Alex the second he got out of this rat hole. Then a familiar voice appeared.

"Skilltrees are unique to your specialities. When you unlock a skill on the skill tree it does not mean you can use it, only that you can potentially use it. Your efficiency with the skill will define how strong you are with your skill. The skill itself can change if your prophecy of using it gets to a certain level. To unlock skills you need to attempt to use them until you feel something changing inside you or you need to follow the quests predetermined requirements. Good luck!"

After this the skill tree showed up, he saw that he had two skills but that there were 3 different skill routes he could take. He decided to inspect his current skills.

Passive skill(Owned): Bone Arm ~ One of your arms is reduced down to bone, in return, you lose all the blood in your body.

Side effect: Unable to bleed out

Side effect: A majority of your muscles are lost

Side effect: Recovering energy and regenerating muscles becomes painfully slow.

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Active skill(Owned): Predator eyes ~ Eyes gain a predatorial feeling

Side effect: it can frighten creatures with very weak souls, like fetuses

Side effect: Quite weak night vision

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'What shitty skills' he thought, he decided to keep reading to see what direction he would start improving now. He realised that he could only access the skills he could learn right now, the other ones were blacked out.

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Continuation to "Predator eyes"

Active skill: Eagle eyes ~ Eyes become increasingly sensitive and can view thing from far distances

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Continuation to "Bone Arm"

Passive skill: Way of the Draugr King ~ How can skeletons be so strong? Ditching all muscles and almost all organs and embracing death energy is the answer.

Side effect: Athletic strength

Side effect: All muscles in the body disappear

Side effect: Body parts work on their own, and bones are strengthened

Side effect: Infinite stamina

Side effect: Immunity to drowning

Side effect: you cannot take "Way of the Grim Reaper"

Activation: Lift your left hand and put it on your heart as you fall asleep.

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Continuation to "Bone Arm"

Passive skill: Way of the Grim Reaper ~ Weird fellow, isn't he? Embrace your weakness and wield death energy.

Side effect: It will open the "Death energy" skill route, death energy can give you unique abilities such as "deathly movement", "deathly empowerment"

Side effect: Opens a completely new skill route called "Black magic"

Side effect: The bone arm will exude a faint black aura whenever you use it, that will get stronger the stronger you get.

Side effect: Killing people gives a similar feeling to being cocaine (Essentially he gets an amazing feeling when he kills and its extremely addictive)

Side effect: You cannot go "Way of the Draugr King"

Activation: Think about the grim reaper as you fall asleep.

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Active skill: Powershot ~ Imbue your next shot with black magic and make it more powerful, current shot makes it 1.2x more powerful.

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'Now this is the real deal' Jake thought, these were actual skills that had meaning and would help him. As of now, he was close to defenceless as he could barely move, he had to decide what path he would go. Otherwise, everything else would be useless. It would seem that the Draugr route would make him more warrior based, whilst the grim reaper way would make him more mage based. Jake had never really liked the warrior classes, it felt a bit too simple for him. He thought about it for a while and decided to go the grim reaper path. He closed his eyes and tried to fall asleep, however doing so had proven quite the challenge. His body was filled to the brim with adrenaline, he was after all in a cage and was told to he'd have to fight for his freedom. So he had one of his less brilliant ideas, he stood up and walked forward, all this happening whilst his brain was repeating the word grim reaper whilst picturing him in his mind. He then banged his head towards the iron rod in front of him, the reaction of this was his head bouncing backwards and bouncing off the iron floor, and then Jake was off cold, maybe with a brain fracture or two. Without him noticing the people around him in their own cages looked at him as if he were suicidal.

He woke up luckily with no brain fractures but dizzy. Nonetheless, he was still in his iron cage and then he heard the familiar clanging followed by a more familiar voice.

"Today starts your training, in a few seconds your cages will open up. I want you to move towards my voice and then I will lead you to the training ground" he said.

As he finished the gates on his cage opened and he stood up and walked out, then he walked towards the voice. He walked in a way that was different because of him having to balance out his limp hand. It looked as if his right step was longer than his left and that was because it was. He stepped out of the cage and followed the stream of people walking towards the voice until he ended up in a pool of people all waiting. As he looked around a lot of them had something unique about them. One of them had a burning head, one a tail, another one horns, He slowly realised why he was kidnapped.

"Let's go," said the man

The man was a very tall man with good stature, he had a scar similar to the person that carried Jake. The man was sporting a suit with a green tie and walked very elegantly. He walked for a short while with the group following him through a dark corridor. Jake had no issues following him thanks to his night vision, a short while later they arrived at a sand yard.

"This is your training ground" He pointed at a wall filled with weapons "these weapons are all here for you to fight with, you cannot die here thanks to a formation set here. Actually one of you idiots would already be dead if it were not for this healing formation. Well, don't waste your time."

Then he walked away without saying another word. As Jake looked around he saw multiple shooting boards, he saw training dummies, he saw obstacles. He decided that he would not waste a second and neither did multiple other prisoners. He realised that he could not shoot a bow and he could hardly fight thanks to his weaknesses, 'I have to hurry up and meet the grand reaper, wow that sounded wrong' he thought. He decided to walk forward to the board and pick up a bow made out of iron. He looked at the other prisoners and saw one who picked up a sword. He walked forward and asked him if he would like to train together. He accepted and they decided to walk to a corner and start sparring.

"Arent you going to bring an arrow, or something ranged. I am guessing you are a ranger." He said looking at the bow.

"I am but one of my arms is kind of fucked up so I was thinking about practising melee with the bow." Jake responded

"Makes sense," He said.

As the first fight started he noticed that the enemies sword changed from metal to fire and realised that it got slightly longer, 'a sort of fire warrior' Jake thought.

"Before we start what's ur name," Jake asked

"Kin" he responded

Then he started sprinting towards Jake, in a real fight, he would not have the luxury of walking forward because as of now the enemy would be taking shots. Jake stood wide and balanced and waited. Kin got closer and slowed down using both his hands to hold the sword. Then he walked forward and vertically swung the sword down. Jake put the edge of his bow forward to make the sword go off course. The sword went straight through and burned Jake. Jake screamed at the top of his lungs, Jake luckily healed back because of the formation but it still hurt like hell. This is how the fight would go and for 12 hours they fought, Jakes melee technique improving leaps and bounds and Kin getting more efficient with his sword. He found out that Kin was a "Fire knight" a speciality focused on defence and power, he could be a good ally to have. By the end, there was not a part of Jakes skin that was not burned it was quite a gruesome scene however you could see it visible healing, just very slowly.

"Here let me add you," Jake said

"Fine" Kin responded

He added Kin and realised that there was not much he could do with the friend tab and realized that there was not much worth to it except that he would now have a green marker above his head to presumably avoid "friendly fire"

"That's enough," the man with the familiar voice said.

After leaving the weapons at the board he led us back to the cage room where we would all enter a cage, then the same thing happened like yesterday. The cages shut closed and then the lights went off. This time he was exhausted, he sat down on the hard iron floor and quickly fell asleep thinking about the grim reaper.

Jake woke up on the floor staring straight up, he could see a grey sky filled with many clouds, a giant was moonlighting the area.' Where are am I' he thought. As he stood up he heard something, he decided to investigate and walked towards it. There he found a skeleton with a 20 cm long beard. The skeleton sat at a table with stacks of papers on its table which only magically seemed to rise. His hands were moving at such a speed that only after images were visible. When he listened more closely to the noise the realised that the skeleton was mumbling.

"Fucking bureaucrats sending me all this paper... died by fucking FUCKING... how do you even manage dying to a FUCKING CATERPILLAR... Sex with a caterpillar, a fucking caterpillar...suicide caused by micro dick... Dumb ways to die, so many, fucking, dumb ways to dieeeee.... What the fuck do you think will happen if you try to stick your dick in a dragon... Horny fucking humans... KISSING UR REFLECTION IN A LAKE FILLED WITH FUCKING CROCODILES, THE IQ OF THAT POND WENT DOWN BY 10 AS SHE FELL IN IT... Dick... Beeehive... owww!!!...

*The skeleton started laughing maniacally at this point*

"Hello" Jake carefully asked.

In response to the question, the skeleton simply stood up and stared at Jake. It hasn't had another visit in who knows how many years. Usually, it would be he who had to go visit others when complications arose or when boredom got the best of it. What the skeleton didn't notice was it was choking Jake simply by looking at him, its power was simply choking.

"Who are you," Jake asked with a faint voice before falling on his knees

The skeleton apologies before restricting the amount of raw power he was emitting. He was kind of shocked that he didn't know who he was, he was after all in his own home.

"the grim reaper, more importantly, why the royal fuck are you here?" The grim reaper asked intrigued"

"I am here to receive my skill" Jake responded.

"Ohhh, I see... You want me to change the shape of your soul," The grim reaper said.

"What?" Jake asked a bit weirded out

"Yes, naturally I could give you a bit of my power but that would be exhausting as you grew more powerful because I would have to fuel you which would mean more power from me. You would start quite strong but you would have to do my bidding in response for my power and I doubt you would want that, so rather I would change the nature of your soul, that way you would draw from the same power source I do. The world, but you would draw death energy unique to skeletons and us." the grim reaper said

"Okay I get it, but how are you going to do it"

The grim reaper proceeded to take out his two-meter long scythe, then he stuck it straight through Jake's heart. Jake looked at him with a hint of surprise and honestly a bit of betrayal

"Any last question"' said the grim reaper

Even though Jake was surprised and shocked he would not waste such a golden opportunity to ask why instead he would ask.

"How can I get stronger the fastest"

"Meditate and try to draw out as much death energy as possible," said the grim reaper

Then he woke up in his iron cage, he moved around and noticed the difference immediately. His movement felt much more smooth and lighter. He could also move his left hand which was previously limp. If anything his left arm was now more useful then his right one. When he moved it he was mesmerized by the black mist seeping out of it.