1 100,000 years of war
Somewhere within an infinitely spanning realm of intangible nothingness resided a capsule of simulated existence. Like a dot on paper, the dome of earth and sky harshly juxtaposed against the black immaterial void.
Within the dome resided flora, fauna, mountains, rolling clouds, sunlight, and even a brisk chilled wind. It felt real but was faux. All of it was fake, like the world in a dream or a simulation of the mind.
The sun never fell, the brisk breeze never went still, and the clouds repeated in the same few patterns like a scratched record. The point for such an existence seems to be none at all, except, curiously, for the area in the center of it all.
Shouting, screaming, and metal clashing rung out through the immaterial valley, originating from a small field of flowing amber, A grain field, the battlefield between two opposing armies.
Two armies numbered in the hundreds, seemingly carbon-copies of each other were it not for the plain blue and red banners draped down their shoulders, fought rank and file depositing the field with their bloodied corpses. These men, whose faces were indistinguishable from each other, saw no quandaries in slaughtering each other like dogs.
It wasn't clear whether they had individual consciousness or unaware computer-like minds. What was clear was that their endless carnage in the field of barley was a purposeless endeavor. They fought not for a king nor a nation nor any reason at all. It was utterly pointless bloodshed staining the insignia-less banners they bore.
For eons and eons, this pointless battle had ensued. Whenever one side got close to winning, a group of reinforcements would charge in from somewhere hidden behind the trees, perpetuating the conflict ever onward.
All on this field would eventually meet death on this field to be replaced by another who would also eventually meet death. This is all except for one man, one whose face was quite different from that of the others. His was unique, unique in being different.
He had black hair, brown eyes, and a somewhat boyish look as though he were still in his late teens. This one man who had survived for all this time knew he was different for he had sapient cognition. He thought, therefore, he was, and he knew this to be true.
His oldest memories were from this world, but every once in a while, he would see glimpses into memories that dated to a time before. Somehow, he was certain there was more than just this world. He never forgot the word 'hungry'; his ever-growing stomach never let him. He never forgot the word 'tired'; his body always felt on the verge of collapsing at any moment.
He knew this world wasn't a real world, and he knew this world was dependent on his conscious existence. Whenever he forgot about a mound of piled bodies and looked away, it would disappear to be replaced by a fresh plot of untrampled grain.
He wore no armor on his torso, exposing his blood-stained bare chest covered in thousands of cuts, gashes, and punctures. He could feel the constant, never-ceasing pain of each and every one of them though he could only remember getting one.
The last wound the black-haired man got was the oldest memory he could clearly recall, proof to him that he'd been around a lot longer than he had the capacity to remember.
He held no weapon, wore no scabbard, nor anything on his body which would serve to slow him down. He was perfectly capable of defending himself solely off the weapons he'd acquire from disarming his opponents.
Even though the men he fought were stronger, taller, well-armored, and wielding a diverse range of weaponry, he had no problems fighting hundreds of them at a time, which often happened when his side began to falter.
His side, the men wearing blue banners, served to be more of a nuisance that stood in his way than an actual benefit to him. As such, he'd often slaughter the blue-banners as well if they stood in the way of his red-bannered targets.
Oddly, the blue-banners completely ignored his friendly fire as if it wasn't happening at all. In fact, when he didn't kill them in one hit, which occurred as often as one wins the lottery, the blue-banner recipient of the strike would ignore their ally injurer, recover their bearings, and continue fighting with no recourse.
They were mindless drones, but that wasn't to say they weren't intelligent; it was quite the opposite. They would often fall into formations and avoid leaving themselves wide-open to attacks as any well-trained warrior would. They sometimes even came up with brilliant strategies like once when they stood upon a tall mound of dead bodies brandishing pikes and spears pointed down at the grim blue-banners below.
The man who wore no armor recognized this world revolved around him and existed because of him for him, but for what reason, he could not ascertain. After all, it seemed so pointless. With never an end in sight, he had long since grown sick of the inane act of warfare in which he was forever engaged, but never did he once consider escaping by the means which he knew he could do. Even with the constant blood that oozed from his fiery, painful wounds, lacerations, and broken bones, he didn't wish for death, quite the opposite. In his mind repeated the third word, which he could still remember, "Survive. Survive. Survive."
He desperately wanted to live, for death to him was a fate much scarier than fighting in this realm for the rest of eternity. He hadn't a clue why he felt this, for he couldn't even conceive what the state of being dead even meant.
Little did he know at that moment something had changed, for in the sky a timer that he had long since forgotten of, read, "00000:000:00:00:00" Then, the characters turning from white to red, a red box appeared in front of it with red letters saying, "Reincarnation challenge requirement [Survive for 100,000 years] fulfilled. Granting player ability [Reincarnation ability (Ultimate Experience)]."
The man didn't see these words in the sky, nor could he read them had he known to look. He was fully engrossed in the battle that had become his existence and long since forgotten the timer in the sky, the sky which he hadn't considered looking up at since before he could remember.
He often knew the moves his opponents would make before they knew they would make them, therefore rendering combat an almost entirely predictable affair. To him, predicting their actions was little more than walking or breathing; he did it without even thinking.
After a good twenty minutes, his side's forces had whittled down to the odds of 20:1. This wasn't out of the usual for him. He was fully capable of fighting the hundreds of red-banners that had him encircled along with the few blue-banners left until reinforcements could arrive.
Seven men rushed him, wielding a great-axe, flail, glaive, quarterstaff, katana, and claymore: three from the front, three from behind.
The black-haired man waited for the closest man, the man with the great-axe, to do an overhead chopping strike which he gracefully dodged while ducking under the arcing swing of the man with the glaive.
As the glaive missed its mark, it gashed the throat of the man with the quarterstaff, and before the quarterstaff slipped from the now dead man's hands, the black-haired man grabbed it graciously, swinging it around and whacking it in the exposed part of the back of the glaive-man's neck shattering his spine instantly killing him.
Turning back to the axe-man, the black-haired man dodged the swing of a claymore and jumped on the back of the axe head, firmly implanting it into the ground, and before the axe-man could even react, he used the axe handle as a springboard to jump up above the axe-man smashing the quarterstaff down on his head and pole-vaulting off of it into a diving kick, snapping the neck of the claymore-wielder.
As the black-haired man fell to the ground, he quickly rolled out of the way of the flail-man, missing arcing trauma by only a few centimeters. Somersaulting back onto his feet, he caught a katana between the palm of his hands right before it could slash his face.
Crescent-kicking the katana-man's face into the dirt, the black-haired man simultaneously disarmed him, quickly using the katana as a pole to tether swinging flail. As it did, he pulled back, yanking the tethered flail out the man's hands letting go sending the katana spinning backward, impaling into the stomach of the recovering axe-man.
The flail-man, now without his flail, tried bashing his shield into the black-haired man, but the black-haired man grabbed his shield tightly and side-flipped, rotating the flail-man's shield along with his arm in a full 360-degree rotation. The flail-wielders arm that held his shield unnaturally twisted back as he fell over, writhing in pain.
Grabbing a large rock and the man's shield, the black-haired man placed the edge of the shield on the neck of flail-man and hammered down on it with the rock, like a hammer and chisel, crushing his throat in.
Turning around, the black-haired man deftly whipped the large stone into the back of katana-man's skull before he could rise back to his feet.
The black-haired man recovered his breath before turning to continue the battle, however as he did so, he realized he was the only blue-banner left standing in the encirclement with no reinforcements in sight.
He wrote it off thinking they were just about to come out from behind the bend in the hills and resumed battle. After all, it hadn't been the first time he had been in such a situation like this.
So, he continued fighting against dozens of men from every direction, and as the number of red-banners decreased from one hundred to fifty and fifty to twenty, he became increasingly concerned.
Skewering the last three red-banners into a kebab with a pike, he nervously looked around to see an open field clear of dead bodies, clear of red-banners, blue-banners, yelling, trumpets, marching, or clashing steel.
His face twitched with an anxiety that he had forgotten existed. The moment he had always hoped for was before his eyes and ears, a long stretch of beautiful golden barley swaying with a pleasantly soothing sound of wind rattling against it unmarred by the sound and sight of blood and carnage. Even in spite that, in spite of all that untainted beauty, he couldn't get his lips to smile.
He was scared.
All he ever knew was war. He thought maybe the war that depended on his existence was his existence, and if the war ended, then maybe so would he.
His world had come crashing down around him. The moment he had been hoping for as long as he could remember happened, and now that it happened, he wanted to go back to fighting because he couldn't comprehend the prospects of life without it.
He looked back to see if he could find a sword, but all he could find was the untainted landscape in every direction. He wordlessly thought to himself that the people must be somewhere, so he began searching.
Walking to the edge of the tree line, he banged his face into something which he could not see. Recovering his stance, he looked in confusion at what he had just hit his face up against but couldn't find its source.
Walking forward, he rammed against that something he couldn't see again and fell to the floor. With a look of anger, he grunted and yelled a war cry mimicking how the blue and red-banners yell.
Standing back up, he lifted his hand, reaching out for the object he couldn't see, and was surprised and startled when his finger brushed up against an invisible surface.
He jumped back afeared of the thing which he could not comprehend. Then a few seconds after nothing happened, he nervously approached once more, slowly extending his hand out before pulling back in hesitation.
Once his hesitance subsided, he touched the wall to feel a smooth-flat surface that extended as far as he could reach.
Tracing it with his hand and walking alongside it, he understood it to be an invisible wall of some kind, and almost immediately upon realizing this, he was struck with a vague memory he had long since forgotten of him trying to escape the battlefield.
For as long as he could remember, clearly, he never even thought of trying to escape. Looking back on it retrospectively, he would've felt stupid for not thinking of it sooner, but now he knew why. It wasn't known in memory but known subconsciously.
Sitting down on a rotten log, he began waiting, waiting for nothing. He no longer had anything to do, and now he knew he couldn't leave either.
For the first time, maybe ever as far as he was concerned, he was in a situation where he could just sit and think. So, he did just that.
After some time, his thoughts were brought back to the wall.
He inhaled a large, pained breath under his cracked ribs and exhaled.
Suddenly, he remembered a fourth word.
"Door," he thought aloud.
He hurriedly stood back up, eagerly tracing the edge of the invisible wall, trying to remember small fragmented bits of his memory relating to the word which he spoke.
He didn't know the meaning of the word he spoke, but he thought he had seen one.
He traced the wall through the trees, through the barley, and through the valley before he found it.
A big ornate marble frame lined with golden trimming stood tall, supplanted within the wall. The door, also made of smooth marble and gold, had glowing-orange engraved letters that read, "Unlocked."
The black-haired man couldn't read this, nor did he even comprehend that the letters had any sort of meaning whatsoever. What he saw were meaningless shapes that vaguely reminded him of people and weapons and nothing more.
Reaching out, he curiously touched the glowing inscription, which did nothing in response.
He tried touching it again, and once more, nothing happened.
Then he looked around at the marble door a bit more before seeing a golden knob handle. Turning his full undivided attention to it, he first poked it, then wrapped his hand around it and waited.
Nothing happened.
A little antsy, he began furiously fondling the doorknob until it began to twist. Startled, he jumped back and started waiting.
When nothing happened, he anxiously reached his hand out and slowly turned the handle, and once the handle turned all the way, the sound of a mechanism started up.
He jumped back another time, observing in fear and awe of the heavy marble-door opening to reveal a golden portal. It spun swirling an elliptic spiraling pattern that stretched on an on an on, the walls of the vast swirling distance looking like liquid gold and molten lava.
The black-haired man froze in terror of the thing that seemed so unnatural and which he couldn't begin to grasp. He waited and waited, but nothing changed.
He painfully swallowed down; his throat constricted.
Gathering some courage, he stepped up to the portal and extended his hand out. As he pushed his hand through it, it disappeared into something that felt wet and hot. Immediately pulling his arm out, he saw it wasn't wet even though it had just felt otherwise.
He was confused and completely terrified, but he resolved himself to step through.
Taking one hefty breath and exhaling, he jumped forward through the portal to dodge any threats that may appear on the other side. However, upon reaching the other side, he realized he was surrounded by nothing but darkness.
He panicked because he couldn't see, breathe, or hear. All there was was soundless nothingness leaving him to wonder if this was death.
Suddenly words appeared in front of him, which he couldn't read nor understand as being language.
---
['Rebirth' protocol activated]
[Granting skill/s: (Ultimate Experience)]
[Automatically determining 3 best-suited bonus skills]
[Granting skill/s: (Sense Presence), (Enhanced Stamina), (Adept Insight)]
---
After a few seconds, the words faded to black leaving him back in utter darkness.
All he could do was wait.
