Life altering decision

Leo found himself on a difficult crossroad of life.

The token in his possession represented a unique chance, and by a twist of fate, the location it bore matched the 'X' on his map.

This revelation made him realize that what he had thought to be a treasure outpost at first, was, in fact, a hidden lair of assassins.

If he chose to head there posing as the dead assassin he would have a chance to enroll himself into the Assassin Alliance, but there was also a risk that everything could go south and he could be killed with his identity being exposed.

He was not even sure if joining an assassin alliance would be permitted by the system or not? However, all he knew was the fact that he had 24 hours to decide his fate.

The token he possessed expired in a day and once it expired, gone would be the chance to enroll into the Assassin Alliance and after that even if he decided otherwise he would not have an opportunity to explore that path.

On one hand, his mind reminded him as to how repulsed he felt about killing one man, but on the other it told him that if he wanted to become a player that was a cut above the rest then he had to utilize every opportunity that presented before himself.

Deep down, Leo knew that this was going to be a life defining decision.

Uptil now, he had no understanding of what the true purpose of Terra Nova Online was, however, he had a strong gut feeling that this game was not just meant for pleasure and that the aliens forcing every human to play this game needed to have a deeper meaning behind it.

While he did not understand that purpose, he felt that walking down the path of becoming an assassin might help him realize it and that if he did not take up this opportunity now he would surely regret it later.

"What should I do? Mom? What would you say I do?" Leo murmured as he put a hand to his heart and tried to think as clearly about this issue as he could.

His heart told him to exit the game for now and think about it in the real world so it was exactly what Leo did.

Logging out of the game even though he still had 2 more hours of playtime before his next shift, Leo woke up in his small cabin and stared at Luke's limp body beside him which was still connected to the game.

Reaching out to his backpack from earth placed in a corner of his small apartment, Leo brought out a picture of his family and stared intently at his mother's face.

In his heart there was a silent storm brewing as it was one of those moments where Leo felt his entire life and every decision he made so far overlapping with one another as his emotional capacity reached its peak.

Everything from his absent father, to his poor upbringing to how acting like a bigshot and being the source of envy for the common players secretly felt good overlapped in a swirling mess with the sensation of killing a man for the first time trumping them all.

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( A couple of hours later )

As Luke woke up, 15 minutes before their next shift, he was surprised to see Leo sitting silently in a corner of the room sketching something in his notebook instead of playing Terra Nova.

His eyes were swollen red as if he had silently cried for hours and Luke felt perplexed as to what was going on?

He made eye-contact with Leo, who acknowledged his presence, however, there was an anger behind his red eyes that made Luke feel hesitant to converse with his younger brother as although he did not understand what was going through Leo's mind, he understood that it was better to give him space at this time.

Saying nothing, Luke silently began to change into their sewage worker clothes as all his excitement about telling Leo how he bought a sword and was now leveling up in the wild by killing horned rabbits faded away.

The duo had agreed just yesterday that both of them would try their best to escape the slum that was sector E and promote themselves to Sector D in the upcoming evaluation, however, despite that promise Leo was sitting with red eyes in a corner of the room and Luke could not even ask him why.

On one hand, he felt worried about his little brother, but on the other he knew that this was one of those moments where he just had to trust him as a man.

'Leo….. will you be okay?' was a question that Luke wanted to ask, however, the words that came out of his mouth instead were "Shifts in 15" as Leo nodded his head.

Putting his sketchbook aside, Leo too stood up and began dressing up in their cleaned and laundered orange work clothes, when an unexpected visitor suddenly entered their small apartment.

A young and handsome man with golden hair, blue eyes who looked like a Greek model walked into their room in pure white robes with gold embroidery that had a beautiful 'S' embroided on it.

He was clearly a man from the uppermost standing within the ship, an urban elite who belonged to the same circle as the president of USA.

However the question in the Skyshard brothers minds was-, why would such a man visit them out of the blue?

The man looked around the small apartment, clearly surprised by how cramped it was and then towards Luke and Leo as he said "Hello, I'm Cervantez and I beg your pardon for barging into your small apartment unannounced, but I believe I have a proposition that might pique your interest- I know a way to get your mother onboard this very ship with you."

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End of introductory volume!

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/// A/N - Please read my rant in the author notes below as it is written with the sole purpose of reader empowerment ///