The truth of the world

It was near dinner time when Illumca awoke. She was disoriented as the ground now looked very far. She stumbled for a few times, trying to get used to the new body. To her this feeling was not unpleasant.

She found a set of clothes ready for her, placed on a chair to the side of the bed. She took a sniff and it smelled like the sun. That was another thing. The disgusting and rank stench that had accompanied her for all those years had disappeared.

Illumca put on the clothes and found out that it was a nightgown. It was a simple one, too short at the bottom but the feel of the fabric was nice, very different from the rough hemp cloth that she had been wearing.

"I need to thank her," she said to herself. She went out the door and down the steps.

She saw the old granny named Ethel who had helped her a few times to clean her body, sitting on a chair with eyes half open. She was strict and disgruntled, but she found her to be a kind person despite that. Then her eyes fell on Connie who was swishing a large skillet over a large fire while occasionally stirring the contents.

"You're up," Ethel murmured, her eyes red with signs of lack of sleep. "Take a seat. She has been preparing the food for some time now."

"Ah, the sleepyhead awakens!" she said cheerfully. "Breakfast is almost ready! Well, I suppose it's dinner by now."

Illumca took a seat at the dining table. The chairs around the table were mismatched, signs of someone who had lived alone for a long time. She looked at Ethel, who had fallen asleep with her arms folded, seemingly comfortable slumbering in a straight sitting position.

"Illumca, come over here."

Illumca slowly tottered towards Connie, who had changed into a simple man's clothes and an old apron. She wiped her hands with a nearby cloth and took a sip from the cup of tea to her side.

She then gave Illumca a look.

"Do you know what day it is?"

"It's…Friday," she replied.

"Good. Short term memory is fine. How about your full name?"

"Illumca Fir Liban."

"No problem with long term memory. What else do you remember?"

"I remember…the assassin's life. Her life. Her title. Her everything."

Connie frowned and put down her tea. She was silent for a while before she said. "I see. Let me see your eye," she said. Illumca bent down and let the blonde girl examine her. "Look at my finger. Follow it please. Eye is working fine. Can you move your fingers? From your little fingers to your thumbs, and then backwards. Excellent."

She drew back and finished her tea. "Congratulations. Everything is working fine."

Illumca smiled happily in response when a loud gurgle resounded from her stomach, waking Ethel from her sleep.

Connie looked at Illumca, who held her stomach down with a red face, and guffawed.

"Aha, such a great sound! Hunger is a good sign. It means you are still alive."

The blonde girl opened an earthen pot containing a green colored soup with glistening nodules of fat floating around. The ingredients had been processed specially by Connie, thus dissolving them into the soup perfectly. It had cooled down considerably after a long time on the stove.

Connie ladled the soup into a bowl and handed it to Illumca.

"Finish it. Any chunky thing inside, just drink them down."

"It's green," Illumca said with a dubious look. "I have never seen green soup before."

"This is Marrow Cleansing Broth. The worst tasting medicine you will have ever tasted. It's going to taste like hell. But it's the thing you need. It'll purify your marrow and cleanse your innards."

Illumca took a deep breath and chugged everything down. It tasted sour, bitter, and salty at the same time. The smell of it overwhelmed her nose that her sense of smell just shut down. And the texture was weirdly sticky and chewy, with some crunchy things inside.

She forced herself to finish it and wobbled backwards from the intense taste overload.

"Bleargh. I finished it. I don't feel any different."

"Wait for it."

Suddenly, Illumca's body glowed bright and she felt incredibly light and warm. Her consciousness became more acute and everything in her sight seemed to be more real, if that was even possible. She gazed into the empty bowl in her hand and her eye could see the minute details of the bowl, its imperfections, the thickness of its material.

She then looked at Connie, and could see her every pores. Every entrancing contours of her beautiful, moist lips.

"Not yet," Connie's lips moved so slowly, yet her voice came so fast.

Then, she felt something in her stomach. A loud gurgle to end all loud gurgles.

"Aand…there it is."

Illumca's face constricted as she returned from that magical feeling and felt a great tremor within her stomach. She threw the bowl at Connie and quickly ran towards the bathroom.

After quite a while, the dark elf came out with a face red with embarrassment. She looked at Connie while feeling wronged. The blonde-haired girl simply smirked with amusement.

"Don't be like that. I also experienced the same thing when my master helped me establish my foundation. It's a rite of passage of sorts."

She gestured at the spread before her.

"Come. I have prepared a feast of herbs and medicinal food. The first meal after your rebirth is very important."

"There are scorpions and worms in them!" she exclaimed in horror after seeing the plates on the table.

"The scorpions are pan fried with salt and served with a side of sweet sauce made of plum. And these are not worms."

"Really?"

"They are larvae. Big difference. I assure you the scorpions may look intimidating, but they taste like shrimps. Do you have shrimps here? Oh, and the larvae are cooked well. They are good for your health."

Illumca looked at Connie, then at Ethel. The wrinkly old woman had satisfied herself by eating a plate of oatmeal, gleefully waiting for her to start eating the critters.

"Come, eat the scorpion," Connie had taken one of the scorpions by the tail and dipped it in the sauce. She wrapped with a piece of basil leaf, then offered it to Illumca. "Come on."

"Can I refuse?"

"Please?"

"J-just get it over with!"

The dark elf closed her eyes tight and opened her mouth. She felt something hard placed at the tip of her tongue and forced herself to bite down. As she start chewing, the sweet and sour plum sauce mixed with the salty and crunchy scorpion and the fresh biting taste of Basil.

She hated to say, but it was one of the best tasting things she had ever eaten.

As she chewed, she began to realize. "This tastes nothing like shrimps!!"

"Got you to eat it, though. Doesn't taste bad, right?"

"Yes," she said sullenly. Picking up another scorpion the way Connie showed her.

Connie introduced the food one by one. A salad made of raw herbs, orange peel and almonds, sprinkled with deep fried larvae, good for the lung and intestines. A small omelette with bell peppers, carrot and garlic. A plate of fried bits of pork, stir-fried with cucumber, eggplant, and white pepper. The portions were small but varied.

"Poison and medicine are two sides of the same coin. Too much medicine can be poison, while the right balance of poison can be medicine. These foods are good for your innards. I personally counted the amount for each plate for optimal value."

After finishing the food on the table, which was neither too much or too little, Illumca felt oddly clean. If that was the word to describe the strange feeling of lightness she experienced right now.

"Now that we've finished dinner, there is still one more thing we need to do. Oh, and Ethel? go to bed."

Connie took Illumca to the basement where the dark elf saw a person strapped spread eagled on a table. The moment they entered, the man shouted out intelligible curses at them. His eyes were crazed and unfocused.

Connie placed the candle she was holding at the side of her head, just enough for them to be able to see his face.

Illumca felt a twinge of pain when she saw his condition. She knew him. Or at least, a part of her knew him.

"Hello, Derrick. How have you been?" Connie began while putting on a stained white apron. She threw a spare one at Illumca off-handedly.

"Ffck off, horr," the man said, weakly thrashing about. His voice was slurred.

"Now, now. No need for that unpleasantness. Or do you prefer to have some more of my specially made jam?"

The man whimpered at the mention. He had experienced torture endurance training but what she did was more than torture. It was cruelty of the mind and body.

"Jam? Illumca asked.

Connie took a small glass jar and showed it to her, the color was reddish brown like a mix of strawberry jam and smelled of wood. She stirred it with a wooden spoon a few times.

"Careful, don't let the look fool you. That is a mix of fire ants, a pinch of crushed Cassiopeia bark, and three grams of grape vine. More of a prank rather than poison, really. The compound sticks to the lining of the stomach and irritates the insides, causing an itch that cannot be scratched. And Derrick have tasted a spoonful of it. Isn't that right Derrick?"

"Rrrgh. I've told you all I know," he said. His eyes full of hate and despair in equal portion. "Just kill me already."

"No. Not when I still have use for you, Derrick," she replied.

"What do you need me for Connie?" Illumca asked her, suppressing the feeling inside her heart.

"Can you see your status screen, Illumca?"

"Yes."

"Do you have a skill called Analyze? At what level is it?"

Illumca opened her status screen and gave her skills a look. "Level 2."

"Raise it up to the highest level you can, please."

The dark elf did not ask for a reason and simply followed her instruction. One must understand that choosing a skill for anyone living in that world is crucial. One wrong choice could cause you to stop growing. And yet she did it without question.

"It's now at level 6."

"Great. use it on him," she said while taking out a knife from a table nearby. "How much HP and Max HP does he have left?"

"1000 out of 2700."

"Hmm, so lack of food also lessened the HP, I see."

Without a change of expression, Connie stabbed the man's arm.

"YAARRGH!"

"How much is it now?"

"Ni – nine hundred," she stammered. Surprised by the sudden violence.

"So, this knife does 100 damage?" She then plunged her finger into his other arm. He screamed again.

"How much?"

"500," she said levelly, now getting used to the screams.

"My finger does a bigger damage?" Connie wiggled her finger inside his arm, causing the man to struggle and threw his head back against the table. "Now?"

"450."

Connie pulled out her finger with a small pop and returned to the knife. She pulled the knife out and now slowly pushed the knife into the same arm.

"400. 390. 380."

"The amount of force used also affect the numbers," she stopped moving once it reached the nice even number of 200. Then sliced a bit of flesh of the arm.

"A-a hundred," Illumca said with a trembling voice. The pain was now so palpable that she needed to lean against the wall.

At this point, Connie gestured for Illumca to come closer and handed her the knife.

"Stab his arm."

"But, his health is already at red!" she looked at Derrick, who looked back with hatred.

"I want you to stab his arm. Why not? It's easy. You've killed before, right?"

Connie went around and stood behind her, peeking around from her right while wrapping Illumca's fingers one by one, around the handle.

"I want to see if you have something of hers still inside. I want to see…if you have what it takes to walk the path."

"…no," Illumca said. The pain was powerful, but she was not Kelly. She was Illumca Fir Liban. And she would cut the final thread of Kelly's attachment with this knife.

"Haaah!" Illumca plunged the knife into his arm an saw the numbers go down to one.

"What?!" Illumca exclaimed in disbelief.

"Do it again."

She stabbed another part of the arm and saw the numbers still amount to one.

"This…this doesn't make sense! He should have died!"

"We are not cutting into his arteries or vitals. Of course, he wouldn't die," Connie said with a crazed smile. "Of course! My hypothesis stands!!"

"But the numbers are there?! How could this be? This went against everything that I know!"

"I know. Incredible, isn't it? This play, this…farce of the heavens."

She laughed maniacally. "Let's see it this way, then. For example, if your HP is full then I decapitates your head, will you die?"

Illumca answered, arms on the table, supporting her body from the shock. "Yes."

"Then, if I speared through your rib and pulled your innards out, will you die?"

"Er…yes."

"So what is the use of your HP then? I mean, giving numerical values to your life is just going to make you lose your sense of danger."

Connie scratched two collections of numbers with the knife into the table. One is 25, the other 5000.

"Between these two amounts of HP, which one is more likely to die faster if, say, I cut their arm?"

"And which one die faster if I were to cut off their head?"

"They'll both be dead."

The blonde girl chuckled as if she was the only one to understand the joke.

"There, you see? This contradictory way the world works is amusing, no? It is easier to force people to fight when they are given the illusion that they might survive. The bigger your health, the more chance for you to survive. By the gods, Bigger health sounds stupid."

"You still don't understand? Let's convert these numbers to coins. One man has 25 coin, and the other 5000 coins. Which one would spend the most money to buy his needs?"

"The one with more coins," Illumca's eyes widened after beginning to understand what she meant.

"Exactly. We are commodities, made to fight for our life to the amusement of the gods. The more HP you have, the more likely you will risk your life for more. Our thirst, our greed! This is the sum of all of our desires."

"And the gods are providing everything for their little game. And you all played the game because of the thought of winning big. But the thing about games, my girl…the dealer always wins! HAHAHA!!"

As Connie was feeling euphoria from understanding the rules of this new world, she began again. "You know what the problem about the people in this world is? They do not question the world. They have never asked the question, why," she paced around the table. "Why can you see a status screen? Why must you speak the skills' name? Why is the world the way it is?"

She slammed her arms against the table, causing it to crack slightly.

"And you shall ask these questions with me."

That madness, that single-minded drive, those eyes filled with curiosity of a child aroused a feeling inside her. Kelly's pain for Derrick was replaced, overwhelmed by the stirrings of Illumca's ardor and desire towards Connie.

The words leaked from her lips without going past her brain. It was an answer from the heart.

"Yes. Yes, I will."