Chapter 16
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Alex and Chris were led to a room filled with chairs similar to what would be seen in a dentist's office and all were facing toward the same blank wall. When the door was shut the pervasive music outside was finally blocked out but Alex only had time to sigh in relief before he was picked up and strapped into one of the chairs. Once he was secured, a side door opened and a team of smaller pinkuns wearing something similar to white lab coats entered the room and walked up to the larger red monsters before they all put their hands on their cheeks and bent to the side as a sort of salute.
"Are these the last ones?" One of the lab coat wearing pinkuns asked.
"Yeah, just these two rebels left. Careful with this one." the red monster points at Chris, "We found him licking the ceiling of his cell."
"That's disgusting! We'll probably have to do a little extra to teach him proper love." The lab pinkun responds before turning to the rest of his team and instructing them to prep the two prisoners for their treatment.
Alex starts trembling as he sees them pull out strange instruments with tubes among other things. And to his wide-eyed horror, he sees them putting probes and tubes into places best left unsaid as they worked on the still unconscious Chris before turning to him.
"Oh God no! Keep those d*mn things away from me!" No matter how much Alex struggled he couldn't get free and the smiles of the pinkuns holding the probes as they advanced closer to him will inhabit his nightmares for eons to come.
*Scene censored*
"There that wasn't so bad was it? Now you're all ready for your treatment." The lab pinkun smiles as he wipes the tears falling from Alex's eyes.
Alex could only moan in agony and if they hadn't put in the gag from the start he would have tried biting off his tongue. He was so tightly restrained that he couldn't even move his head now. While he could look around with his eyes, his eyelids were forced to stay open and with his face pointed at the blank wall, he couldn't help but watch as it started to gain color.
"Alright, start the treatment!"
"Yes sir"
The images on the wall started moving and music different from the world outside filled the room. Alex had just enough time to realize he'd seen a movie like this before when the needles jabbed into him started pumping a fluid into his veins that made it hard to string two thoughts together. In the chair next to him, Chris was forced awake with a short shock to his head and started screaming into his gag with bloodshot pinkun eyes forced wide open.
Alex couldn't tell how long it took for the drugs to start wearing off and during the treatment, his mind slowly relived some of the short lives he'd recently experienced. Everything else around him was a nightmarish blur filled with brainwashing propaganda and sing-alongs joined in by all the other pinkuns in the room. After a while, Alex's mind started to clear up.
"They're becoming lucid. Remove the gags so they can sing along."
"It's in my head like a bad commercial jingle!" Chris wasted no time to yell out to Alex.
"They used to play horrible music where I worked. The trick is to think about other stuff to distract your brain."
"How can I distract my thoughts from all the stuff they shoved up my ***?"
Alex was happily distracted as he thought for a moment before yelling back, "Think about the woman you were with before your boss killed you!"
Chris started grinning. "That was the boss's daughter!" After a moment of silence, "Hey, you're right! If I picture the girl on the screen naked and giving me a bl*w, this isn't so bad!"
The pinkuns watching on staggered and the lead pinkun jumped into action grabbing one of the purple bats from the interrogation tool chest.
"We need to beat the evil out of this one!" he yells as he and a handful of the other pinkuns start whacking the h*ll out of Chris.
After about three minutes of intensive attention with the bats, Chris yelled out, "It's still better than the sing-alongs!" as raspberry blood spills from his mouth.
The side door was opened again and another pinkun came in to inspect the duo with a frown.
"These guys aren't responding at all. Put the gags back in and Insert the brain scanners. You over there, tell our Imouto about their resistance."
Before long the same girl that was in all the videos Chris and Alex were being forced to watch, but with wrinkles across her face, entered the room.
"Are these the ones still protected by their demon gods?"
"Yes, my Goddess Imouto." The lead lab pinkun replied in reverence.
"You're right, I can't read their minds like this."
"We were just about to insert the brain scanners." As the lab pinkun speaks the others are pulling the feeding tubes from Alex's nose and inserting the wires of a device up through his sinuses and into his brain. With a painful jolt to his brain, the screen turns on and the voice of his mind yells out.
"Arg my brain! What the h*ll's this old hag going to do to us now?" Alex literally thinks out loud.
All the pinkuns in the room gasp with wide eyes as Imouto indignantly clenches her fists at her side.
"I'm not an old hag! This is a curse from your demon god that I just haven't bothered dealing with yet!" She says with tears forming in the corners of her eyes.
All the pinkuns immediately drop what they're doing and repeatedly kowtow while yelling, "Our mother Imouto is young and cute! There is no one more lovely than her. All the other gods are ugly, rancid demons!"
At this moment Alex's thoughts are heard out loud again, "She's obviously compensating for something with all these stupid, yes men subordinates. And what's with this horrible music? I've heard walruses barfing with better tone depth"
The kowtowing pinkuns were on the verge of passing out hearing this. One of them desperately bellows, "How dare you insult our Goddess Imouto's karaoke mix tape! How dare you not love her divine voice!"
At this point Chris's thoughts are finally heard, "I want my body back you demon b*tch."
Shaking in anger Imouto get closer before saying, "I'm going to torture and kill the both of you for this and after you die, I'll find your souls and bring you back to life and kill you again and again and again."
Alex cringes and couldn't help but think out, "I don't want to stay in this h*ll hole world with this crazy goddess."
To which Chris thinks, "She's a demon, not a goddess." in reply.
"Enough! Mute their brain scanners and make extra copies of all the recordings." She looks back at Alex, "I know where one of you comes from already and it won't be long before I find out where you come from too and when I do, I will find your family and make them my pinkuns. Then I'll have them torture you until your protection wears off and then you'll be all mine."
Imouto turns back to her loyal pinkuns and orders them to bring Alex and Chris to the execution square before leaving the room.
The lead pinkun steps forward with the ever-present squeaks and announces, "For the crime of not loving your Imouto, you are hereby sentenced to death by gruesome torture. You will be dipped in candied water till half-drowned then your belly sacs will be pulled open and your organs pulled out to be sectioned off and turned into food for the other love prisoners. Your bodies will then be stuffed and mounted for display before being made into weapons to bring love to the demon worlds you come from."
The pinkun starts walking to the door but stops and turns around, "I'm sure we'll be seeing each other a lot from now on." He says before walking out of the room.
Alex and Chris make eye contact one last time before they are wheeled out of the room and toward their doom.
...
Back in the white space, the old man is holding an orb and speaking to a young woman.
"You've been chosen as the hero that will save the world. The Goddess named Accordia that you will be serving has asked me to explain a few things before sending you on your way, so pay attention."
The brown-haired, bright-eyed girl nods at the old man.
With a bored voice, the old man reads from a scroll in his left hand, "The world you'll be going to is in turmoil. A demon lord has been rampaging across the land and his army has been held in check at great cost. To make matters worse the human kingdoms are full of corruption and fight each other both on the battlefield and with assassins behind the scenes. Accordia is busy dealing with the demon lord directly so she can't watch over you and give you her protection until you've proven yourself and become a Valkyrie worthy of standing vanguard among her troops."
The old man takes a breath, "To do this you will have to pass a trial at her main temple in the capital city of Accor. She regrets and has explained to me that you must enter the world some ways distant and keep a low profile while you gain strength so that human agents of the demon lord don't hunt you down before you're ready."
The old man conjures an orb in his right hand. "Do you understand so far?"
"Yes, I'll be on my own and need to get stronger to save the world." She replies.
"Good. To help survive and gain ultimate victory, Accordia has given you an assistant system. This system has a partial ego and is named Guardian Angel. It will help guide you and give you access to certain abilities as you get stronger. Angel will explain more about itself when you've been reincarnated. Now then let's have you choose some special abilities to imprint onto your orb."
Alex appears in the background behind the old man catching the attention of the girl. Noticing that she's no longer paying attention to him, the old man traces her line of sight and spots Alex getting up from the ground. He immediately throws the orb at Alex and turns back to the girl.
"Where was I?"
"You were saying something about imprinting skills onto the orb." The girl replies.
"Ah right. As I was saying, you need to choose some special skills to imprint onto this orb." The old man raises his now empty hand and stares at it for a moment in silence before his face begins to pale and his eyes widen in disbelief with his mouth hanging a bit open.
"What's wrong?" The girl asks as she sees the old man's odd behavior.
The old man's face reddens to a deep crimson and he quickly twirls around to see if Alex is still there but is disappointed by the blank white space. "This is bad!" He grabs the sides of his head in panic before turning back to the girl.
"You'll need to follow him and.. and... You'll need to kill him before he messes things up."
"Don't I need to choose some skills first?" The girl was clearly taken aback at how the old man was acting.
"Right, here is a list." He quickly hands her a list that had appeared in his left hand and starts to twirl both his hands around each other in front of him. "Quickly choose your skills while I remake a new hero orb and system for you."
...
Alex comes to with the cool feeling of damp grass pressed against his face and the sounds of a nearby river's burbling rapids. His eyes pop wide open as a subdued female voice speaks to him in his head.
"Alicia, you need to wake up and get moving soon."
"Who's there?" Alex looks around for the source of the voice and hears another female voice asking exactly the same question over his own voice.
"What? Who said that?" The second female voice speaks again, asking the same thing as Alex at the same time once more.
"I asked you first." Alex was getting indignant [Once again she asks the same thing as me and speaks over me. I can't even hear my own voice because of her.]
An idea slowly dawns on Alex as he looks around for both female speakers but finds himself all alone in a small riverside meadow. Slowly looking down, he sees two unfamiliar lumps of flesh sticking out of his chest.
"AAH!" Jumping up in fright, the shocking, loud second female's voice is coming out of his own mouth. Before he could fully absorb what was going on, the first female voice interrupts his thoughts.
"I advise you to keep the volume of your voice down. You are in the middle of a forest filled with monsters and are currently vulnerable."
With tears in his eyes, Alex stops paying attention to his new body and looks up expecting to see the first female speaker at last. But seeing only the empty field around him he asks, "Where and who are you?"
"I am your system called Guardian Angel or Angel for short. I am inside your mind and will assist as you grow stronger."
"System? As in that AI assistant that Chris mentioned having?"
"I don't know which Chris you speak of, but yes, I am your assistant system. Now let us stop wasting time and review your stats. Open up your menu by thinking menu and I will explain how I work to you."
Feeling as confused as the time he tried using an A*ple product for the first time, Alex does as he's told. [Menu]
A half transparent menu overlay pops up in his view making Alex step back as if a bee just flew in front of his face.
Ignoring Alex's reaction, Angel continues. "This is the main menu, from here you can access your profile which displays your current status and statistics as well as your skills and abilities. There is also a section for your inventory once you activate your personal storage space. This menu is only accessible by you while other heroes may have similar systems of their own."
"Interesting..." Alex says aloud as he subconsciously gropes one of his own boobs while deep in thought.
The system continues, "Now think skills. This will open up your skills list. After this first time, you only have to want to use a skill and I will automatically prepare it for you."
[Skills.] Alex thinks the word as he's told but only a mostly blank list of moves appears. Looking through it there are only a few odd skills listed.
"Why are throwing a tantrum and groping the only things listed under my skills?"
"That is odd. The eight skills you chose should be listed here. As for the two skills you do have, those were automatically compiled and optimized by me just now as you performed them. The next time you wish to carry out these skills, they will receive a proficiency boost and you will gain experience and further optimize them the more you use them."
Alex looks down at his hand feeling around his chest and lowers it back down to his side embarrassed.
Not taking any notice of Alex's actions the system continues, "The first time you successfully perform new skills they will be added to your skill list and optimized the more you use them. For now, I suggest learning a defensive and an offensive skill for self-defense. As well as a movement skill."
"What should I do?"
"Try punching the air in front of you. Or you could swing a stick and throw a stone. I also think you should try dodging to the side and running around a tree."
Alex throws a punch and an appropriate skill is added to his list of skills and appears on a skill bar near the bottom of his vision.
"Having things blocking my view is distracting. Is there a way to hide all this and still have access to everything?"
"I'll take care of it. When you do want to review your skills you can always access the menu as before and you can also hide the menu by merely wishing to close it." The system explains as it hides the menu.
With a sigh of relief, Alex begins feeling excited. He runs up to a nearby tree and punches at it hurting his fist.
"Ow! God! This isn't like M*necr*ft at all."
Shaking his hand to ward off the stinging a bit, Alex hugs the tree and starts to grapple with it getting the grapple skill. Then he breaks off a small branch and swings it around gaining forestry and rudimentary sword and club skills among other miscellaneous skills.
Looking through the list at the skills he's already collected Alex realizes that pretty much every action can have a corresponding skill that is automatically optimized by his system. He tries jumping up and down and stumbles with a nosebleed as his fat sacs bounce unexpectedly.
A new skill "Bleeding out the nose" is added to his skill list.
Alex sits on the ground with a numb mind as reality finally starts to sink in.
Please report us if you find any errors so we can fix it asap!
Alex and Chris were led to a room filled with chairs similar to what would be seen in a dentist's office and all were facing toward the same blank wall. When the door was shut the pervasive music outside was finally blocked out but Alex only had time to sigh in relief before he was picked up and strapped into one of the chairs. Once he was secured, a side door opened and a team of smaller pinkuns wearing something similar to white lab coats entered the room and walked up to the larger red monsters before they all put their hands on their cheeks and bent to the side as a sort of salute.
"Are these the last ones?" One of the lab coat wearing pinkuns asked.
"Yeah, just these two rebels left. Careful with this one." the red monster points at Chris, "We found him licking the ceiling of his cell."
"That's disgusting! We'll probably have to do a little extra to teach him proper love." The lab pinkun responds before turning to the rest of his team and instructing them to prep the two prisoners for their treatment.
Alex starts trembling as he sees them pull out strange instruments with tubes among other things. And to his wide-eyed horror, he sees them putting probes and tubes into places best left unsaid as they worked on the still unconscious Chris before turning to him.
"Oh God no! Keep those d*mn things away from me!" No matter how much Alex struggled he couldn't get free and the smiles of the pinkuns holding the probes as they advanced closer to him will inhabit his nightmares for eons to come.
*Scene censored*
"There that wasn't so bad was it? Now you're all ready for your treatment." The lab pinkun smiles as he wipes the tears falling from Alex's eyes.
Alex could only moan in agony and if they hadn't put in the gag from the start he would have tried biting off his tongue. He was so tightly restrained that he couldn't even move his head now. While he could look around with his eyes, his eyelids were forced to stay open and with his face pointed at the blank wall, he couldn't help but watch as it started to gain color.
"Alright, start the treatment!"
"Yes sir"
The images on the wall started moving and music different from the world outside filled the room. Alex had just enough time to realize he'd seen a movie like this before when the needles jabbed into him started pumping a fluid into his veins that made it hard to string two thoughts together. In the chair next to him, Chris was forced awake with a short shock to his head and started screaming into his gag with bloodshot pinkun eyes forced wide open.
Alex couldn't tell how long it took for the drugs to start wearing off and during the treatment, his mind slowly relived some of the short lives he'd recently experienced. Everything else around him was a nightmarish blur filled with brainwashing propaganda and sing-alongs joined in by all the other pinkuns in the room. After a while, Alex's mind started to clear up.
"They're becoming lucid. Remove the gags so they can sing along."
"It's in my head like a bad commercial jingle!" Chris wasted no time to yell out to Alex.
"They used to play horrible music where I worked. The trick is to think about other stuff to distract your brain."
"How can I distract my thoughts from all the stuff they shoved up my ***?"
Alex was happily distracted as he thought for a moment before yelling back, "Think about the woman you were with before your boss killed you!"
Chris started grinning. "That was the boss's daughter!" After a moment of silence, "Hey, you're right! If I picture the girl on the screen naked and giving me a bl*w, this isn't so bad!"
The pinkuns watching on staggered and the lead pinkun jumped into action grabbing one of the purple bats from the interrogation tool chest.
"We need to beat the evil out of this one!" he yells as he and a handful of the other pinkuns start whacking the h*ll out of Chris.
After about three minutes of intensive attention with the bats, Chris yelled out, "It's still better than the sing-alongs!" as raspberry blood spills from his mouth.
The side door was opened again and another pinkun came in to inspect the duo with a frown.
"These guys aren't responding at all. Put the gags back in and Insert the brain scanners. You over there, tell our Imouto about their resistance."
Before long the same girl that was in all the videos Chris and Alex were being forced to watch, but with wrinkles across her face, entered the room.
"Are these the ones still protected by their demon gods?"
"Yes, my Goddess Imouto." The lead lab pinkun replied in reverence.
"You're right, I can't read their minds like this."
"We were just about to insert the brain scanners." As the lab pinkun speaks the others are pulling the feeding tubes from Alex's nose and inserting the wires of a device up through his sinuses and into his brain. With a painful jolt to his brain, the screen turns on and the voice of his mind yells out.
"Arg my brain! What the h*ll's this old hag going to do to us now?" Alex literally thinks out loud.
All the pinkuns in the room gasp with wide eyes as Imouto indignantly clenches her fists at her side.
"I'm not an old hag! This is a curse from your demon god that I just haven't bothered dealing with yet!" She says with tears forming in the corners of her eyes.
All the pinkuns immediately drop what they're doing and repeatedly kowtow while yelling, "Our mother Imouto is young and cute! There is no one more lovely than her. All the other gods are ugly, rancid demons!"
At this moment Alex's thoughts are heard out loud again, "She's obviously compensating for something with all these stupid, yes men subordinates. And what's with this horrible music? I've heard walruses barfing with better tone depth"
The kowtowing pinkuns were on the verge of passing out hearing this. One of them desperately bellows, "How dare you insult our Goddess Imouto's karaoke mix tape! How dare you not love her divine voice!"
At this point Chris's thoughts are finally heard, "I want my body back you demon b*tch."
Shaking in anger Imouto get closer before saying, "I'm going to torture and kill the both of you for this and after you die, I'll find your souls and bring you back to life and kill you again and again and again."
Alex cringes and couldn't help but think out, "I don't want to stay in this h*ll hole world with this crazy goddess."
To which Chris thinks, "She's a demon, not a goddess." in reply.
"Enough! Mute their brain scanners and make extra copies of all the recordings." She looks back at Alex, "I know where one of you comes from already and it won't be long before I find out where you come from too and when I do, I will find your family and make them my pinkuns. Then I'll have them torture you until your protection wears off and then you'll be all mine."
Imouto turns back to her loyal pinkuns and orders them to bring Alex and Chris to the execution square before leaving the room.
The lead pinkun steps forward with the ever-present squeaks and announces, "For the crime of not loving your Imouto, you are hereby sentenced to death by gruesome torture. You will be dipped in candied water till half-drowned then your belly sacs will be pulled open and your organs pulled out to be sectioned off and turned into food for the other love prisoners. Your bodies will then be stuffed and mounted for display before being made into weapons to bring love to the demon worlds you come from."
The pinkun starts walking to the door but stops and turns around, "I'm sure we'll be seeing each other a lot from now on." He says before walking out of the room.
Alex and Chris make eye contact one last time before they are wheeled out of the room and toward their doom.
...
Back in the white space, the old man is holding an orb and speaking to a young woman.
"You've been chosen as the hero that will save the world. The Goddess named Accordia that you will be serving has asked me to explain a few things before sending you on your way, so pay attention."
The brown-haired, bright-eyed girl nods at the old man.
With a bored voice, the old man reads from a scroll in his left hand, "The world you'll be going to is in turmoil. A demon lord has been rampaging across the land and his army has been held in check at great cost. To make matters worse the human kingdoms are full of corruption and fight each other both on the battlefield and with assassins behind the scenes. Accordia is busy dealing with the demon lord directly so she can't watch over you and give you her protection until you've proven yourself and become a Valkyrie worthy of standing vanguard among her troops."
The old man takes a breath, "To do this you will have to pass a trial at her main temple in the capital city of Accor. She regrets and has explained to me that you must enter the world some ways distant and keep a low profile while you gain strength so that human agents of the demon lord don't hunt you down before you're ready."
The old man conjures an orb in his right hand. "Do you understand so far?"
"Yes, I'll be on my own and need to get stronger to save the world." She replies.
"Good. To help survive and gain ultimate victory, Accordia has given you an assistant system. This system has a partial ego and is named Guardian Angel. It will help guide you and give you access to certain abilities as you get stronger. Angel will explain more about itself when you've been reincarnated. Now then let's have you choose some special abilities to imprint onto your orb."
Alex appears in the background behind the old man catching the attention of the girl. Noticing that she's no longer paying attention to him, the old man traces her line of sight and spots Alex getting up from the ground. He immediately throws the orb at Alex and turns back to the girl.
"Where was I?"
"You were saying something about imprinting skills onto the orb." The girl replies.
"Ah right. As I was saying, you need to choose some special skills to imprint onto this orb." The old man raises his now empty hand and stares at it for a moment in silence before his face begins to pale and his eyes widen in disbelief with his mouth hanging a bit open.
"What's wrong?" The girl asks as she sees the old man's odd behavior.
The old man's face reddens to a deep crimson and he quickly twirls around to see if Alex is still there but is disappointed by the blank white space. "This is bad!" He grabs the sides of his head in panic before turning back to the girl.
"You'll need to follow him and.. and... You'll need to kill him before he messes things up."
"Don't I need to choose some skills first?" The girl was clearly taken aback at how the old man was acting.
"Right, here is a list." He quickly hands her a list that had appeared in his left hand and starts to twirl both his hands around each other in front of him. "Quickly choose your skills while I remake a new hero orb and system for you."
...
Alex comes to with the cool feeling of damp grass pressed against his face and the sounds of a nearby river's burbling rapids. His eyes pop wide open as a subdued female voice speaks to him in his head.
"Alicia, you need to wake up and get moving soon."
"Who's there?" Alex looks around for the source of the voice and hears another female voice asking exactly the same question over his own voice.
"What? Who said that?" The second female voice speaks again, asking the same thing as Alex at the same time once more.
"I asked you first." Alex was getting indignant [Once again she asks the same thing as me and speaks over me. I can't even hear my own voice because of her.]
An idea slowly dawns on Alex as he looks around for both female speakers but finds himself all alone in a small riverside meadow. Slowly looking down, he sees two unfamiliar lumps of flesh sticking out of his chest.
"AAH!" Jumping up in fright, the shocking, loud second female's voice is coming out of his own mouth. Before he could fully absorb what was going on, the first female voice interrupts his thoughts.
"I advise you to keep the volume of your voice down. You are in the middle of a forest filled with monsters and are currently vulnerable."
With tears in his eyes, Alex stops paying attention to his new body and looks up expecting to see the first female speaker at last. But seeing only the empty field around him he asks, "Where and who are you?"
"I am your system called Guardian Angel or Angel for short. I am inside your mind and will assist as you grow stronger."
"System? As in that AI assistant that Chris mentioned having?"
"I don't know which Chris you speak of, but yes, I am your assistant system. Now let us stop wasting time and review your stats. Open up your menu by thinking menu and I will explain how I work to you."
Feeling as confused as the time he tried using an A*ple product for the first time, Alex does as he's told. [Menu]
A half transparent menu overlay pops up in his view making Alex step back as if a bee just flew in front of his face.
Ignoring Alex's reaction, Angel continues. "This is the main menu, from here you can access your profile which displays your current status and statistics as well as your skills and abilities. There is also a section for your inventory once you activate your personal storage space. This menu is only accessible by you while other heroes may have similar systems of their own."
"Interesting..." Alex says aloud as he subconsciously gropes one of his own boobs while deep in thought.
The system continues, "Now think skills. This will open up your skills list. After this first time, you only have to want to use a skill and I will automatically prepare it for you."
[Skills.] Alex thinks the word as he's told but only a mostly blank list of moves appears. Looking through it there are only a few odd skills listed.
"Why are throwing a tantrum and groping the only things listed under my skills?"
"That is odd. The eight skills you chose should be listed here. As for the two skills you do have, those were automatically compiled and optimized by me just now as you performed them. The next time you wish to carry out these skills, they will receive a proficiency boost and you will gain experience and further optimize them the more you use them."
Alex looks down at his hand feeling around his chest and lowers it back down to his side embarrassed.
Not taking any notice of Alex's actions the system continues, "The first time you successfully perform new skills they will be added to your skill list and optimized the more you use them. For now, I suggest learning a defensive and an offensive skill for self-defense. As well as a movement skill."
"What should I do?"
"Try punching the air in front of you. Or you could swing a stick and throw a stone. I also think you should try dodging to the side and running around a tree."
Alex throws a punch and an appropriate skill is added to his list of skills and appears on a skill bar near the bottom of his vision.
"Having things blocking my view is distracting. Is there a way to hide all this and still have access to everything?"
"I'll take care of it. When you do want to review your skills you can always access the menu as before and you can also hide the menu by merely wishing to close it." The system explains as it hides the menu.
With a sigh of relief, Alex begins feeling excited. He runs up to a nearby tree and punches at it hurting his fist.
"Ow! God! This isn't like M*necr*ft at all."
Shaking his hand to ward off the stinging a bit, Alex hugs the tree and starts to grapple with it getting the grapple skill. Then he breaks off a small branch and swings it around gaining forestry and rudimentary sword and club skills among other miscellaneous skills.
Looking through the list at the skills he's already collected Alex realizes that pretty much every action can have a corresponding skill that is automatically optimized by his system. He tries jumping up and down and stumbles with a nosebleed as his fat sacs bounce unexpectedly.
A new skill "Bleeding out the nose" is added to his skill list.
Alex sits on the ground with a numb mind as reality finally starts to sink in.
Alex and Chris were led to a room filled with chairs similar to what would be seen in a dentist's office and all were facing toward the same blank wall. When the door was shut the pervasive music outside was finally blocked out but Alex only had time to sigh in relief before he was picked up and strapped into one of the chairs. Once he was secured, a side door opened and a team of smaller pinkuns wearing something similar to white lab coats entered the room and walked up to the larger red monsters before they all put their hands on their cheeks and bent to the side as a sort of salute."Are these the last ones?" One of the lab coat wearing pinkuns asked."Yeah, just these two rebels left. Careful with this one." the red monster points at Chris, "We found him licking the ceiling of his cell.""That's disgusting! We'll probably have to do a little extra to teach him proper love." The lab pinkun responds before turning to the rest of his team and instructing them to prep the two prisoners for their treatment.Alex starts trembling as he sees them pull out strange instruments with tubes among other things. And to his wide-eyed horror, he sees them putting probes and tubes into places best left unsaid as they worked on the still unconscious Chris before turning to him."Oh God no! Keep those d*mn things away from me!" No matter how much Alex struggled he couldn't get free and the smiles of the pinkuns holding the probes as they advanced closer to him will inhabit his nightmares for eons to come.*Scene censored*"There that wasn't so bad was it? Now you're all ready for your treatment." The lab pinkun smiles as he wipes the tears falling from Alex's eyes.Alex could only moan in agony and if they hadn't put in the gag from the start he would have tried biting off his tongue. He was so tightly restrained that he couldn't even move his head now. While he could look around with his eyes, his eyelids were forced to stay open and with his face pointed at the blank wall, he couldn't help but watch as it started to gain color."Alright, start the treatment!""Yes sir"The images on the wall started moving and music different from the world outside filled the room. Alex had just enough time to realize he'd seen a movie like this before when the needles jabbed into him started pumping a fluid into his veins that made it hard to string two thoughts together. In the chair next to him, Chris was forced awake with a short shock to his head and started screaming into his gag with bloodshot pinkun eyes forced wide open.Alex couldn't tell how long it took for the drugs to start wearing off and during the treatment, his mind slowly relived some of the short lives he'd recently experienced. Everything else around him was a nightmarish blur filled with brainwashing propaganda and sing-alongs joined in by all the other pinkuns in the room. After a while, Alex's mind started to clear up."They're becoming lucid. Remove the gags so they can sing along.""It's in my head like a bad commercial jingle!" Chris wasted no time to yell out to Alex."They used to play horrible music where I worked. The trick is to think about other stuff to distract your brain.""How can I distract my thoughts from all the stuff they shoved up my ***?"Alex was happily distracted as he thought for a moment before yelling back, "Think about the woman you were with before your boss killed you!"Chris started grinning. "That was the boss's daughter!" After a moment of silence, "Hey, you're right! If I picture the girl on the screen naked and giving me a bl*w, this isn't so bad!"The pinkuns watching on staggered and the lead pinkun jumped into action grabbing one of the purple bats from the interrogation tool chest."We need to beat the evil out of this one!" he yells as he and a handful of the other pinkuns start whacking the h*ll out of Chris.After about three minutes of intensive attention with the bats, Chris yelled out, "It's still better than the sing-alongs!" as raspberry blood spills from his mouth.The side door was opened again and another pinkun came in to inspect the duo with a frown."These guys aren't responding at all. Put the gags back in and Insert the brain scanners. You over there, tell our Imouto about their resistance."Before long the same girl that was in all the videos Chris and Alex were being forced to watch, but with wrinkles across her face, entered the room."Are these the ones still protected by their demon gods?""Yes, my Goddess Imouto." The lead lab pinkun replied in reverence."You're right, I can't read their minds like this.""We were just about to insert the brain scanners." As the lab pinkun speaks the others are pulling the feeding tubes from Alex's nose and inserting the wires of a device up through his sinuses and into his brain. With a painful jolt to his brain, the screen turns on and the voice of his mind yells out."Arg my brain! What the h*ll's this old hag going to do to us now?" Alex literally thinks out loud.All the pinkuns in the room gasp with wide eyes as Imouto indignantly clenches her fists at her side."I'm not an old hag! This is a curse from your demon god that I just haven't bothered dealing with yet!" She says with tears forming in the corners of her eyes.All the pinkuns immediately drop what they're doing and repeatedly kowtow while yelling, "Our mother Imouto is young and cute! There is no one more lovely than her. All the other gods are ugly, rancid demons!"At this moment Alex's thoughts are heard out loud again, "She's obviously compensating for something with all these stupid, yes men subordinates. And what's with this horrible music? I've heard walruses barfing with better tone depth"The kowtowing pinkuns were on the verge of passing out hearing this. One of them desperately bellows, "How dare you insult our Goddess Imouto's karaoke mix tape! How dare you not love her divine voice!"At this point Chris's thoughts are finally heard, "I want my body back you demon b*tch."Shaking in anger Imouto get closer before saying, "I'm going to torture and kill the both of you for this and after you die, I'll find your souls and bring you back to life and kill you again and again and again."Alex cringes and couldn't help but think out, "I don't want to stay in this h*ll hole world with this crazy goddess."To which Chris thinks, "She's a demon, not a goddess." in reply."Enough! Mute their brain scanners and make extra copies of all the recordings." She looks back at Alex, "I know where one of you comes from already and it won't be long before I find out where you come from too and when I do, I will find your family and make them my pinkuns. Then I'll have them torture you until your protection wears off and then you'll be all mine."Imouto turns back to her loyal pinkuns and orders them to bring Alex and Chris to the execution square before leaving the room.The lead pinkun steps forward with the ever-present squeaks and announces, "For the crime of not loving your Imouto, you are hereby sentenced to death by gruesome torture. You will be dipped in candied water till half-drowned then your belly sacs will be pulled open and your organs pulled out to be sectioned off and turned into food for the other love prisoners. Your bodies will then be stuffed and mounted for display before being made into weapons to bring love to the demon worlds you come from."The pinkun starts walking to the door but stops and turns around, "I'm sure we'll be seeing each other a lot from now on." He says before walking out of the room.Alex and Chris make eye contact one last time before they are wheeled out of the room and toward their doom....Back in the white space, the old man is holding an orb and speaking to a young woman."You've been chosen as the hero that will save the world. The Goddess named Accordia that you will be serving has asked me to explain a few things before sending you on your way, so pay attention."The brown-haired, bright-eyed girl nods at the old man.With a bored voice, the old man reads from a scroll in his left hand, "The world you'll be going to is in turmoil. A demon lord has been rampaging across the land and his army has been held in check at great cost. To make matters worse the human kingdoms are full of corruption and fight each other both on the battlefield and with assassins behind the scenes. Accordia is busy dealing with the demon lord directly so she can't watch over you and give you her protection until you've proven yourself and become a Valkyrie worthy of standing vanguard among her troops."The old man takes a breath, "To do this you will have to pass a trial at her main temple in the capital city of Accor. She regrets and has explained to me that you must enter the world some ways distant and keep a low profile while you gain strength so that human agents of the demon lord don't hunt you down before you're ready."The old man conjures an orb in his right hand. "Do you understand so far?""Yes, I'll be on my own and need to get stronger to save the world." She replies."Good. To help survive and gain ultimate victory, Accordia has given you an assistant system. This system has a partial ego and is named Guardian Angel. It will help guide you and give you access to certain abilities as you get stronger. Angel will explain more about itself when you've been reincarnated. Now then let's have you choose some special abilities to imprint onto your orb."Alex appears in the background behind the old man catching the attention of the girl. Noticing that she's no longer paying attention to him, the old man traces her line of sight and spots Alex getting up from the ground. He immediately throws the orb at Alex and turns back to the girl."Where was I?""You were saying something about imprinting skills onto the orb." The girl replies."Ah right. As I was saying, you need to choose some special skills to imprint onto this orb." The old man raises his now empty hand and stares at it for a moment in silence before his face begins to pale and his eyes widen in disbelief with his mouth hanging a bit open."What's wrong?" The girl asks as she sees the old man's odd behavior.The old man's face reddens to a deep crimson and he quickly twirls around to see if Alex is still there but is disappointed by the blank white space. "This is bad!" He grabs the sides of his head in panic before turning back to the girl."You'll need to follow him and.. and... You'll need to kill him before he messes things up.""Don't I need to choose some skills first?" The girl was clearly taken aback at how the old man was acting."Right, here is a list." He quickly hands her a list that had appeared in his left hand and starts to twirl both his hands around each other in front of him. "Quickly choose your skills while I remake a new hero orb and system for you."...Alex comes to with the cool feeling of damp grass pressed against his face and the sounds of a nearby river's burbling rapids. His eyes pop wide open as a subdued female voice speaks to him in his head."Alicia, you need to wake up and get moving soon.""Who's there?" Alex looks around for the source of the voice and hears another female voice asking exactly the same question over his own voice."What? Who said that?" The second female voice speaks again, asking the same thing as Alex at the same time once more."I asked you first." Alex was getting indignant Once again she asks the same thing as me and speaks over me. I can't even hear my own voice because of her.An idea slowly dawns on Alex as he looks around for both female speakers but finds himself all alone in a small riverside meadow. Slowly looking down, he sees two unfamiliar lumps of flesh sticking out of his chest."AAH!" Jumping up in fright, the shocking, loud second female's voice is coming out of his own mouth. Before he could fully absorb what was going on, the first female voice interrupts his thoughts."I advise you to keep the volume of your voice down. You are in the middle of a forest filled with monsters and are currently vulnerable."With tears in his eyes, Alex stops paying attention to his new body and looks up expecting to see the first female speaker at last. But seeing only the empty field around him he asks, "Where and who are you?""I am your system called Guardian Angel or Angel for short. I am inside your mind and will assist as you grow stronger.""System? As in that AI assistant that Chris mentioned having?""I don't know which Chris you speak of, but yes, I am your assistant system. Now let us stop wasting time and review your stats. Open up your menu by thinking menu and I will explain how I work to you."Feeling as confused as the time he tried using an A*ple product for the first time, Alex does as he's told. MenuA half transparent menu overlay pops up in his view making Alex step back as if a bee just flew in front of his face.Ignoring Alex's reaction, Angel continues. "This is the main menu, from here you can access your profile which displays your current status and statistics as well as your skills and abilities. There is also a section for your inventory once you activate your personal storage space. This menu is only accessible by you while other heroes may have similar systems of their own.""Interesting..." Alex says aloud as he subconsciously gropes one of his own boobs while deep in thought.The system continues, "Now think skills. This will open up your skills list. After this first time, you only have to want to use a skill and I will automatically prepare it for you."Skills. Alex thinks the word as he's told but only a mostly blank list of moves appears. Looking through it there are only a few odd skills listed."Why are throwing a tantrum and groping the only things listed under my skills?""That is odd. The eight skills you chose should be listed here. As for the two skills you do have, those were automatically compiled and optimized by me just now as you performed them. The next time you wish to carry out these skills, they will receive a proficiency boost and you will gain experience and further optimize them the more you use them."Alex looks down at his hand feeling around his chest and lowers it back down to his side embarrassed.Not taking any notice of Alex's actions the system continues, "The first time you successfully perform new skills they will be added to your skill list and optimized the more you use them. For now, I suggest learning a defensive and an offensive skill for self-defense. As well as a movement skill.""What should I do?""Try punching the air in front of you. Or you could swing a stick and throw a stone. I also think you should try dodging to the side and running around a tree."Alex throws a punch and an appropriate skill is added to his list of skills and appears on a skill bar near the bottom of his vision."Having things blocking my view is distracting. Is there a way to hide all this and still have access to everything?""I'll take care of it. When you do want to review your skills you can always access the menu as before and you can also hide the menu by merely wishing to close it." The system explains as it hides the menu.With a sigh of relief, Alex begins feeling excited. He runs up to a nearby tree and punches at it hurting his fist."Ow! God! This isn't like M*necr*ft at all."Shaking his hand to ward off the stinging a bit, Alex hugs the tree and starts to grapple with it getting the grapple skill. Then he breaks off a small branch and swings it around gaining forestry and rudimentary sword and club skills among other miscellaneous skills.Looking through the list at the skills he's already collected Alex realizes that pretty much every action can have a corresponding skill that is automatically optimized by his system. He tries jumping up and down and stumbles with a nosebleed as his fat sacs bounce unexpectedly.A new skill "Bleeding out the nose" is added to his skill list.Alex sits on the ground with a numb mind as reality finally starts to sink in.
