Four humans were now standing in my cell, which was quite large, so that four more prisoners could easily fit in. Since I was pinned to the wall, I did not need much space, but it still felt crowded.
Maybe it was because the only ones who had ever set foot in my cell were the ones I wanted to kill. None of them entered the cell without the intention of harming me, so this was an unusual situation for me.
To my surprise, they did not notice me right away. Three of them did not look back, but peered out of the cell, solely focused on the throne room. My presence became apparent when one of the human women turned around.
Her eyes widened and she shrunk back.
The woman's blonde hair only caught my attention because it was a very unusual color. A color I had never seen on a human before.
"G-Guys?!" She yelped, at which point the other three turned around.
"Lisa, what's ... oh." The other woman, her hair bright red, turned around.
All of them were obviously surprised at my presence, their reactions were entertaining enough to make up for their intrusion. Not that it was their fault. Greeting the newcomers was not an option, thanks to the stupid piece of metal in my mouth, so all I could do was stare down on them from above.
“W-who is she?” The blonde woman asked.
Was she seriously expecting any of them to know that?
“How would we know?” The taller of the two men asked. His head was bald, but he grew a grey mustache and chin beard.
“Identify doesn’t work,” the other man spoke. He was smaller and sleeker than the bald man and his hair was dark and cut short.
The man made me remember something I had completely forgotten about. Something that I could do, but rarely did. The ability to get a simple description of what was in front of me.
The words he spoke were some I heard on the regular.
Maybe I should give it a try. It’s been so long though. How do I do it again? Was it like this?
As my eyes locked onto the blond woman, small words and numbers appeared in my vision.
[Human - Lvl. 45]
The skill surprisingly worked with ease. I had not used it for quite some time, so I expected to need a little more warm-up. In general, when I used this ability, it would tell me three essential things about the other person. Their gender, level and species.
The blonde woman was Level 45 and while that surpassed a few of the clan’s younger members, the veterans were somewhere in the 80’s and last time I checked Malik was… well, level 20, but that was when he was still a kid.
Looking at the other three did not change my mind.
[Human — Lvl. 60]
[Human — Lvl. 55]
[Human — Lvl. 80]
The other three were higher in level, but still did not reach Malik’s level. I had seen higher leveled people die at his hands.
“Uhm, e- excuse me?”
The voice of the blonde woman snapped me out of my daze and my attention returned to the group in front of me. The words in my vision vanished.
Being talked to was not something I was unused to, but it definitely felt strange for it to be someone beside Malik. I could count the amount of conversations I had with other prisoners on a fingerless hand.
Unfortunately for her, she would need to take the initiative on that one, because even if I wanted to answering was not an option. A small nod was all my managed.
“I- I think we should get that thing out of h- her mouth,” the blonde woman turned towards he companions. The others looked reluctant, with no immediate response.
My eyes widened after hearing her words. The human girl was obviously naive and did not know the graveness of the situation, however, I did not dislike the prospective of having this pipe removed.
She quickly turned around again and looked at me, while her body was slightly shaking, her eyes carried an unexpected resolve.
“D- Don’t worry, we don’t belong to those guys,” she tried to assure me as she approached me.
“I think she can tell,” the black-haired man commented, not looking my way.
And indeed, I could.
The blonde woman was now really close to me. Since I was stuck to the wall, my feet not touching the ground, the woman struggled a little to reach my mouth, but eventually managed to get a grip on the small pipe and removed it from my mouth.
The metal pipe was fastened to a leather belt that kept the iron pipe in place. It was a gag, after all. The woman slowly moved the pipe over my head and took it off me, then placed it on the ground.
“There you go,” she said.
The moment the pipe had been removed, I spit out all the saliva that built up in my mouth and took a long, deep breath. My jaw hurt a little, but was nothing compared to the sword piercing my stomach.
“Tha…nk…s,” I tried to show my appreciation, but my voice came out raspy and broken as it had been a long time since the last time I said anything.
“What do we do about the sword?” The blonde woman asked.
“I don’t think pulling it out is a good idea. With how deep the wound is, there will be too much blood loss,” the bald man said, shaking his head
Yep, couldn’t agree more. The sword hurt like hell and not having a sword stabbed into my stomach sounded like a wonderful future, but unfortunately there was more than a little truth to what he was saying.
“But we can’t let it in there! She will die!”
“Yes, Lisa. People tend to die if they get stabbed through the stomach and left like that for Leona knows how long.” The bald man retorted with an almost sarcastic tone.
Okay, that hurt. I knew my body was at its limits and I knew that my chances were low, but getting the hard facts like that felt like a gut punch right into my sword-pierced stomach.
The dark-haired man now walked up to me.
“Guys, look at her wound. While there is a lot of blood on the ground, the wound stopped bleeding.”
“What do you mean?” The bald man asked.
“That her wound is healing, even though the sword is still stuck. Either it is a skill or she has a monstrous amount of Vitality, but pulling out the sword might be the best idea. If it remains, the damages might be a lot worse,” he finished, leaving me wide-eyed.
What did he mean? Things progressed too fast as the bald man seemed convinced and gripped the handle of the sword.
“This is going to hurt,” he told me. “A lot,” he added.
Wait, what are you-
“Argh!” I screamed out loud as the man pulled out the blade in one swift motion. Tears streamed down my eyes.
Trying to resist the pain was impossible. I wailed as my hands curled into fists, completely ignoring the thick nail piercing through them. Now even my hands burned with violent pain.
“Shit, we have to get her down. Now!” Someone yelled.
The pain was overwhelming all my other senses, completely isolating me from my surroundings. My screams the only thing that rang in my head and all around me. Then suddenly, everything went dark.
The next thing I knew was that I lay on the ground, the nails out of my feet and hands. The cold ground was much like the wall, but for some reason, felt a lot more comfortable.
My throat was sore and completely dry from all the screaming, my breathing was rapid and my vision blurry with tears. A truly horrible experience.
“Is she alright?” One of the humans asked.
“Does she look alright to you?” Another answered.
The bald man leaned over me.
“Sorry about that, but your screams were loud, we needed you to stop,” he scratched the back of his head.
I didn’t look at him, instead my gaze was unfocused and my mind somewhere else entirely.
There was an annoying certainty that Malik wouldn’t let me die, but just pulling out the sword and nails like that, without proper equipment to treat the wounds should have killed me, but it didn’t.
I had survived. My body was in tatters and hurt a lot, but I was alive. This had ruined Malik’s plans to torment me. He would be bat-shit angry after this, but it wasn’t like he could do anything worse.
The realization sunk in and I smiled for the first time in what felt —and probably was— a decade.
Shortly after, I raised my upper body. The hole in my stomach quickly made me regret that choice. Luckily, the wall wasn’t too far away and with a short push, I rested my back against the wall.
“What?” I asked, looking at the humans.
“Are you okay?” The blonde woman asked.
“Not really,” I chuckled, my voice still raspy, but much clearer, “but thanks.”
My voice had returned, but still cracked in between words. I expressed my gratitude for their help and decided against complaining. I had not asked them to free me entirely and cause me unbearable pain, but they did anyways and the outcome wasn’t really bad.
Nobody spoke a word for a while, until the redhead broke the silence.
“Who are you?”
“Who I am? Who are you? This is my cell, as guests, you should introduce yourselves first, don’t you think?” I told her, frowning.
The redhead did not answer.
“I’m Lisa,” the blonde woman answered in her stead. Then she gestured towards the other three.
“That are Carla, Seth and Bennet,” she introduced the others.
“Seth,” the bald man raised his hand, pointing his thumb at himself with a grin. “Bennet’s the twig over there.”
“Seth, stop with that bullshit,” he complained, then turned my way, “Hello, the name’s Bennet,” he grumbled. From what I had seen, he had a stern personality.
“Pleasure,” I smiled, giving a short wave and momentarily surprising myself. It had been ages since my last conversation and it wasn’t like I missed talking with someone, but it sure felt good to talk to people that didn’t only have your suffering in mind.
But as it appeared, not all of them were intent on a friendly chat.
“We introduced ourselves, now answer my question,” Redhead demanded.
I knew her name, but her personality really sucked. Even if I was a stranger, her attitude was really annoying. If anyone had a right to be pissed, it was me, but I was not here to have a competition over who had it worse and needed to be treated better, still, I felt like she could cut me some slack here.
“Carla!” Lisa pulled her shoulder slightly.
“What? We should at least know who she is and why she was locked away, shouldn’t we? Normally, such drastic measures are only needed for dangerous people!” She growled, making Lisa flinched in the process. Good job, Redhead!
“As for who I am? I don’t have a name like the four of you, so you can just call me “you”. A pleasure.”
The four looked at me dubiously. It was a sad thing, but I did not remember my own name. I would argue that I never had one, but I might have just forgotten it.
“I am sorry for the things that happened to you,” Seth said empathetically, “but have you tried opening your status? Your name should be there.”
I had no idea what he was talking about and tilted my head in confusion.
“What’s that?”
Seth looked at me wide-eyed and so did the others.
“Just think or say the word ‘status’. The rest should become obvious then,” he told me and I saw no reason to not do what he proposed. It wasn’t like thinking about anything hurt.
What is he talking about? Status? Status! Sta…tus?
“Status!” I eventually said out loud and a semi-transparent thing appeared before my eyes. Words and numbers floated in the air, very similar to when I used this Identify skill or what it was called.
System Initialization has been activated.
Error detected. Individual cannot be categorized. Trying to find solution. This will take an indeterminate amount of time.
Temporary status will be generated.
Name: None
Sex: Female
Species: Unregistered (Level: 1)
Class: None
Stamina Pool: 4/5
Mana Pool: 1,000/1,000
General Skills:
[Identify (Common)], [Iron Will (Epic)], [Pain Tolerance (Epic)]
Species Skills:
None
Class Skills:
None
Stats:
Vitality: 10
Strength: 2
Agility: 4
Dexterity: 5
Intelligence: 10
Willpower: 15
Perception: 20
Faith: 0
What the fuck?
There was so much to process that my mind just went blank. My face probably reflected my confusion quite well, since the bald man could tell what I was thinking.
“What you are seeing is your status, put simply, it is a bunch of information about yourself. Would love to give a thorough explanation, but considering… all of this,” he said, looking around the cell, “I think we can put that on hold for now.”
Seth’s explanation was way too short and simple. That in itself wasn’t too bad, since I liked it that way, but in this instance, I required a little more information.
I never really bothered with the skills or floating texts. All this time that I knew people had levels and classes — as named in the status —yet, I thought that I was not the same.
It was something the humans could do. Something that… whatever I was… didn’t have the right to have, at least that is what I believed until now. Seeing that I did have my own status, I couldn’t help but get a little excited.
“And?” Redhead grumbled with crossed arms and I scoffed at her in response.
Real nasty personality you have there, woman
“Carla, let her think for a bit.” Lisa admonished her, making Redhead glare even more at me. I snorted and turned to Lisa, who was the most supportive of the bunch.
Unfortunately, even my status showed no name, which probably meant that I truly did not have a name. Not that I had expected any different.
“It seems I don’t have a name,” I shrugged.
“Oh…” Lisa looked down, while even Redhead looked a little uncomfortable. The two men did not show any particular reaction other than staring straight at the wall to their right. Did they have a problem looking at me and the other two?
“I know that there is a lot to talk about, but let’s not forget that we are currently being held captive by a bandit clan. With all of them gone right now, shouldn’t we stop wasting time?” Bennet interrupted our talk.
I thought I misheard, but looking around convinced me that none of them were surprised by this statement. Even Lisa did not look very surprised, despite her timid personality.
Then the realization dawned on me. These humans had not given up and they had no intention of letting Malik have his way. They wanted to break out.
Four humans were now standing in my cell, which was quite large, so that four more prisoners could easily fit in. Since I was pinned to the wall, I did not need much space, but it still felt crowded.
Maybe it was because the only ones who had ever set foot in my cell were the ones I wanted to kill. None of them entered the cell without the intention of harming me, so this was an unusual situation for me.
To my surprise, they did not notice me right away. Three of them did not look back, but peered out of the cell, solely focused on the throne room. My presence became apparent when one of the human women turned around.
Her eyes widened and she shrunk back.
The woman's blonde hair only caught my attention because it was a very unusual color. A color I had never seen on a human before.
"G-Guys?!" She yelped, at which point the other three turned around.
"Lisa, what's ... oh." The other woman, her hair bright red, turned around.
All of them were obviously surprised at my presence, their reactions were entertaining enough to make up for their intrusion. Not that it was their fault. Greeting the newcomers was not an option, thanks to the stupid piece of metal in my mouth, so all I could do was stare down on them from above.
“W-who is she?” The blonde woman asked.
Was she seriously expecting any of them to know that?
“How would we know?” The taller of the two men asked. His head was bald, but he grew a grey mustache and chin beard.
“Identify doesn’t work,” the other man spoke. He was smaller and sleeker than the bald man and his hair was dark and cut short.
The man made me remember something I had completely forgotten about. Something that I could do, but rarely did. The ability to get a simple description of what was in front of me.
The words he spoke were some I heard on the regular.
Maybe I should give it a try. It’s been so long though. How do I do it again? Was it like this?
As my eyes locked onto the blond woman, small words and numbers appeared in my vision.
[Human - Lvl. 45]
The skill surprisingly worked with ease. I had not used it for quite some time, so I expected to need a little more warm-up. In general, when I used this ability, it would tell me three essential things about the other person. Their gender, level and species.
The blonde woman was Level 45 and while that surpassed a few of the clan’s younger members, the veterans were somewhere in the 80’s and last time I checked Malik was… well, level 20, but that was when he was still a kid.
Looking at the other three did not change my mind.
[Human — Lvl. 60]
[Human — Lvl. 55]
[Human — Lvl. 80]
The other three were higher in level, but still did not reach Malik’s level. I had seen higher leveled people die at his hands.
“Uhm, e- excuse me?”
The voice of the blonde woman snapped me out of my daze and my attention returned to the group in front of me. The words in my vision vanished.
Being talked to was not something I was unused to, but it definitely felt strange for it to be someone beside Malik. I could count the amount of conversations I had with other prisoners on a fingerless hand.
Unfortunately for her, she would need to take the initiative on that one, because even if I wanted to answering was not an option. A small nod was all my managed.
“I- I think we should get that thing out of h- her mouth,” the blonde woman turned towards he companions. The others looked reluctant, with no immediate response.
My eyes widened after hearing her words. The human girl was obviously naive and did not know the graveness of the situation, however, I did not dislike the prospective of having this pipe removed.
She quickly turned around again and looked at me, while her body was slightly shaking, her eyes carried an unexpected resolve.
“D- Don’t worry, we don’t belong to those guys,” she tried to assure me as she approached me.
“I think she can tell,” the black-haired man commented, not looking my way.
And indeed, I could.
The blonde woman was now really close to me. Since I was stuck to the wall, my feet not touching the ground, the woman struggled a little to reach my mouth, but eventually managed to get a grip on the small pipe and removed it from my mouth.
The metal pipe was fastened to a leather belt that kept the iron pipe in place. It was a gag, after all. The woman slowly moved the pipe over my head and took it off me, then placed it on the ground.
“There you go,” she said.
The moment the pipe had been removed, I spit out all the saliva that built up in my mouth and took a long, deep breath. My jaw hurt a little, but was nothing compared to the sword piercing my stomach.
“Tha…nk…s,” I tried to show my appreciation, but my voice came out raspy and broken as it had been a long time since the last time I said anything.
“What do we do about the sword?” The blonde woman asked.
“I don’t think pulling it out is a good idea. With how deep the wound is, there will be too much blood loss,” the bald man said, shaking his head
Yep, couldn’t agree more. The sword hurt like hell and not having a sword stabbed into my stomach sounded like a wonderful future, but unfortunately there was more than a little truth to what he was saying.
“But we can’t let it in there! She will die!”
“Yes, Lisa. People tend to die if they get stabbed through the stomach and left like that for Leona knows how long.” The bald man retorted with an almost sarcastic tone.
Okay, that hurt. I knew my body was at its limits and I knew that my chances were low, but getting the hard facts like that felt like a gut punch right into my sword-pierced stomach.
The dark-haired man now walked up to me.
“Guys, look at her wound. While there is a lot of blood on the ground, the wound stopped bleeding.”
“What do you mean?” The bald man asked.
“That her wound is healing, even though the sword is still stuck. Either it is a skill or she has a monstrous amount of Vitality, but pulling out the sword might be the best idea. If it remains, the damages might be a lot worse,” he finished, leaving me wide-eyed.
What did he mean? Things progressed too fast as the bald man seemed convinced and gripped the handle of the sword.
“This is going to hurt,” he told me. “A lot,” he added.
Wait, what are you-
“Argh!” I screamed out loud as the man pulled out the blade in one swift motion. Tears streamed down my eyes.
Trying to resist the pain was impossible. I wailed as my hands curled into fists, completely ignoring the thick nail piercing through them. Now even my hands burned with violent pain.
“Shit, we have to get her down. Now!” Someone yelled.
The pain was overwhelming all my other senses, completely isolating me from my surroundings. My screams the only thing that rang in my head and all around me. Then suddenly, everything went dark.
The next thing I knew was that I lay on the ground, the nails out of my feet and hands. The cold ground was much like the wall, but for some reason, felt a lot more comfortable.
My throat was sore and completely dry from all the screaming, my breathing was rapid and my vision blurry with tears. A truly horrible experience.
“Is she alright?” One of the humans asked.
“Does she look alright to you?” Another answered.
The bald man leaned over me.
“Sorry about that, but your screams were loud, we needed you to stop,” he scratched the back of his head.
I didn’t look at him, instead my gaze was unfocused and my mind somewhere else entirely.
There was an annoying certainty that Malik wouldn’t let me die, but just pulling out the sword and nails like that, without proper equipment to treat the wounds should have killed me, but it didn’t.
I had survived. My body was in tatters and hurt a lot, but I was alive. This had ruined Malik’s plans to torment me. He would be bat-shit angry after this, but it wasn’t like he could do anything worse.
The realization sunk in and I smiled for the first time in what felt —and probably was— a decade.
Shortly after, I raised my upper body. The hole in my stomach quickly made me regret that choice. Luckily, the wall wasn’t too far away and with a short push, I rested my back against the wall.
“What?” I asked, looking at the humans.
“Are you okay?” The blonde woman asked.
“Not really,” I chuckled, my voice still raspy, but much clearer, “but thanks.”
My voice had returned, but still cracked in between words. I expressed my gratitude for their help and decided against complaining. I had not asked them to free me entirely and cause me unbearable pain, but they did anyways and the outcome wasn’t really bad.
Nobody spoke a word for a while, until the redhead broke the silence.
“Who are you?”
“Who I am? Who are you? This is my cell, as guests, you should introduce yourselves first, don’t you think?” I told her, frowning.
The redhead did not answer.
“I’m Lisa,” the blonde woman answered in her stead. Then she gestured towards the other three.
“That are Carla, Seth and Bennet,” she introduced the others.
“Seth,” the bald man raised his hand, pointing his thumb at himself with a grin. “Bennet’s the twig over there.”
“Seth, stop with that bullshit,” he complained, then turned my way, “Hello, the name’s Bennet,” he grumbled. From what I had seen, he had a stern personality.
“Pleasure,” I smiled, giving a short wave and momentarily surprising myself. It had been ages since my last conversation and it wasn’t like I missed talking with someone, but it sure felt good to talk to people that didn’t only have your suffering in mind.
But as it appeared, not all of them were intent on a friendly chat.
“We introduced ourselves, now answer my question,” Redhead demanded.
I knew her name, but her personality really sucked. Even if I was a stranger, her attitude was really annoying. If anyone had a right to be pissed, it was me, but I was not here to have a competition over who had it worse and needed to be treated better, still, I felt like she could cut me some slack here.
“Carla!” Lisa pulled her shoulder slightly.
“What? We should at least know who she is and why she was locked away, shouldn’t we? Normally, such drastic measures are only needed for dangerous people!” She growled, making Lisa flinched in the process. Good job, Redhead!
“As for who I am? I don’t have a name like the four of you, so you can just call me “you”. A pleasure.”
The four looked at me dubiously. It was a sad thing, but I did not remember my own name. I would argue that I never had one, but I might have just forgotten it.
“I am sorry for the things that happened to you,” Seth said empathetically, “but have you tried opening your status? Your name should be there.”
I had no idea what he was talking about and tilted my head in confusion.
“What’s that?”
Seth looked at me wide-eyed and so did the others.
“Just think or say the word ‘status’. The rest should become obvious then,” he told me and I saw no reason to not do what he proposed. It wasn’t like thinking about anything hurt.
What is he talking about? Status? Status! Sta…tus?
“Status!” I eventually said out loud and a semi-transparent thing appeared before my eyes. Words and numbers floated in the air, very similar to when I used this Identify skill or what it was called.
System Initialization has been activated.
Error detected. Individual cannot be categorized. Trying to find solution. This will take an indeterminate amount of time.
Temporary status will be generated.
Name: None
Sex: Female
Species: Unregistered (Level: 1)
Class: None
Stamina Pool: 4/5
Mana Pool: 1,000/1,000
General Skills:
[Identify (Common)], [Iron Will (Epic)], [Pain Tolerance (Epic)]
Species Skills:
None
Class Skills:
None
Stats:
Vitality: 10
Strength: 2
Agility: 4
Dexterity: 5
Intelligence: 10
Willpower: 15
Perception: 20
Faith: 0
What the fuck?
There was so much to process that my mind just went blank. My face probably reflected my confusion quite well, since the bald man could tell what I was thinking.
“What you are seeing is your status, put simply, it is a bunch of information about yourself. Would love to give a thorough explanation, but considering… all of this,” he said, looking around the cell, “I think we can put that on hold for now.”
Seth’s explanation was way too short and simple. That in itself wasn’t too bad, since I liked it that way, but in this instance, I required a little more information.
I never really bothered with the skills or floating texts. All this time that I knew people had levels and classes — as named in the status —yet, I thought that I was not the same.
It was something the humans could do. Something that… whatever I was… didn’t have the right to have, at least that is what I believed until now. Seeing that I did have my own status, I couldn’t help but get a little excited.
“And?” Redhead grumbled with crossed arms and I scoffed at her in response.
Real nasty personality you have there, woman
“Carla, let her think for a bit.” Lisa admonished her, making Redhead glare even more at me. I snorted and turned to Lisa, who was the most supportive of the bunch.
Unfortunately, even my status showed no name, which probably meant that I truly did not have a name. Not that I had expected any different.
“It seems I don’t have a name,” I shrugged.
“Oh…” Lisa looked down, while even Redhead looked a little uncomfortable. The two men did not show any particular reaction other than staring straight at the wall to their right. Did they have a problem looking at me and the other two?
“I know that there is a lot to talk about, but let’s not forget that we are currently being held captive by a bandit clan. With all of them gone right now, shouldn’t we stop wasting time?” Bennet interrupted our talk.
I thought I misheard, but looking around convinced me that none of them were surprised by this statement. Even Lisa did not look very surprised, despite her timid personality.
Then the realization dawned on me. These humans had not given up and they had no intention of letting Malik have his way. They wanted to break out.
