A Brief Backstory of Elias Smith’s Prior Events

  The world… Freedom… How much is contained in those words? I think my story began when I ended up in the Other World—or rather, in another universe. Yes, a universe. With the same Earth, but a slightly different history.

  Who was I before all this? An ordinary student of the Commonwealth, living on one of the many planets that had become home to representatives of countless races.

  Where did I end up? In a game that felt more like Hell. Endless pain, endless betrayal… Yes, it was Hell…

  What happened? I suppose nothing terrible will come of briefly recalling it all. It’s a finished story anyway.

  It began in the most banal way—with my death in my own beautiful home world… How stupid I was back then…

  I saved many there at the cost of my life. You could say I atoned for a grave sin from my past, one that had weighed on my heart like a dead weight. That’s what I believed at the time. But as I said, the world I entered was Hell for me—and a Game for others. Yes. A game that hundreds of millions of people on Earth were obsessed with, interacting with NPCs or the local inhabitants of those worlds. The history of that Earth didn’t interest me much. What history could matter when you’re chained to a wall and your interlocutor bares her teeth while twisting a dagger lodged between your ribs?

  Endless pain—my constant companion.

  The first days of my captivity were terrifying. A certain “Dark One” demanded answers from me, but I had none to give. I repeated the same things over and over, though the daggers were only the beginning. Torture, pleas… It all ended when I stood on the edge of madness, one step away from the abyss and the eternal darkness within my own body.

  Then came the mine—and new forms of insanity. As it turned out, I could see item descriptions and brief player statistics, something unavailable to other users.

  And there was her… A girl, a follower of Chaos, from whom I once wanted to escape—but it turned out the other way around. We grew close. More than once. Heh… she was one of the few happy memories.

  A minor incident—and an escape. An escape after which Pain became my constant companion, because of the curse now hanging over me and the armor melted into my flesh by monstrous heat.

  Then an old man appeared—Chaos, as he called himself—and gave me a chance at salvation, a hope that I might return to my own reality.

  What happened next? The first betrayal… The betrayal by the girl I loved, who got carried away with the game and sold both her character and me for a considerable sum of in-game currency.

  Did I become wiser? No. But my paranoia began to grow, slowly entwining not only my mind and reason, but my soul—my immortal soul, damaged by endless torture and pain…

  And then… then my journey through this and other worlds of the Game began. It seemed the Game had no edge, no boundaries. Quests, mobs—I learned it all. Could I be called a native of that place? I think so. Only my class, the one Chaos granted me—Chaos Blacksmith—was incredibly difficult to hide. Whenever that information leaked out, a real hunt began, one that usually ended with my death, my resurrection, and a forced relocation.

  Captured by the Dark Ones, then stealing their warship in the middle of a cosmic storm where dozens of cruisers and battleships were being torn apart… It was a mesmerizing sight… So many adventures. One replacing another. And yet a few things never changed.

  A strike in the back—and the poisoned tip of a spear, a sword, or an arrow jutting from my chest. The weapon never mattered. It was never about the weapon. It was about the fact that the moment I trusted someone, the blow came—and once again:

  Hello, respawn point.

  “You are alone, Chaosite. You have no one and never will have anyone you can trust. Even the one you come to love will betray you. You are alone—and you will remain so in this universe forever…” Chaos would say, and then simply dissolve into the air. His influence here was weak, but through me it slowly grew and spread. Wherever I went, true madness began. Often it happened on its own, but sometimes I caused it deliberately—for example, to complete a clan quest to destroy their enemies’ supplies. It always turned out that my actions led to “local” upheavals, and my… employer became a little stronger. In return, Chaos spoke to me… And at times that was vital for someone who could trust no one. It was he who told me that time in my own reality had almost stopped, and that my body was lying in a hospital under the care of specialists.

  Pain…

  Stolen novel; please report.

  How much time had passed? Did I even have a chance to return to my world? At that, Chaos only shrugged and said he would not stand in my way—and would even help if I continued carrying out his tasks.

  An interesting situation occurred when Chaos granted me a skill called Word of Steel. A skill of this kind allowed me to hear metal—whatever that was supposed to mean. I learned it; it was passive anyway, and Chaotics had no skill limit.

  On one of the most ordinary days, I went to the Arena. Not to fight—just as a spectator, to distract myself from the pain that had begun to return. I would be leaving that planet soon enough.

  The match lasted for hours, until one of the opponent’s swords finally broke. That was when the strange skill revealed itself. When one of the gladiators, in hatred, threw aside the hilt of the shattered blade, I felt the weapon’s pain.

  Pain… but not my own.

  Betrayal—so familiar…

  The owner of that sword had betrayed his weapon. Yet I could feel that the piece of metal still held hope that its master would pick it up from the blood-soaked sand of the arena and restore it after the fight. But the victor simply walked away beneath the applause of the crowd, basking in his own glory.

  Everyone began to leave. I stayed.

  When the duel was over, I stepped forward and picked up the broken pieces of the sword.

  As foolish as it might sound, the sword was angry. Shaking my head, I gathered all the fragments and, using my knowledge—and the Forge of the Ancients that I had found on Chaos’s hint—restored the broken weapon and even strengthened it. What I hadn’t expected was that a quest would appear once the restoration was complete…

  In the end, I became the owner of a sword that gained the name Loyal, and a companion in the form of a small metal scorpion.

  But all of that was a trifle. Inspired by the success of that experiment, I finally made up my mind… Using the specialized apparatus of the Forge of the Ancients, I began to tear off the armor, each piece of which had fused not only with my mutilated flesh but with my tormented soul.

  After some time, another unusual item appeared in my arsenal—a nanite bracer. That’s what I call it, though from the outside it looks as if my arm, from elbow to fingertips, is covered in a thin, opaque silver film. The bracer was supposed to have only one function—to protect its bearer, meaning me. But during implantation, part of the nanites covered my arm while the rest entered my bloodstream and spread throughout my body. As a result, I gained certain bonuses and enhancements, but most importantly—the pain… it was finally gone. And that was… strange.

  After a while, it dawned on me: I needed information. And resources. I had accumulated a decent amount of currency, but I needed a team I could trust—and that meant no players, only locals. People who had something to lose.

  For once, I was lucky—truly lucky—to run into sane, reasonable beings. We joined forces and, in a way, began helping others.

  But it didn’t last long…

  Shackles and a death sentence… And yet I looked with a victor’s smile at those who were about to execute me—a Chaosite. Gods, dark and light alike, and even the one who had tortured me, together with her Sisters of Darkness, had all gathered there.

  “Wait! I’ll tell you what you want—but let my team go,” I said calmly, without a trace of nerves. They would only get in the way now.

  After some negotiation, my team was released. It was no secret to me what item all of them—the gods of that world—had been searching for for so long. They were looking for the key to a very interesting location called Eden. Rumor had it that from there one could control the System.

  “Speak, Chaosite! Who holds the key, and where is it?!”

  I looked at the furious face of my tormentor and, with a contemptuous snort, shifted my gaze to my right hand—the one that bore a gift from an unknown benefactor back in my own reality.

  “The master and owner of the key is in this room. I swear by the System.”

  One step back—and the cold embrace of space received me into its halls. My bond to the resurrection stone was destroyed, and I had lost… I was tired of walking, running, doing anything at all… It was time to simply leave.

  But what began after that—I will never forget.

  A slaughter.

  The Light and the Dark Sisters, the gods and the higher beings tore each other apart.

  A notification from Chaos flashed before me about another rank increase—to General—but I didn’t care. For me, it was over.

  As it turned out… it wasn’t.

  I was saved, and Chaos had a serious talk with me. He stripped away all my skills and abilities, freed me from his influence, and let me go wherever I wished.

  And he said only one thing:

  “Live.”

  So I lived. I joined a minor clan as a blacksmith on the most remote planet. But there was one condition from Chaos: I was not to meet my former team.

  Happiness didn’t last long. The fact that I was a Player became known quickly—though the clan didn’t care. A low-level Player leveling a blacksmith profession—nothing unusual. What did matter was that one of the Dark Sisters began watching me…

  Stepping out into the backyard of my forge and shop, I sat down in a chair and, smiling, raised a glass of wine in salute toward the treetops—then took a sip.

  I didn’t want to run anymore. I was tired. I had already accepted both death and eternal captivity in this place.

  But fate had other plans…

  Despite everything I had gone through, I had learned much. Very much. And I had achieved my goal—I returned. The gods and Chaos himself had kicked me out of that reality. But I did not come back alone. I returned with knowledge—and with a girl.

  Now I just have to meet her and talk about everything.

  All that remains is to wait for the darkness to recede, to breathe in the air of my home world and its “perfect” society once more.