Chapter 4

“Congratulations! Quest completed: Kill a single human being!”

“Congratulations! You have completely unlocked class: PROTEAN!”

The two messages flashed before me for a moment before a myriad of consecutive messages followed it.

“Quest rewards rewarded: 10000 XP, four appearance slots!”

“Congratulations! You reached level three!”

“Level up reward: One appearance slot!”

“Level up reward: One appearance slot!”

“Title Achieved: Avenger! You got your due revenge. Which fool said revenge is best served cold?

Reward: You can completely assume the identity of anyone you kill. Including taking on their identity on the OrderWeb.”

“Title Achieved: First Leveller! You were the first one to level up. Isn’t that just fantastic? Take two more level-ups for your trouble.”

“Congratulations! You reached level five!”

“Level up reward: One appearance slot!”

“Level up reward: One appearance slot!”

I couldn’t take anything further than that mentally. The constant barrage of messages made my head hurt and I mentally signalled to close the tab or whatever this was. The messages stopped as ordered and I came face to face with a menu that had options like ‘Stats’, ‘Titles’, ‘OrderWeb’ etc. I closed them too, not wanting to get into the technicalities of what this weird system had to offer.

I stood on the edge of the cliff, thinking about what I had just done. I had just murdered a person and to my utter surprise, I found myself feeling no remorse. There was no self-justification on my part, trying to prove that I was innocent. I knew I wasn’t. The thought never crossed my mind. Instead, the most prevalent emotion I was feeling was acceptance. Acceptance about what I had done. And that the victim had deserved it!

After all, the system had said I was an Avenger. I only got my due revenge. My due justice. There was a hollow voice behind my head that suggested that I was only believing what the system had said because it served my purpose and cleared my conscience, giving me some semblance of innocence. I pushed that thought to the depths of my mind, never wanting to hear it again.

I walked back to the cabin and stood in front of the door, ready to knock, when I realised that I probably wouldn’t be allowed to enter. There was a simple way around the problem though. I just visualised the appearance of my recent victim and within moments, I was the perfect replica of him. I knocked on the door and waited for a moment before the door was opened and a girl whose name I couldn’t quite place peeked from behind the door with an unsure expression on her face.

Her face quickly lit up with a smile on seeing me though. I was quite startled by her reaction before reminding myself that I had taken on the form of the douche and the reactions I would get weren’t meant for me.

“Hey, Brad, why did you go out?” The girl asked with a curious look on her face. Looking around, I saw that few of the other people in the cabin were also listening in on the conversation.

Before I could answer though, one of the other boys in the cabin asked boisterously, “Hey, Brad, you find any sign of that loser?”

I struggled for a moment, trying to place who the said loser was before realising that he must have referred to me. The real me. Cold rage filled my veins as I wanted nothing more than to go over him and knock the stupid smirk off his face. Some of the emotion must have shown on my face because he asked, “Hey, man, you ok there?”

I shook my head and said stiffly, “Yeah, man. Just thinking of that loser sends my blood boiling, you know.”

The smirk on his face grew wider as he said, “Tell me about it. I was afraid that bringing him on this trip would spoil the whole experience. You did a good job of phasing him out, Brad.”

“Can we talk about what’s happening to us right now instead of wasting our breath on that weirdo? This whole Grand Order or something. I am looking at my screen and I see my stats and stuff. Doesn’t that strike you as remarkable at all?”, one of the other guys spoke up. I really needed to associate these guys with their names or else my jig would be up pretty soon.

‘Or you could just kill them all and get rid of the hassle. You know, they deserve it as much as the douche.’

I shook that thought out of my head as soon as possible. I was concerned by the fact that I was hearing voices in my head but didn’t ponder on it too much because it was disconcerting to the extreme.

While I was literally trying to sort out the voices in my head, the others had a wild discussion on what course of action to take. I found myself unable to deal with all of this and loudly suggested, “Why don’t we go home and take stock of what is happening? If the system is right, then whatever we are experiencing is happening to everyone else on this planet. Let’s meet up with our families and then see what’s going on.”

Everyone unequivocally agreed with me and we all decided to leave for our houses at the earliest. It was still quite early in the night and based on whatever was going on, we decided that leaving in the night was a risk worth taking.

We gathered all our belongings and began to leave the cabin. I waited for everyone to exit before getting out of the cabin myself. As soon as we exited the cabin though, the cabin began to change its shape. We could only stare on in shock as the cabin transformed into some sort of a shrine. A plate adorned the entrance of the shrine, where the words ‘The Minotaur’s abode’ was engraved in gold letters.

Those words brought back the memories of the Minotaur I had died at the hands of. I had a bad premonition that I hadn’t quite seen the last of the Minotaur. We started moving down the hill when suddenly a message flashed before us, “Welcome to a new dungeon!”

“Dungeon: The Minotaur’s abode”

“Required level: 25”

“Recommended party members:7”

As soon as I saw the message, I knew that we were screwed. If the dungeon boss was the same Minotaur I had the unfortunate meeting with, we might as welcome death with open arms.

There were confused whispers all around me, each wondering what the message meant for them. Nonetheless, we started walking down the hill, with me in the lead. It seemed that everyone considered the douche their de facto leader and trusted him to lead them out of this mess. We had barely walked a few minutes before there was a startled scream from behind us.