A Wolf's life

Brian opened his eyes to a new world. He was in a luxurious palace. Shaped as if straight out of a fairy tale. It was a classic Medieval-style castle, except, the interior had been renovated to fit in the multiple new inventions from the 24th century.

These inventions included the new teleporters that moved you through the four wings of the castle, North, South, East, and West, as well as the main keep. These elevators, as well as all the automatic doors were all password protected, whereby one would have their retina scanned every time they entered or exited.

All around Brian was state-of-the-art equipment, whether it be the robots, or the holograms. But what amazed Brian the most was that none of it was from the NWC. I repeat, none of it. Not even a single brand new high-quality, portable toilet.

Brian, no matter how dumb he was, knew something was off. If he were living here, at least some trivial things would have been from the NWC. But surprisingly, every single person, or wolf, depending on the form they were in, which had something produced by the NWC, were severely punished, 50 lashings to be exact.

Wolves, like most animals, were proud of their fur. So you can just imagine how cruel the lashings were as the fur would also be peeled off due to the coarse whip. It seemed that this palace, located in a separate world, was highly against the NWC.

Despite this weird hatred for all things NWC, Brian started living out the life of a common young prince. Yes, this wolf was royalty. His male form was unsurprisingly a pretty boy with smooth skin. He was really similar both in wolf form as he was human form. His eyes, which were also unexpectedly green, though not as profoundly enchanting as Brian's, also emitted a feeling of pride, making people want to follow him. Brian assumed this was just the innate talent of royalty.

The life of this wolf, whose name Brian found out was Caesar, like the great Roman emperor from the Days of Depression, was very comfortable. Too comfortable. Caesar had nothing to worry about, when everyone bowed down to him, and the only ones above him were his 2 elder brothers, Napoleon and Genghis, as well as his father, king of the world that they were in.

Due to this comfort and lack of conflict, Caesar, as the youngest son, had almost nothing to do except study, so he was commonly up to mischief. He enjoyed playing pranks on his elder brothers and his father, but never when they had something with a royal seal on it, cause then he knew he would be in big trouble. He learnt this the hard way when he accidentally soaked an important letter belonging to his father, and was spanked so hard he couldn't get out of bed for a week.

Also, he very much enjoyed going to casinos and getting into trouble there for all sorts of reasons. But since no one could punish him, he just kept on doing it. It soon got boring though, doing the exact same thing with no care at all.

Since everything was seemingly peaceful in this world of wolf-men, Caesar always wanted to run outside. He kept on having this urge to explore the worlds, and make them his through his own power, just as the previous famous owner of his name did. He wanted to be respected not because of his father or brothers, but because of himself. He wanted to start afresh, from a peasant's viewpoint, and rise to the top.

One day, as he was browsing through the library, since that was the only way he would hear adventures of the outside world, he happened on a book. The book was old and quite dusty, but like all books in the high-tech library, was conveniently stored onto a holographic tablet that Caesar was in possession of.

This book labelled the ability to stay hidden, to be invisible when right under someone's nose. This skill intrigued Caesar at first not because it would help him play pranks more often and with higher skill, but so that he could slip past the guards of the central teleporter in the city square, the only way to leave this world.

So, he invested all his free time, which was basically 24/7, since he had no official jobs, into it. Since his brothers wanted more recognition, they competed to see who could accomplish the most things, common fighting for the throne sort of stuff, which obviously meant that Caesar had all the time in the world.

Through 3 months of dedicated learning, he achieved what most people thought could never be done, and what he shouldn't have been able to do. He practically developed a second skill. Of course, just having the ability to hide would mean he would never get to the Familiar stage, much less those higher godly stages, which made it not even worthy of the lowest ranking, a C-ranked skill, but it was still a skill.

He had achieved the impossible but he didn't tell anyone. Instead, he just left a note reading, "I'm off to see the worlds. I will come back when I have one as my own. Yours sincerely, Caesar."

It was a short letter, but one that conveyed all of his hopes and dreams. And with that, he set off on his adventure, to conquer the worlds, to become Lord Caesar II. This was his dream, and thus he set out.

---

The first world that Caesar had come to was unsurprisingly the original world where all the other virtual worlds had stemmed from, which was also the one Brian inhabited. So, coincidentally, he had just arrived and started howling at the moon, when he was attracted by Brian's necklace, and the rest is history.

---

"So, boy, how is it? Now you know my power? My grace?"

Brian though, was unconvinced.

"You dare show off when you're just a pretty boy with a tough dad, lazing around. You're just a second generation debauchee."

This had hit the weak spot of Caesar.

"Shut up, you!!! This great esteemed self here has delved through all the books in the imperial library, passing on all the knowledge of a whole world to you and you're still not thankful. Kids these day!"

"..." Caesar, if wolf-men had the same lifespan as normal humans, was actually younger than Brian by 1 year. Also, he had only read up on stuff, but never actually did anything stated, making it very hard to believe everything the book wrote.

Some stuff was true, such as big families and sects having the ability to pass down their skills through both conventional and unconventional ways, which is why all the wolf-men had the ability to interchange between their forms and knew about this at birth, through injecting DNA from their parents, and also why it was really amazing that Caesar had semi-developed a second skill.

Most though, was pure idiocy, such as a horse being able to have a baby unicorn if it mated with a narwhal, which had one horn, for those who weren't sure. It was utterly stupid. But no matter what, Brian could not refuse the fact that this was an imperial library, which housed the best of the best. So, Brian knew that he had profited a lot through this special bond.

Then he realized something. When he had just found out about Caesar and Caesar wanted to follow him, he cried out in surprise. He was wondering why, so therefore he asked Caesar.

"Haha! You wanna know? Well, I won't tell you!! Ha! It's your fault for looking down on me! All I can say is that you need to develop that weak-ass body of yours, a lot, if you want to actually accomplish your dream."

Brian was unsure of why Caesar had said this, but as it had come from royalty, it should be right. But then again, it was Caesar, a second-generation pretty boy we were talking about here, so Brian wasn't sure. 'What could go wrong from training the body?' thought Brian, so he started incorporating some exercises into his daily travelling routine.

"Oh yeah, by the way, when we're travelling, Caesar, can you be a human. It's weird having a wolf follow me as a pet." Brian truly felt so, so therefore he requested Caesar of this.

Caesar was really mad when he heard this.

"I am royalty!!!" he shouted, "Royalty, you hear me? R-O-Y-A-L-T-Y, and you dare say I'm your pet. I will change into human form, definitely not because of you, but it is easier to move around. And give me your best clothes so this prince can wear them?"

Brian was utterly speechless. His goodwill had somehow gotten him into so much trouble. Ahh, life as a good person is really hard. He may as well just focus on travelling.

---

And after quite a while of travelling, though considerably faster when Brian found out he could ride Caesar, which very much angered the wolf, they finally made it to Philade, capital of Indonesia, and where Brian's real journey would begin.