Alone Again

The scorching hot sun was shining ever so brightly in the middle of the day. A vast desert as far as the eye could see everywhere you looked. The only life visible was a few crows flying around in a circle over a body that was half buried in the sand. The desert was extremely warm and the sand was extremely soft and had extremely little to no moisture in them. The sand was flying in the air along with the wind that carried it. The sand fell down the side of the human as it started twitching and making small moves. After not a long time, most of the sand had been blown away and now only small patches scattered across the dirty clothes. The human slowly opened his eyes.

The human was met with the sun shining directly over and straight down. The human was still clearly tired as the rest of the body layed there stiff. Where am I? Is this a dream? The human was confused and had multiple questions without having somebody to answer. As the human opened its eyes somewhat more, the sand which had crusted around the human's eyes had slowly started falling off. The human could clearly feel the warm yet weird sensation from being able to feel each and every individual grain of sand touch the parts of its skin directly.

A desert? What was I doing? The individual kept laying there on the ground, vanishing into thoughts, becoming increasingly tired while doing so. Suddenly, its eyes quickly widened as if it was still asleep before, remembering and getting clear images of what had happened. While this sudden realization hit, the human's body quickly sat up, with its left hand somewhat behind its body, supporting most of it. The human started breathing heavily in an attempt to get some air and for the brain to start working properly. Once it had collected its thoughts and calmed itself down, it started trying to think about everything that happened.

How long was that ago and how long was I out for? Same thing. How am I even alive? I died, right? What happened? Wait a minute. It was then the human remembered, touching every limb of its body as if it was trying to make sure as if everything was still left. My body, it was supposed to be cut in half, what happened? What did that reaper do to me? As the human continued to check around its body trying to find wounds, no cuts, slashes or any signs of it being injured was found. Something else, however, could be seen as the human lifted its shirt up. Tattoos? Signs? Since when did I have these weird tattoos on my body? Hieroglyphs? As the human continued to try and figure it out, it removed its shirt to find that there were many weird marks scattered across all of his upper body. Some of them looked like scars, others like weird letters and words completely unreadable and some of them were something completely different. The color of them was light red and the human had no clue what they were. 

It did not take long for the individual to realize that the "tattoos" were a little more than just tattoos. What's this? The "Grim Reaper's Curse"? What's this? The human found what the tattoos were, but the description for them was not a short one. A curse? "The Grim Reaper's Curse is a superior curse, meaning that the effect will be significantly higher and also much harder to get rid of. Individuals get this curse by having been deemed worthy to be a threat to one of the ten Sovereigns, the Grim Reaper and in doing so, gets a curse put on them. The curse is as follows: Individuals with this curse are not allowed under any circumstance to use weapons or any form of equipment and will be punished if rule gets broken. The individual with this curse applied on will be automatically targeted by any monster and the individual with this curse applied will have resistance against any type of healing or boosting in any form."

The only human in the world with this curse, who had barely managed to survive and who now was stuck with restrictions far greater than any other player, was Velios. Wait, what's this? Velios looked even more confused. That confusion shortly after turned into a smile after he had read what it meant. "People afflicted with the Grim Reaper's Curse will have buffs as follows 20% multiplier on every stat, an additional 20% boost in magic growth and the unique magic necromancing. The individual with the curse applied will have a natural resistance against poison and the manaheart's growth rate will be increased by 20%." Velios looked at the marks on his body with delight. A sort of proudness that couldn't be explained, a feeling specifically for Velios. Velios drowned himself in the ideas of endless possibilities. The face that magic now existed changed everything Velios knew about the world.

Velios had finally come to realize something. That he didn't have a single clue on where he was, how he actually got there and how he was going to even survive. It wasn't long until he was walking around, looking in every direction for a clue but found nothing except for his own footsteps. The sand was pretty soft but it was much heavier than you would think. His body was still hurting very much and he wasn't sure if it was because of what happened before or if it was because he had been laying down for so long. Training did not stop either way as he finally had the chance to use his senses to the maximum, focusing on creating as wide a field as possible that he could see around him. It was more so that he was able to accurately sense what was around him to an exceptional level.

The sand beneath Velios started rapidly sinking and if it wasn't thanks to his crazy fast reaction time, he would be swallowed. As Velios starred up, the creature before him reminded him of a certain something that he had fought before. What was in front of him was an almost exact replica of the oversized earthworm that he had fought but now fit to blend in with the desert climate with an outside color matching that of the sand, the only thing telling it apart were the differently casted shadows and the giant sharp teeth sticking out of its mouth. Unlike the previous earthworm, this one was a bit bigger than the last he fought. 

Velios was pumped up, already getting to fight, to learn and to grow as a fighter. He realized that what he lacked to truly be the best was experience with the different systems and monsters in this new world. If Velios had learnt that, what more would he need to be the strongest if anything. Smacking his fist into the palm after his hand one after the other was something that happened to come natural to him. Unlike the dungeon, Velios was not only much stronger but he also had all of his senses back, he had more experience, he had truly tasted defeat and all together he grew as a person. Velios had more fire in his eyes than ever before.