Astaroth slept little, since he had already been out cold for a few hours. Besides that, his dreams kept going back to screams in his brain and visions of him losing control and killing everyone.
He woke up two hours later, feeling like a pile of burning garbage.
"Urgh… Great. Now I feel like it's Monday." He said, grabbing his head as he sat up from the bed.
"White… Are you still there?" He added, thinking out loud.
There was a momentary silence at first, followed by a low response.
"Yes… Master… I didn't want…" White Death started saying, in his mind.
"No need to explain. I think I know what happened." Astaroth said, cutting him off.
Astaroth could guess what had happened, even if he was slightly uncertain.
He had already been in an enraged state of mind before the fight, and he must have lost control over his emotions at some point.
That eventually led to the animal instincts of White Death going into override, and because of the proximity of their souls, he got dragged into it.
"I don't blame you, White. But I think you also need to keep your instincts in check in the future." Astaroth declared.
"Yes, master." White Death responded solemnly.
Astaroth then got up and stretched. There was a small basin of water in the room's corner, which he used to clean his face.
The water in the basin was numbingly cold, and that washed away the last bit of fatigue he had.
Astaroth stood up from the basin and walked towards the door. He knew he would grow bored in the next few days, but he had to do it, anyway.
What he dreaded the most was the fact that he would lose a lot of time on this training. He wouldn't be leveling up in the meantime and that killed him inside.
His chances of participating in the first tournaments for 'New Eden' had just left the station.
While he was thinking about all this, he had walked into the tavern part of the barracks, and he was already close to the doors.
He had not been oblivious to the looks he was receiving. Some were looks of awe, others were looks of fear.
There were even some looks of anger mixed in the lot, though he wondered why.
But that was a question for another day. Astaroth just walked out of the barracks, not stopping for anything.
After exiting the yard, he turned toward the old mage's abode. He saw from the corner of his eye a white furry form walk up to him.
It was Genie. She had probably waited for him outside the barracks the whole time since no one would let her in.
To the men in there, she was a wild beast, but at Kloud's orders, she had been left alone.
"How are you, girl?" Astaroth asked her, bending down to pet her head gently.
Genie responded with a low whimper and rubbed her head in his hand.
Astaroth could see on the side of the wall a small pile of bones, so he knew someone had fed her, so she wasn't hungry. But she had probably been very lonely since no one else came close to her.
"Alright girl. Come with me. We have a long week ahead of us." He said, straightening up.
Genie looked towards the village entrance and then back to where Astaroth was walking, looking a bit confused.
Astaroth chuckled at the sight.
"No. We are not going hunting today, or for the foreseeable future." He said, shaking his head left and right.
"We have some mental training to do." He added, pulling a face.
Genie tilted her head a bit at his statement, but followed him.
Both he and Genie walked over to the old man's house and entered it. Astaroth maneuvered the book maze, Genie following from behind, looking around curiously.
Once they made it to the back of the house, Astaroth once again went down the stairs in the wall, making his way down to the cave under the village.
He walked through the tunnel in silence until he reached his destination. Once there, he found Aberon sitting in front of the artifact, eyes closed, as he seemingly always did.
"Hello, sir." Astaroth announced himself with a bow.
"Hmm." Aberon simply hummed back.
Astaroth walked over to him and sat down next to him, waiting for instructions. In the meantime, he looked around a little before focusing his mind on the artifact.
There was nothing much he could glean from the object as it floated there in front of him. He could see carvings on it, but they made no sense to him, so he didn't bother trying to read them.
After sitting there for over an hour, Astaroth was getting restless.
"Sir. What is the training you were saying I should do?" He asked the old man, trying to pry information out of him.
"You are already doing it. Now stop talking." Aberon responded without even opening his eyes.
"Huh?" Astaroth said, puzzled.
"I said stop talking." Aberon repeated, turning to look at Astaroth angrily.
"Yes, sir!" Astaroth replied, looking away and shutting his mouth.
They sat there in silence for another hour before he got restless again.
"Sir. I don't understand what it is I'm supposed to do. Can you at least give me a clue?" He asked, twisting his hand together.
"You meditate." Aberon replied plainly.
"Meditate?" Astaroth questioned.
"Yes. You meditate until you can push out all distractions and emotions. Until your mind becomes as calm as the dead sea." Aberon replied.
Astaroth didn't respond to that and simply turned his eyes away from the old man.
He was wondering what meditation really was, since he had done none. He closed his eyes and focus on his breathing.
In the movies, this is what they did anyway, so he might as well try it.
The next hours flew by as Astaroth almost fell asleep a few times, only to get slapped behind the head by Aberon.
Eventually, the whole day had gone by and Aberon shooed him away. He ordered Astaroth to come back again the next day, and that made him frown.
Sadly for him, he couldn't go against these orders and obeyed them.
Thus began his days of 'doing nothing'.
Free chapter for reaching 300 PS!
*** Random employee of 'Evo-Gaming' company POV ***
It had been a normal day at Evo-Gaming HQ, or 'EG' as the people here called it. Dan was a tech safety manager for EG and had been working on the new gaming pod for a while now.
The pod was supposed to be the main tech for 'New Eden' from the start, but because of some slight safety issues, they pushed the launch back.
The company, not wanting to push back the whole launch, had ordered the techies to cobble up something to enable the game to launch on its due date, anyway.
That is when they had come up with the VR helmets. It had the same basic technology as the pod, but came with fewer parameters.
The helmet still enabled the synapse connections and motor function freeze, but did nothing else. It just logged people into the game.
To the tech team, this was just a stopgap, and it repulsed them how low-end the product was.
But no one wanted to lose their jobs, so they delivered it to the head honchos and went back to their major project.
The pod did so much more. It not only connected to the brain but also monitored it.
It could also stimulate the rest of the body from within the pod, to make the users feel more from within the game.
Of course, that came with a plethora of risks. The information being traded from the game body to the actual body had to be restricted.
The mental alignment had to be kept perfect.
The tech team kept refining the program so that these issues were resolved, but the game launch had already happened.
Most of the team were sad about this, since it did not use their pet project at the start, and that would tarnish their reputation.
They only kept their heads up when they thought about how it would still end up being the primary way to play soon.
There were still many weeks of tweaking and debugging to go, but they knew that with time, they could deliver.
Dan was the lead manager on safety checks. His entire job was to make sure the product was up to the safety code before hitting the stores.
He was the one that ran all the simulations imaginable on the programming to fish out errors in it. He was the one that caught the glitches that could endanger the users before they could actually happen.
If the program running the real-time feedback weren't up to par, many accidents could happen.
When a player got his arm cut off in the game, if the feedback program didn't limit the pain transfer, the player could end up severely damaging the nervous system in his arm.
The brain would signal the body that the arm was gone, possibly denying any feeling to it in the long term. This was exactly the type of error that they tasked him with catching.
What if someone got possessed by a demon, or spirit, in the game? Would that leave permanent brain damage on the player?
Would he develop a personality disorder? Who knew?
Therefore, Dan's job was to run any scenario his mind could think of through a simulation and see if the program did its job correctly.
He was still catching errors of that type daily, so he knew they would not launch the pod for a good while.
During the first week of launch, Dan kept up to date with how the game was being received by the players. He looked on the forums often, making sure the helmet he had approved didn't cause any accidents.
When he found out about some players not logging out, causing them to trigger the safety protocol, he was satisfied that his work was functioning properly. He was the one that had proposed this hard limit, to assure the safety of the users.
On the fifth day after launch, while he was running a millionth simulation for the pod, his phone rang.
It was the project supervisor. The man asked him to attend the board meeting on the forty-sixth floor at nine AM sharp the next morning.
When he tried bailing out of it, saying he still had a lot of work to do, his supervisor insisted heavily. He even threatened to fire him and end his career if he wasn't there.
Dan reluctantly agreed and hung up. He hated those kinds of meetings the most.
Stuck up rich men, forcing their ideas and solutions upon the real masterminds of a project. Acting as if they knew best how the tech, the actual geniuses produced, worked.
Those men were what Dan dreaded the most. He had been at many of these meetings throughout his career, most of them ending in him pushing out some tech he wasn't quite satisfied with.
Of course, he always made sure the tech was safe for use, but he mostly left out some small kinks and long-term side effects. Those were the ones that took the most time to fish out and fix.
The next morning, he put on a suit and left for work earlier. He wanted to get this meeting over with as quickly as possible and get back to his proper job.
These gruesome meetings were not his cup of tea. He hated them because he had to be nice and polite to people who knew nothing, just because they have money and power.
If it were up to him, he wouldn't hold these at all. They were a waste of time, in his opinion.
During his musings, he made his way to the office. Instead of taking the elevator down to the lab, he took it upwards, to the management floor.
He made it to the forty-sixth floor and waited outside the meeting room. It would be bad manners for him to be the first to sit in the room since he was just an employee.
He looked at his watch, and he was still fifteen minutes early. So he just stood there, looking at the walls.
Shortly before nine o'clock, the department managers started arriving one by one. But when he thought everyone was there, more people kept coming in.
Some of them he recognized, their faces being quite recognizable. These people were all influential people in the country.
But they were rich. Filthy rich!
He surmised they were the investors for the game, and probably also major and minor shareholders of Evo-Gaming.
His nervousness reached an even higher level as he swallowed his dry saliva.
*Gulp*
This meeting had just become a lot more serious than he thought.
If you liked my story, add it to your library!
This story is in the Fantasy Carnival, so it needs Power Stones to up-rank. If I get into the top 100, I will drop an extra 2 chapters that day. Another 2 chapters for top 50. I will up the stakes at 5 bonus chapters for top 20, and another 5 for top 10! Please vote for me! :)
Also, I drop an extra chapter on Monday for every 100 PS I accumulate in the event!
We did it! We reached top 50! Woooooo! Although the competition is tough here on out, I have faith. Top 20 is our next goal! Let's keep this going!
If you like the novel so far or think something could use work, don't be scared to leave a review :)
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