And (N)one Shall Remain

And she thought that the day had started so nicely, too…

 

It was a pleasant summer day, where the sun shone overhead and the dry heat made one sweat vigorously, but Alissa O’Connor didn’t hate such days. In fact, she welcomed the warm sunshine over the humid rainy days, much less the cold winter days, but then again, that might have just been the model student-slash-sport scholarship nominee in her speaking.

 

At eighteen years of age, and in her final year of high school, she looked pretty much like a textbook stereotypical southern Texan belle. Alissa was tall - some called her too tall, but she did gain that nomination for sports scholarship from playing basketball, after all - and slender, yet at the same time filled with toned, wiry muscles from her active lifestyle, with flaxen blonde hair and piercing sky blue eyes. That she typically dressed in jeans and shirts and had an affectation for cowboy hats and boots made the image go even further.

 

Despite the age-old joke about blondes and their intelligence - or lack thereof - Alissa was a straight-A student on top of being one of the top players in her high school’s women’s basketball team, and while some likely envied her, most of the kids in her grade either looked up to her or liked her sincerely, as she was generally kind to others, even befriending some of the kids that others had shunned or bullied and helped them out of their rut.

 

It was precisely the door to the home of one such friend that she had been knocking at for the past five minutes.

 

One of her friends and classmates, Esperanza Gonzalez-Cabrera, had been absent for the whole week for unknown reasons, and since it was Friday, and school was over for the week, Alissa chose to visit her house to lend the girl her notes and to check on her well-being at the same time. She found the house dark and the door locked, however, and neither ringing the doorbell nor her knocks were answered.

 

“Zaza, you there? It’s me, Alissa!” she asked more loudly, using the affectionate nickname she usually called the other girl with as she knocked on the wooden door some more. She could hear water running from within the house, so there should be someone in there. Maybe they were sleeping and didn’t hear her knocks?

 

“Maybe they’re out and about?” asked Ethan from next to her as he frowned and crossed his burly, hairy arms over his chest. Ethan Greene was Alissa’s childhood friend and neighbor, and they’d been friends since before she was even in pre-school since their parents were also friendly with each other. He had at times hinted that he wished that they could be more than friends, but Alissa had not felt comfortable going into a relationship while she was still in school.

 

The boy himself looked almost like someone brought a stereotypical jock archetype from a TV drama to life, tall, big, and like all muscles, star of their school’s football team and even trying to grow the sparse mustache that had begun to darken his upper lips. Unlike his very jock-like exterior though, Alissa knew that the big boy was one of the nerdiest kids she had ever met.

 

After all, Ethan was the very guy who got her into video games of all sorts, though she never really shared his particular love for those JRPGs of his. His figure collection - from all sorts of anime girls in skimpy outfits to half a dozen different kinds of robots of various sorts - would probably have made a japanese otaku proud, for that matter, but she liked him for being the big dork he was.

 

“What Ethan said. It would appear that none of the Cabreras are home, miss O’Connor. Maybe our time would be better spent elsewhere,” said Joshua Smith, the Class President rather snidely as he fixed the position of his glasses at the bridge of his nose with one finger. Unlike Ethan, who was at least somewhat friendly to Esperanza, Joshua had always been on the cold side and ignored the latina girl when he could get away with it. “I never understood why you bother associating with the likes of Ez Cabrera anyway,” he added, drawing out the nickname most of the class used for Esperanza that it almost sounded like ‘Easy’.

 

A typical bible belt boy from a well-to-do family, there were a bunch of kids like him in the class, who tended to stick to their own and looked condescendingly at others from poorer birth when they thought nobody was looking. Of course, since their parents were rich and likely donated the most to the school board, any complaints towards them would just go unheeded. He maintained a veneer of civility to Alissa since she was one of the model students, but neither of them liked the other, and they preferred to keep it that way.

 

The only reason he was even present was because it involved a student who had been absent without leave for a whole week, and he was there to check on her on the school’s behalf.

 

Alissa was just about to retort with more scathing words at the jerk when all of a sudden, the world seemed to spin around her, and everything seemed distorted in her vision. Everything went dark as she tried to open and close her eyes to no avail, only for the darkness to suddenly be replaced by a blinding light that forced her to close her eyes with a scream of surprise.

 

Then she started to hear voices in her head and wondered if she was going crazy.

 

Candidate Detected…

Checking…

System Integration Initiated…

17/9738 Processing…

 

No, rather than a voice, the noise seemed to reverberate from inside her very self. The voice was monotone, completely and utterly devoid of emotion, much like the voice of a machine that just read what it was given to read.

 

Desirable Qualities Detected…
[Hero] Class Granted…

General Skill [Respawn: EX] Granted…

General Skill [Language Understanding: Level 1] Granted…

Class Skill [Weather The Storm: EX] Granted…

Processing Completed… Transfer in Progress…

 

Oddly enough, the words that the voice said reminded her a lot of that series of novels Ethan was crazy about of late, the sort where people died and then got transported to another world, where usually they get to live any which way they wanted. She had not seen the appeal of those stories, but had read a couple on his insistence so she was at least somewhat familiar with the idea.

 

Was that what happened to her just now? Transferred to another world? As ludicrous as it sounded, the way her body kept feeling weightless as if she was falling from a very high place made her wonder if she had a fatal stroke or something when she was visiting Zaza’s place earlier and caused this. Alissa felt like she was falling for what seemed to be ages, or it might also be mere moments - it was difficult to tell how much time had passed, before she finally felt like she could feel herself once more.

 

When she opened her eyes and looked around, she immediately realized the oddity of her surroundings. She was definitely not in front of the Cabrera’s place anymore, as her present location was instead inside a large room that looked more like an ancient roman or greek temple from her history books, painted in a glaring white shade which reflected the sunlight that streamed in from the open sides of the building.

 

Neither had she missed the clearly ritualistic patterns carved on the ground, the patterns which surrounded her, since she knelt in the very center of it. Something within her mind told her that she should be panicking more about her situation, but somehow Alissa managed to remain calm as she took in her surroundings further.

 

There were armed men and women - dressed almost like roman legionnaires of old, with leather skirts and chestplates that were either carved in the forms of either a muscular man’s of a buxom woman’s chests with crested helmets on their heads, along with long spears and large shields in their hands - that stood guard at the four corners of the “temple”.

 

However, her attention was mostly given to the one unarmed figure who stood tall and proud before her, a woman clad in a flowing gown of white fabric that somehow seemed to both billow with the wind and cling like a second skin to the woman’s body, the color at times giving hints of skin yet not, like something designed entirely to tease others with the body of the woman in question.

 

“Welcome, O Chosen Hero of the Gods,” said the woman with a pleasant, almost hypnotic voice as she offered a hand to Alissa. The warmth from the woman’s hand as Alissa grasped it and stood up - she noticed that she was dressed just the way she remembered it last, though for some reason her shoes were missing - made things feel more real to her. Granted, she had also already discreetly pinched herself to make sure she was not dreaming in the first place before that.

 

“I know you must have many questions, Chosen One, but please allay them for the moment, as we need to clear the array to allow the other Chosen to arrive as well,” said the woman as she gently guided Alissa to stand beside her, from where she could view the whole ritualistic pattern on the floor. “From how calmly you have accepted things as they come, I believe that you must be our [Hero] and savior sent by the gods, are you not?”

 

“Hero? What do you mean?” asked Alissa as she finally gathered her thoughts after the unexpected incident.

 

“You must be confused, but worry not. Please try to say the term [Status] out loud in your mind, and you will be able to learn more from there while we wait for the others.”

 

As silly as the idea sounded, Alissa tried it anyway, as she intoned the word out loud in her mind. To her surprise, what looked suspiciously like a HUD interface not unlike what she had seen in Ethan’s games seemed to pop up out of thin air before her, half-transparent, and from the looks of it, only visible to herself. She took a deep breath and checked it out.

 

Name : Alissa Faith O’Connor

Race : Human

Age : 18

Class : [Hero Lvl1]/???/???/???/???

 

Stats :

 

• Body : 13

    - Strength : 11

    - Dexterity : 15

    - Constitution : 13

• Mind : 11

    - Intelligence : 12

    - Perception : 11

    - Wisdom : 10

• Soul : 11

    - Willpower : 11

    - Intuition : 12

    - Sanity : 10

 

Skills:

 

Class 1: [Hero]

• Weather The Storm: EX

• ???

• ???

• ???

• ???

 

General Skills:

• Respawn: EX

• Language Understanding: Lvl 1

• ???

• ???

• ???

 

It really had looked much like the screen from one of Ethan’s games, even came with her full name - nobody other than her late mother had even ever called her by her middle name - and all on it. All the question marks naturally gave her questions in turn, but before long, she noticed that she could focus on a specific part of the interface and it would display an explanation of what things were, so she did just that with the skills she saw.

 

[Weather The Storm]

Legendary Skill

Level EX

No matter the storm life throws your way, you find a way to weather it.

The user will always manage to retain their rationality regardless of the situation they faced, no matter how dangerous or life-threatening it was. Effectiveness increases with skill level. Level EX: Able to remain calm before a world-ending situation.

 

That explained why she hadn’t panicked or thought that she’d gone crazy already, at least. The next skill in line surprised her even more, though.

 

[Respawn]

Ultimate Skill

Level EX

Death is but a temporary nuisance.

Allows the user to return to life ten minutes after death at either their last location or the nearest temple of the gods. Number of uses increases with level. Level EX: Unlimited uses.

 

It was only the voice of the shrine maiden (?) that pulled her out from her musings about all the horrible implications of the skill that she had just read about.

 

“Ah, the second hero has arrived! Praise be to the gods for their mercy in our time of need!” said the shrine maiden-like woman.

 

Over the patterns on the floor, Alissa could see how a portal had formed, and from within the portal, dropped a figure who fell on his knees in the middle of the patterns on the floor.

 

A figure that Alissa knew all too well.