'Now that I think about it, isn't it weird how there used to be no system whatsoever?' Seeing that the voice had finished giving him more information regarding the First Forger, Valyr began to delve deeper into the latest thought he had, slightly frowning as he mulled over it.
'I've already gotten information about how there used to be no system during the Age of Darkness from the Myriad Archives, but why didn't I think anything of it at the time?' asked the young man to himself, the frown on his face gradually turning deeper. 'With how Greater Beyond's power system relies on the system, shouldn't the system exist since the beginning?'
'Or did the company behind the game simulate the world to the point where everything about Greater Beyond popped up naturally?' Unfortunately, by the time he had reached the end of his train of thought, the young man was left with no definite conclusion, only a few answers that seem to have gotten a couple of steps closer to the truth.
'Speaking of the company, what kind of technology did they actually use to achieve such levels of realism for a game?' wondered Valyr all of a sudden, beginning to doubt the claims the company made about the game in his past life. 'Sure, they did say they used quantum supercomputing and similar high-level technologies to achieve it, but I still feel like it would take more than that to achieve truly lifelike realism.'
Letting out a low sigh, the young man decided to push the thought aside for the meantime, faintly recalling a series of similar questions he had come up with while he was perusing through the books within the Myriad Archives. However, rather than expound on them, he let them stay where they were since those questions and the questions he had just come up with were facing the same problem.
He had no clue who to ask about such things, nor did he have an idea on where to begin asking such things.
Focusing his attention back on the memory he was currently witnessing firsthand, Valyr had a stoic expression on his face as he watched the crowd of orcs land various types of attacks on the human, ranging from light cuts to injuries that went bone deep. Nevertheless, all of those injuries eventually close up in due time, causing the orc named Brh'zaak to grin widely as the amount of money in its pockets increased with each cut.
By the time the sun had set, only then did Brh'zaak and the human start heading some place, prompting Valyr to follow them until the orc and the human had arrived at a destitute-looking shack made out of clay and straw. With the two heading inside, the young man saw the orc confine the human into a small room while giving the latter a bit of food and water to eat.
After doing so, the orc went on through its nightly tasks before finally resting on its bed and calling it a night, seemingly falling into a deep slumber as it began to snore after a few minutes had passed. Seeing that he would not obtain anything else from watching the orc, Valyr shifted his attention towards the human, who was currently staring out of the small window within the small room he was in.
"Seven…" muttered the human all of a sudden as he began to do a few gestures in front of him. Then, sometime later, the man clenched both of his hands into fists before doing a series of gestures once more.
Watching this, Valyr felt like the human was accessing the system at first, only to recall that the system had not arrived yet. Just as he was wondering why the human was doing all of those gestures, the disembodied voice had begun to resound in his mind once more, saving him the headache of coming up with a myriad possibilities.
'Though he had escaped the fate of ending up in the stomach of one of the many orcs that roamed the world, that did not mean that the man had an easy life ahead of him. Being subjected to physical torture the whole day, only to be confined in a small room at night, the man had developed a weird coping mechanism that allowed him to trudge through years of the same routine,' said the voice.
'Airing out his frustrations and aggravations through a series of gestures every night, the man was able to restrain himself from lashing out against the orcs that had cut his body thousands of times over,' the voice continued. 'However, he always hoped in the back of his head that there would eventually come a day where he could seek revenge for the torture he had been subjected to.'
'For the torture the humans had been subjected to.'
'With every passing day, he wondered why he had been given such a resilient body, a body that could withstand years of constant torture,' said the voice after a brief pause. 'Because of it, he had witnessed tens of thousands of human deaths in front of his very ways amidst the jubilations of the orcs felt with every slash they inflicted on his body.'
'Why can't I just die? Why am I not like the other humans who fall after a single blow? These were the questions that constantly lingered in the man's head every night.'
'Fortunately, it did not take long for him to figure out why.'
After the voice had finished what was basically a long monologue that delved into the man's thoughts, Valyr watched the man go through its daily routine for a few more days. In the morning, he and the orc would be out in the center of the settlement, receiving thousands of cuts on his body as the orc gained money from it. Then, when night came, he would be confined in the small room he stayed, dwelling in his thoughts as he gazed out of the small window, airing out his grievances.
With each passing day, the young man wondered more and more whether the man's nightmare would end, seeing the man even near the brink of death after a heavy-handed orc landed a fatal attack on the man's torso one day. Thankfully, after a week of the same thing passed, something had finally changed, with the man stopping in the middle of gesturing as a monotonous voice Valyr was familiar with resounded throughout the small room.
[Initializing the Advancement System…]
