Jake hated his father for the person he was, but he never hated him for the unreasonable hatred that he felt for him. He was the man who caused the death of his beloved wife… While Jake never had the chance to see how his mother looked and his father always his the photographs of her, he still felt to this day some blame for that incident.
In his place, he believed that he would try to be better, but for a man to keep moving his wife for many years even after her death to the point that he never got into any relationship after, he could understand how much his father loved his mother. That was his sole redeeming trait.
In the end, Jake didn't want to believe it, but even before the memories of his birth, he found new ones. At first, he only saw darkness, like it was the time between the two lives that he had supposed to leave… memories of the void that Myrna mentioned.
In any case, eventually, he began to relive that first dream that he had on the day he started playing the game. Things proceeded in the same way, but the memory was way more intensely than the dream… after killing some dragons. The strong smell of blood, smoke, and death was almost enough to make him choke. Until the shadow emerged…
Jake wouldn't go down without a fight, so he got up from his throne and then held his sword with both hands. Focusing all his powers on a single attack, he was planning to destroy half of the world if he had to, in order to destroy the darkness. However, when he swung his sword, the entire world trembled due to the massive amount of energy, but the darkness created a wall in front of him, and the only thing that had been destroyed was the remains of his city… it was like the hand made of darkness was trying to tell him that he wouldn't be the one to do the honors..
"So, that is how it is…" The dark-haired man.
Jake watched the hand of darkness covering that whole region from above. His life passed before his eyes in his last moments. He laughed for a moment since he confirmed that such a thing actually happened.
"If only I had another…" Jake said.
Before he could finish his sentence, the hand of darkness covered the whole world and closed itself, making the entire planet explode and killing all life in it… at that moment; Jake recognized that he truly had lived two lives, and he could tell what he thought in the end.
"If I had a second chance… I would never bother to help anyone…" Jake opened his eyes and then said.
You have learned the skill Zenith.
"Jake?" Myrna asked. "Did you see something difficult? The end was difficult to accept to all of us, but…"
"No, I fully accepted my death back then," Jake replied. "I only didn't accept how and why I reached that point… Regardless, I have learned the skill, and you have my gratitude for it. I am going to level up this skill now. You can go help your friends."
"All right… just don't think too much about the type of person you once were," Myrna said. "You are your own person now, and you aren't bound to the things that happened before."
After saying that, Myrna left. Jake wished that the dumbasses that were leading the guilds could also think like that. That would have him from a lot of trouble… In any case, now that he had learned about his past, Jake was interested to see if things played out exactly the same way. He was also interested in why the human race had to deal with the arrival of monsters considering what Myrna said…
One hour ago, Jake didn't feel like watching his past again, but now he was pretty eager to see the whole thing of his past life. He really wanted to see and feel everything in order not to make the same mistakes again. He wondered why their past memories weren't unsealed completely as soon as they entered the game, but Jake had a feeling that he would understand why once he saw everything again…
Jake's original life hadn't been much different from his current one. In the end, the simulation ended like that because of his own actions… It was quite the spell if it could make things develop according to his own choices and who knows how many people… Regardless, one of the few things that were different was that one day, Jake managed to see a photo of his mother. She was a beautiful woman who had black hair and green eyes… They were pretty similar, which probably made his father even more pissed when he looked at him… It was a pity that Jake never had the chance to see the kind of person she was.
Jake lived his life normally after leaving his hometown and then began to slowly build his own life after moving to the capital of the state. While he was forced to leave high school, he wasn't stupid, and even there, he valued efficiency, so he did well in all the jobs that he had. For the first time in his life, he had a normal life. Still, that only lasted for three years.
Monsters, dungeons, and dragons began to appear on Earth when he was eighteen. Those destroyed human civilization and decimated their numbers in a matter of days. The humans who survived could only hide and slowly develop their strength using the system. Eventually, people learned that they could obtain more power by clearing dungeons, and so they did it.
At first, Jake didn't have those innate skills, and his talent for fighting wasn't that high, so he became part of a group of survivors. Things weren't easy for them, but they survived and built their strength over the months. However, once the dragons disappeared, humans with too much power began to target each other to rule some areas. Jake's group was attacked sometimes and ended up losing many comrades. Still, one day, his group was rescued by a large group that was being led by a powerful bald warrior. His name was Hugo… the first guild master.
Hugo was someone who fought the same way as Jake, so he learned a lot watching him. Both of them only relied on magic to enhance their parameters and fought on the frontlines. Jake and many others felt indebted to him, so they worked with his group for a while.
Eventually, his group became the largest in North America, and his strength was also recognized by the other powerhouses of the world. Thanks to that, and to protect the survivors of the world, Hugo and the others created the council of the guild masters and worked together against the enemies. Even during that time, Jake was helping him, and things stayed like that for three years. While in some aspects, the human race was progressing well, in others, they were failing.
Jake, who admired the guild masters a lot, talked with Hugo a lot about his vision of things. He had ideas of making everyone in the world live in a single fortified city against attackers while using magic to clear the dungeons now and then. Still, Hugo didn't believe that he should force everyone to abandon their lands, even if everything had been destroyed.
Jake also believed that they had to split into ranks and categories to make better use of their skills. The ranks would only determine which missions or battles they should participate in order to increase survivability. However, Hugo didn't believe that it was a good idea to separate people from their friends and family. He believed that they could fight better if they had people they trusted to watch their backs and protect.
Jake shared those concerns with other guild masters as well, but they thought that things couldn't be improved… even though they were losing more people with each battle and more and more dungeons were appearing on Earth. Moreover, some people were causing the dungeon breaks, and no investigation was being carried on since they were afraid of traps.
In the end, Jake grew tired of that and decided to do things on his own way. At first, he was ignored since no one believed that a single person could change things. However, he grew stronger and stronger, and eventually, he awakened his own sin and learned Master Thief.
Jake had heard that strong emotions could make people awaken to new abilities, but he never thought that he would be one of them. Moreover, he disliked his skill because it made him recall that the first thing he did in that world, although involuntarily, was to be born at the cost of someone else's life. He didn't know the circumstance of the whole thing. If his mother knew the risks and went on with it anyway, or if it was completely unexpected… but that skill still felt like a reminder to him.
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