Alex saw a bright flash of light before she felt herself moving to another dimension. It took a moment before Lumiere’s voice echoed through her ears. “Welcome to void’s realm.”

“Huh…” When Alex opened her eyes, she lost her footing and fell to the ground. Lying on the ground, Alex feels light-headed as she feels her strength leaving her body. 

“This…” Lumiere stared at her flabbergasted when she tripped. Lumiere doesn’t understand why she lost her strength when usually dying once will not damage a player’s soul or affect it at all. However, her current state looks like she died more than 7 times in a row.

Dying once or thrice a day is not a problem since the void realm’s purpose is to place the soul in a temporary vessel then rehabilitate it.

But dying more than that, a player’s soul can’t heal by simply resting for an hour in the void’s realm. Players who experience death multiple times in a row will naturally build up trauma that will affect the player’s day-to-day life. 

A player who has a damaged soul may experience unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, strained relationships, and even physical symptoms like headaches or nausea. It isn’t life-threatening since it only lasts a few days and, worse, a few weeks. But it is one of the guardian spirit’s jobs to monitor a player’s soul from being damaged. 

“For now I think that you should log out and rest. I don’t know why but your soul seems to be exhausted.” Lumiere suggested explaining her current state and the consequence if she didn’t listen. Lumiere also explained to her that as an A.I. she was given by the system the ability to stop the player from playing the game. But Lumiere can only use it if something risks the player’s life inside and outside the game.

“Your current state is not normal, please rest for now. That’s all, any questions??” Lumiere ended. 

Alex can tell that Lumiere is genuinely concerned about her safety. So listened to Lumiere’s in earnest since problems with the soul can’t be taken lightly. However, she never thought that the game’s A.I. is this amazing they even monitor the player’s safety. 

“Don’t worry I will be fine with a few minutes of meditation,” Alex exclaimed at her as she relaxed her body. She did not panic because she had already guessed why she had lost her strength. Since talking with Lumiere while lying down is awkward, she struggled to squat crossed legs then positioned her hands on her lap. 

“But…” Lumiere reminded her of the dangers but seeing her calm expression, she decided to observe her and take fast action later. 

“If you see any problem you can do as what you have been programmed.” Alex smiled at Lumiere, then closed her eyes as she slowly breathed in and out. Focusing her attention on the sensation of the air moving in and out of her body. It took her quite some time since she hadn’t done this for years before reaching a refreshing state of natural clarity and concentration.

The meditating technique that Zac taught to her to reduce the burden of using dragon’s art with her untrained body, mind, and spirit in the past is actually helping her recover. With this, she slowly felt her strength recovering.

Lumiere, who was monitoring her, saw the results of her meditation as Alex’s pale complexion started getting better and better. 

…

Then after almost 30 minutes of meditation, Alex breathed out then opened her eyes to start scanning her surroundings. “Haaa, that tutorial was fun,” Alex exclaimed as she reminisced the things she had done earlier while meditating. 

“So, where am I??” Alex asked as she couldn’t help but notice the enormous stone tower in front of her. She doesn’t understand why but it felt as if she had already seen or heard about this tower. 

The tower is as massive as the tallest skyscraper in the world. She almost thought that it looked like a giant stone pillar. It was only thanks to the stairs and doors around it that made it resembled a dungeon tower in video games.

Alex turned her gaze at the top of the tower as she felt something observing her. Then she suddenly had this urge of wanting to reach the top as if something or someone strong was waiting for her up there. 

She tried to look around, but everything around her and the tower was nothing. It is just pitch black everywhere. It was as if she had fallen deep into the abyss. The only light source she has is Lumiere, who is floating around her. 

“This is void’s realm, a place where you rest your soul until Yggdrasil repaired your vessel. Aside from that, you can also recover from the experience you lost in your death. In front of you is the void tower.” 

“Void…?”  Alex mumbled in her mind when she heard the name of the place. 

Meditation helped her clear her mind and get a clearer memory of what happened before her death. She remembered Chaos talking something about him being the void’s guardian; she couldn’t help but connect everything with him. Especially those beings who appeared in the sky are definitely there because of Chaos. It’s like every leader of the races in the game is there to hunt a common foe. For her, every one of those beings who appeared in the sky from the dragon, angel, vampire, and even the fairy she saw exuded an aura of a last bosses in the game. 

Their strength may be miles and miles better than her current strength. Yet Alex can’t help but tremble in excitement as she thinks of fighting against them in the future. 

“Since you’ve meditated for 30 minutes already. You will now only need 30 more minutes before your vessel gets repaired by Yggdrasil. So you have the choice to log out, or gain back the experience points you have lost in your death.”

“You can gain experience here?? How!!?” Alex pushed her current thoughts of the future as soon as she heard Lumiere talking about gaining experience points. Her current strength is merely an ant against the beings in this game, so she needs to level up fast and get stronger. 

“It is easy all you need to do is kill monsters that the void’s tower releases. The number of monsters you will fight will correspond with the amount of experience you have lost.”

“Can you elaborate?” Alex asked as she only understood half of Lumiere’s explanation. 

“Let me give you an example. Let us say you have died with 20/100 experience points. Dying means losing all those 20 points but in the void’s realm, you can recover it by killing the monsters in the void tower. And 20 experience points will be equal to 20 monsters from the void tower’s first floor. But higher floors gives higher experience points so you’ll fight stronger but lesser enemies.” Lumiere elaborated.

Listening to Lumiere’s explanation, Alex suddenly thought of a crazy idea. “Lumiere… Am I cheating?? Or are there loopholes in the game??”

“What do you mean??” Lumiere asked in confusion.

Alex then asked with excitement. If it works, it is definitely going to be a shortcut for her. “With my hero trait of times two experience points, if I lost 20 experience points won’t I earn 40 experience points in here??” 

“….”