Chapter 1: Chapter 1: Dawning

It had been a long night; and now I was nursing the headache that was capping it all off.

Ugh, I had no idea where the rest of the girls were at. Somewhere inside probably, where I should be. They wouldn't leave without me.

The metal door to the club closed behind me; the chilled night air of the alleyway was crisp and somewhat sobering on my tan skin.

My head was hammering. I vaguely remembered the impulse to get some fresh air that had led me here.

I was drunk and dumb. Wandering around a college party city was all well and good, but not when you were in the seedier corners of it in the early hours of the morning.

And not when your blood was more booze-bonded sludge than free flowing crimson.

I should've stayed inside.

I reached back to shake the door handle behind me.

The cold steel didn’t even budge. Locked. There'd probably been a sign warning of that, but I'm sure I'd missed it.

Reading wasn't altogether easy when your eyes were making two, sometimes three, of everything.

My phone might be the lifeline I needed. I reached into my pocket to grab it.

I was confused for a moment when the screen remained black, despite me holding it up to my face. Was it too dark for it to tell I'd lifted it up, or?

My finger found the side button and held it down. No, it just wasn't on; I somewhat remembered then that I'd turned it off to conserve the battery at some point.

The lights were dizzying as the phone booted up.

I could barely make out the home screen; luckily the use of the device was so ingrained into me by this point that it didn't matter much.

My lazy thumb found the contacts symbol and I scrolled down to find my friend Jane's number.

The phone started to ring just as I heard footsteps approaching.

A strange cocking noise filled my ears next.

I tried to straighten myself as I looked up to the woman who had approached me, but I fell dazedly up against the nearby wall. The smell of the moisture laden brick made my heavy stomach suddenly nauseous.

"What do you... want?" I asked her; my words were slurred, talking was hard.

I just needed to get home.

Then my eyes finally saw her gun.

My phone fell from my hand as my heart skipped a beat.

"Just give me whatever you have on you; money, cards, jewelry, it don't matter," the middle-aged woman said.

I tried to stand up again.

"Don't move," the woman brandished the weapon towards me.

I'd been fighting since I was a kid, but I didn't think it was a good idea to try and take this woman's gun. Even drunk me knew that.

"I don't have any money," I swayed from side to side; I'd managed to just barely get off the crutch of the wall.

"You've got something," the woman said.

I raised my hand and the woman tensed. So did I. I was just trying to gesture back to the door behind.

"Listen, please, I just want to go back inside with my friends," I replied.

"Don't go near the door," the woman told me.

"It's locked," I remembered out loud. "Just let me go to my car out back, I won't tell anybody about you."

The woman frowned at me. "You got money in your car?"

"Uh," I hadn't thought that through; I wasn't an idiot normally, but drunk me kinda was.

"Turn around and take me to your car," she said.

My eyes studied her. "Hey, please just let me go."

The woman held the gun out. "Now."

My heart was threatening to burst out of my chest now.

"Alright, uh," I said and turned as slowly as I could manage, though the movement was especially clumsy.

Could I get to the parking lot through this alleyway? It looked like I saw streetlights at the end of the brick tunnel and what were maybe the shapes of cars.

I hadn't come in this way though and nothing made perfect sense right now.

Would this woman let me go?

Should I try to fight her?

Suddenly, all my years of gymnastics, boxing, and fencing didn't seem all the useful. This woman had all the power, just because she had the only weapon.

"Walk," the threatening, though perhaps self-doubting voice, said behind me.

The fear was sobering me up somewhat, but even with what the adrenaline did to bring my world into perspective it also created a sort of tunnel vision as I walked towards the glow of the street lights.

Would anyone help me? Maybe someone in the parking lot?

It was late though. Even the club was thinning out.

"I'm going to put the gun in my coatsleeve. If you try anything--" the woman trailed her voice off menacingly and with a hint of paranoia about her.

So no one would see that I was being robbed and I couldn't even cry for help?

I felt my fear turning into a cold terror.

I'd never been a crier. I didn't even want to cry now, but… I just wanted to get out of this situation.

I was too afraid to glance back at the woman as we walked; so I couldn't be sure if she'd hidden her weapon like she'd said she would.

As we moved forward, I could hear the sound of her stepping over the concrete and through the puddles behind me.

I did see a body or two as we entered the parking lot, but no one seemed to be paying us too much attention.

It was like no one knew the personal nightmare that I was now in.

I felt anger rising up inside me.

Would my mugger just take whatever she wanted from my car and go?

"There's nothing in my car," I slurred. "No money."

"We'll see," the woman said. "Keep walking."

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I felt a bit more of the rage bubble up inside me. Who was she to put me through this? Especially when she literally had nothing to gain; unless she was planning on stealing my car, I really didn't have anything to offer her.

I'd realized not long after she'd asked for money that I'd stupidly left my purse inside the club; though that was the least of my worries.

Maybe if I hit her fast enough...

An urge to act was growing inside me, the hidden aggression that had always served me so well in my studies and sports was coming out now, only being tempered by the fact that I'd never felt fear like this before.

We reached my little Hyundai before I could work up the nerve to make a decision.

"Open it," she said.

My hand reached for the small handle. Instead of the tension releasing pullback of the door coming free on its hinges, I was instead met with resistance.

I felt my blood run a little more cold. My keys were in my purse.

"I don't have the keys," I said.

I felt the gun barrel slide into my back. "Open it."

"I can't," I snapped, maybe a little too aggressively.

A pause. The barrel dug deeper into my shirt. Then it let up just a little.

What was I supposed to do? I really didn’t have the keys.

As it partially accepting my words, but needing to confirm them, the woman's hands started to pat down my pockets.

"Don't touch me," I warned; she was going too far.

She should just let me go. Things weren't going her way and I couldn't give her what she wanted.

Didn't she see that?

She just needed to let me go... why wouldn't she?

Just as I was about to say something else to that affect, a loud buzzing filled my ears.

Then a light blinded my eyes from out of nowhere.

Next, an equally as sudden explosion of force that almost knocked both me and my attacker off our feet hit me.

"What the--" the woman snapped.

A gunshot rang out.

The force of the bullet entering my heart and the concussion of the mysterious blast both knocked me to the ground.

The woman, however, grabbed a hold of my little, blue car and managed to remain standing if only barely.

I starred at her face as the world was bathed in an increasingly bright light, until her features eventually faded out into the white illumination.

[Welcome to the Centrality.]

[The Great Game begins.]

[Stand by as your world is converted and your souls are integrated into the System.]

A small progress bar appeared before my all but blinded eyes; yet somehow I could still see the text.

[Converting Souls: 40%... 65%... 80%.]

The world slipped out from under me, just as the status bar reached 99%, and my heart beat its last.

I felt a lightness come over me, as I slowly lost my connection to my body.

The progress bar disappeared entirely, about as quickly as it had come.

The blinding light that had surprised the mugger into shooting me became a distant thing as a tunnel of kaleidoscopic colors filled my disembodied vision.

I felt drawn to the end of the light. I began to step forward towards it.

I saw figures there. I didn't feel drunk anymore. I was almost... at peace, I guess, in a way I'd never experienced before.

One of the figures, though still mostly a silhouette, looked familiar; more importantly it felt familiar.

"Grandma?" I asked aloud; I was somehow sure that she was there waiting for me.

She'd passed away years ago. Which meant...

Was I dead?

With my drunken stupor now cleared away, I realized that, yes, I probably was. I'd been shot, and in the heart no less.

I was only twenty.

My chest gnawed in regret, but before the full scope of the situation could fall upon me, a new notification appeared before my eyes, even though it felt oddly out of place in this new tunnel of light that I was experiencing.

[Error: Your converted soul has been disconnected from the Centrality at the moment of full investiture. Threat of soul loss detected. Emergency reclamation initiated.]

Something asserted itself on my now seemingly spiritual form. Something that I somehow instinctively knew shouldn't have been able to do so in this place.

And, just like that, I felt myself be ripped into a million little pieces; though I felt no physical pain, the sensation could be described in no other way than being broken down to base parts, but somehow still remaining conscious of it all.

[Error: Soul has lost connection to body. Teleportation failing. Emergency reincarnation initiated.]

[Error: Human species not fully indexed yet. System is incapable of reproducing the human body at this time.]

[Solution: Randomizing physical form from index of compatible invested species.]

[Success!]

[Error: Earth not fully converted. Teleportation not possible in partially converted areas.]

[Warning: Danger of soul loss imminent if soul is not immediately reclaimed from afterlife.]

[Solution: Transporting to random inter-world Dungeon.]

[Success!]

[Welcome to the Centrality, Clarissa.]

The notifications spilled out in from of me as I felt myself being transported through an unknowable distance. The tunnel of light seemed to have long since disappeared.

Then, just like that, I hit the ground hard.

I had barely even realized I was made of physical matter again yet as my lungs were filled with upturned, wet dirt.

But it seemed whatever this System was gave little room for mercy.

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