System Change

Alanah woke from a nightmare with a start. No, it wasn’t a nightmare she was having; it was her dreams taking her down memory lane. She didn’t know how long she’d been out of it, but it was long enough for her mind to force her to relive every aspect of her former life. She tried to not think about those memories, but now, after using ‘that’ skill, she couldn’t stop.

Her dream started with her small village—her mother and herself being isolated and hated ever since she was born—no, ever since her mother became pregnant. Her small village, and her country in general, was very biased and discriminate against humans and every other non-elf species. In that sense, it was about like Indria, maybe even worse.

Her ‘father’ wasn’t exactly the personification of a good human, either. No, he was just about as bad as they come. But that didn’t matter to the village. What mattered was that her mother was carrying a child fathered by a human. Her dream took her through that entire pitiful childhood existence—one she only wished she could put behind her.

Flashes of images played through her mind as she remembered other parts of the dream. Of her village being raided by a band of angry humans—ones that probably had a reason for their hatred, to be honest. Images of her mother dying in front of her. Then, of her escaping to what would become her home for the next decades: The Echoing Abyss.

The Abyss was a danger area that nobody from her part of the country dared to enter. It was a place that few of even the strongest made it out alive. If the voices, vibrations, sounds, and overall lack of sleep because of them didn’t drive you crazy or kill you outright, then the overwhelming amount of rabid beasts with their minds long gone from living in the valley would.

And when she entered the valley to escape from the human raid, she wasn’t even old enough to have access to a class yet. She shook as she remembered going crazy and coming back to on multiple occasions, only to somehow still be alive—the hunger and starvation she felt on a regular basis when she wasn’t hiding or on the run—not knowing how to escape.

She remembered finally getting a class that allowed her to dampen the noise, then somehow living long enough to upgrade the class over and over until she had enough power to escape from The Echoing Abyss decades later.

Alanah also had some fond memories, short as they may have been. Memories of joining up with some teams and adventuring—taking the Cooking skill and learning as much as possible about it so she never had to experience the hunger and starvation again. But those memories didn’t last long because of another class upgrade.

She already had some control through sounds and vibrations, but that class upgrade had taken that control away from her. You couldn’t get a power like she had gotten without terrible side effects. After that, she was no longer welcome in parties. She was forced to adventure on her own. With that isolation came the flashes of her she had grown up.

With that isolation came anger and violence. In Cydaria, she was known for her recipe to turn Void Beasts into permanent stat boosts. But she hadn’t been the creator of that recipe, and she wasn’t proud of the way she got her hands on it. But that was something she refused to think about. Others had done things much worse than her, but that part of her life was an embarrassment.

She really didn’t even have a want or need to use the recipe. She had no way of finding Void Beasts, and she wasn’t strong enough to think she could handle it if a powerful one was to appear. No, she just wanted the recipe because she found it interesting. So, she took it.

That recipe did become vital later on, after her final class upgrade—the one that had given her the legendary class, and ‘that’ skill. She had been ecstatic seeing a legendary class appear. With the extra stats and skills, she thought she may be able to find a way to control her passive effects. She would be able to talk with people again.

But that couldn’t have been any further from the truth. With the Dawn Siren class, came even less control. Her passive effects became even stronger. And when she used the skill, she was met with an all too familiar feeling—one that brought her back to when she was young and living in The Echoing Abyss.

When she used that skill, she would go crazy, and wouldn’t come to for days. She could barely remember what she did when it was activated, but from what she did remember, she didn’t go completely berserk. She didn’t kill anyone and anything she saw, just the ones who tried to stop her. She wasn’t exactly fun to be around.

But with a skill so powerful, there were multiple occasions where it saved her life. And the higher the skill leveled, the more she could remember, and the more control she felt she had. That could have been a placebo—she was still uncertain.

What she did realize was that her wisdom stat did increase her control, and her legendary class gave her all the free skill points she needed for that stat and control—but only if she completely ignored her other stats.

That was where the recipe she had stolen came in. That was also when she went looking for a black market Portal skill that paired well with a Deathsworn. Like that, she spent decades of her life alone. Summoning and fighting Void Beast after Void Beast. There were so many of them.

She chuckled at that thought. At the time, there seemed to be so many of them, but then Derek Hunt had brought to her in days what it took her almost a century to farm herself. She couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony.

But she was able to drop all of those stat points in wisdom because of the recipe. She used it to shore up her weaknesses, even if she did have to run away from more than a few Void Beasts she couldn’t handle. Then, she left her homeland to explore the continent. Unfortunately, her reputation proceeded her. Everyone on the continent knew about the beastly Dawn Siren.

Her half-elf appearance, radiant emerald hair and eyes, and her beauty made her very easy to recognize. So, she was back to being isolated once again, even though it had been decades since her last use of that ‘skill.’ In fact, she hadn’t used that skill since well before she capped her wisdom stat at 1500. That’s why she didn’t know what would happen if she used it again.

But she was tired of the isolation, so she chose to go overseas. The journey took ages and wasn’t safe—at least for those she met on the way. Her endurance was high enough to see her through almost any situation. But, after all that time traveling, she finally made it to another continent.

First, she visited Astrus. It was a breath of fresh air being somewhere where nobody knew who you were. She didn’t stay in that country long, and eventually moved on to Indria, the kingdom of elves. She left that country even faster—it reminded her too much of her home.

After that, she visited Vallum. The dwarves were rude, but not in a discriminate way. They talked to everyone like that, even their own kin. They didn’t treat anyone differently. She actually ended up staying there for some time. She also met some dwarves that managed to withstand her passive control, and she made friends.

She came out of Vallum with her beautifully crafted armor and weapon. After that, Alanah moved on to Cydaria. She enjoyed the blend of different cultures, and the fact that the royal family didn’t put any one race above the other, even if the elves she met were snobbish.

She settled down there. She chose to create a business there with all the recipes she had—obviously, she hadn’t taken just the Void Beast recipe. That was where she met a young bumbling prince that pestered her to no end, even though he couldn’t withstand her talking with him at the time. And that was where she met a young orphan boy and a young girl many years later. The rest was history.

So, even though most of the memories were bad or outright terrible, she still had a few good ones. Because of that, she couldn’t call what she had just had a nightmare. It was just a very unpleasant dream of things that happened.

While Alanah was deep in thought, the door to her room opened. Speaking of the young girl, Stella stuck her head in. Before Alanah could utter a word to the woman, the butcher was already beside her bed, enveloping her in a massive hug. She even saw a few tears fall from Stella’s eyes.

“I’m okay. I’m okay,” reassured Alanah, her hand gently tracing circles in the middle of Stella’s back in a comforting manner.

Stella pulled herself back and gave Alanah a evaluating look. “I wasn’t sure how long you were going to be out. What did you do? I’ve asked Natalie, but she refused to give me any information about what happened.”

Alanah shrugged. She was thankful that Natalie hadn’t said anything about her use of her Dawn Siren power. It would be something she would prefer to personally explain to Stella and Avery now that she had to. But, with the thought of the power, she smiled. She had been able to control it fully.

There were some bestial inclinations during her use of it, and her personality was still a bit shifted in the form, but she didn’t black out. She didn’t forget anything. And most importantly, she hadn’t been taken over by the ability. She was even able to shift back using her own will when the army had retreated, though that took a lot of effort, and drained whatever reserves she had at that moment.

“It was a pretty draining skill,” Alanah answered. “It’s one I don’t like to talk about because it turns me into something I hate. It was a skill I haven’t used for decades, maybe longer. But I’m glad everything worked out.” Alanah looked up at Stella. “It did work out, didn’t it? How long have I been out?”

Stella waved away her concerns. “It’s been a little under two days. Everything has been fine now that Edgar’s back with his… dragon.”

Well, that’s another thing I don’t have to be concerned with, Alanah thought. The dragon I briefly saw was real. I’m glad I wasn’t hallucinating. “What about the enemy army?”

“We don’t know the full details yet, but they haven’t made any moves. You… you hit them pretty hard. It’s probably going to take them a long time to recover. And that’s if they choose to continue their attack after seeing what you can do, and hearing the rumors that Edgar’s back with a… dragon.”

Alanah chuckled. Stella was having a really hard time admitting that the young prince had somehow managed to come out of a dungeon with a dragon. “What about the rest of the raid team?”

“Uh…” Stella looked as if she didn’t know how to explain something.

“What is it?”

“Well, Edgar used an escape scroll. The rest of the dungeon is still there. Apparently Avery was currently leading a trial—it’s a trial dungeon by the way—and there’s one more and the final boss fight after that. Edgar passed lead to Derek and left when…” Stella let out a deep breath. “When Silvi showed up in the Time Distortion Raid Dungeon out of nowhere and asked if it was okay to cook and eat an elf.”

Alanah stared at Stella in shock. She didn’t know what to say. For the first time in a very, very, long time, there were no words that wanted to leave her mouth.