Forsyx opened his eyes and found himself inside the empty, dark land.
As far as his eyes could see, there was nothing but black, barren land stretching to the horizon.
Even the sky lacked a sun or moon—just thousands of stars shining above. There were so many of them that they bathed this vast, forgotten world in cold light.
At the center of this void, he saw a massive old stone building.
The ancient structure completely stood out from the surrounding emptiness.
Forsyx just stood there, staring at the stone lab, as a lot of memories surfaced in his mind.
He took a deep breath and started walking toward the lab. The entire exterior of the lab was built with stone in a massive square shape.
He saw a couple of windows, but mostly, the building resembled a massive stone block prison.
Forsyx walked to the massive metal gates. Each of them was at least five times his height.
Each door was filled with multiple strange patterns. He took a deep breath and placed both his hands on both doors.
Nothing happened for a moment, but then he heard a loud metal screeching sound, followed by a movement from the gates.
They were so massive that even the slightest movement caused the surrounding land to vibrate.
Ding!
[Template Wilder detected. Lab synchronization in process… 1%... 4%....]
As the synchronization percentage continued to increase, the entire building started to shake. It was like some ancient creature was waking up.
With each additional percentage, the doors continued to open wider and wider.
What was interesting was that, except for where he was standing, dust started to fall from the walls on the other side.
Soon, the synchronization reached 100 percent, and the lights inside the front part of the building lit up.
Ding!
[Welcome to the Lab, Template Wilder Forsyx.]
He saw torches on both sides of the main corridor ignite with blue flames.
Forsyx looked around for a moment before walking in.
The moment he stepped inside, he saw a dust cloud rise behind him.
Not caring much about it, he walked through the corridor. He passed multiple doors along the way, but all of them were locked.
As he continued walking past the closed doors, he reached the end of the corridor, where he saw wooden doors that were slightly open.
Just above the door, he saw a stone plate with "Master Office" chiseled on it.
This was the heart of the entire lab.
He walked to the wooden doors, and even though they were triple his size, they opened with a single touch.
Unlike the dim corridors, the office flickered with warm yellow torchlight, casting shifting shadows across the ancient stone walls.
The air was thick with the scent of dust and old parchment, as if the room had been sealed for centuries.
Even though the office was massive, it was mostly empty, with just a table and chair at its center.
They looked worn down, but Forsyx did not care about their appearance. Instead, he focused on the ten square slots carved into the table.
The moment he saw the slots, he froze.
This table was a special storage used to store templates. What baffled him was that instead of two, there were four slots containing template cards.
What the hell?
He rushed to the table to check the cards. All the template cards were common white cards.
The leftmost card had a bird drawn on it; the second one had a fish; the third had a rabbit; and the last one had a snake.
"Woah." Forsyx smiled at this fresh development. So, using those high-level crystals had a positive impact.
He knew these initial templates were the most important ones for him.
As he realized this change, he also noticed a purple assistance crystal at the corner of the table.
This crystal was also different—if he remembered correctly, in his last life, he had received a pea-sized red crystal. But this time, there was a massive apple-sized purple crystal.
He just stared at the purple crystal for some time and shook his head.
It was better not to create an assistant for now.
Basically, the assistance crystal was a one-time reward that let him summon an NPC assistant who would manage the lab in his absence.
The problem was, the assistant he had summoned last time was an old witch with a bossy personality.
He rubbed his forehead as he recalled the many times she messed up his work.
The thing was, even though lab assistants were under his command, they were not obliged to follow his orders.
The only reason that the witch even listened to him in his last life was because the game system had connected the assistant's life to his character.
So if his character got deleted, the assistant would also die.
Even with that, she was so bossy in the beginning. But later on, she became even more desperate than him. But what was the point? By then, it was already too late.
Now, he didn't know if having a bigger crystal would be a good thing or a bad thing. Another issue was that he would have to teach his assistant how to manage things. It was just too much hassle, and he didn't want to waste time like last time.
He shook his head and left the crystal as it was for now.
Not wanting to waste more time, he just sat at the table and said,
"Player status."
===
Player Name: Forsyx
Species: Human/Nil.
Class: Template Wilder.
Level: 1
Health: 100/100
Mana: 50/50
__________
STR: 5
AGL: 5
VIT: 5
INT: 5
STA: 5
DEF: 5
Condition: Healthy.
Unassigned stat points: 0
Template slots:
Slot 1: None.
Slot 2: None.
*Hidden Slot: Baby Nyxthar (71:37:02) [Locked]
Class skill:
-> Template shift.
===
Ding!
[Hidden slot of ancient being detected.
Time before awakening: 71 hours, 36 minutes, 56 seconds.
(Caution: Be prepared for the awakening cycle of Baby Nyxthar.)
]
Forsyx smirked at the grayed-out black template card attached to his status.
There was a small humanoid baby creature drawn on the black card. This innocent little creature card was the weakness of his class—the weakness that could lead to the deletion of his character.