The Outsider

Chapter 4: Azrael

It's been three days since Azrael was trapped inside 'Crystal Cross'. And Azrael noticed a lot of strange things happening after that day. He noticed that the NPCs started to behave like actual people. Showing emotions of desire, respect, agony, disgust etc. That shouldn't have been possible, NPCs have a certain set of lines given to them while coding the game, only these lines reoccur when they talk. But now they are able to generate their own sentences for conversations.

Even the game's AI started to talk to him like a normal person. Well like a normal person with a robotic voice. The AI asked Azrael to call it the 'Brain Sage'. What that means even Azrael didn't know but he agreed to call the AI - 'Brain Sage'. The most bizarre thing he noticed was the graphics of the game started to turn almost realistic. Well, the game's graphics were really good, the critics said that 'It was almost real-life graphics'. But what Azreal saw looked so real that he couldn't find any difference between the real world and the game.

In the back of his head, he knew a possible reasoning for all these changes in the game. And the culprit which he had thought to have done this was his subconscious mind. Surprised, aren't you? Well, there is a logical explanation for that accusation. The subconscious mind is like a sleeping bear capable of doing a lot of things but it chooses to lie dormant until the right time. For example - Mothers are able to lift heavy boulders if their child is trapped underneath one. This is called hysterical strength. Normally, humans use 20% of their muscle strength to prevent wear and tear due to the stress inflicted on them if used at 100%. But the subconscious mind has the key to unlocking the strength for a short time. When the person's life is at danger. All the survival instincts are controlled by it, it's like a sleeping giant that doesn't wish to fight anyone. Even this giant has some flaws. The major flaw is that the subconscious mind doesn't know the difference between real and fake. It believes what it sees and that's the main reason why Azrael thinks his subconscious mind was making those changes. But there was no real proof for this accusation. Being trapped in the game for three whole days made his subconscious mind to believe that the game's world was actually real!

Although Azrael accepted being trapped in the game quite easily, the matter what bothered him was why didn't anyone come to help him in Saber's HQ? At first, he believed that he was going to be saved by his colleagues but he changed his mind after the first two days. Sometimes he actually felt happy to be trapped! He was totally different in the game world. He was All-knowing and All-powerful, this was way different from his frail real life. But still he had a family in the real world and that topic made him feel depressed.

While Azrael was sitting in his room and collecting his thoughts on the matter at hand, Jacob burst into the room and said "Lord Azrael! Syren scried for the nearest city as you had ordered and while doing that she came across something interesting in a small village about two or three leagues from here. I thought you might want to see this."

"Um... Something interesting huh? Bring the scrying bowl here." Azrael ordered.

Jacob brought the bowl and placed it on the table. Well, Jacob called it interesting but most people would call it devastating. A group of soldiers of an unknown country was attacking and slaughtering defenseless villagers. Yup! A horrible sight to watch, but Azrael felt nothing towards them. The reason for this might be because of the race he had chosen. He was a demon, they live on all those negative emotions, so watching humans slaughter other humans didn't bother him at all.

"I thought you said this was interesting, but it's just humans killing themselves, is that something new?!" Azrael asked.

"Well, no milord. But we don't know from which country they're from. Isn't that interesting? Wouldn't it be good to know the politics and nature of these new lands?" Jacob justified.