Second World

"There are players in the basement?" Grace asked while they were walking outside.

Jack told her about what he saw down there.

"I can't do anything since it is just my copy down there. I thought about changing places with that copy and tried to free the players, but I'm not sure if doing that will alert Euphosine. So, I decided to just leave them for later."

"If you tried freeing them, that will indeed alert Euphosine," Talia said.

"How do you know about them? I thought Euphosine kept you locked up," Jack asked.

"After Euphosine took away your spirit form ability, she started to tell me everything about her game," Talia answered. "Once she started talking, she couldn't stop. In her own way, she was truly proud of her game… I tried to talk some sense into her, but she was no longer the sister I knew. Those people in the basement were the outworlders who lost in the game."

"I thought they were brought to the nursery hall and were trained to rejoin the next game?" Grace asked.

"I see that you are familiar with Euphosine's game as well?" Talia asked back.

"We met a past participant who explained it to us," Grace answered.

"Then you should know there were some outworlders who decided they have had enough and refused to go with the program," Talia said.

"Do you mean…"

Talia nodded. "The ones in the basement were players who defied Euphosine and refused to participate in her game anymore. So, Euphosine made use of them in a different way… The dimension that Euphosine had created required tremendous energy. Euphosine had to constantly drew power from the divine heritage to sustain the dimension. Doing so endlessly is excruciatingly tiring. Hence, when the first few outworlders refused to follow her program, she took them away and started experimenting on them."

"That's awful…," Grace uttered.

"It was," Talia agreed. "With the power of a God in her hand, she finally devised a way to suck mana out of outworlders. Every time an outworlder dies and rebirths, mana converges around them to complete the process. This mana was what Euphosine took to help her ease the burden of her dimension by a little."

"You… You mean… The outworlders were constantly killed?" Grace asked in disbelief.

"Euphosine installed an enchantment so that they were rebirthed at the same place, so they would always be bound. So, they could be continuously killed and harvested for their energy."

"This might be the first time I didn't envy your kind's immortality," Laurent remarked. He was walking with them. They might still need his healing spells, so Jack let him hang around.

"Are you sure they are outside as well?" Jack asked. "Maybe they are still in the basement."

"Our mansion has no basement. The basement you saw is another of Euphosine's pocket worlds," Talia answered. "She just attached it to the nexus world for easy access to the produced energy. When her dimension was destroyed, they should be released like the others."

They were nearing the mansion's exit now. They heard murmurs. It sounded like a crowd was out there.

When they came out the main door into the garden, they saw that it was indeed a crowd.

"This… Are they all participants in Euphosine's game…? This is too many…," Grace said after seeing the scene. There were probably thousands of people out there.

Around them, outside the garden, were large trees. Jack and Grace remembered the landscape as one from the Shylvan region. Seeing those trees told them that they were back to the normal game world again.

"There are a lot of natives…," Jack said after using his Inspect on some. "They can't be the past participants… Natives die for real, and there is only one winner in each game."

"Thella!" Talia called when she saw one of the natives in the crowd.

Jack heard something different in her voice when she called the native. She sounded joyful.

The native woman, whom Talia called, looked over. Her voice turned bright upon seeing Talia. "My Lady…!" She called.

Not only her. A lot of the other natives came also. Most of them were women.

"Are they…"

"They are my faction members," Talia told Jack with a smile. It was a genuinely happy smile. Jack thought this was the first time he saw her this happy.

Talia went and embraced her people.

"Hey, you people survive!"

Jack and Grace turned to the voice and saw Winson and the others there.

"You chickenshit, you ran outside?" Jack said.

"Aren't you the one who asked us to find safety?" Saddie said.

"Yes, I'm just joking. I'm glad you didn't try going back in," Jack said.

"I can't believe it, kid… You truly kept your promise," Freddie said. "You free us from that awful place."

"Yeah, I've lost hope for so long… Thank you!" Saddie exclaimed.

"Hey…! Heyyy…!!"

They heard shouting. They turned and saw more familiar faces. Out of the crowd, Stefan, Naomi, Tom, Dina, and Richard came running to them. They had one similarity. All of them were level 1.

"You made it! You people truly won! Un-f*cking-believable," Stefan said as he approached.

"How did you manage to defeat that monster?" Naomi asked.

"Let's leave that tale for later," Jack said with a laugh. He asked, "Everyone all right?"

They nodded with wide smiles. Some of them had been locked up for some time. It felt truly good to finally be freed.

"My dear! Oh, how I miss you…!!" They heard another voice.

Grace facepalmed. She was relieved the guy was safe since he died protecting her, but she also felt nauseous once she heard his voice.

Out of the crowd, Evan came running to Grace and was met by Jack's fist.

"Chill it, dude. She is taken already. Go find another Goddess," Jack said to Evan, who was massaging his jaw. Jack then felt Grace's arms on his.

Grace was clasping his arm.

"That's right, I'm already taken," Grace said, seemingly to Evan, but her eyes were on Jack.

Jack was unsure how to respond. When he was still thinking the right words to say, Grace's face turned stern.

Jack was about to ask her what was wrong when she said in an urgent voice, "We need to leave!"

"What? Why?" Jack asked, confused.

"Master is on his way here," Grace answered. "With his army."