The Bright-Revelation, page 1
The Bright
Revelation
Alex Knowles
The Bright - Revelation
Copyright © 2021 by Alex Knowles
Published by Alex Knowles
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written consent from the author, except in the instance of quotes for reviews. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded, or distributed via the internet without the permission of the author and is a violation of the International copyright law, which subjects the violator to severe fines and imprisonment.
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, incidents, and place are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real except where noted, and authorised. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or actual events are entirely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or names featured are assumed to be the property of their respective owners and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used.
The author and editor have taken great effort in presenting a manuscript free of errors. However, editing errors are ultimately the responsibility of the author.
This book is written in American English and includes relative diction.
Dedication
Huge thanks goes to all my early readers.
For the inspiration specifically on this one - special thanks goes to Brett Tubbs without you asking that question when I wrote book 1, this would never have been written!
Thank you
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
More from Alex
Cultivation/Litrpg/Gamelit Links
Litrpg
Other Recommended books
1
I didn’t recall anything, anything but pain. I’d tried to move and couldn’t.
Now there were sounds, soft beeps, and hissing noises. No, not hissing, breathing. My breathing. It sounded so mechanical. I choked. My throat constricted. Something stung inside me. Something that had helped me? It didn’t feel like it helped now. It hurt.
I tried looking around, I couldn’t even open my eyes. Sticky, messy.
My thoughts, my mind foggy. No memories. Nothing?
I panicked. The hissing noises from the machines sounding worse. Who was I? Where was I?
“Give me a moment,” a soft voice said, and they lifted my head, my eyes opening. Bright lights, very bright. I squeezed my eyes closed again.
I felt something then, and I gagged. Choked again; they took something out of my throat. Then wet around my eyes. Cool and wonderful.
“That’s it, take your time. Open your eyes when you’re ready. I’ve lowered the light.”
I swallowed, my throat so sore. I could hear someone moving around. I think there was only one person in the room. When I did eventually open my eyes again, there she was. Dark skin, shining teeth. “What? Where? Louise?”
Her eyes lowered, and I knew something was wrong, drastically wrong. I tried to move to sit up, but she placed a hand on me, stopping me dead. “You were in an accident, Ella, a terrible one. You’ve been in a coma for quite some time.”
“Coma?” I tried to move even more, but nothing was working.
“You’ve been here for several months. You’ll be weak. There are no other injuries, you’ve healed with time.”
“My daughter,” I croaked out. “I have a daughter?”
“You were all relocated. Your parents too, they’ve settled in fairly well.”
I managed to lift an arm up. It felt heavy, much heavier than it should have been, and I looked at it. Something shiny glinted back at me.
“I’ll go get you something to drink and eat. Doctor will want to get you up today, if you think you can.”
“I will,” I said. “Tell my parents, I need to see Louise.”
“We will sort it out, don’t worry.”
“I will worry!” I wrung my hands together. “You’re telling me I’ve been unconscious for several months.”
I saw her go for the door, but it wasn’t like any door I’d ever seen. She touched a panel, and it just vanished. She stepped through and it appeared again. I blinked. It was a door. But this room. Everything in here wasn’t anything I knew, the sounds, the materials. It wasn’t a hospital. I didn’t know what it actually was. It all looked strange, weird metals, shiny parts.
I blinked and then opened my eyes. It was still the same. I could, however, just about see a window. Could I get to it, see outside? I wanted to see where I was. I focused. I had been able to lift my arm. Oh, my arm!
That metal thing, I reached out with my other and ran a finger over it. Its cool metallic surface slippery to my fingers. I realized it wasn’t something I could take off. I tried to reach around it to see if it was fixed somehow at the back. More of my hand connected with the metal, and I felt something shock me.
Initializing System Connection - Recognizing species - Human
System Initialization - Ella Hart
Guild recognized - Moeru-hi
Personal Guard for Tytan Shade
A sharp pain ripped through me. Needles stung up the insides of my arm. I slapped the metal and I pulled at it to try to get it off. I couldn’t.
Then the pain vanished.
I saw something scroll across my eyes and tried to shake it off. Then I saw my name and I read on instinct.
Name - Ella Hart
Age - 31
Species - Human
Class - Sorcerer
Rank - ?
Personal Level - 25
Rebirths - 1
Chosen Specialty - ?
Health - 77%
Brightness Capacity - 60%
Brightness Achieved - 25%
No Enhanced Endoskeleton
Strength - 6
Dexterity - 23
Constitution - 8
Intelligence - 26
Wisdom - 23
Charisma - 9
Luck - 11
De-buff - Not well rested at all!
Due to your coma, you are minus 5 to Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution. This will take time for you to recuperate and grow your strength once more.
I didn’t understand any of it. What it meant for me? De-buff. That was shit, I hoped it wouldn’t last long. I tried to move again, realized I couldn’t. I really had no strength at all to even move my own weight. I sighed. This sucked.
The door opened up, and the nurse came in with a tray of food and a drink. She plonked it down on the table and I just stared at it in disgust. I didn’t want any of this. I wanted answers. “Where are we?” I asked her. “This is no normal hospital, right?”
The nurse raised an eyebrow at me. “You’re perceptive,” she said. “Please let—”
But the door opened once more, and a rather odd-looking man came in. “Thank you, Ruby, I’ll take it from here.”
I said odd because he clearly wasn’t human. When he turned to watch her leave, a tail poked out from the back of his trousers. He wore a sleeveless shirt, his green skin laced down the sides of his neck and arms in a swirling pattern. Scales? Wow, he was stunning. Absolutely stunning.
“Yes, of course.” Ruby moved to leave the room, and I shivered. She was really going to leave him with me?
His yellow eyes turned to me. “Please, Ella, I will explain everything. Eat. Then we’ll let you see your parents and Louise.”
“I’m really not hungry,” I said and pushed the plate away.
He came up toward the bed and offered his hand. “My name is Raz Truvo. I am in charge here.”
“Please tell me what happened?” I couldn’t help but stare at his tail. It swished backward and forward, in a really distracting way.
He glanced behind him and brought it forward. “You’ve never met anyone of another species before. I understand your hesitation. I’m netrovol from a planet many, many light years from Earth. What happened… Yes, you were on your way home from work—”
I had visions flash before me then. Rushing, I never stopped rushing. I needed to get to Louise, of course. Ryan and I hadn’t had the best few weeks, arguing over certain things, and I’d left early. Now I knew he’d be waiting for me, dinner ready.
The image changed to being on the main road out of the city. Then I recalled seeing something level with the truck ahead of me. Was that a helicopter? Some kind of… Then it shot the tires on the truck, I hit the brakes. Everything slowed down and though I had managed to stop, another articulated lorry and the surrounding cars didn’t.
I raised my hand to my mouth, realizing they shook.
The man’s eyes softened, and he reached for my hand.
“How am I even alive?” I asked him as his fingers ran over the metal object stuck to me.
“This is a band made by the Sarashead guild,” he said. “You were given it by one of its members. Sin Vrace. This saved your life.”
Guild? That sounde
“Far from Earth. You were moved for your own safety.” He pulled my hand. “You were in an accident revolving around a wanted criminal we were tracking.”
There was something wrong with the way he’d said that. It instantly got my back up. “Criminal?”
He glanced at me as I once again tried to move. Everything hurt still, but I managed to push the covers aside and move my legs.
“He goes by the name of Tytan Shade, he was hiding out on Earth.”
I’d literally read the name… Personal Guard for Tytan Shade. No way I’d be a guard for a criminal! That was absurd!
A wave of something drifted over from Raz, and inside my mind tiny alarms were going off.
Inspection failed.
The inspection flashed up once more, and I had to rack my brain to think seriously about how it washed over me and how it made me feel. Almost like I were inside a video game? I mean, it wasn’t possible, right? But that was what it felt like. I recalled some of the times Ryan had tried to get me involved with his late night ‘friendscapades’ into games.
Virtual Reality wasn’t my thing, though I had tried, more than once.
I glanced around me now, this totally felt like I was in a VR game, the statistics, the messages, the aliens! On the inside, totally freaking out… I couldn’t show it, I wasn’t like that. My whole job dealing with the city’s corporations involved being cool, dealing with really stressful situations. I breathed in and out, settled my thoughts. I’d scream into the pillow later.
I had to play this, play the game. “I read that name a moment ago,” I admitted. “Who is Tytan Shade?”
He eyed me sideways. That way he looked at me, almost with a sneer. “I’m sorry,” he replied. “He was your husband.”
“Ryan is Tytan?”
He nodded at me. “He’s a dangerous man, Ella. We’re hoping now you’ve come around you might be able to help us find him.”
I swallowed and took a tentative step. “I feel sick,” I said. Noticing a bin at the far end of the room, I ran for it and, retching, emptied my nonexistent stomach into it.
Raz’s hand settled on my back in seconds, patting me. I didn’t like him. I didn’t like this whole thing. I shook him off. Which I thought he hissed at me over. I cringed.
“It will take you a while to get used to being around here. The energy is different. I will let you eat and rest. I will ask Ruby to drop back in, help you to bed.”
Bed? I wanted to get out of here. I wanted to speak with my husband. I wanted to see Louise, my mom, dad.
I listened to him leave, then I sat back on my legs, looking around the room. I had no idea where I even was, let alone who they were. I always, always trusted my gut. Ruby didn’t seem so bad, but Raz, no, he oozed bad. I closed my eyes, sucked in a breath. Play it cool, I said to myself. You got this.
No matter what’s going on, Ryan never lied to me. Never. I couldn’t believe that. We’d had a great relationship, bar the last few months. My job was more demanding, I wanted to leave it. But I needed it. We needed it. Ryan didn’t work. Though he’d paid for the house, the things we had now. My money paid for living there. I had wanted to move, to pack it all in. Sell up. He’d not wanted to leave without talking more. He knew I loved the job, just didn’t love it right now. Ryan made so much sense, even if I hated him at the time. A criminal, really? I didn’t want to think about that at all.
I wiped the spit from my face, held onto my stomach and pushed up. I moved to the door, never in a million years expecting it to open. Nope, nothing. I wasn’t getting out of here very easily at all. Locked up with no one I knew, no one I trusted. A wave of sadness spread over me and I returned to my bed.
There were several things I had to do right now. Eat. Even if I didn’t want to. Because I needed the strength. I needed to get my muscles working again. Even though now I’d actually gotten used to where I was and moving my body truly felt better than it had in years.
I needed to know more about this system, this world around me.
I sat on the bed and, pulling the tray to me, ate.
It filled me with energy, though everything ached. There was nothing I could do in here, so I settled back down and curled sadly into the blankets, crying.
Loneliness washed over me. I’d lost everything. My husband and our daughter gone. I worried so much, but worry wasn’t going to get me out of here. Being smart would.
Ryan, I said to myself, whatever have you’ve gotten yourself into?
I wished I could ask him. I needed the answers.
I woke to the sounds of the door moving once more. This time it wasn’t Ruby that came in, or Raz, but someone else. He looked younger than the others. Almost dubious about coming in. He moved my empty tray to one side and stared at me.
“You’re the first human I’ve seen with a band,” he said. “That’s pretty amazing.”
I looked at the metal invading my arm as I crossed them before me. “Doesn’t feel amazing, it feels fake.”
“I’m Ssekien Kiyota,” he said. He came closer to the bed and sat on it. “I’ve been given instructions to help you through some of your early transitions. Though I have to be honest and tell them what I discover from you.”
“You have to?” I asked, and he looked away. Okay, I thought, I might have someone on my side. Maybe? He looked young, almost like some of the juniors at my job.
“I’ll ask you the questions and record the answers.” He pulled up a chair and a data pad.
“How about you ask a question and you answer one of mine?”
He looked forlorn and shook his head, but he wrote something on the pad and turned it to face me. I read it fast, before he wiped the screen. Give me some time, I will talk to you. Do everything they ask of you.
I nodded at him and held his eyes with mine.
“I’m going to run you through accessing your statistics, and then I’ll note them down.”
“Even I know that’s a pretty private thing to ask.” He frowned, but I smiled and tried to reassure him. “Okay, talk me through it,” I said.
Within a second, he had my status screen in front of him, and he stared at it. “You are Bright capable and already at twenty-five percent. This is huge.”
“I don’t know what it means, at all,” I said. “Or even how any of this works.”
“Your basics, I’m not sure of. But it seems the system has allocated all of your points earned, or at least those it thinks you’ve earned. You’re down as a sorcerer; that’s going to interest my boss greatly. I don’t think any of us knew humans were Bright capable at all.”
“That sounds like a bad thing,” I sighed, sitting back in the bed.
“It means you can manipulate the surrounding energy, learn to use it.”
“Magic?”
“I think that term has been used around the universe before. The Bright is special and takes time to learn, to even cultivate correctly without damaging yourself.”
My mind whirled. If I had access to magic, maybe I could get out of here without weapons or fighting. I wasn’t a fighter, that much I knew. My muscles were weak.
I could get through a few days of poking and questions… I had to.
Ssekien had given me a little hope. I had only been awake for a while. I had a lot to learn, but now, I thought I had a friend. Maybe. I still didn’t want to trust anyone. What if he was just going to kick me in the guts, tell them everything, tell me all the things I wanted to hear, then betray me?
I needed to learn, and I had to start somewhere. Ssekien and Ruby were going to be it.
