Rewound

Hello, Mortal Human. You have the privilege of being taken to a new world. A world where, if you become strong enough, you may be able to reach the heavens and claim the title of Guardian. This world contains hidden artifacts that may grant the user powerful abilities. These items are known as relics. If you are able to acquire enough strength through these relics, we will allow you to ascend to our rankings or return to your home world, if you so wish. You, human, may receive a powerful relic to begin your quest. One that allows you to use any percentage of its power to enhance your strengths. Use it wisely, and seek out the legendary power of us guardians.

~~~

City of Respawn, Central Eternia

In the middle of this city, something abnormal happens constantly. People are brought here from other worlds. These people are almost immediately bombarded with scouts from other agencies asking these newcomers to join their organization. These people are of several different races. Whether that be elves, orcs, humans, or any other race, people tend to face one person or another as soon as they arrive. And our protagonist is of no other immediate fate.

“Hey! Human with the Purple hair!” someone shouts. The human in question quickly turns toward the voice and notices that the origin of the shout is an elf girl, seemingly in her twenties. “Ah, so I do have the language right! Perfect. Ehm, my name’s Liora Moonsweeper, a scout from an organization that would like to recruit you! Would you be willing to come with me, if you don’t mind?”

“O-oh, uh, s-sure. How could it hurt to hear this place out?” Our protagonist responds.

“Amazing! Just this way.” Liora directs him toward a semi-large building, around the size of a warehouse, somewhere around 300 ft away from them. As they start toward this building, he looks back toward where they started, noticing that several people seem to be being created out of some light that swirls around for a bit, and then takes form in various ways. He also sees that there are around ten times the number of scouts surrounding a few elves than any other being. Trying not to be rude, he starts quickly toward Liora.

“O-oh, uh, I’m sorry, I still haven’t mentioned my name. It’s-”

“I’m gonna stop you right there,” Liora interrupts. “It’s a bad idea to share names with people you don’t know. I only shared mine in order to convince you to come along with me, and I told you one of my three nicknames at that.” Taken aback by this statement, the protagonist nods as if he understood that the whole time, while simultaneously thinking of a nickname for himself.

“Then how’s Apollo for a nickname? It’s decent enough, right?”

She looks back at him for a moment, laughs to herself, and responds,

“Great. Apollo then!”

As these two arrive at the warehouse, she looks toward him with a straight face. “Listen. Until I nod at you, I need you to stay as quiet as possible, and not say a single word.” Apollo realizes the weight of her words and solemnly nods at her. She looks back at the entrance, then opens the door leading inside. Apollo notices her expression instantly change back to her cheerful mood from before. Inside, there’s several different races, but prominently elves and orcs. Liora says something in a completely different language to the orcs, and it’s one that Apollo has never heard before. Upon closer inspection, he sees that the orcs are all either sitting on some boxes (although the material looks completely foreign to him), and the one sitting most confidently on the biggest box responds to Liora. Several different races seem to be tinkering with some kind of devices in their hands, and some were fiddling with different items he assumed they used as weapons, like magic staffs and different kinds of large hammers. Liora turned back toward him and gestured for him to walk toward what looked like an elevator. Not wanting to mess up whatever act was being created, he obeyed quietly and quickly walked toward her. It seems that it was indeed an elevator, and they both walked inside. Once the doors closed, Liora nodded toward him. Just then, he saw the buttons on the elevator.

“57 Floors?! How? From the outside, it just looked like an ordinary warehouse!” Liora looked back toward him, quickly changing her confused expression.

“Oh, are you assuming those go upward? No, the floors here descend downward. Although, in this world, you’ll have to learn not to always trust your normal eyes. With him now confused, she flatly ignored him and pressed the button for the 33rd floor. After a short moment, the elevator started to descend. After a few minutes, Apollo broke the silence with a question. “So, uhm, you’re Elven, right?” Liora looked toward him and nodded. “Ah. Uh, forgive me if this is rude, but would you be willing to tell me your age? I-I just heard that Elves live for so long, so..” A mixed expression washed over her. After a moment, she answered with a soft smile, “two79, so I suppose if I ran the equation for elf to human ages, that’d be around twenty-eight or so.” Slightly embarrassed and startled, Apollo nodded and looked back toward the door, and Liora did the same. Eventually, the elevator stopped, and the door opened to upbeat music playing, dim blue lighting, and a lounge area (largely populated, he noticed), behind a front desk with an attendant behind it, but they were a race Apollo could not recognize. Liora stepped out first, and Apollo walked shortly behind. She then spoke to the attendant of the front desk in an elegant language Apollo guessed was Elven, and then handed Liora a circular object which seemed to be a pin. Liora handed it to him and gestured to put it directly on the shirt he had on. After doing this, it immediately moved onto said shirt, almost like a magnet, and suddenly-like some kind of miracle-he could understand the words being spoken in the lounge. No, it was more like they were all speaking his language instead.

“What you just put on is a translator,” the attendant said. “It will automatically translate any other language spoken into whatever language you understand the best. It will not be moved off of you unless removed by you directly. Although some words may be translated with two meanings, so be careful when using some words.”

“Well, I’ve led you to floor 33 and given you a circlet, so I’m going to head back out. Can I leave him with you?” Liora said, looking over at the attendant. After they nodded, she was off to the elevator. After she left, the attendant spoke again.

“Did she tell you about nicknames at all?” they asked him.

“Oh, yeah, she did. I gave myself the nickname of Apollo.”

“Perfect!” they said in response. “My nickname’s Check, and I’m a female Oni. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Apollo!” She pulled out something of a locket from her pocket, opened it, then mumbled something like, “...world 2o8, sect. 4, human…” are recorded it on some paper on the desk. “Okay!” Her expression quickly turned to a more serious tone, but nowhere near what Liora had put on before. “Apollo, we’re going to have to have a deep conversation about you and what you’re planning to do from this point on. And trust me, this will go much better if you tell the truth when I ask you questions.”

Oni- A Japanese demon, similar to a humanlike ogre, typically blue or red, and sometimes mentioned as evolved ogres themselves.