Zenith Online: Rebirth of the Strongest Player

The drawn-out emissions and low hums of the VR Helmet powering down echoed in the room. Kieran clutched the device and pulled it off his head with a weary sigh, tentatively looking around the room.

As a consequence of overtaxing his mental strength, his vision was double and a queasy feeling assailed his stomach, forcing him to reluctantly lay on the medical bed while looking at the ceiling littered with fluorescent light.

With labored breaths, Kieran soon subdued the feeling, allowing him to turn his head and gaze at Dr. Riley, who was evidently enamored with her work.

Her fingers scrolled through her tablet with dizzying speed and her eyes lit up, completely fascinated by her work.

In somewhat of a trance, she murmured something. "Is this what it means to be an Inhuman? How exactly are they graded, though? I don't think they'd be held in the same universal regard. There must be some sort of baseline to categorize these Inhumans as they call it."

Given Dr. Riley's guesstimate, Kieran presumed she had made some headway in her research while he was gone, though it truthfully wasn't that long. Which begged the question of what channels Dr. Riley used to finally get her hands on such information.

Groaning in pain, Kieran turned over and sat up, his noises finally eliciting a response from Dr. Riley. Startled, she snapped her head in Kieran's direction and approached, placing her tablet on the desk beside the table.

"Are you hurt?" Dr. Riley asked, examining Kieran with a watchful eye, hints of concern and anxiety peering through her actions.

"Not really, just tired. Wait… shouldn't you know my condition?" Kieran knitted his brows.

Generally, it was Dr. Riley who alerted him of his condition. There was no need for him to probe for the information himself.

Yet, in this situation, Dr. Riley was the one who asked for a report of his condition.

Confused, Kieran turned to the screen that showed all of his remarkable vitals. It was a puzzling predicament, but after giving it some extensive thought, the ordeal became crystal clear. These devices were not designed to track the consumption and exhaustion of the energy he had just used.

The equipment may need several upgrades to reach that level of supernatural diagnostic prowess.

"Well, you remained stable since you've been gone. I haven't seen any cause for concern throughout your dive. Uh, but you do need to prepare for your trip, no?"

"Trip… trip. Ah, right. We have that meeting," Kieran groggily muttered, attempting to shake away the disorienting fog shrouding his mind.

"Can you reach out to Allan Peters and have him schedule a ride on standby? I need some sleep," Kieran requested, sliding down off the medical bed with the balance of a drunken fool.

What usually happened instantly took a few seconds.

Though he felt wobbly, looking down, Kieran noticed his legs were as sturdy and resilient as ever. They hadn't buckled at all. The impression was all in his mind.

The mind—a powerful tool—which by itself, couldn't separate material from immaterial. There was a dissonance in his sensory abilities. Perhaps it was an aftereffect of the trial that'd have to subside naturally, or maybe there was a deeper reason.

Though a veteran of Zenith Online, this sensation was extremely unfamiliar to Kieran and entirely inexplicable.

'Sleep it off. Perhaps I'm just exhausted. Or maybe that new Apex Trait is more taxing than I can fathom. No one ever documented the strain of a Trait like this.'

Dr. Riley agreed to Kieran's request with overflowing alacrity, but her expression seemed conflicted afterward. The question "is he okay" flickered through her mind several times.

Including the beginning of their training, Dr. Riley had never seen him this mentally enervated before. She could only presume Kieran was of a haggard mind.

As if skeptical of the device, Dr. Riley turned to the VR Helmet with a squinted gimlet eye and gnawed on her nail. 'Are there side effects to this version of the device that hasn't been announced to the public? Maybe I should perform a thorough brain scan of the team to check for any alarming trauma.'

The last thing Dr. Riley sought was having Kieran and the others suddenly collapse due to hidden and undisclosed effects of a device that was said to have refined versions hitting the markets very soon.

Refined versions implied inadequacies were being targeted. Could her current concern be one of them?

Quite possible. But Dr. Riley wouldn't know for sure until she gained surety by testing the cohort who continued to establish a team rhythm.

…

In bed, Kieran slumped and let his face be embraced by the pillow's softness, falling asleep seconds later. While sleeping, Kieran experienced something extremely odd for the first time.

He was back on a battlefield, gruesome and flooded by chaos. Screams became the ambient noise and the clangor of destructive battle set morale ablaze.

With the scored grounds doused in blood, Kieran saw throngs of carnage unfolding as far as the eyes could behold.

A swift glance down alerted Kieran to another oddity—his hand.

Covered in scars, it gripped a large battle axe that, with a single effortless swing, culled thousands. The blood of those culled flowed back to Kieran, subservient, docile, and acquiescent.

The Kieran in this space, didn't allow this lesser blood to sully his blood, however.

The accumulated blood evolved in a maelstrom and located at the eye of this maelstrom was an ornate blood cleaver, a motif of death etched into its depraved edge.

Kieran blinked, the scene captured like the snapshot of a camera shutter, but all that remained when his eyes focused once more was mutilated bodies, maimed and mangled, dripping ruby blood.

The viscosity thicker than any human should be capable of.

A question surged into Kieran's mind—"What battlefield is this? I don't remember this."

Then… a change occurred.

A gruff voice carrying an inviolable bearing entered Kieran's ears.

"The Warpath is not of one who slaughters mindlessly. It is a path forged for those that understand the necessity of barbarism and have the wisdom to know its place and purpose. I have slayed millions and remained unchanged, as did the world. My Warpath was incomplete… ineffectual. Perhaps there will come a day when a greater Warpath arises, and its bloodshed commands with little defiance. A deviant of absolute transformation."

'Warpath?' Kieran muttered in his mind. This all sounded vaguely familiar until Kieran recalled the conversation with Veradin.

The mental recount spurred a slew of questions within Kieran, the main one being if this memory belonged to the Draconian Warmonger.

If it did, why did he dream outside of Zenith Online where such a character could not exist?

If it didn't… were there other people that followed this so-called Warpath?

By the time these questions were seared into Kieran's mind, his eyes had opened, a soft presence unlike the pillows sitting upon his cheek. Opening his eyes to the well-lit room from the dream of a bloodied and condemned battlefield was a stark and sobering change.

"Lillian," Kieran muttered.

"I think you've slept long enough," Dr. Riley half-smiled. "It's time you wake up. Also, you stink of sweat. I'm not sure what unsettling dream you had, but you were sweating like a hog."

"I couldn't begin to make since of it. A jumbled experience," Kieran answered.

Since he couldn't find the answers himself, there was no reason to alarm the others. There was no value in raising their suspicions of Zenith Online further, not when it contributed to their swift rise in ability.

Dr. Riley could sense the uncertainty and turmoil in Kieran's tone yet she didn't press the matter. She felt it was probably for good reason if he didn't wish to confide in her.

If it were as dire as her radical mind thought it to be, she would undoubtedly hound him until a solution was found.

Instead of bombarding Kieran with misguided concerns, Dr. Riley continued caressing his cheek. The changes in his feature became apparent the more she stared at him.

While Kieran's gaze was always partially cold and detached as if focused elsewhere, perhaps the future or the past, there was a hint of bloodthirsty murder that flared from time to time.

Just, Dr. Riley couldn't put a label on the sensation she felt.

Besides his eyes, Dr. Riley also noticed minor changes in Kieran's facial structure. The slightest bit of fat around his jawline and cheekbones quickly melted away.

Compared to the recorded effects of X-hancers, Kieran seemed to be at least two times more sensitive to its effects.

In terms of the quality of refining effects on physical imperfections, a 25% X-hancers did to him what a 50% X-hancer would accomplish for others. Anomalies were aplenty with Kieran, leaving Dr. Riley devoid of any dull moments.

She truly wanted the answer—what made Kieran's relationship with X-hancers so different from the rest?

Like Dr. Riley suggested, Kieran showered, scrubbing the sweat and grime that secreted from his body, but not before sparing her a contemplative look. For some reason, the research-obsessed woman looked particularly beautiful to him. So much so he could feel a subtle fire in his loins.

Though it was far too early to tell physically, Kieran sensed signs that Dr. Riley had kept up with the tailor-made training regimen he had designed for her. Once her taut muscles were targeted and a solution was implemented, Dr. Riley became much more limber.

But the current facility, as state-of-the-art as it was made out to be, wasn't on par with what Kieran required.

The type of facility he wanted required billions, if not tens of billions, to perfect. With that thought in mind, Kieran decided to bring Dr. Riley up to speed regarding his near-future plans.

"So for the next couple of days, including those spent on this trip of yours, you'll be inactive? Using the opportunity to potentially set your guild's foundations?" Dr. Riley said, summarizing all that Kieran had told her.

"Essentially. But, you'll be coming along. Surely, you wouldn't want to be here all lonely again, right? Besides, it'd be best if you could scout out land or property that'll suit a better-equipped research facility."

Dr. Riley gawked. Was she being wrested away? Yet somehow, Kieran's confident tone swayed her.