Bob looked at his friend as he was really worried about him. The boy he had known for years had behaved entirely differently in the last 24 hours. He looked like he could die any second as he was concentrating on something Bob had no idea what.

  Bob was skeptical about this whole thing. He felt that Max - as the boy wanted to be called Max, he would oblige- was overestimating whatever his skill was. A couple of minutes ago, he felt the boy do something, but it didn’t feel like much. Now he had something like an itch somewhere he wasn’t sure where.

  The fact that the boy went white as a sheet immediately after feeling this didn’t fill Bob with high levels of confidence. Nonetheless, he would be happy enough if this could help with his fear problem even a bit.

  He had been a coward all his life. Even in the memories he could only faintly remember from the time before he was in the slave zone, the memories were tinted with paralyzing fear. He didn’t know why he was like this, but he couldn’t control his fear no matter what he tried.

  While he was thinking his attention was taken by Max as his friend’s eyes opened slowly. Bob realized then that he was looking at the boy’s eyes for the first time since his apparent advancement. He had known Max for years, and he was pretty sure that the boy’s eyes should have been black. But the eyes he was seeing now were a sparkling green, and he felt himself getting absorbed by them.

  He couldn’t look away as he felt his mind slow down and come to a complete stop. He felt like he was staring at endless possibilities in these eyes. It felt forbidden but also enticing. He felt his mind dissolve as his world got consumed by a green light.

  When he opened his eyes, he saw he was in a crib. His mind seemed to work as it should, but he felt his body was completely different.

  I’m a baby! He realized. A woman above him was looking at him with an emotion he was quite unfamiliar with.

  The woman turned back as he stared at her and spoke to someone he couldn’t see. “He is so cute, isn’t he?” she said with delight. “Indeed, he will be a lady killer when he grows up. " A man answered, laughing. Bob was confused. Where was he?

  He felt himself getting lifted from the crib. It was his mother who was lifting him, he realized, and he felt his body instinctively hug the woman. He felt a warm feeling of peace as his eyes closed in contentment.

  When he opened his eyes again, he could see outside through the window. His mother was speaking to the man, but his attention slipped from the dialogue as he saw something strange outside the window.

  A masked man was looking at them from outside, and he was holding a rifle. Bob felt the paralyzing fear rise in him. He was once again getting consumed by it.

  He tried to move, do something to warn his mother, but he couldn’t control his body. Fear kept rising as the man outside lifted the rifle towards them. He could see his eyes through the mask, and he seemed to look at him for a moment before pulling the trigger.

  The deafening sound of the rifle drowned all noise after that. He was consumed by fear, barely acknowledging the outside world, but his mother was still at the center of his attention.

  He watched as she was riddled with holes, still hugging him. He watched as she shielded him in panic, not even looking outside to see what was happening.

  He glimpsed the man his mother was talking with, looking with grim determination outside as he was pointing a gun outside. Everything inside him screamed for him to help them, but he was powerless as the world went black.

  He opened his eyes again, and his fear was gone. This time, he was in a more familiar environment. He felt dread, as he did remember when this was. So, the baby was really me? he thought as he felt the body, which was once again outside his control, look around. He didn’t want to see the rest, but he had no choice.

  There was a boy near him, and they were walking in the slave zone near the dormitories. His number before he was reassigned was 114, as he was too small for the other dormitories. The boy near him was around 8 years old, like himself at this time. He was his roommate back then.

  He watched desperately as a group of children appeared from the corridor to the left. His roommate was never liked among the children as he had a very hot temper. With Bob’s timid personality though, they were surprisingly suitable as they became friends years before from this memories point of refference.

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  Bob felt the fear coming once again as these guys were some of the children whose dislike for his friend had reached different heights. He helplessly watched as his body once again froze with fear as one of the boys hit his friend in the head.

  113 was a fierce boy. He was quick to answer in kind, and his answer was rarely limited to his fists. He was quickly between the boys, kicking, biting, and scratching whoever he could reach.

  Bob wanted nothing more than to help his friend, but once again, he found his body disagreeable. He watched as 113 slowly got more sluggish. Inevitable happened after a couple of seconds as he was hit with a kick at the side of his head falling down to the ground.

  One of the kids screamed, “You fucking killed him, you idiot!” as he punched the other boy who kicked 113. The said kid looked terrified himself and soon they were running away.

  Bob watched as they disappeared into the corridors. He could feel that his fear was slowly turning into guilt. He felt his body walk shakily towards 113.

  The boy was rigid and shaking on the ground, and foam was coming out of his mouth. The boy’s eyes seemed to accuse him of inaction, and he felt guilt consume him. Soon, the boy stopped breathing, and Bob felt his world go dark again.

  Yet once again, he couldn’t protect someone.

  He opened his eyes once more. This time, he was seeing a very recent memory, as he could see Max in the periphery of his vision. They were walking once again, just like in the memory before, but Max was a quiet boy like him, so they didn’t have any enemies. The thing was that this was just after the system integration.

  Soon, he could see once again a couple of boys coming from a corridor. Fights in the slave zone never really followed a surprising pattern. He watched them come closer as he saw Max tense up. He thought Max had chosen the thief class back then, but he was still classless, as he was unsure what he should choose with his fear problem.

  The kids approached them, and one of them spoke to his friends. “I think I’m close to another level. Let’s beat them up.” Suddenly, they were running towards them.

  He saw Max brace himself with an iron shard he found from somewhere, but he could again feel the fear coming. As far as his memory was concerned, he didn’t remember anything after this, but the memory he was seeing now seemed not bothered by the fact that he actually didn’t remember it.

  With shock, he realized that something was different this time. He felt the fear inside him turn into something else. Pure anger rushed out as he felt his mind get faint. His body was getting anything but fainter though, as he felt himself focus on the system and choose a class almost randomly.

  Oh, so this is how I became a warrior? A small part of his still-awake mind thought faintly through the anger.

  Warrior Class Selected

  Mind Instability Detected

  Analyzing..

  Hidden Trait: Primal Fear Revealed.

  Primal Fear: Animals sometimes freeze from fright when they are preyed upon. Your inner self refuses this reality. Let its prideful anger consume you instead, and watch them realize what primal fear feels like.

  The system interface is locked until the user’s mind stabilizes.

  Bob watched in disbelief as his past self bit one of the boys’ neck as he was punching another. He tasted blood in his mind and felt exhilaration.

  He was giggling like he was doing something very fun as he proceeded to pummel the boy in front of him with his fists. They looked at him as if he was something out of stories, as he fought them with sheer abandon.

  He himself wasn’t much different from the boys now. He would feel sick, too, if it wasn’t for the immense anger he was feeling from his memory. The fight was over soon enough, and he could see Max looking at him. The boy seemed to be trying to decide whether he should run away from him.

  Bob was a bit heartbroken for a few seconds until he realized his anger was not lessening. This turned into horror as he felt his body charge in the direction of Max with no good intentions, proving the other boy right.

  He could glimpse a horrified look on the boy’s face before he darted away from him in fear. He could see that the boy would be faster than him in his normal state, but this angry state he was in apparently didn’t care much about that fact.

  He was steadily gaining over Max. Stop! Fuck! The fuck am I doing? Bob screamed in his mind. He was happy for a second that he was not helpless like before, but this turned out to be even worse. If this continued, he would kill his friends himself instead of just watching them die.

  Fortunately, he knew that Max had actually survived this, so he tried to calm down. He watched to see how the boy managed to avoid him in this state. No wonder all the advancement options were about him turning into a mindless berserker. I was already a mindless berserker after all… he thought.

  Fortunately, Max was good at running, and after a couple of minutes of high-tempo chase, Bob could feel his anger dwindling.

  Even this trait seemed to have a limit after all. Max seemed to realize this, too, as he was constantly turning back to see if he was still there. After a while, Bob was feeling really tired. The last thing he felt in this memory was his body slumping to the ground from exhaustion as, once again, the world went dark.

  Bob was curious about the next memory, but this time, the darkness was longer. After a couple of seconds of darkness, he suddenly felt something weird in his mind. There seemed to be a foreign thought, or rather a question, inside it.

  ’What do you desire?

  Bob felt his mind strain under the heaviness of the question, and he pondered. After his journey through three different but similar memories, it was apparent to him what he actually desired the most.

  He wanted to protect.