The notifications came like raindrops in a storm. Each one was a life, poured into Leo's consciousness. His mind expanded beyond mortal limits, stretching to accommodate the flood of ancient memories.
Each point of experience was more than a number.
They were fragments of souls.
Echoes of lives that had walked beneath these ancient city.
This experience wasn't a steady drip of monster-slaying. Wasn't the satisfying chunk of a completed quest either.
It was different.
Raw.
Overwhelming.
He saw an elfling's first steps on living wood, her laughter blending with the tree's heartbeat. He felt a warrior's centuries of dedication, each sword stroke perfected until blade and body moved as one. Steel sang through air that tasted of morning dew.
He knew an elder's patient hands guiding young ones through ancient texts, his weathered fingers tracing runes that held the wisdom of ages.
But beneath these moments of light, something darker lurked.
Like a shadow beneath clear water, it waited. Patient and terrible.
Then memories shifted. They aligned like stars, forming a constellation of horror.
Different faces. Different times.
Always the same destination.
The Chamber.
At its center sat The Chair. It was created from living silverwood, wood that should have sung with life but instead wept with silence.
It was a mockery of elven craft. Traditional elven furniture flowed like a living thing. But the Chair's angles were sharp, ferocious. Runes of binding and draining were carved deep into its arms. Each groove was stained dark from centuries of use.
In countless memories, it waited.
Patient like a mimic.
"For the future of our race," the Elders would say, their voices honeyed with false benevolence. Some walked to it willingly, filled with pride at being chosen. Others were dragged, their screams echoing off walls that had heard too many such cries.
Leo felt each memory with devastating clarity. A promise of glory that delivered only silence.
A scholar's desperate attempt to warn others, his words cut short by hands that once blessed his studies. A warrior who fought to the very end, her blade shattering against barriers of magic and morality.
The Chair loomed in every memory, its shadow stretching across time.
Each notification brought new horrors.
A tide of understanding crashed against him. The rising numbers were not just power but were threads of a tapestry woven with betrayal and despair.
The Elders, once revered as guardians, had turned their sacred duty into an unspeakable atrocity.
Another set of notifications danced in his vision.
[System Notification] Congratulations! You have leveled up to Level 16.
The truth hit Leo like an external blow. He gasped, his new body's strength doing nothing to soften it. The revelation was a blade of ice to his core. A horror so profound it went beyond mere fear.
The Elders' words echoed through the memories. Each promise was a different flavor of the same poison.
A voice, deep and rumbling like ancient stones, would make the same promise. "Your sacrifice will strengthen Elderglade's barriers," it would declare. Each word was heavy, commanding absolute obedience. "Your very soul shall be woven into the barriers that guard our realm for generations."
To others, often the strongest, a different promise came wrapped in tones smooth as glacial ice. "Join our immortal army," the voice would say, each syllable sharp and clear. He would gesture to the frozen figures standing sentinel in the shadows, his words carrying an arctic bite. "Your body shall stand as an eternal sentinel, a blade in the shadow of Elderglade."
Those victims' screams lasted the longest. Their spirits fought on, even as their bodies were twisted into weapons. Weapons for the very ones who destroyed them.
But the "chosen ones" received the cruelest fate. A grandfatherly voice would approach them with impossible gentleness. Each word was carefully crafted to inspire devotion.
"You," he would whisper, his voice trembling with manufactured awe, "you shall be part of something greater. Your essence shall pave the way for the Elven God's return."
They walked to The Chair willingly, their faces radiant with purpose. They never knew they were merely fuel for the Elders' twisted ambitions.
The Chair was not an instrument of torture but more than a tool of control. It was a perversion of everything the elven race held sacred.
It was where all hope died.
Where trust curdled into betrayal.
Where the sacred essence of elvenkind was unraveled, thread by thread.
How could they? Leo's mind screamed.
His enhanced body withstood the flood of memories, but his heart ached under their weight. Yet, beneath the despair, something else grew.
A fire.
Fierce and unyielding.
If they wanted him to bear witness, he would do more than that.
He would act.
The notifications continued their relentless march, each one a life, a story, a tragedy.
But now Leo understood a terrible responsibility. These souls had chosen him to know their truth.
And with that knowledge came purpose.
He wasn't just fighting for Amanda anymore.
The countless souls tethered to the Chair were now part of him. Their strength merged with his. What was once a solitary battle had become a shared crusade, fueled by the memories of those who demanded justice.
He was fighting with every soul that had sat in that Chair. With every life twisted by those who should have been their guardians.
The notifications blurred together. A symphony of light and memory. Beautiful moments intertwined with horror.
A lullaby twisted into a final scream.
A triumph ending in betrayal.
A discovery becoming their doom.
[System Notification] Congratulations! You have leveled up to Level 50.
The memories flowed like a river of light and shadow: an elfling dancing under moonlit skies, a master archer's arrow splitting wind and darkness, a healer restoring life to withered blooms. Each fragment wove a story, leveling him up, until he reached Level 60.
Each level brought different perspective. The memories were not just recordings. They were lives, complete with hopes, dreams, and the bitter taste of their endings.
Then came the last notification.
[System Notification] 58,311,640.063 EXP received.
[System Notification] Congratulations! You have leveled up to Level 69.
The number was staggering. It dwarfed all that had come before. But it was not the size of the number that made Leo's heart stutter.
It was the memory attached to it.
A memory that made all others pale in comparison.
This was not just another victim.
This was the first.
The one whose essence set the cycle in motion.
A memory older than the Chair itself whispered of the Elders' first betrayal. Of the moment they turned from protectors to predators.
Leo's breath hitched as the memory unfolded, fragments piecing together a truth that could shatter the very foundations of Elderglade.