Is this really a Game?!

"It happened after my final victory, Arthit was a worthy opponent, one that I was glad to call a rival, to be honest, but I still managed to defeat him, albeit with great difficulty," Marco said as he slowly reminisced.

The thunderous applause, the cheering of his many fans, the handshake he and his opponent shared after the battle, all of it seemed to have happened only yesterday to him.

As the 27-year-old Marco made his way back to the dressing room after his victory, he was shocked to find all of his people suddenly falling down unconscious. Before he could even understand what was happening, a man dressed in all black appeared in the room.

Without even asking the man any questions, Marco quickly attacked him, but even after using everything he had, he was unable to land even a single blow on the man, it was he that lost the fight after one punch from the man.

Marco kneeled down on the ground and tried to stand up, but he couldn't. It was as if invisible hands were pushing him down on the ground, making it almost impossible to stand up. His whole body shook heavily as he tried to stand up with all of his strength, only to fall down to the ground in a couple of seconds.

The man crouched down in front of Marco and started speaking. The words the man spoke that day would never be forgotten by Marco. Flames danced on the man's hands before turning into a ball of wind and more.

He told Marco everything, about how magic truly existed in this world and that the people that were truly powerful were hidden, never to be seen or found out by the public. With a simple motion of his hand, Marco's battered body was lifted from the ground and floated in front of him.

Marco's mind was in turmoil back then, he didn't want to believe the man, magic, that was a fairy tale, something that could never exist in the real world. But how could he explain this then?

The flames were real as the man had brought his hand closer to Marco so he could feel the heat. The ball of wind was real as upon destroying it, a gust of wind blew in the room and made Marco's blonde hair flutter. A coldness could be felt as the man's hand suddenly turned a bit blue, with a simple touch of his hand, Marco could feel an incredible coldness penetrating through his body.

He didn't stay long however, the man simply told Marco that if he wished to have such power, he needed to come to an address and that he had 4 days to think about it. After the man's departure, Marco's whole team woke up, they didn't know about what had happened and they even forgot about fainting.

It was a surreal sight, one that made Marco steel his resolve and go to the place the man told him about. After doing so, he vanished, the world never heard of his name since that moment. He still kept in touch with the people that once trained him and were his teammates, but he gave excuses, he lied as to why he stopped fighting.

The man that recruited Marco was powerful, he simply made a copy of an X-ray and made some people falsify some reports. With that Marco was easily able to fool his team into believing he had cancer and that fighting would be impossible thanks to it. They never published that however and his disappearance from the sport became a hot topic for quite some time. But as with everything, that soon died down as well.

As for Marco, he was now training in something different compared to before. Sensing mana, reinforcing his body with mana, and learning how to use it for spells. It took him years before he could finally call himself a competent fighter in this seemingly new world he was recruited into.

In the following years, Marco had done numerous missions and fought against many people that used mana, and some monsters that were transformed thanks to mana. In the ten years he had been a part of his order, he managed to climb the ladder and stand side-by-side with the leader. He was the right hand and held much power, although their order was nothing special compared to bigger, more powerful ones, it was growing in both quantity and quality and they were both certain that in about 10 more years, they would become a medium-sized order.

"There were many small-sized orders like us in the world, thousands probably, medium-sized were rarer, but they still numbered in hundreds, it was the large-scale orders that controlled everything together with a couple of ancient clans that had been around for centuries," Marco said to Reign.

"Our order was not independent, however, we had a connection with a large-scale order in Chicago which made a lot of the other orders respect us and they didn't dare try to sabotage or attack us, of course, there were others that did so."

"Still, we persevered, slowly but surely we were becoming more powerful until this happened." Marco suddenly sighed with a sad look on his face before continuing his words.

"Luckily most of us were together when the voice suddenly spoke into our ears, and because of that, we were able to fight against the monsters that suddenly appeared after we were taken back. A large amount of mana that could be found in the surroundings made it harder for us to actually use it since it became too difficult to not go overboard, some of our people accidentally blew themselves up after hastily trying to use spells against monsters. "

"Of course, it didn't take us long to adapt. We could still use mana to fight, but most of us were shocked to find that our bodies were left with no strengthening from before the game, luckily it was now easier to draw mana in and do it again, this time we could even see how much stronger we were becoming thanks to the system, after fighting for over a month we finally managed to take over a small safe zone, that however was when we met them."

"By them you mean-"

"Yes, the ones that have infiltrated many safe zones, including yours, the ones that have the ability to understand and control monsters," Marco said with a serious expression on his face.

"It wasn't the first time we came across them however, even before all of this madness started, we ran into them a couple of times, each time resulting in a fight." Marco sighed before shaking his head.

"They're a slippery bunch, that much is for sure, not to mention the fact that although they were also a small-sized order like we were, for some reason they had as many people as a medium-sized one, the only difference was that they were much weaker individually, not to mention the fact that their strength lied in using animals and monsters, and since there were barely any monsters in the world, they could never use their full ability, of course now that has changed greatly."

"I heard that once they were almost completely destroyed, about 12 years ago they had a dispute with members of another order and then ambushed them and tried to kill them, unfortunately for them, it turned out those guys were members of a large-scale order and after the order heard about what had happened, they attacked and killed most of them, how they got their strength back so soon, I have no idea."

"So you're suspecting they have some sort of secret?"

"Correct, they could be demon worshipers or members of some other kind of cult, that would explain why they were so big in number, of course, none of that was ever found out so they were spared from annihilation."

"I see, alright, tell me everything you know about them." Marco simply nodded at Reign before starting his speech, for about 30 mins the man spoke about the order that was targeting Reign and his territory. Their individual strength was truly nothing special, everything they had was their monster control skills and their shrewdness.

Reign inferred that the monsters that attacked them that night weren't controlled, the one that scattered the bodies of the baby monsters was probably too weak to control them and as such resorted to using such means.

"You said you're from New York, well the large-scale order we were connected with had a good relationship with another large-scale order in New York, those guys were quite something as well, they were one of the rare ones that didn't have just one, but two leaders," Marco said with a smile on his face.

​ "I saw them once during a meeting some orders had organized, I and the boss only managed to get inside thanks to the Chicago order, I have to be honest, after seeing how powerful those guys were, I knew that it would be incredibly hard to grow our order to match them, I was drawn to the New York order since the two leaders were similar to me, both used to be world champions before joining, just that in both worlds they were above me, in terms of mana they had the much greater talent, while back in the normal world, both of them were world champions in MMA, not to mention they used to be rivals as well."
Reign's eyes slowly opened wide as he listened to Marco's words, the man, oblivious to how Reign was reacting continued.

"One of them was Asian, if I remember correctly he was Korean, the other one though, American, what was his last name though, something like Ash, Ashton, or something."

"Ashburn."

"Oh yes, that's it, John Ashburn, he even agreed to spar with me once, I don't think I lasted even 5 seconds, ahh those-" Marco suddenly stopped as he finally realized that Reign was acting weird, his eyes were wide open as he stared at him.

"Hey, wh-what's wrong?"