Chapter 81

  Before waking up in a new body, Anna Reed did not believe in magic, the supernatural, or gods. She was not interested in any of this, she lived an ordinary life by those standards, a little unsuccessful, but she did not complain about it. She spent her whole life in an average city of about 500,000 people. She was born into an ordinary, complete family, with minor financial problems. She received a secondary education, and then was able to enter a medical college on a scholarship to get a job in a hospital, and later become an ambulance paramedic, while continuing her studies to become an emergency surgeon.

  She had her own connections and friends, tried to keep herself in shape, in her free time she talked with her girlfriends, or teased her cats at home, watching TV series. She was unlucky in finding a guy, first she invested a lot of time in studying, and then in work. She justified herself by saying that the right one for her had not yet met, she was still young and everything was still ahead.

  Life was moving fast until one of the ambulance calls brought her to the scene of a horrific incident. Something had exploded in one of the densely populated areas of the city. Perhaps it was gas, perhaps something else, but the explosion was so powerful that several dozen houses were completely windowless. The multi-storey building that had exploded could only be recognized by the few walls that remained standing in a pile of rubble.

  She arrived in an ambulance in response to an urgent call and a rescue operation began. She saw the most severe destruction of buildings that day, which looked more like the destruction from missile salvos. A lot of people with varying degrees of injuries, some were lucky to go deaf and get a few cuts from glass, others were pulled out of the rubble of houses. It was a real nightmare, that day she saw so many corpses that she would have nightmares for months. She especially remembers one young guy of about 20 years old, who was pulled out from under a concrete slab. It crushed his legs and only by a miracle did he survive until the rescuers arrived. They were able to quickly pull him out and put him on a stretcher to quickly go to the hospital. So she ended up with him in the ambulance, trying to somehow keep him alive while he was still conscious. His look at that moment and his behavior said that he knew that he was going to die soon and resigned himself to it. He somehow managed to cope with the pain, he didn't scream, he didn't cry, he didn't beg to save him, he just sat, watching her try to save his life. At one point his gaze became sharper, he took her hand and spoke quietly.

  "Tell my family that I loved them very much and that they should not grieve too much over my death."

  Of course, she nodded quickly and tried to do something else, to say that he would pull through, or that everything would be okay, but the words stuck in her throat. She saw how his gaze lost its sharpness, how his pupils tried to focus on something, but they could not. A few seconds after his words, he lost consciousness and she heard the beeping of his heart stopping.

  She and other doctors did everything to restart his heart, but that wasn't even the point. The guy had lost too much blood and every resuscitation was just a mockery of his body. He had extensive internal bleeding in his legs and several arteries were simply crushed.

  For Anna, this was not the first death in an ambulance, but for some reason it hit her hard... Having had a short break, Anna found out the guy's name and promised herself that she would contact his relatives to tell them everything. Continuation of the shift was the same hell, several more deaths and the sight of new crushed and burned corpses. She had to work for more than a day until she simply could no longer maintain a clear state of mind.

  Having finished with this, Anna changed into her usual clothes and went home, to seek comfort from her cats. On the way, her hands were shaking badly because of nerves, although this usually did not happen, her eyes were wet from holding back tears, in order to somehow cope with this, Anna tried to hold her breath correctly all the way home to calm down. But it did not work, many ugly deaths with liters of blood came to her mind. Thoughts about how to properly meet the relatives of that guy also did not leave her, as well as his behavior before death. And if there was still a chance to save him, how would she look them in the eyes?

  Thinking about this, Anna pressed her arms tighter to herself, so as not to tremble so much and to keep warm. Even her teeth were chattering from nerves, perhaps because of the cold, she was not sure. After 10 minutes, she was able to get to the house, she only had a minute left to enter the entrance and open the doors. Turning the corner, Anna went around the house and climbed the small stairs to it. On the last step, her legs buckled due to extreme weakness and general malaise, and she began to fall. Her arms were pressed tightly to herself in her own embrace the whole time, that's why she didn't have time to get them during. Due to fatigue and nerves, she did not even have time to understand what happened, the next thing she saw was complete darkness.

  ***

  She woke up in complete darkness, not understanding what was happening. Everything seemed strange, she could not open her eyes, or even think normally. She felt that everything was somehow cramped, but she could not do anything about it, her body did not obey and she was very sleepy. Having fallen asleep and woken up, Anna repeated this cycle several times. Over time, she began to think that she had received a traumatic brain injury and was in a coma, and perhaps delirious. This made her very nervous, but she reassured herself that she was in her right mind, since she no longer felt any abnormalities in her head and simply wanted to sleep all the time. It did not occur to her that not only could she not see, but she could not breathe, and the only thing she heard was a strange heartbeat.

  At some point everything changed, she began to be squeezed from all sides so that she would slowly fall somewhere. At that moment she began to hear some sounds, in addition to her heart. And a moment later she began to feel cold air with her foot. Something took hold of her leg and pulled it out, at that moment she involuntarily tried to scream and open her eyes. Her lungs opened, she screamed with a child's cry, strongly jerking her arms and legs, while she saw large figures taking her in their arms.

  Her eyesight was poor, but she could make out the sight of large people picking her up. They dipped her in water and dried her off to hand her over to someone else. Her scream died down and she opened her eyes again to see the woman holding her in her arms, her vision was very blurry and she did not immediately notice the black animal ears on the woman's head, with thin tassels. One of her cats had the same ears, only much, much smaller.

  Thus began her second life as a beastman. At first she liked it, feeling like a child with great hope for the future. A new half-human body, with large black ears on her head, reminiscent of a cat's or a fox's and a large, fluffy, black tail. Already a few days after birth she felt how much better her perception was than in her past life, her hearing, sight and sense of smell were literally on another level compared to a human.

  But there were also downsides to her life that would later become a big problem. She lived in a medieval, poor dwelling that could only be called a home with a stretch. But this did not upset her much, with the little knowledge she had, she considered herself indispensable in the new society.

  As for her new parents, she liked them. Her mother was just like her, very beautiful, with a good figure and a beautiful face, with black ears and a very fluffy tail. She spent a lot of time with her, constantly sitting next to her and if something was wrong, she would immediately get up and check if everything was okay with her. Anna was touched by this and felt her love and care, her mother spent a lot of time with her, feeding her and taking care of her in every possible way and only sometimes disappearing somewhere. The same was with her father, he was an ordinary big man in her opinion, but with black ears, a tail and a strong build, from hard and long physical labor.

  Living with them, Anna began to understand that they lived very poorly, her parents were dressed in rags, or the thickest and lowest quality fabric, as she saw, there was also little food. The father disappeared somewhere all day and came only late in the evening, to leave again early in the morning. The mother watched her, constantly doing something with her hands, sometimes she sewed, sometimes she cut something out of wood with a knife, sometimes they ground herbs. All day she was at work, Anna saw that they were having a hard time and they were undernourished, but she hoped that everything was not so bad and soon she would be able to change it.

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  At three months old, the truth of their real plight was revealed to her and that things would only get worse. That day, her mother wrapped her tightly in clothes and took her to her grandmother with white animal ears so that she could keep an eye on her. On the way to her, Anna saw a city and did not like what she saw at all. She lived in the slums, where beastmen walked the streets in slave collars, like animals. Only a few minutes into the walk, she saw a beastman slave trader beating slaves with whips and shouting loudly at them. His slaves were of different types, one man even looked more like a rat-type beast than a man, he received the worst lash of all. His back was covered in bloody abrasions, and his very thin appearance indicated that he had not eaten for a very long time and was living on his last strength.

  Seeing this, the mother turned in the other direction and quickened her pace. Looking further into the slums, Anna saw only half-ruined buildings and a great many slaves, some with collars, some without, all of them either beaten or suffering from hunger. None of them were dressed properly for the cold autumn weather. This gave her very bad thoughts. When they almost reached her grandmother's house, the clouds parted and the sun came out, with this Anna turned her attention upward. And there she could see the continuation of the city, far away from them, perhaps 4-5 kilometers away, stood beautiful high towers and a huge stone wall along the entire horizon. The view at that moment was beautiful, if not for the loud cry in the neighboring alley, begging for mercy. The mother covered her ears with her hands and walked away even faster.

  Sitting at her grandmother's that day, she thought a lot about life and this world. Slavery, what was it for, what was this extra cruelty and savagery for? The obvious division of society into castes, slaves and masters. But what was perhaps the saddest thing she realized that day was that she was formally a slave, since she lived among them. Trying not to be upset about this, Anna hoped that she could change this and break out of here, pulling her family out. So that they could live without this burden and sadness.

  ***

  The years flew by quickly and very hard, during this time Anna, or more precisely Mellis Eridar as she was called in this life, learned a lot about the new world of Radiant. It was a real magical world, with a system of classes and skills. At that time, it made her very happy and encouraged, but when she entered her status, she did not see any special abilities. The only thing that was surprising was the [Legendary+] title [Otherworldly Reincarnator] and the new race [Beastman of the Liss clan]. But it did not matter, the bonuses that she knew about did not bring her much benefit. Therefore, she took several skills of professions from her past life, namely [Medicine] [Common] and [Handicraft] [Common]. These were just useful skills that were supposed to increase her skill in order to help her parents.

  Mellis paid the most attention to their forced situation. Therefore, she tried to learn as much as she could about the system, laws, geography, and any other useful information. She absorbed information like a sponge from any source, so that later she could correctly understand the situation and try to benefit from it. This led to her getting her first [Uncommon] skill [Analytical Thinking] at the age of 5.

  Here's what Mellis had learned over the years: She lived in the Beastman Republic, in the city of Karton, on the border with the Holy Kingdom of Humans. The city was in a low mana zone and was built as a border town, focusing on manufacturing of various products, which was essentially slave labor, and the slave trade. The city was divided into two districts, the inner and the outer. The inner district was behind a huge wall, which she had seen one day. The wealthy citizens lived behind it, and they were considered the real city population. The people who lived in other areas were mostly slaves, farmers, and criminals, and they were at the very bottom of the city's social hierarchy.

  The slums where Mellis lived stood out even among other areas behind the wall. Because only slaves lived there. Alice learned about this when she was 1.5 years old and couldn't stop crying all day, she was in despair and couldn't just come to terms with it. She even complained to the gods about this injustice, but nothing changed...

  And yet, it didn't change her determination to shed the stigma and give her parents a better life. Over the course of her life, she had seen how much they loved her and how much they sacrificed for her, and she simply couldn't help but give back to them in some way.

  At the age of 4, Mellis began to help her mother around the house and at work, for this she took a few more skills from her past life. Mostly, these were some small chores, bring and serve. She was either not capable of big things, or could not explain where she knew how to do it or where she knew it from. Over time, she began to help with more complex things, such as embroidery, carving, sewing. Mellis did not dare to tell her parents that she was a Reincarnator, she did not know what it would lead to and decided to stick to the status quo.

  So her life went on for years. Life in slavery was a complete nightmare, although they were not slaves in the usual sense of the word, they had no real master, but this was no different. They were slaves because they lived in the slums, no more, no less, and that is why they could not leave them, neither the slave traders, nor the government, nor the street gangs allowed it.

  It was incredibly hard for her and her parents. They had no money for anything except maybe a little food. Her parents worked almost all the time, sometimes even up to 18 hours a day and still there was no money, and the only property they could get was the things thrown out from the upper city, or the little food that the slave traders fed the slaves.

  Mellis looked for options to change this, to leave, to become adventurers, criminals in the end, but she did not find a reasonable option. Her parents were orphans and no one taught them in their youth. They lived like street rats and survived solely due to luck and little skill, never falling into real slavery. That is why their classes were bad. Her mother had her race [Beastman of the Liss clan] which gave +14 characteristics per level, first class [City Scout] [Uncommon] +10 characteristics per level and second class [Jack of all trades] [Common] +5 characteristics per level. Her father had the same race +14 characteristics per level, first class [Street Fighter] +11 characteristics per level and second class [General Worker] +4 characteristics per level. By the standards of this world, her parents were ordinary people, not of a high level at all.

  Name: Alice Eridar, 25 years old

  Race: Beastman of the Liss clan [Uncommon] Lvl 40

  Class: Urban Scout [Uncommon] Lvl 45

  Class: Jack of All Trades [Common] Lvl 78

  Name: Morgan Eridar, 27 years old

  Race: Beastman of the Liss clan [Uncommon] Lvl 40

  Class: Street Fighter [Uncommon] Lvl 28

  Class: General Worker [Common] Lvl 88

  They were weak by this world's standards. Even if her father could bend steel with his hands and was able to lift 2 tons over his head, he was helpless against anyone who had a true Warrior class, even level 20. The difference in skills was insurmountable. The same was true for her mother, she was fast, agile, with excellent perception. But would she be able to hide from a trained scout or hunter, no. All this promised very bad prospects.

  They couldn't just up and leave, go to another city, or just try to live in the forest. Firstly, they didn't have money to go anywhere, secondly, The slums were walled off, so you couldn't leave the area without permission. And even if you did, you'd be hunted by bandits, the government, the soldiers. Which meant that they couldn't leave the city until they bought themselves out of slavery, which they couldn't do. As for the option, let's try anyway of running away to the forest and hoping for luck and subsequent leveling of classes. Mellis often thought about this and tried to somehow calculate the options. Each time she came to the same conclusion, they would die. Although they lived in a low-mana zone, the city of Karton stood on the border with the Holy Kingdom and had decent security. For many kilometers there were a lot of animals and monsters, the level of her parents and higher, they were not specifically fought on the territory, putting them as a barrier against refugees and anyone who dared to illegally cross the border. Conventionally speaking, they had a small chance run away and to survive the first encounter with someone in forest, but with each time the probability of running into a beast of a higher level, or a pack type, increased, which meant 100% death. This works even if you do not take into account the lack of food, water, shelter, illness, injury, etc. Surviving in the forest was not a viable option at all.

  Considering all this, Mellis decided to lead a quiet life, study, work, help her parents, try to survive somehow, while learning combat and other things that help in killing people. She did all this while waiting for the day when she could get her class. She was sure that she would have at least an average [Uncommon] class, purely because of her knowledge and medical skills. But this was not enough for her, she wanted something much stronger, so she tried to train all her skills to a decent level, including combat skills. In the hope of getting some kind of class [combat doctor], or [wise doctor], such a class would be easier to develop on occasion and it would bring more characteristics and of course respect. This was the beginning of her plan, after which she wanted to get a job in the city guard, or the government, the last option was a criminal gang. Of course, this was on the condition that she did not die before that moment, or did not fall into real slavery