There's nothing worse than going to sleep, only to wake up immediately after and find everything around you has changed.

  That's how bad Ryan was feeling when he opened his eyes and everything in his surroundings was different.

  His first reaction was to move and his body responded with a sharp headache, as if a press was slowly crushing his brain. That only increased his urge to move, ignoring everything else, but his limbs felt heavy as if they weighed tons.

  It only took him a second to accept that moving his limbs for now was useless, so he started looking around, trying to identify his whereabouts. The blood, the corpses, the fire, and the ashes he had expected to find were repced by a dense forest, with narrow trees that seemed to stretch toward the sky like towers. From the trunks, branches extended without any vegetation, like countless slender fingerstrying to cover the sun and the blue… Sky? It was the first time Ryan had seen a sky so beautiful, with a color so peaceful that it seemed to even alleviate his headache.

  The emotion of finding himself in an unknown pce led him to try to sit up, only to be hit by a wave of dizziness that forced him to lie back down. Luckily, the pain and dizziness turned first into a jumble of ideas and then the jumble turned into memories, that weren't his. In them, like a spectator, he found a young boy no more than 10 years old, someone he had never seen before. Although the memories passed in a fsh, Ryan saw them in slow motion. He remembered a life he hadn't lived, a family he never had.

  But there was also something more, something that was knocking at his grey matter and made him feel dirty. The vestige of a power. A power he knew had been used to destroy almost everything he loved.

  Ryan tried to sit up again, this time slowly. He looked at his hands and saw they were the young boy's hands from his new memories. They weren't his hands, not the hands he had used to fight, to protect his loved ones. He felt like a stranger in his own body.

  Sadly, before he could even accommodate his thoughts and accept his situation, white letters appeared in front of his eyes, floating in the air in front of a window as blue as the sky.

  "Initial synchronization completed. Inherited ability: Toy Soldiers. Initiating inheritance."

  Once again, Ryan didn't have time to think when he was assaulted by another wave of dizziness, new images, new memories... But at least his headache was gone.

  As if he could read a book in a second, Ryan found himself in a room facing a square relic. He had no idea what it was, only that the object contained a story he really wanted to see. The square object showed him the story of an assassin after he had killed a toymaker.

  Not long after arriving home, the assassin received a huge package from an unknown sender. With a bit of paranoia, everything seemed to culminate in the surprise of having received a box full of miniature toy soldiers. But there was something more. While the assassin ignored the box of toys, these soldiers not only came to life but their weapons and equipment were fully functional miniature versions of the real ones. From there, the story culminated in a battle between the assassin and the toy soldiers until both sides ended up dead.

  "This has to be a bad joke," Ryan said in a murmur. This was the ability of the man who had become the enemy of humanity, although a very different version from the one he had faced, the base of all that senseless destruction were these toys. A part of him abhorred these soldiers who fought valiantly to avenge their creator, while the other more pragmatic part knew that said power was just an instrument, and that the true culprit was the man who wielded and distorted this power to conquer and destroy his world.

  That said, no matter how much repulsion he had towards his new power, the truth was that he was completely weak and unprotected in a pce he didn't understand.

  "Soldiers avaible," Ryan called out in a murmur, and the letters of what was defined as "system" according to his new memories, responded:

  "Avaible units: Squad. Soldiers: 4. One sergeant and 3 corporals. Armament: HK416, bayonet knife, 2 hand grenades, and 1 anti-personnel mine."

  The strangest thing was knowing the minimum about all the weapons the soldiers carried, but nothing specific enough to know if what he had was good or bad. For example, although Ryan knew that the HK416 was a carbine model, Ryan didn't know any other model to compare it to. The only thing he could do while his small body recovered its strength was experiment.

  "Summon squad," another of his murmurs made tiny green figures appear by his side, offering him a military salute followed by a quick scan of their surroundings as if knowing that Ryan was not in a familiar or safe pce.

  "I need the corporals to protect me while I recover, Sergeant. I need you to show me your power." Using his power felt familiar and strange at the same time. He knew he could command these soldiers with his mind, but it made him feel better to give orders out loud.

  With a new military salute, the corporals blended in with the grass around them, while the sergeant simply pointed his weapon at a nearby tree and started firing his assault rifle. There didn't seem to be any sound except for the slight buzzing caused by the assault rifle bullets hitting the tree, breaking its bark immediately but not visibly penetrating the rest of the trunk.

  The first conclusion was that it would be impossible to kill someone with such insignificant firepower, but power was not the only thing the sergeant would demonstrate. After a few shots, the small toy fired higher, breaking the small extremities of the branches, perhaps the size of a toothpick. What was so impressive? While the tiny branches fell more than 15 meters away, the soldier was able to hit them constantly, turning them into dust before they touched the ground.

  "A fearsome precision," Ryan murmured, relieved not to be completely unprotected. With that level of precision, aiming at a person's eyes was as easy as breathing.

  Something perhaps not so easy when for a moment he forgot to do so, given the new window that opened in front of his eyes.

  "Start of the tutorial: Escape or defeat your captors. Rewards: 50 exp. New memories, Inventory, Main mission, Secondary missions, Title acquisition: The Pyer"

  …Today was going to be a very long day.

  Nakusyer