The tattoo made even more sense. I wondered why I did not see it sooner. The tattoos in the avatar customization did not allow for roman numerals like he had. The lettering for tattoos were all in cursive. "You're the sixteenth ranked Protector in your group? How many of you are there? What's your name?" I asked in a rapid succession. He looked surprised before looking around the room. He took a deep breath before he calmed down. "If it wasn't for the fact you saved my life tonight, you would be dead right now" he said as he sat back down on the bed. I gulped as he was dead serious about it. "I won't kill you. It wouldn't be right" he said as he rolled his eyes. That gave me courage. I crawled over and looked at him. "We were born to be the elite forces of the Protectors for Pollo Island. We got these tattoos when we were 14 years old. It marked our ranks based on our health combat prowess and magic abilities. There were twenty one of us that were raised together. I was a failure, but I still clung to life. Some were better than me and still lost their lives. Do you even know about us?" he said.
Due to there being so many variations for the Protectors, I had no real clue what his circumstances were. I shook my head and he chuckled to himself. "I know that" he whispered. He took another breath before he looked at my face. "There are three normal ranks of the Protectors and then Special Ops. You know about the mana wells, right?" he began. I nodded. Every sage had a literal well of pure distilled mana in their domain where they would be invincible with unlimited magic. "A Protector- Third Class needs to be able to ingest two drops of mana without rejecting it. Second class needs to ingest a fluid ounce. First class needs to ingest three ounces. It gives us our unique eye color. Needless to say, most people throw up with one drop. Even then, you don't know how many bit off more they could chew and killed themselves off before doing anything. The next day, that same amount gets injected via an IV drip" he told me. I was fascinated by the lore I was receiving. He continued saying "Our master wanted even an even stronger set of Protectors".
I was confused "What she did was have two First Classes copulate and have us. One fetus was multiplied by magic into three. Three infants were multiplied into twenty one. While in the woman's womb, the original three were given in fusions of mana via the umbilical cord. We were not born like normal humans. The mana made us stronger, faster and magically adept. We were raised by doctors and our master herself. When we were 14 years old, we were told to drink five ounces from the well. We all did it and the next day it was injected into us. After a month of examinations we were ranked." he explained. They were all just super powered child soldiers at that point. I looked closer at his face. He did not look disturbed or embarrassed or any way in distress or rage. It was if he was telling me the color of the sky. He was not done either. "When we came of age, we had more training and strength than the top generals all over Ether."
His face then hardened and he narrowed his eyes. "In our final test we were told to survive. All of the monsters and environments we were trained for turned twenty times more deadly The doctors all went insane and tried to kill us on sight. Some of us even killed each other. I saw it all with my eyes. It was pure hell and it didn't stop for a whole week. Master appeared and collected us all. She smiled at us and said a third of us had died. She then told us she wanted only ten of us, but was not willing to wait. The one who did the best was rank 1. Ranks 6,5,13,17,19, and 3 all died in the final test. The three who did the worst in her eyes were ranks 7, 9 and me. We then became the comfort men for the others. It seems that sex with us stimulates healing and temporary mana growth in people. After the trial, the fifteen of us each got our names. We were promised names for so long, most of us cried out of joy on that day". I was horrified. They were only NPCs, but they still had their own feelings and lives. Checking myself, I did have a 24 hour boost to my mana.
