There was darkness, no sound, and no sensation to feel. Then, Harry felt a tingling sensation on his head, with which his optics started rebooting.

  [Configuring System… 10%] The countdown appeared on the bottom left of his optic, and with it came all the error messages.

  Harry was caught off guard as he was surrounded by humanoids. These people looked like normal, pure-breed humans to him. The strange part was that most of them stood naked. He could see concern in their eyes, not hostility. Also, none of them were pointing blasters at him.

  "Are you alright there, boy?" a young man asked. The man in question had brown skin, and his brown hair was tied in braids. The man was bare-chested and was wearing weirdly sewn light brown pants.

  "Are you hurt anywhere?" someone from the crowd asked. It was then that Harry realized that he could understand what they were saying, even though it was the first time he had heard this dialect.

  The young man from before then grabbed his hand and pulled him up with ease. As Harry stood on his feet, he realized he was one of the smallest amongst these beings. Harry looked down at his hands and legs, only to realize his mechanized augmentation was absent. He now had the body of a purebred human.

  "It seems that the boy is in shock," someone commented. "Imka, take your son and go back to the tent. He needs to rest," someone said.

  Son? Harry questioned.

  Before he could ask someone what was happening, the young man took his hand and started escorting him through the crowd.

  "I have told you a hundred times, Adui, you have to be careful…" the young man started ranting, which Harry mostly ignored. His whole attention was on his surroundings.

  After crossing the crowd, Harry saw that they were walking through a very poor town of sorts. All around him were tents, vendors selling their wares on sheets of cloth. There was no solid structure in sight, only tents and huts made of mud and straw. People in the town didnt look well fed; everyone was wearing clothes made from leather pieces sewn badly together. He even spotted some people who were sporting loincloths around their privates.

  It was only when they took a turn that Harry saw the only solid structure of the place. From where they just came, there was this big off white three storey dome like structure. Weird glowing symbols were etched on the structure, and it seems to be emitting a blue color hue, which seems to be spreading across the sky, giving a beautiful contrast to the setting sun.

  The young man then brought him to a tent barely big enough for three people. The man made him sit on one of the leather sheets on the ground, "Stay here. Move, and I will personally break your leg. Do you hear me?"

  Harry wasn't fazed by the man's threat. But he still sat there, trying to understand what was happening to him. It took him a few seconds to gather his thoughts. He remembered driving an intergalactic battle barge straight into the Imperial Palace to kill the emperor. He knew that there was no way he would have survived the dive.

  There was a chance that someone would have downloaded his consciousness and uploaded it into this body. But he was sure that with his hardware, there was no way someone could have made a copy of him without him knowing. He had never left a copy of his consciousness anywhere; he was sure of it.

  What is happening here? This is no simulation as well, it is too detailed to be a simulation. He thought. For an hour, Harry sat there, trying to remember anything that might help him understand his predicament.

  [System has been rebooted] The Message appeared before his eyes.

  [No implants are found]

  [No inputs available]

  That is weird. He thought. The system in his brain was surely wrong, according to him. He could see the messages before his eyes, which meant there was surely an input device in his brain, but why was it not showing anything?

  He started touching his head, trying to feel the socket of his brain. Sometimes, clogs in the sockets can lead to error messages. But to his surprise, he was not able to find any socket. Hell, from what he felt, there was no opening or augmentation in his skull.

  "Alright… Now it is getting freaky."

  He looked around the tent, he saw spear wood with poorly shaped metal heads. There were bows and arrows around, but he couldnt find a shred of tech around. Then he started thinking back about the last thing that he remembers.

  On the deck of an Intergallactic Battle Barge, he was heavily injured. Most of the people on the deck were killed by him, and in the scuffle, he was severely injured. His plan was simple: to kill the emperor, he needed to drive the barge into the palace. Killing the fucker, where he sleeps.

  He remembers, driving the barge straight to palace. The barge was big enough to fit 3 of palaces, which meant that there was no way that the emperor could have survived the attack. Nor he could have. But what was he doing here?

  Hours went by, and darkness took hold of the world, with one moon shining brightly in the sky. It is then a girl around his age came running into the tent, "Adui, come! Appa is calling us for prayer."

  Now truly curious about his situation, he followed the girl without a second thought. He saw that most people of the town were heading where they were heading. Soon, Harry found himself in front of a great pile of wood with his so-called father. There were children with him, and as they seemed to be close with his father, he figured he had siblings as well. And from what he saw, it seemed that all the people of the town were before the pile of woods.

  Drums started playing from the other end, and the murmurs of the crowd stopped.

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  A woman in her twenties came forward. Her face was covered with a white skull, her chest lay bare, while neither region was covered with colorful leaves.

  The woman started the ceremony by singing songs about a deity who rules the world and who saved them all. While the people around him just hummed the tune of the prayer, not singing along with the priestess. It is only when the prayer was about to end that the woman raised her hands, along with her, and everyone in the crowd as well.

  Out of nowhere, the woman's hands caught fire. A dark red flame appeared out of nowhere, engulfing her hands. His observation told him that the flame was able to reach 515 degrees Celsius, which would have been enough to burn the skin off the woman's hands. But she seemed fine for some reason, making him rather curious.

  On his mental command, his eyes scanned the woman, and her X-Ray appeared before his eyes. To his surprise, the woman didnt have any implants or sorts; what she did have was a cluster of some sort of energy left to her heart, which was fueling the fire. From what he could see, the energy was flowing through the woman's body as if it were blood, yet there were no implants of sorts that were guiding the energy.

  The priestess then started pumping more energy into the fire, turning her hand into a flame thrower of sorts. Her flames set fire to the wood, making everyone cheer at the sight. While Harry stood there, with his eyes on the priestess, trying to understand what the actual fuck was going on there…

  ***

  People were dancing and celebrating for reasons that Harry could not understand. The ceremony had turned into a party. There were some pouches of leather being passed around. A simple whiff of the stuff that adults were drinking almost made him puke. Surprisingly, the people all around him were drinking the stuff as if it were the tastiest drink on the planet.

  His so-called siblings had joined the fray of celebration, but he instead just sat in a corner. Still trying to make sense of what was happening.

  Finding him in a corner, his father Imka came and sat down with him.

  "Why aren't you dancing?" his father asked, staring at him with concern.

  Harry said, "Dont feel like it." Surprisingly, he was able to use their dialect and speak with their accent with ease.

  "Adui," Imka put his hand on his shoulder, "Dont feel bad. Even the grand priestess didn't mention the matter. Everything is good."

  "Grand Priestess didnt say anything?" he tried to enquire about what this man meant.

  "Look. You are a child. You got curious and touched the dome." And then the man turned Harry towards him, "And for that, you got thrown into the air and hit your head. The Lord has already punished you. Now you dont have to feel guilty again."

  Harry then turned his head towards the white dome in the center of the town. He realized that maybe that place held the answer to what was happening to him.

  "You should enjoy while you can, boy," Imka said. "We are leaving tomorrow anyway."

  "What?" he said, "We are leaving?"

  Imka chuckled, "Well, yes, we are leaving. We need to get back to our tribe now, won't we. And let's not forget, in just one moon, you are going to come of age."

  "Yeah…" Harry said, and then he stood up and started walking towards the crowd.

  "That is my boy!" he heard Imka yell. The good thing was that the man didnt follow him.

  Harry shuffled through the crowd and made his way back to the town. The street vendors that he saw before were no more, the streets looked wider in their absence. From time to time, he saw a person or two in the town, but they were all heading outside for the party.

  It didnt take him long to get in front of the white dome. Now standing before the structure, Harry was able to see carefully the weird glowing etched on the surface of the dome. And these symbols were emitting some sort of blue hue, which his eyes couldnt analyse.

  He moved forward to touch the thing to understand what this structure was made of. When he heard a shout, "Oi!" he looked back to see the priestess from before, along with sturdy-looking men with spears, making their way towards him.

  "Didnt your elders teach you manners!" oneof the guards of the priestess yelled, came and slapped him across the face. Harry fell down from the force. The taste of blood filled his mouth. "You dont touch the scared dome, you maggot!" another one yelled.

  Pain, Harry was feeling it after a long time. Because of which, he couldnt help but smile.

  It was a such a nostalgic feeling for him. Unfazed by the cut on his lips and the pain he stood up, smiling in the face of the soldier. "That was a nice slap," he said.

  Seeing this, the priestess let out a small laugh, "Let me guess, a spawn of Mars tribe?"

  One of the soldiers shook his head. "No, grand priestess. He is a Vulcan. He is the same idiot who got punished this evening."

  "Is that so?" the priestess said, her expression not visible because of her skull mask. "Didnt you learned your lesson, boy? What are you doing here?"

  Harry thought about it for a moment, then asked, "I wanted to meet you. I wanted to ask you, how were you able to create fire in your hands?"

  "Why didnt you ask your elders about it?" She asked, "They could have given you the answer with ease."

  "Your answer is more valuable to me," he said. "Everyone looks up to you. Respect you. Which is why I want an answer from you,"

  The woman then lifted her mask, revealing a rather beautiful woman. She had curly black hair, tied in the form of braids, and she had these deep green eyes, "Well.. It is because of Vita. It is an energy that can be found all around the world. I can harness it, and use it."

  "How?" he asked. With no implants in sight, he was curious how she was able to maintain an energy source in her body.

  "When you get the Lord's scriptures, you will know if you can harness Vita."

  Harry got more curious. "Lord's scriptures?" he asked.

  The woman smiled, "Your elders didnt show you their scriptures?" she questioned, then kneeled beside him. She then raised her hand, and a blue window appeared above her hand, which looked pretty similar to a hologram. In a language that he couldnt understand, some information was being shown in the hologram.

  On his mental command, his system tried tracking the hologram before his eyes. Trying to see where the holographic projector was. But for some reason, he couldnt find any. His eyes were not able to pick up the signal of the projector or trace the rays of the projector.

  "These are the scriptures of the Lord," The woman said, "When you come an age, the lord will provide you with one scripture. No one will be able to read what is written in the scripture unless you allow it. And these scriptures would tell you whether you ever will be able to harness Vita or not."

  She then ruffled his hair, "Pray to the Lord, kid," She said while walking away. "Maybe then you could become a Vita Wielder."

  It is then he quickly added, "How can I come into the dome?"

  "When you become strong, Vita Wielder," she yelled while walking away, followed by her soldiers.

  Harry looked again at the dome and then at his body. He was neither strong nor healthy enough to sneak in. He knew that. Not at the moment, at least.

  So he did the only thing that he could do: he went back to the party.

  Harry knew one thing for sure. He was stuck here for now, in this body. He was stuck in a world of mysteries, and it would be a shame if he didn't enjoy this holiday…