Another Day - Chapter Twenty-six

    Whatever I do, it doesn't change the outcome. Slowly, the white-haired monster gets closer and closer. As if assisting him, my legs become heavier and heavier, slowing me down even more. It comes to a point that running become impossible and the only thing I'm able to do is drag my useless legs forward, which feel like they're made of lead.

    Gathering the courage from the bottom of my being, I abandon my pathetic attempt to fell and turn around to meet the monstrosity head on. But the moment I start turning my neck, I feel his bone-chilling breath on my back. Slowly my eyes fall upon the enemy and I stand petrified, looking at the enormous monster with white hair and burnt skin, exposed rotting muscles and bone underneath it. The monster continues breathing, his eyes slowly changing colour from green to blood red, illuminating the darkness surrounding us.

    In the next instant, the monster moves, but it happens so fast that I don't even have a fraction of a second to react, as its huge jaws and long white fangs sink deep into my neck, cutting off all airflow. I try to break free from the death grip, but it's futile, as pain shoots through my unresponsive body.

    I scream and leap away, only to fall down on a cold marble floor. Looking around, I find only darkness and silence in the room, which I recognise as my bedroom. Slowly my eyes adjust to the darkness and the room takes form, as a rare few strands of light break through the small windows covered by thick curtains. There's movement on the bed, and a girl with silver hair rises up, her small yellowish eyes searching the room for danger.

    Cursing under my breath, I stand up and walk closer to the girl, who jerks slightly when she sees me. Her yellowish eyes stop on my face, and slowly calmness returns to them. She stretches her arms like a child waiting to be picked up would to a parent. Grasping her hands I sit on the bed, and she instantly leaps to my chest, burying her face in it.

"Everything is okay." I whisper quietly. "We are safe."

Her thin and weak hands hug me with all the strength she can muster, which is quite significant compared to what you expect from her thin limbs. Caressing her head I repeat again and again

"We are safe Natalia, we are safe".

Slowly we both drift back asleep, embraced in each other's arms. With sleep overtaking me, so does the darkness, though this time I am alone in it and no monster is hunting me.

...

"Marcus! Natalia! You guys look tired!" shouts Manato from the opposite side of the huge room as soon as we enter, waving at us in the process.

Together with Lia we walk to the huge table in the center of the room, filled to brim with food. I guide Lia to the chair, and while still holding her hand sit on chair to the right of her.

"You don't look much better." I answer Manato with dry smile.

"Yeah, you are more than likely right!" he laughs loudly through it.

It has been nearly a month since, but Manato has already changed so much, it feels as if I am speaking with someone else. As if the guy who loved sightseeing, didn't take anything seriously, and not so long ago was running around with the head of a dead creature in the middle of dungeon dive, no longer exists.

He is not the only one who changed.

    As I already start to devour a third dish, Sergei walks in, limping slightly on his left foot. Even if a limb is restored after you lose it, nerve damage may still persist for quite some time, and what's happening to him right now is kind of normal, if you can call losing a whole leg normal at all. His eyes meet mine and we give each other a nod and half smile. A few second later he stops behind Lia, and gives her a kiss on the top of her head. Turning to him Lia sweetly smiles, grasping his hand with her own to convey her love to the only blood relative she has left. Sergei sits to the left of her, greeting everyone in the room in the process, and joins us for the meal. Half an hour later, after every single member of the party arrived and finished their meal, which is at least five times bigger than any normal human would eat per day, we start the discussion.

And the discussion takes quite some time.

    There are several important things that have happened since we... ran away from the South Dungeon Kingdom, or what's left of it. After the battle, the appearance of the huge elementals and finally the eruption of the volcano, not many were left alive. The city was swallowed by magma and lava before our very eyes. For a fraction of a second there was an idea to help everyone and remain in the city, but we had to discard it the moment we saw the huge flotilla of ships still around, filled to the brim with Paletians. We had to leave the city, and everyone who was left there, our superiors, the royalty, the nobles, my maids....and more. We didn't abandon them, there was no proof that they were even alive, and it would...

    Anyways, after that we decided to travel to Mozzarel, but half-way through we had to stop. Locals at a small town, where we stopped for the night, told us that Mozzarel's relationship with Empire deteriorated, and it was very unstable. There were a few that even mentioned a chance that they would either join Qing or Paletia, as the whole region was unstable, and they weren't such a big kingdom. In the end we decided to play it safe and not travel any deeper into the region, which could be hostile to us, and go straight home. A lot of stuff has happened since.

    As a matter of fact, we're currently in Qing, or how this part of the world should be called nowadays, Sun Empire East province. Nearly the whole continent has been 'liberated', as the Empire's officials call it, and the most shocking part of it is that there were no epic battles, preparations, or stories. Only death, destruction, and inevitability. The 'unification' of Sun Empire happened nearly exactly the same way with every city and kingdom around it's border, with sudden arrival of thirteen floating fortresses firing beams of concentrated mana. There was no 'discussion' or terms of surrender, as it wasn't an option from the very beginning.

    The very first thing that was done during the 'liberation', was the utter destruction of the royal palace from a distance, after which several thousand Paladins in powered, white armor laid siege to the city. Their task was to kill every single royal and noble they found, with no option for negotiation. They come in utter silence, 'clean' the city, and leave as soon as their task is done. Shortly after, several officials from Sun Empire enter the city, and announce that they are the new leaders of the city, together with about a hundred Paladins as their personal army.

    The result of such a tactic is a clean city, with no rulers or power structure, where you can easily force new rules, with absolutely no resistance. And if there is a small chance that someone would voice their disagreement, there is 'police' in powered armor that quickly change that. Why haven't I seen or heard anything about this awesome thing? An armor made out of extremely rare metal, which gathers and stores ambient mana, and injects it into the wearer's body at specific time intervals. I would've played around with it, and maybe made my own, with tons of feature, colored in black with wings and stuff. After the new territory joins Empire, the whole procession continues forward, to new city, region and country. We're actually currently in one of those fortresses.

    We were found when we were returning back home to the Sun Empire using the path we went through before, through the Dead Desert. Right in the middle of the desert we suddenly saw a dozen floating mountains coming in our direction, each of which was about four hundred meters tall, and at least twice as wide, growing larger every second. When the huge rocks came close enough, we were able to see that it wasn't just a huge floating rock, but rather a huge structure made out of stone and metal. For a few short moments it felt as if we were once more transported into a new world, but this time it wasn't a medieval one. Soon enough though, my eyes found something recognizable, a flag with the insignia of a sun that we know very well.

    As I learned later, the structure was designed by the, nowadays legendary creator, Grand Wizard Palonto, who came up with it about ten years ago. The design was so revolutionary and so well planned that it was instantly classified. For the achievement she received the title of Grand Wizard, and a personal Wizard Tower to improve and implement the design. But it still took them ten years of testing and failing, only to return to the original design and create the structure itself. It even has a new communication device, with which you can exchange 'voice messages'. A long distance radio in other words, though only works for two unique modules, each designed for the other. Therefore they have several of them for communication between the fortresses.

    Anyway, when the one of the fortresses was over us it stopped moving and several Mages in official royal robes flew out of it. The group landed softly before us, with no weapons on them. One of the officials had a mana compass in his hand pointing in our direction. We quickly recognized the person as one of the Mages that educated us back in the Empire when we were just summoned. We were quickly brought into one of the fortresses, where we told everything that happened to us, and why were we here in the desert, alone. After a through interrogation, we were healed and given rooms to rest. The next day during meal, everything that is happening in the world right now was explained to us.

    The short version is that there is no longer a Sarshi Caliphate, Desert Alliance, or Northern Kingdom. Additionally, there's a full blown continental war with the Paletian continent, and their kingdoms. While the elves, orcs, and other southerners from the adjacent continent of Lort-thol, haven't taken sides in the war. It's quite apparent that their position will fully depend on our state, or to be more specific, how weak we look.

    It's not just about Lort-thol, and the kingdoms that reside in it, but the continents south of it, which have many more kingdoms, and their own opinions of what the world's future should look like. Fighting a war with three separate continents at the same time wouldn't be a feasible option, as the Empire is simply too big, and any logistics will take too long to respond to an aggression from all sides at the same time. And by the look of things, there's very high chance that one of the south kingdoms will, one way or another, collaborate with Paletia.

    So in order to 'calm' everyone down, the Empire decided to show how big its dick is, and conquer the eastern part of the continent in one quick sweep. We were automatically recruited in the task, and our opinion in the matter was irrelevant. I was afraid Qing would join Paletia, and Empire would have to deal with both aggressors collaborating together, and supporting each other.

But ironically, no.

Qing detests all non-humans so much, that even in this state, where they have common enemy, they refused all help and cooperation offered by Paletians. Well most of that hate is actually coming from Qing's Empress, which by reports, 'dislikes' the Paletians and all non-humans so much, that she issued an imperial edict, requiring the public impaling of every single foreigner, non-human, and any citizen who is aiding them in any way . A genocide of its own citizens in the middle of war. Only a madman would come up with that, and by the looks of it, will more than likely be one of the reasons for their downfall in the end.

    We slowly progressed through Qing, 'liberating' every city we came across from the tyrants that enslaved it. At the start I didn't understand it, why are we not offering them a to surrender, to join us. There must be some who disagree with the Empress, and somehow we could convince them to join the Empire on their own. But soon enough I saw the reason with my very own eyes, how zealously the nobles and rulers of the cities are loyal to the Empress and the royal family.

    But that doesn't mean that it became easy and straightforward when you simply plug out the weeds, on the contrary it became harder. During one of our stops at another major Qing city, all of the nobles and people loyal to the Empress simply went into the underground and started their subversive work in the shadows. Poisoning water wells, burning down the city's infrastructure, attacking the fortresses with suicide mages. It got so bad that the council, which is commanding the whole flotilla, ordered Seers to search every man, woman, and child who has mana signature similar to the royal family, as well the people we captured or killed.

It was a bloodbath.

Even though I strongly disagreed with their inhuman decisions, I didn't voice my opinion and made sure no one in my party voiced theirs. We're in no position to ask or demand anything. And worse of all, I still haven't figured out how to break free from the accursed spell that binds my mind.

    It took some time to figure it out, and the solution was simply a journal, written in English, with my handwriting, containing my thoughts about the Empire, what I disagreed with, what I experienced. The problem is that I don't remember those thoughts, or even writing those words in the journal at all.

    Fucking brainwashing, or whatever it is. I'll kill them all, make them pay for what they did to me, to us. I am not a toy, not a tool, I will not be used, I will not fail, I will not become my father. But not now, not yet. Right now the main goal is to play the idiot mage, and continue filling the diary with information, thoughts and ideas on how to break free, until I reach the point when I will be able to destroy these chains. Anyway, the fortresses continues traveling in the direction of Qing's capital, and we, by extension, together with it. There are still few days left until we reach it, and logically right now we should be preparing and resting. But easier said than done.

    Travelling to Qing's capital wasn't as easy as Namos, the general which is the leading the procession, and the head of the council, expected. He already took into account that Qing has been preparing for this war for decades, maybe even centuries, with nearly every single citizen equipped with a weapon, and zealously brainwashed into hating all foreigners. But even he couldn't imagine what awaited us ahead. We're not exhausted because of Qing, its tricks, or whatever its doing, but a rather by a third party, which became a much bigger problem.

    For the past few days we have passed through several cities completely devoid of any human beings, as if they all decided to abandon the city, leaving their things behind. Everyone, even Namos, was becoming anxious, that all of the citizens, men and women, old and young, have been either recruited into the army, as cannon fodder or they have been 'used' for some grand-scale spell, which was awaiting us ahead.

We all were partially right, an army was awaiting us, but not the one we were expecting.

It wasn't human army.

Corrupted.

Millions upon millions of corrupted local wild animals, undead, and liches. They all behaved and attacked like some kind of hive mind, like moving waves of carnage and destruction. A perfect army. Post-apocalyptic stories back at home did not prepare us for this.

    I overexerted myself when I consumed a total of five mana potions. Even two of them are believed to be life-threatening, but because of the situation I was in, the danger and the amount of potions consumed, I wasn't in a state to follow orders or even understand the danger I was in. It was as if I was watching a movie from a first person perspective, where you see the image change, your legs and hands move, but you have absolutely no control over them, or the outcome of the movie.

Where's the Blood Brotherhood? Those that specialize in hunting corrupted and stopping the 'Emergence', as people in the Empire call it.

Where are they when you need them? Right, they are dead. And information about that was released just some time ago.

What about their replacement? Oh, yeah, also dead, killed by...

    Anyways, we're left all alone with the undead and predators, which we don't know how to hunt, which results in a lot of wasted time and energy, testing and learning the hard way. It would be nice if we had a book that mentions that undead will continue moving even if you cut their head off or dismember them into pieces. It would also be nice if someone would have told us that they have leaders, which can cast mind control spells.

Oh sorry, there is no such book, or at least we don't have one.

A simple word would have been enough! What was the Blood Brotherhood replacement even doing?!


Shit.

Maybe I am just exhausted, though, it wasn't just me, as everyone is nearly in the exact same state, even if they don't show it.

Sigh.


    It takes another hour for us to review what happened yesterday, what we did right and what we did wrong. Every single mistake, every single decision and more, as we were wholly unprepared for an army of that scale and type. We're a team, and we need to become better as a team, because this is our main strength, and as things are going, the future doesn't look very bright.

"Any news from the Empire?" Sergei asks quietly.

The room instantly turns to total silence. Switching to English I try to answer as calmly as I can.

"Nothing. The Senate has not contacted us since the last time." I finish dryly.

There is another thing, that I did not expect, the Prophecy that Paletia summoned talked about was known to Empire for quite some time, and they have taken it quite seriously since day one, unlike us.

    However mystic or Sci-Fi it may look, Espers, or how people here call them 'Oracles', exist. There aren't many of them, and value of each one cannot be overstated, they're literally worth more than their weight in gold. At first I thought that it was just another sham, but no. Those Oracles gather into a huge group of about a thousand and organize a ritual, in which they consume and use enormous amounts of mana use as a catalyst with one single goal, to cast a space-time spell and peak into the future.

    And the answer they got wasn't the good one. As we were explained to, the Oracle and Senate tried all means necessary in order to bend or change the prophecy, but it always stayed the same, it was never under the control of mere mortals. To put it simply, apocalypse, end of the world, the final judgment. The thing that some religions promised, some celebrated, and some prepared for. And here it is, right around the corner, just a single step away. I quietly mutter the prophecy under my breath, like a mantra to think over it, or laugh at the ridiculousness of it, which one though, I'm not sure.

"Night will swallow day.

Blood rivers of innocents will flow.

Dead will rise from their earthen prison.

Messengers of other world unite.

Warriors of light and dark be born.

Spirits of Ancient World return to living.

War of wars shall begin.

The savior will descend to return the order and truth.

And he will clash with Destroyer, the Devourer of worlds.

Death will come, and with it the world will become one again."

This is everything that the Oracles have received, again and again, and whatever they did the answer coming from the future did not change, and as it looks like we are not the only ones who received this message. The Empire, Paletia, Qing, Elves, and maybe more already know about this.

    Okay, from the first three lines I understood that there will be darkness, blood, and many dead. And I believe the 'Messengers of other world' from the fourth, is referring to us. But why is it 'unite' and not 'will unite'? Is this a call for action, or a maybe misunderstanding, and simply describes an inevitable future? More than that, why is it asking for 'warriors' from both sides, good and bad to 'be born'? What the hell does that means? Isn't the goal for the 'good' or 'bad' guys to win? Why call out both sides? The spirits part is a bit more tricky, as I was explained, the 'spirits' do not have bodies, and what it refers to, is for them to 'acquire' physical bodies in world of living, a flesh and body they can command.

Avatars.

Is this what the Paletian heroes were talking about?

Anyways, the War and Savior part is VERY original, and it is not as important as what it implies. We, the summoned heroes, are not the Saviors, but simply messengers.
And there is an enemy, 'Destroyer, the Devourer of worlds'. A name of a comic book villain from a third-rate story, where the guy is evil for the sake of being evil.
Thankfully after his death the world will become one.

It's his death that is implied, right?

How stupid.
Sadly this is my life now, and this 'stupid' thing can kill me.

"Mark, you should see the healer again." Sam suddenly says.

Looking back at him I find a genuinely concerned look.

"Yeah, you look extremely exhausted, and I don't think those blood-shot eyes look healthy." adds Manato.

"Sorry Marcus I'm useless, I can't heal these symptoms." quietly whispers Lisa, evading direct eye contact with me and Lia.

No glances anymore huh. At least there's one less problem.

"It's okay, it's not your fault, there is nothing you can do here. I know that you are already overwhelmed with injuries from others. I will be fine, nothing life threatening." I try to calm Lisa down.

I am already taking care of one, I won't be able to support the second one too. Sam should understand that.

    Standing up, I say bye and start walking with Lia still holding my hand tightly, and moving closer to me. We continue to walk in silence until we reach the long inter-sectional corridor that is rarely used. Suddenly Lia starts slowing down, slowing me too until we fully stop. She continues to stand frozen to the ground as if a statue for several long seconds, until her expression changes slightly, and I quickly recognize the same look that I have been seeing for quite some time.

    She takes several steps closer and tenderly hugs me, nuzzling into my neck. The hug changes to tighter one and nearly instantly our lips connect, after which her tongue shoots into my mouth, exploring it as I savor the sweet taste. She drags me to the wall, and leaning on it pulls me over her. She starts breathing heavily and her hand slips into my pants. We already did it in the morning, but just few hours later she wants more. I would be happy if it would be just a healthy and natural libido, but things are not that easy. After the 'event' she got a serious psychological trauma, it wasn't just her who was affected by what we saw in the South Dungeon Kingdom, but her case is the most severe one.

    Looking at it once again, it's a miracle that we all made it out alive, but everything has a price. Natalia lost her cheeky fire and became very dependent on me and her brother. At the start she was simply using me as a hug buddy, citing that she only feels safe near me. Then it became more severe, with her not being able to sleep alone, as she was afraid of darkness, therefore I became a temporary sleep body pillow.

From there things escalated quickly.

Maybe I was also searching for someone's warmth, or maybe after more than a week with no action I simply...snapped. Anyway, Natalia and me are a thing now. And any moment she feels unsafe or scared, she leaps at me, craving for warmth. This is unhealthy, and I should do something about it, but I do not know what exactly.

    Growling, I push her against the wall and start grunting rhythmically, savoring the sweet smell coming from her hair. Lia clutches to me with death-grip like a drowning man to a lifebuoy. Looking into her yellowish eyes, the absolute trust in them ignites something in me, and clutching her body to myself stronger, increase the rhythm speed, and quite soon we both finish, kissing, and breathing heavily.

Looking deep into my eyes once again she whispers quietly.

"Please don't leave me."

Clutching her closer I force my tongue into her mouth. She gasps sweetly when I part my lips away.

"I won't."

Quickly tidying ourselves up, we continue walking in the direction of the healing ward.

...

"Healing too slow? HA! You should thank the Gods that you heroes are so sturdy. FIVE. FIVE GOD DAMN MANA POTIONS. And all you get is a minor migraine. Three are already enough to kill a powerful wizard, but five, FIVE!"

The healer with wild grayish hair continues his lecture on improper use of potions while I calmly sit on the chair and nod. He's one of the people who likes to lecture you about everything, going as far as telling their own personal life story with the purpose of teaching you a 'lesson'. Lia's small hand is tightly clutching mine while the older gentleman in his fifties continues his passionate monologue.

    At the beginning Lia was afraid to even look in the mirror, afraid to see anything with even a bit grayish hair, even herself. It's hard to blame her, it's still hard for me to look at anyone with gray hair without my heart nearly stopping for just a moment. I myself, am at a stage where I'm trying to overcome these nightmares with HIM and the blood avatar, so I don't have the right to tell Lia what to do, or how to solve it.

    After the event, I started asking more questions, about HIM, the Blood Brotherhood and Empire's past in general. And I didn't like the answers I got.

"At two people start bleeding internally, but five, FIVE! You-" he says, repeating himself already for the third time.

"Is there a way to increase number of mana potions I can drink safely?" I inject to guide the talk in correct direction.

"HE WANTS MORE!" the healer screams, throwing his hands into the air. "A normal person would have needed weeks to heal after what you have done. You-"

"Sir Lihar, please."

The healer stops, closing his lips tight into thin line, and stares at me for several long seconds.

"For a normal human, maximum advised dose is one potion per week. For veteran adventurers and Wizards, that increase to one per day, anything higher could damage the body irreparably."

"But?"

"But, if you posses a strong body, which is the case for summoned, that increases the dosage slightly." he replies quietly.

"So the stronger the body, the more I can consume?"

If so, than it is much easier than I expected. I just need to increase the intensity of my physical exercise, and ask Sam to be more ruthless during our sparring sessions.

"It not as easy as it sounds." he stops my mental plans suddenly.

"Enlighten me."

He sigh deeply and starts talking monotone, as if reading out of a book.

"To increase efficiency of mana potions and number of times they can be consumed sequentially, the user must slowly increase the dosage and internal mana circulation speed during extensive training sessions."

Looking into my eyes for confirmation, that I understand where this is going, he continues with cautious tone.

"It is dangerous and may take years. It also takes a great dedication and-"

"I'm in."

Sir Lihar sigh deeply once again.

"Okay, come everyday at noon, I will help as much as I can. But I will strictly monitor the performance of you internal circulation, as it is the most critical part! Only after you reach a specific level, will I allow for the dosage training."

Shit, that's one of the hardest things to do, the thing that I still struggle with, and hate with my guts. It as if trying to dig a huge hole in desert with a fork. Slow and tedious. There must be an easier way.

    After a rather short discussion we decide upon the exact time, when and how he will train me, which suits both me and him. As I'm about to leave I decide to ask the question that has been bothering me for some time, and which I can no longer hold in.

"Sir Lihar?"

"Yes?" he says with same enthusiastic voice he generally has.

"What is the biggest amount of mana potions you have seen a person consume?"

He sighs deeply again, and looks somewhere in the distance for few seconds. The healer finally turns to me and with a grimace gives me an answer.

"Nine, by the Grand Wizard of Central Wizard tower, but his achievement was short-lived as he was in feral state and died just few moments later."

Nearly twice. Shit. I nearly blanked out after fifth, what will happened to me after the ninth? So there are monsters in this world...

"What about.....the Inquisitor?" unexpectedly words come out of me.

There is sudden change in his expression, but the healer keeps it cool. At the same time I feel as Lia's hands tighten slightly.

"What about the deceased Inquisitor?"

"No, I mean... I have heard that you and... the REAL Inquisitor were-"

His eyes shoot open and he starts looking around the room, to check that there is no one else here.

"Shush!" looking around the room once again he continues whispering. "Who told you that?"

"I want to-"

"WHO!?"

"No one."

"I do not care what game you are playing, but you should stop. This is nothing that you should get involved in. You-"

"You were traveling with him, helping him with purges. You are experienced battle healer, which is why you are here. Or is this not true, Sir Lihar?" I look into his brown eyes and continue "Please tell me, I need to know."

    He looks around the room, quietly walks to the door, checks that there's no one behind it, locks the door and returns back to the table within seconds. Taking out a small brown bottle from inside of his coat, he opens it and drinks it down, after which he puts it down on the table. A strong alcohol smell comes from the bottle, which means that he the thing he is preparing to talk about, is something that is not easy to talk about.

I came to the right person.

"What exactly do you want to know?" he asks calmly few seconds later.

"What is the maximum number of mana potions Inquisitor could drink?"

"He was a... monster. You should not compare yourself to him. He consumed potions as a noble child eats candies. He was-"

"How many?" I push

"...I personally have witnessed...seventeen...But after that he was bleeding throughout his whole body, in...an unresponsive berserk state...not reacting to anyone except the corrupted."

"Wait. You said the maximum was nine by a Grand Wizard." I inject after reiterating everything he said again in my head.

"By a person. A human. Inquisitor...is not what you call...human." picking up the bottle with once again, he gulps more, until the whole bottle is empty.

I need to stir it in the right direction, I am not sure if I will get another chance. "We crossed path with him in the South Dungeon City and..."

His head whips in my direction and his eyes stare deep into mine.

"You saw him?! You saw that... thing? Alive?!" he pauses for few more seconds and continues "And you thought that that thing was a human?! Did that thing even feel alive, much less like a human?!"

He picks up the bottle once again to drink, but finding it empty puts it back on the table.

"You know nothing, you have seen nothing. Do not look deeper into it child. This is much bigger than you, me, or anyone else for the matter of fact. Only despair and darkness awaits you there. Stop while you still can."

He finishes looking into my eyes with desperation. A few moments later he stands up and quickly pushes us out of the healing ward, sending us back to our rooms to heal.

    As we walk back, thoughts continue swirling in my head, until I stop when I feel Lia's hand tightening around mine. The realization of what I just did hits me hard as a wall of bricks and I curse myself for inattentiveness. Clutching Lia to my chest I start caressing her head, trying to calm her down. I made a big mistake and spoke about HIM in Lia's presence. Shit. Even a mention of that gray haired monster can triggered this response, and curiosity got better of me. Maybe I should have asked it separately...

He spoke in English.

There is some kind of primal instinct in me screaming to forget and evade HIM, or find and destroy HIM, but at the same time there's something deeper within me, which is screaming that HE is important, that HE holds more than meets the eye.

...

    It has been several days since I started healing, and it would have been great if I had a bit more time to finish healing this annoying headache, but within this day we'll arrive in the capital of Qing. I'm currently sitting cross-legged on the balcony, looking straight at the horizon and the moving mountains. Lia moves slightly, shifting in my lap, trying to warm up and find a more comfortable position, but I don't think it's possible. First of all, I'm only a few centimeters higher than her, and even if I open my legs wide open, it will not make me or my lap bigger. Second, the small barrier that I created around myself and Lia, can barely hold back the freezing cold wind, which blows straight into our faces.

    Even in this situation, when an enemy may attack at any moment, I still try to allocate some part of me for training, to improve myself, even if it's such a useless thing as a thermo-barrier. Every single step is important, because together, all these insignificant things can pile into something much bigger. In order to survive in this world and break free from the shackles that the Empire has binded me with, I need to be strong, stronger than any human being can be, beyond the limits of flesh and blood, because there are monsters in this world, and they take all kinds of forms. To slay some of them I need to become something more than a mere mortal, something far beyond that. And only after that can I start dictating the rules, and stop being the one who obeys.

    The image of the fire and lightning elemental fighting in the middle of city, flashed before my eyes. Their spells, their enormous mana reserves, their primordial wrath and power.
True absolute beings. What can mere mortal do against them?
Their appearance is extremely rare, as elementals, unlike avatars, are born out of pure elemental mana, and require an enormous amount of it in its natural or ambient state. Counter to them, avatars are born from humans, who fused with the element, and become one with it, feeding upon it, growing stronger in its presence. The very sight of the blood avatar sent chills down my spine, like a deer in the headlights, a prey before the predator. How do you even kill such being?

    If the Oracle didn't make a mistake and the prophecy is actually true, which I have less and less doubts about, this is only the beginning, and much bigger horrors are about to become real.
Shit, now I start sounding like Paletia's summoned.

    Whatever the "Spirits of Ancient World" are, I shouldn't count on them being friendly. I have only one personal experience with an avatar, and it wasn't a good one. The books spoke of calm, collected, and enlightened beings, but what I saw was nothing like that. A feral creature consumed by instinct and destruction. I could somehow feel that with my very bones. Even more, the people who could become avatars were supposed to be the best of the best, and even then there was only a small chance that one could become an avatar. How could the new Inquisitor become the blood avatar when his skills were sub-par at best?

    I hear footsteps and slowly, one by one, Sam, Sergei, and the naive Trio come to the balcony. Not so naive anymore though, their eyes reflect a bit different light now, with Manato brimming with confidence and a cheeky smile to boot. His cheer-leading duo on the other hand, became more calm and collected, a bit more quiet too though. Yuki, with long black hair, which would usually give cold jabs in the direction of her friends, became more friendly and open. Akari on the other hand, with her short haircut and brown hair, became less childish, and somehow more dependable. For several long seconds they stand in silence, enjoying the view, the fresh and cold wind. Alas, this won't last for long, as we all understand perfectly well what will happen today.

    Sam's voice breaks the silence, as he reiterates over the strategy, and that we must stick together, and not waste our mana reserves and always keep a very safe margin, as anything can happen. He turns to me, and repeats once again that the we should be very careful with potions, and the amount we consume, as they are very addictive and toxic, not breaking eye contact with me during the whole process. It takes a very long minute of me agreeing, and giving him my word, to calm him down and close the subject. Checking that there is no one near, he looks at me and Lia for confirmation that we are alone, and that there's no one near us, which we give a second later after the check. Even though we already gave him confirmation that there is no one around, he still continues whispering quietly, trying to keep his voice barely audible.

"If anything goes wrong, and I mean anything, we should abandon the mission and return to the Empire. Forget the fortresses, forget the council, forget Qing, forget the war and the prophecy, forget everything. We need to return back home, safe, alive...together."

    So, he's already at a stage where he can evade orders, or at least try to think outside of the limits of the damn curse. It seems like I'm not the only one. But it's still on the level of evading or bending the orders, not refusing them.

I'll need to speak with him about it later.

    As we stand and continue to chat about useless stuff, trying not to think of the day's events, the mountain range becomes larger and larger. Suddenly a guard, with nearly no mana signature, who I notice just a second before he appears, enters the balcony and tells us that we are awaited in the captain's bridge.

    I tenderly caress Lia's face, after which she groans and opens her lovely yellow eyes. After a quick explanation of what is happening, we stand up and start following the guard, as he guides us through the enormous structure into the room, where the council, Namos, and all of the leaders are already waiting, looking through a huge glass window as the mountains move closer and closer.

    We are quickly guided to our positions right behind the council, where we join everyone in silence, looking straight ahead as the view through the huge glass window slowly changes. It takes a dozen long minutes of travel to exit the mountain range, which acted as a natural barrier and wall for the Qing Kingdom's capital, ensuring its security and longevity.

    The mountains end, opening up to a view of the capital in all of its greatness and size, as the gigantic plain comes into our sight. The uncountable number of small houses and villas, the huge and wide roads which crisscross the enormous city. In its sheer size and density it could easily rival Tokyo or New York, or any other metropolis from Earth. Far away, in the center of the city, close to the ocean shore, is an enormous platform, dwarfing anything I have even seen before. The stairs that lead up to it alone, span several kilometers in length, and at least a kilometer in height.

    On top of the platform there's several gigantic multi-layered castles in the oriental style, with golden roofs and bright red walls. The structures pierces the dark gray clouds over them, creating a feeling of wrongness, as the scale is simply unbelievable. The biggest castle, which is in the center, could fit a whole city alone on top of it's first roof layer. By my estimation the whole structure goes higher into the sky by at least it's visible height. I would be shocked by its beauty and size, and would want to explore it for weeks and weeks, looking into its history and genius as it would surely rival, or even exceed anything we have back on Earth, if there wasn't another more bone chilling shock freezing me in place.

    The whole plain is a blazing inferno, with people screaming and running around, trying to save themselves from the fire. Though the fire isn't the only thing that people are running away from. Undead, an unbelievable number of them, a dozen million at least, with waves upon waves of zombies and liches, consuming buildings, structures, and the inhabitants of the city like a swarm of locusts.

This is exactly the same thing we met about a week ago, but on a much grander scale.

    In the sky I there are about a dozen thousand brightly shining spheres, which contrast starkly against the drab sky. Most of them are either shining with a red, green, or blue color, which easily gives away the powerful fire, water, and wind specialized Wizards, their mana auras visible even from here. All of them are at least several dozen kilometers away, but even from this distance I can feel that the mana density of each of flying Wizard is on par with the average mana density in my team.

But all of it nothing in comparison to what truly make by blood chill.

    On the ground, there are about a hundred beings, with mana auras shining several times brighter than that of any Wizard in the sky, which are ripping apart undead and Liches, like they're made out of paper. For few short moments I thought that they were the famous Qing Grand Shamans, power and skill of which I have heard so much about, but that theory crumbled apart when the beings started morphing into animals, monsters, and humans, as if they are made out of liquid. That action triggered a memory of creature I have seen not so long ago in Dungeon City, which was made out of blood.

Avatars.

    People in the captain's bridge are shouting orders, running around, reporting, while my team is standing near me, petrified at the sight of what is happening before us. Slowly the number of undead grows bigger and bigger, until the whole city becomes a single mass of destruction, rage, and corruption, consuming one avatar after another, under a hundred-meter tall wave of millions of undead. The blood in my veins chills when I imagine myself standing against one of the avatars, or even worse, standing in place of the avatar.

    As an absolute catastrophe happens before my eyes, my whole being screams at me to look in the direction of the ocean, after which I freeze once again. Trying to understand what could trigger such a response, and what could be more dangerous or important than what's happening in the capital, my eyes continue to dart around the horizon. It takes a very long minute for me to finally find the origin of this feeling very far away. While people continue shouting orders, my eyes find and freeze on a tiny dark dot, which appeared from behind of clouds.

    The dot starts growing,faster and faster, becoming bigger and bigger, until it reaches a size I believe to be its maximum. But I'm wrong, as the 'dot' continues growing, my body starts trembling. The people in the room finally shut up and look in the same direction I do.

Very quickly the room becomes deathly quiet.

    The being that was a tiny dot just a minute, flies in the direction of the central castle, while the thick gray clouds part wherever it's going. The being lands on the central castle's roof, and a huge circle of sky over the castle breaks apart, revealing the structure in it's entire beauty, which isn't a tower as I expected, but rather a platform. The whole palace and city visibly shook when the creature landed, as the whole plain became deathly quiet, with both the undead and brightly shining Wizards in the sky looking in the direction of the central castle in absolute silence. I would've wanted to call the being a dinosaur, but there are two reasons I can't. First of all, the creature has four limbs and two wings, which makes it more appropriate to call the being a dragon. And second, the being's size.
By my modest estimations, the creature is at least three kilometers in height alone.

    The silence which gripped the whole capital is broken when the undead screech in unison morphing into some amalgamation of hate and rage, with every single undead in the city rising up, and joining the screech. The screech suddenly end, and with it the whole city starting to move, as if alive, as if an ocean, with its flesh rising into an enormous wave of undead directed at the central palace. The wave of crashes into the palace, as countless tiny undead ants start climbing it, trying to reach the dragon, but as soon as they get close to it they burn into black crisps because of the burning mana surrounding the massive creature.

    The ambient mana in the air starts rapidly disappearing, and tracing where all of it is going, I determine the origin, which makes me stop breathing. The neck of the dragon starts expanding, shining bright red, and when it becomes nearly white from the heat, turns its humongous head down at the roof of the palace. The moment the dragon opened its mouth, a huge white sphere appeared, rapidly growing bigger, turning everything around it white. By pure instinct, I form the most powerful mana barrier around myself and my team that I can. The light quickly swallows one fortress after another, and when it reaches us, the room goes tumbling, like a kid shaking a box with ants inside.

    When the light finally disappears, I find myself on the floor, with Lia in my arms, bleeding from multiple cuts from the glass window. I try to say something, but nothing is heard, as the ringing in my ears swallows every sound in the world. Slowly it becomes darker and darker, until it finally returns to normal daylight, which somehow feels like night after the white world. With my shaking legs I stand up and look around, finding the unconscious Lia near me, and my whole team lying on the floor, groaning and trying to stand up too. Turning slightly in the direction where the council should be, I find only shredded bodies, bleeding from wounds which still have pieces of glass sticking out of them.

    As soon as my eyes adjust, they start darting around my view in disbelief at what stands before me. In place of the enormous multi-layered castle is a gigantic crater, covered by thick glass, and the whole ground around the city is painted deep black. A single creature stands in the middle of it all, lazily looking around in absolute silence. The silence lasts for a very long minute, as my team is standing up and looking at what happened to Qing's capital. The creature's huge head jerks, looking up in the sky with it's eyes scanning it as if looking for something dangerous. The suddenly its eyes stop, and a very deep and threatening vibration starts emanating from it, as if a huge dog growling at something.

    My eyes slowly turn in the direction where the dragon is looking, and soon I find about a dozen bright white lights, shining in the sky, whose mana density can't be described with mere words. It's like trying to explain a new color with words. Looking closer I find that each of the lights is actually a being with porcelain-white skin, six wings, four arms, and two legs. Strangely though, there are no eyes, ears, mouth, or hair, like a plastic mannequin in a shop.

    The density of mana around the dragon rises sharply, and not just its neck, but rather the whole body starts shining, even brighter than before, while still looking into the sky, at the white being with wings. In response all of the winged beings point their arms back at the dragon and open their palms wide. From the center of their palms, with tremendous speed, a brightly shining spear start growing, sending white lightning throughout the gray skies.

    Before I had time to react and scream for everyone to hide or cast a barrier, the creatures threw spells at each other, the whole world turning white once again, but this time I feel the fortress under me crumbling, like a sand castle.



What did we do to deserve this?

Chapter Twenty-five
Table of Contents
Chapter Twenty-seven

Another Day - Chapter Twenty-five

    Life in Mirkaz flows once again, people running around, guards patrolling the city as usual, everything looks normal. It's as if the previous day's events never happened, like it was a bad dream.
But it wasn't.
There are dead, there is mourning, but the city came alive once again nonetheless. Vendors selling their products, artisans resumed their craft, adventurers are accepting quests once again, no smiling or laughing yet, but the city is alive, slowly recovering.

Unbelievable.

    A waiter in his late teens slowly walks to my table, his legs visibly trembling, eyes looking straight on the floor, like he's horrified to look at something, or someone. He tries to tenderly place the tray onto the table, but his trembling hands betrayed him at the last  moment, and the tray clatters against the wooden table, nearly spilling its contents all over me. His sharp exhale made his figure soften, nearly falling to the ground, like a puppet that lost its string.
"Greatest apologies!" he nearly screams from the bottom of his lungs, making a ninety-degree angle with his back and waist.

    He continues his stream of excuses and starts to slowly move away with his head bowed, until his eyes meet mine. The moment they do, he yelps and leaps away, hitting the stone wall of the building with his back. He mumbles another apology and nearly runs away, leaving the tray still on the floor near the wall. From the moment the waiter approached, till now, my left hand never left the pommel of the short dagger on my hip, gripping it tightly.

Unbelievable.

    I haven't slept at all. Every second was spent on patrolling the alleys, where the corrupted usually gather. Emergence isn't a small skirmish, it's a drawn out battle that has no end. The moment you think that it's finished, is the moment they attack and you die. After not finding any corrupted within the first hour, I was already prepared for the worst, the next waves. During the emergence Liches and corrupted are always on standby around the target city, waiting for the escapees, which after getting caught, are killed and "turned" then sent back into the city to rain chaos once again.

Nothing.

Not a single new corrupted.

Even worse, after asking the guards several times, they repeatedly stated that no one has seen a Lich.

Not a single one.

What the actual hell?!

Yes, the number of corrupted wasn't big, less than a dozen thousand, but this doesn't change the fact that the "Emergence" happened. It feels as if I'm still half-asleep, or under some kind of mind spell, and the illusion will end at any moment, and everything will turn into the usual nightmare.

    I expect every person to either turn inside out, transform into creatures of darkness, or leap at me while yellow and red veins appear throughout their bodies, commanding the half a city of followers under them. I'm still waiting for all of the people in the city to simultaneously turn their faces in my direction and start laughing that they got me, that they tricked me like a greenhorn.

    I don't have a Seer with me which could've easily solved all of the problems and doubts I have. Because of that I took a great risk and searched for the Seer that I saw at the city's entrance. But as I expected, fate would never give me such a gift. The guards told me that  he was one of the first to be killed, a sudden spell appeared out of nowhere.

[You blame fate for the competency of our enemies?]

Competency huh?

Anyways, I'm stuck. How do I verify that everything I see right now isn't an illusion.

My eyes involuntary return to my right hand, and by my command each one of the fingers moves slightly. They should be real. The feeling of warm blood flowing through the veins, that strange feeling when you can 'feel' your own flesh, and the roughness of texture on the wooden table that my fingertips are touching, tells me enough.

"I am telling you he is some kind of NPC related to the main quest!" a boy with black hair loudly says in one of languages of the summoned that I don't understand. There are quite a few summoned.

The boy looks to be barely over twelve, with strange glasses made out of high quality quartz and some kind of black glossy material.

"Calm down Kevin." a guy in his early twenties replies.

"Paul he must have some kind of epic back story with revenge and stuff! Did you see how easily he killed all of the corrupted and that huge dragon?!"

"I said calm down." growls the guy who's name I believe to be Paul.

    I know few words from the language Richard spoke, but not enough to understand the topic of their conversation, and by the boy's tone, I assume he's excited about something, while the older one tries to calm him down. Right now three of the 'local' summoned are sitting with me, a tall guy with short black hair, who is most likely their leader, the healer 'Pam', who restored my right hand, and the child with black hair.

Huh?

Looking closer, not just the hair, but also the facial features of the younger and older one look similar. Parent and child? No, the age difference is too small, brothers more likely. They continue speaking between themselves about something, while I scan the inn for any signs of corrupted.

There must be at least few corrupted left, hiding somewhere in plain sight.

Even if they try to look human, they're not. Although they're very skilled actors, which is one of the main reasons it is so hard to root out the emergence before it happens, they can't fully replicate all the tiny pieces of human behavior.

[Which we could never replicate well. We can barely fit into human society.]

[Calling us human is even a big stretch.]
[Useless sack of blood, flesh and regrets.]



    A few moments later Lekana, the dog-eared twins, and four other heroes enter the inn. Looking around Lekana's eyes stop on me, and a huge smiles breaks on her face. With a happy hop she leaps to me, behaving the same way she had few days ago. Nothing seems to have changed in her, but you can never be sure. The corrupted usually hide in the ones you least expect.

"And here is our ‘Blood Angel’!" Lekana exclaims with a smile, after which she sits down on chair to my left.

Most of the people in the city are whispering other names between themselves. Soon the other summoned come closer, and connecting several tables with the one I am sitting at, make one long table with everyone sitting together around it. After several moments of awkward silence, everyone's eyes turn to me. The one who breaks the silence is the tall guy with black hair.

"First of all I would like to thank you for helping us yesterday. I do not know what would have happened if you didn't come. Truly thank you." he finishes with a slight bow.

Everyone else of his group repeats the same action.

"I would like to re-introduce ourselves again. My name is Paul." gesturing to the young boy, he continues "This is Kevin, my brother."

"Hello!" the child says loudly, nearly screaming. My eyes dart once again to the tiny staff in his hands and the long sword on the hip of his older brother.

"I'm Pamela, but everyone calls me Pam." says the girl in white says, like nearly every healer I've seen before.


Does wearing white clothes somehow improves the healing abilities?


"Kurt." smiles the widely build guy with dirty blond hair and stubble on his face. His thick armor, shield, and mace should be extremely heavy and hard to move in, but the guy moves so effortlessly and fluidly, like he's in skin-tight leather armor.

"Valentine, a pleasure to make you acquaintance." continues the person near him with green eyes, and long dark brown hair gathered into a bun. I can't find a weapon anywhere near him, could mean that it's either hidden, or he's a close-quarters fighter. But because of his slim build, and the baggy, clothes my bet falls on some kind of wizard or mage.

"Victoria." the woman with long velvet black hair, and lighting blue eyes, says with coquettish smile. Two short daggers on her hip, smooth and precise movements, thin long limbs and sharp eyes tell me that she more likely favors speed and precise attacks.

"Timur, son of Darman." shortly states a man with short black hair, who could easily be mistaken for a boy because of his height. But the mustache on his face and calm expression tells otherwise.
A bow, but no arrows. Mana archer?


[People politely introduce themselves, and the only thing you can think of is what is their way of fighting, and what could their weakness be.]

[Truly a man of the people, who sees the best in everyone.]


"Hello! I am Lekana, these guys are Tagaro and Nagoro." Lekana suddenly chimes in, pointing at the duo to her left. "And this is Alan." she finished with a smile leaning on me. I couldn't stop my brows from raising, and I wasn't the only one who let his emotions slip. Each person showed their own emotion, reacting to the situation in one way or another.

This is getting out of hand.

The awkward silence was broken several seconds later by someone who looked as if he was unbothered by the current atmosphere.

"The number of possessed was extremely abnormal though." says Valentine "Their constant flow left me no opportunity to prepare a massive spell."

"Yeah, we have never encountered so many possessed in one place. As Oracle said, things are starting to move..." Paul continued.

Encountered? This isn't their first time?

Many?

A dozen thousand corrupted is many?

That's less than a tenth of an average-sized city.

Cities with a population of more than several million have disappeared into the abyss of rage and destruction over-night several times, in the last decade alone.


"Alan?" A female voice breaks my thought process in pieces.

Looking in the direction where the voice came from, I find the raven haired woman looking at me with a seductive smile.

"Lekana told us that you are traveling to the Endless Empire. We are actually going there too. Would you be interested in joining us? We all would be very happy if you would."

"Of course! We would love to!" Lekana says a few short seconds later, not giving me time to think.

The woman, Victoria, if I remember correctly, smiles at Lekana with a bit of a forced smile, but Lekana is already talking with someone else with a happy smile on her face, discussing food once again.

    While the group is talking, my keen hearing picks up the talk in the corners of the inn. They're all talking about the events of the previous day, and two specific words are repeated the most.

"Blood Demon"

It is kind of ironic that even here, where neither the Brotherhood, nor the church of Zeron exists, the same title was given to me. Although there are a few rare exceptions where people use 'Blood Angel', but that number is tremendously smaller than "Blood Demon", and Lekana is one of the rare exceptions.

[Who knows, maybe she says the other version when you are not around.]

Angel, demon, spirit. Same shit, different container.

...

    Yesterday, throughout the whole day the stares never left me. The terrified stares of horror, as if they saw a monster walking through the streets. I know those stares well, I've seen them for too long to confuse them with something else. But I didn't care about them back then, because the clock was ticking and I still hadn't found any corrupted, much less a Shepherd.
In the end, I found none.

So much is wrong here that I don't even know where to begin.

How were the corrupted able to cast fire element spells?

Are they really 'corrupted'?

They should be. They behaved and acted...nearly the same way.

[No they didn't. They were nothing like anything we have seen before.]

[And don't even try to downplay the fact that shepherd we killed after coming out of wyvern talked.]
 
[IT FUCKING TALKED!]

[Talking fire corrupted. A city surviving an emergence. And to top it all off, the whole city is talking about corrupted as if they are some harmless wild dogs.]

    The word 'corrupted' is never said aloud. A single mention of even the possibility of someone turning would be enough for the region's leaders to abandon the city altogether. That single mention is enough to summon the whole Blood Brotherhood and the Blood Legion together. Every single creature in a several hundred kilometer radius would be scanned by Seers, questioned by elite torturers, and much, much more.

But no, people are speaking about 'possessed' out-loud in public.

Shit.

The fuck do you want Zeron?

    It took some time to piece everything together, and a sleepless night of walking around the city to end up with the only being who would benefit from me surviving. I was never a devout follower, never was overly religious, and I often questioned his existence altogether. But HE exists, therefore, so there must a true creator and other 'gods'.

What 'god' would allow its followers to disappear from the face of the earth?

In some fucked up way, I somehow ended up being the most devout follower.

Blood. Violence. Destruction.
Survival...

But what's the goal?

Is the meeting with the summoned just a single milestone to get me healed, or is there a bigger picture?

Does Zeron even want the same things I do?

I try to remember all the chants Kilan, my closest Blood Brother, said. All those chants and the religious gibberish were usually ignored by me, but now I suddenly need to dig it out from the depths of my memory.

'...purging the darkness...'
'...bringing the blood to blood...'
'...father and death of all...'

I scowl at all the useless bullshit that comes up. All the priests singing about how ‘Almighty’, ‘Endless’, and ‘All-seeing’ he is, how noble and merciful he is.

If you truly are so mighty as you claim, why am I the only one left of your followers?

Or do you truly think that I alone will be enough?

...

    The moons in the nearly pitch black sky somehow look bigger than usual, with more defined textures on their surfaces. But I'm not sitting on the rear porch of the inn because I'm enjoying the view. Looking at my right hand, I try to remember the exact feeling when it was restored by the summoned healer. Everything happened in an instant. I lay bleeding, a piece of useless meat, and the next moment I feel energy overflowing from me, like it hadn't in years, burning inside of me, like a volcano about to erupt.

    Trying to remember the feeling, I find out that the feeling wasn't localized. It wasn't only the damaged areas that were regenerating, but rather it was as if the whole body was being healed from the inside.

Am I doing it wrong with focusing on damaged areas and trying to conserve the nutrition I have?

After looking at my left hand and fingers for several long seconds, I take out the short dagger and press it against the index finger of my left hand. I've been wanting to try and experiment on healing the fingers on my hands for quite some time, but you can't experiment on the only real tool you have left.

No. It's better to test it on the least important finger.

    I move the blade to the top most tendon of the pinky finger, and cut sharply. The finger starts to bleed rapidly, but I focus on the area and direct the nutrition there, and slowly the bleeding stops. Slowly, millimeter by millimeter, the missing part starts to grow back. It takes ten minutes, and the finger finally returns to its original state, albeit missing the fingernail.

Ten minutes of single minded focus for just a tiny piece of finger....

No one will give me ten minutes.

    The blade moves to the pinky again, cutting the newly regenerated flesh. I circulate my mana around the body. The temperature of my body, and its blood pressure sharply rises as whistling fills my ears. I direct the energy to the missing pinky, and the missing finger starts regrowing slightly faster than before. When it finally returns to its previous state, I estimate the time taken to be nearly half of what it was before.

    Twice the speed, but I wasted at least several dozen times more nutrition and mana just to make the body reach its appropriate state.

Is it really worth it?

No, the feelings close, but its not exactly the same as when I was healed. There was more burning, but somewhere else, somewhere deeper.

Muscles? No.

Blood? Close but not exactly. 

Bones? Yes, but not just them, there was something...more.

    I cut the pinky once again. And repeat the experiment, but this time sending more mana into the area around the bones themselves. Mana and blood start pumping once again with more strength than before. As soon as the whistling in my ears becomes nearly unbearable, like a geyser under pressure, I explode, sending all of the energy into the pinky. My vision tunnels, but I watch as the missing flesh grows much faster than before.

I'm on right track.

The dagger cuts the flesh again, and I repeat the experiment. But this time I send the mana deeper into the bones.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Faster.
Faster!
FASTER!!

    As I'm about reach something, I hear footsteps from behind me coming closer. I stop instantly and my vision returns to normal. Looking down, I find a small pile of bloody pieces of meat, and by instinct shove them under the wooden veranda. A second later I see black ears peak out from the side alley, quickly followed by curious eyes. The several second long stare is broken by a quiet voice.

"Hello."

"Hello." I reply back.

"I was searching for you." she's looking down at the ground.

Searching huh. Demi-humans have exceptional hearing and sense of smell, she could've easily found me by smell alone.

"No one knew where you were, so I had to walk through the whole inn."

"Is there something you need?"

"No...um...I actually wanted to talk with you..."

Her eyes try to look into mine, but she looks away nearly instantly.

"Um...during the...fight, you screamed something in a foreign language...and it looked like you were...in pain...and searching for something, or someone..."

"What is 'Dee-Fivte-faive'?"

"Nothing." I state shortly.

"But you were-"

"Nothing." I repeat making direct eye contact.

Looking down at the ground, she falls silent. But the silence is broken just few seconds later when she continues,

"I am sorry. I just wanted you to know that you don't have to hold it all inside of yourself. I am here to listen to you and-"

"Co-travelers." I cut her off sharply.

She looks at me with stunned look.

"We are co-travelers. We formed a temporary travel group."

Lekana looks at me, confused, but I don't give her the chance to continue.

"Next time you want to add more people to the group, you will discuss it with all members of the group. Some of them could be against it, and it is not up to you to make the decision yourself without consulting the others."

Lekana's mouth opens and closes without making any sound, until it audibly closes with a click.

"I am sorry." she whispers quietly.

"Good. Is there anything else?"

She stands for few long seconds, trying to say something, but can't. I look into her deep blue eyes, not blinking, firmly showing my position. The long stare is broken when she looks away with pained face. Lekana turns around and slowly walks away, not turning around even once with her head faced down, her tail dragging after her.


[Well executed. We can be proud of ourselves.]

Shut it.
Do not dare to forget why we are here.
Do not dare to forget what we are.
Purge those dreams and illusions.
It will never happen.
However many times we try it, it always ends the same way.

You want to dig another grave?


It does not matter what we want.

It does not matter what these people want.

It does not matter what the fucking gods want.

There is only one future that awaits us, and HE will use everything he has, every life available to him, every weakness we have, every opportunity that exists.

We need to be prepared.

    I move blade to my left hand and cut off the pinky finger at the root, the blood starts flowing out of the wound, coloring my hand blood red. By my command, the blood in my veins starts boiling, circulating, gathering mana throughout my body, sending it to the finger.

"The weak will not succeed."
Once restored, I cut the finger again.

"The slow will not reach."
I cut again.

"The soft will not survive"
Again.

"We all will die."
Again.

...

    Tomorrow morning the caravan will depart, heading straight north, through the desert to the shores of the northern ocean. I spoke with caravan leader again, and he was much more humble this time, overly polite. As if he was afraid to irk me in any way. And that change may be connected to the emergence, or the fact that I ripped apart a few assassins today early in the morning. Sneaky bastards attacked between the deep night and early morning hours when everyone is usually deep asleep. They believed that it would be an easy kill.

They were wrong.

    The whole inn came alive once screams started. A huge amount of half-asleep adventurers came running through the building into my room, breaking through the wooden door in the process, coming to help to the unfortunate resident. But they weren't prepared for what awaited them in my room, the body parts of a half-dozen assassins littered my room. The whole floor was painted blood red, with guts and innards hanging on the bed frame, window sill, and the walls.

    After a short talk with inn's owner and the city guards, that arrived quite late, I was given a new room, with the promise to find those that sent the assassins. Yeah, right. Guards doing their job, a nice fairy tale. Whats next? The kings become noble and fair? Truth and righteousness becomes the core beliefs of society?

Ha. Right.

    It just happen that they were quite late, it just happen that the assassins knew that I wouldn't have a weapon with me. If I would've taken the sword yesterday everything would have finished faster, or it wouldn't have happened at all. But no, I just had to tell the blacksmith to do a quality job, and to sharpen it well. And to top it all off, I even gave him the last weapon I had on myself, a small dagger, to sharpen as well.

Politics, spies, assassins and shit.

I could go through the information broker, and squeeze the information out of him, even get a name and address, but I didn't, at least not yet.

    Anyways, after the short talk with the caravan leader, I went straight to the blacksmith. And as it looks, he already heard about the events of the previous night, because during our whole interaction he was sweating excessively, and constantly saying how sorry he is that he's so slow.

Do I hold this idiot responsible?

Was it him?

Maybe one of his apprentices, who are currently hiding in the backroom, shared that piece of information with the wrong crowd.

So many ifs.

 
[Killing a person only because of suspicion, just like those nobles you detest. You truly learn from the best.]

    Trying to end the discussion as fast as I can, I quickly attach the new sword and scabbard to my belt. After checking that the dagger was actually sharpened, I put it into the tiny scabbard on the opposite side. As I'm about to exit, I remember the last several times I've had something puncture my chest, and decide to buy a decent set of chain-mail and some sturdy shoes.

    Exiting the blacksmith's, I go directly to the closest food stall and buy a wide range of dishes, cooked in a variety of ways, and out of a wide range of ingredients. Not waiting for even a second, I start swallowing the food, not even tasting it. I overdid it a bit with yesterday tests, and I burned up nearly all of my fat reserves. Because of that, my breakfast was quite big, although it disappeared nearly instantly when I started sending the nutrition throughout my body. So here I am, a few hours later, going food stall to food stall, eating like I starved for months.

    The results of tests are decent though. With each iteration, I was able to push the limit down to two minutes for a whole finger. Next are the tests for efficiency. There's no logical reason to send every single part of the body into overdrive to heal a single finger, or at least I hope there isn't. I felt that there's something in the blood or maybe the bones, which increases the healing speed, but I'm not sure what it is. There's the option to ask the summoned healer how her healing works, but I am pretty sure that I'll get the same answer as always,

"you ask the god for the miracle and it comes",

or

"you just wish for the part to heal",

or

"you direct your external mana from the gates into the area around the wound and it simply heals".

    My obsession with body structure and how everything works in body is usually frowned upon, so I had to go through a more...hands-on approach. The knowledge I have, only comes from my personal experiments... For quite some time I had shied-away from the idea of simply 'opening' a dead body up, and looking at how exactly everything works, and I simply studied through my battles and the way my body behaved. But you can only go so far with that method.
The moment I stepped over those 'limitations', a whole new world opened up.

    Maybe its because of that, that I'm so proficient in internal mana manipulation, healing, and controlling my body. I still remember the astonished look Richard gave me when I told him that there are no books about 'anatomy', which he had explained is a term for the study of the body and its structure. Who needs to know how the body works if anyone, with enough social or economic status to even care, can simply go to church or healer and get himself instantly healed.
Who cares about 'anatomy' if you can simply cast a healing spell?


Only a failure like me.


What I would give for a single book like Richard described, and if he didn't lie, his world has whole libraries of them.

After finishing another circle around the city to verify that there were no corrupted present, I am left in a slump.

This makes absolutely no sense.

The emergence happened, and it ended. Its as if they all ran away, but such things don't happen. They fight to the very last one, trying to maximize the damage they inflict.

    I continue walking until I see an open area, where I can hear words of encouragement and cheers. Coming closer to the origin, I find people around an arena with diameter of about thirty meters. In the center of it two of the heroes are sparring with each other, Paul if I remember correctly, and the one with huge shield, Kurt. The people continue cheering as the summoned fight, a few of them closer to me even start discussing the battle, how fast the fighters are and how fierce the exchange is.

Is this a joke?

Their speed is barely acceptable, and their technique is utterly appalling. No footwork, every move is rigid and predictable, no intent to maim or kill whatsoever, its like watching a scripted dance.

    Richard wasn't like that at all. Yes he was lazy, and kind of strange, but when you got him going, he could go far beyond what constitutes average. Though I still had issues with him using the 'Rapier'. He described it as a deadly weapon, but to me it was more of a oversized needle than a decent sword.

Are my standards too high?

No, it simply can't be. There are catastrophic beings in this world, for which term 'demigods' wouldn't even be appropriate, and comparisons to them would be utterly incorrect. But an average Blood Legion officer would give better results than the summoned before me. No, there is no Blood Legion anymore, they're called the Sun Legion now, and I shouldn't forget that. Looking at the pathetic fight once again, I think over what can I do.

[Nothing. No one asked for your help. No one needs it.]

They'll all either succeed or die, as has everyone before them. As I'm about to leave, a woman in a white dress appears before me.

"Hello Mr. Alan, how are you today?" she chirps happily.

It takes several seconds to process the question and I finally squeeze out "Okay."

This is new, I've heard the question addressed to other people a few times, and it was even once directed at me, but it was more of an official greeting then. But this, this somehow felt like she was genuinely concerned and interested. Looking at the spar in the center of arena she smiles.

"The boys were stretching out, and before we knew it, people gathered around." chuckling, she continues "And now because of their pride they're trying not to look bad in front of the crowd."

"Hey! I hear you!" screams Paul.

"Sir Alan would you like to join us?" Kurt unexpectedly joins in with a wide smile.

"I know that it is impolite to ask this of you when you are still healing, but I would be very grateful if you could give a few pointers to these idiots." says Pamela with the same cheerful smile.

My first thought is to politely refuse, but I stop when I remember that this girl healed my hand, and I am in her debt.

[And here is the cue, someone asked for help. So, what are you going to do?]

If I break my life into scenes, there's only constant movement, destruction, and blood. And whenever I made an attempt to change, to create rather than destroy, only one thing followed, death.

Will this time be different?

Will I be able to even change anything?

Maybe this is what Zeron wanted originally. Does he want me to train the new summoned?

What then?

Enough overthinking.

We all will die, disappearing from this world forever.

I owe the summoned a debt.

And maybe, just maybe they won't end up like me or......Luna.


"Okay." I state calmly.

"So which one of us would you like to spar with first?" says Paul teasingly.

"Both" I reply dryly. They need to survive, and for that they need to learn.

They both chuckle.

"I am sorry Sir Alan, we know you are strong, but both at the same time?"

"Come on, seriously, with the intent to kill and maim, or it will only bring you more pain."

Their eyes turn to more serious, and playfulness fully disappears, but arrogance did not. So the hard way huh.

"Do not regret that, Sir."

They both move into position as I walk to the opposite side of the arena. After several long seconds of standstill, Paul explodes into action, appearing before me with his sword brandished a few seconds later, directed straight at my shoulder.
Slow and indecisive.
In the next instant, a single kick into his abdomen sends his body flying back, straight into the shield of his comrade, toppling both of them to the ground.
Petrified, Pamela looks at the duo on the ground in shock. It takes several seconds for her to grasp what happened, after which she runs to both of them and casts a healing spell. A few seconds later. Paul stands up, groaning, and looks at me with astonishment in his eyes.

"Slow and predictable. Again."

He gets into position again and the mana around him flares up, to which people around audibly gasp. The next instant he disappears, only for his image to ripple into existence few meters in front of me.

Idiot.

This time I don't hold my strength back. My foot impacts his chest, and I feel his rips crack, after which my leg buries his body into the ground, creating a crater several meters in diameter. A few seconds of silence are interrupted by a scream from healer in white clothes, and she instantly rushes to the guy in under my foot, after which I step back.

"Learn from mistakes or you will die."

    As the healer's hands light up and Paul's chest expands back out as he coughs out several large globs of blood. Pamella looks at me with scared eyes, and tries to say something, but before she can I hear the splitting of air and move my head to the right. I feel something sharp traveling just few centimeters away from my neck and its vital vein, the jugular. My left hand instantly shoots out and grabs the new foe's hand. I slam the person, who I caught, into the ground a meter away from Paul and Pam, creating another small crater. The attacker wriggles in pain and tries to breathe, though the long black hair that fell across her face didn't make it any easier.

"You wasted a whole minute doubting, and when you finally did attack, its when everything is already over."

"Pathetic." I state dryly "Heal them."

Several seconds later they start breathing normally while groaning in pain, glaring at me in hatred.

"If you have enough energy to glare than you've healed enough. Stand up and attack, together, as a team."

Burning with dark emotions, they start attacking with their huge auras flaring around them. The earth underneath them explodes into debris as they lunge at me, only for their attacks to be evaded and redirected, after which they are thrown around and slammed into ground. Paul, as if blinded by those dark emotions, focuses only on attacking me, and trying to make his sword reach me.

Idiot. He needs to learn the hard way.

I slam the side of my sword into his thigh, only for the loud crunch of the thickest bone in body breaking, to be overshadowed by his scream, which resounds throughout the arena. I kick his body hard, sending him to the healer.

"Heal him."

    Kurt appears before me with his shield shining up brightly with mana. My sword impacts his shield, sending him several dozen meters away across the arena. In the corner of my peripheral vision I see the next attack and my hand moves automatically to catch Victoria's dagger, which was directed at my crotch, and send it back the next instant. The raven haired attacker tries to avoid the incoming dagger, but she is just a fraction of a second too slow, as the dagger burrows itself deep into her foot and she screams in pain.

    Kurt stands up and attacks me again with his mace and shield, but every time my sword impacts his shield he closes his eyes tightly, as if afraid, trying to protect his eyes from the sparks that fly around during the impact.

"Open you eyes!" I scream as my sword continues to slam into his shield, moving his body several centimeters away each time.

"Stare death in the eyes! Do not dare to look away! If you die, die standing!"

His bloodshot eyes fix on my sword, and trail its trajectory, from the start to the moment it hits his shield. My sword continues to fall on the helpless Kurt, and during the next strike, when my sword impacted his shield, he tries to redirect the force into another direction, but focuses on the sword too much to see my left fist coming. The hook hits him hard and he's sent down, spitting blood and several broken teeth onto the ground.

"Good. At least one of you isn't a complete idiot."

"Stand up. Redirect my attack, but do not lose focus on me, not even for a second."

Kurt groans, but stands up and spits another glob of blood. I repeat my attack and this time he does not lose his focus as much. But that still doesn't save him from being sent to ground and spitting blood several more times.

"Acceptable. Terrible foundation, but you're a fast learner. Go heal."

    Before I can say more Paul appears before me with his sword coming at my face, only for his strike to be redirected and hit the ground. He doesn't lose his fire and quickly attacks again, his mana aura flaring even more, still glowering at me in pure hatred.
Not good. This way he will not learn.
As he lunges at me with his sword in the same pattern, I slam my sword in exactly the same place as last time. Paul falls down screaming, as the sound of a broken femur bone resounds across the arena once again.

"I will repeat this again, and again, and again, until you learn. There are some who require pain to learn from their mistakes, and it looks like you are one of them."

Kicking him again I send his body to the healer once again, only for him to lie there, groaning in pain and waiting his turn, as Kurt is currently being healed. The anger from Pamela's face disappears, and is replaced with solemn guilty acceptance, as if finally understanding what I'm doing. She turns back to Kurt and continues her task with determination.

    Victoria slowly walks to me, with a mix of fury and fear, slowly circling around and not attacking. "Do not let fear bind you. Pain is required. Fear is required. Know pain, know fear. Do not let it consume you. Control it."
She screams and attacks me with a flurry of rapid strikes, which I easily evade, and counter with a solid strike right into her face. She yelps and falls on ground. She looks up at me with the same eyes filled with hatred I've seen countless times before. Blood dripps out of her mouth and broken nose as she tries to stand up with her legs wobbling under her.

"I should say some fancy words about the spirit, soul, and mana. About how you should synchronize with it, but that's useless bullshit people with innate talent use to justify their skills and abilities. You are not one of them, and you'll have to accept it."

"There's only one other way for likes of you. Know your body. Know every bone and muscle. Feel them, know what they can do and what they can't. You are the master. Flesh is the slave, do not let it dictate your limits. You command, it obeys."

    One by one I beat some common sense into them, something that should have been done a long time ago, but wasn't. In order for them to survive they need not just a huge amount of mana, but the knowledge to control and direct their power. With each iteration they become faster, stronger, craftier, trying to find my weaknesses and determine their strengths, but with each iteration I push them harder and harder.

Only when you push people into corner they start growing.

I continue the training regime I have done hundreds of times, again and again with the new Blood. Their young faces flash through my mind as I try to remember their names, code names, as their real ones were either lost or long forgotten. All of them died, their names taken by new recruits again, and again, and again. I should've done so much more, taught them better, maybe then they would have survived.

Or maybe the opposite.

Because I trained them, they became better, sturdier, they became able to follow me deeper into the abyss. And the only thing awaiting us all there was the darkness and corruption of this world. They didn't need to need see it. They could've stayed weak and died earlier, maybe then their lives would've been brighter, easier. Or they could have returned to the Blood Legion, becoming normal soldiers, living easier lives.

[Oh, are you trying to ask for their forgiveness? Or do you believe that helping the summoned will change anything for them?]

[After we were betrayed, our brothers gathered around you. They believed that you would lead them, but it was already too late. The enemy got to the Blood Sanctuary first, and they hunted down every single one of us using the blood compasses.]

[Do you want to hear something like "There is nothing you could have done"?]
 
[You won't.]
 
[We are alive only because we are a 'damaged product', and our blood compass could not be used by 'Mana Seers', and the last real 'Blood Seer' died bleeding and crying in our hands.]

[Nothing can return our brothers. They either disappeared, or are in the eternal abyss, gates which are closed to us.]

Why did you let me live Zeron?

...

I fucked up.

    The moment I was asked to train, something in me flipped and I started training the summoned as I had the new Blood Brothers. Most of them were mule headed, they were either those who zealously believed in Zeron, and wanted to serve him or Blood Legionnaires who wanted to prove something, the remaining small number of others were a random bunch, just as I was once. And one of my main tasks was to either beat them into submission, or show them that the world is huge, and their skills are worth nothing.

    And I did just what should be done with new initiates, but the problem is that people saw it. That small number of onlookers was enough to make things significantly worse. If before it was general fear and caution, now it changed to full blown terror, the same one which appeared on the faces of people from the other side of the planet, when they learned what I am. But this time there's no Blood Brotherhood history to blame.

Only me. Only my actions.

    I continue to walk, trying to conserve as much energy as I can, but its hard as the blazing sun has boiled the very air itself, and every breath feels as if I'm breathing in fire and breathing out ice. The red sand under my feet isn't helping, as it simply caves in on each step I make, which causes me to lose more energy, and produce more heat. The whole thing somehow reminds me of the Dead Desert, but a darker, somehow more sinister, version of it. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but that's exactly what I feel right now. It's as if the desert itself has a will, and it's actively trying to kill you.

    Anyway, I'm not the only one in this state, and at least there's no one near me, whose mere presence would increase the already burning temperature around me. Looking to left, I find a huge caravan of people walking in line, creating a small dust cloud behind them, looking several times more exhausted and emancipated than me.

    I'm currently somewhere in the middle of the long procession, but several dozen meters to the right of it, acting as a side guard. This position is usually given to decently sized party, but the caravan leader believed that I can replace them alone. There is also another reason that I am here, alone. It's very simple, no one wanted to walk together or even alongside the 'Blood Demon'. People glance at me quite often, but instantly turn away, continuing to whisper between themselves. My 'group' is much further ahead, walking together, but again, there's no one other than myself to blame for that.

I pushed them away.

    In the distance I see the silhouettes of the summoned walking together, at the head of caravan, talking between themselves, looking unaffected by the by blazing sun and unbearable heat coming from ground. More likely result of some cooling spell around them. But they don't look happy or energetic either. Some may say that I overdid it a bit with training, totally crushing them, showing how weak and soft they are. But if they want to survive in this world they need to learn, and learn fast.

And they need to survive.

[Do not pity them.]

    Even if they are summoned with enormous strength, and given whatever a mortal soul could desire, it doesn't justify taking them away from their world and lives. Even less, when you take into account that according to the Library of Damned the last 'unbound' summoned walked this planet several millenniums ago. Ancients paid dearly for summoning more than a hundred heroes at the same time without a way to control them. The result was quite predictable. The books didn't say exactly what happened, but it's easy to guess that there are things in this world that they didn't like and tried to change.

But no one likes to change, especially because of the 'preferences' of outsiders, which you invited yourself.

You invite people for 'tea', and they start telling you how the things in your living room should be arranged.

Not nice, right?

    Anyways, as it currently looks out the whole bunch, only Kurt wasn't crushed, and learned a lot. Even now he walks and experiments with his shield and mace, trying different stances, simulating battles in his head, trying to be faster, stronger, and with each move he improves, even if it is by a tiny bit.

Good.

But life never really gives you a chance to take a breath, and the appearance of a huge purple sand snake, which jumped out of sand and swallowed a random person whole, proved that true once again.

"Dragon!!" scream people in unison.

Looking at the creature again, I sigh deeply as I have many times before. I simply fail to understand how can people mix up these creatures at all.

A wyvern is a mix of a skinny oversized lizard and cave bat with two legs and two wings.

A drake is a big, fat, slow lizard with four legs.

A wyrm is a huge snake with spikes all around its body.

A dragon is a fucking four legged mountain, made of pure malice, violence, and destruction with two wings. A single flap of its enormous wings is enough to create tornadoes. The damn thing also spits endless amounts of fire, like a fucking erupting volcano.

ALL of them should be erased from the face of earth, but differentiating them isn't that hard. Just check if there are wings and count the number of legs, nothing more.

    The summoned instantly retaliate, sending powerful spells towards it, ripping big chunks of flesh out of the wyrm, which only enrages the oversized gut worm. It spits a big greenish glob at the summoned, which they barely evade. Upon hitting the ground, the green glob starts sizzling and melting the ground, emitting purplish smoke from it. In place of running away, everyone freezes and looks at the glob. It takes several seconds for everyone to realize what the smoke around the sizzling glob is.

"Poison! Run away!"

That should have been apparent just from how it looks.

    Taking out the sword I start walking to the oversized worm. The purple wyrm is too focused on the brightly shining auras of summoned to see my movements. I easily slip behind it, and leaping up, I plunge the sword straight through its skull. Unexpectedly, the sword doesn't fully go through the purple noodle's thick skull. The damn thing starts thrashing around, trying to throw me off it's back. It becomes so desperate that it spits a poison glob into the air, and jumps straight through it, covering itself and me in a thick layer of nasty purple liquid. All its thrashing only makes things worse, as the sword continues to dig deeper and deeper, until I hear a loud crack and my sword digs much deeper, its blade fully disappearing into the flesh of the wyrm. Nearly instantly its body stops moving, falling down on the ground lifelessly, like a huge tree cut down.

    I stand up and start removing the nasty liquid from myself and my equipment. The liquid is thicker and harder to clean than I expected, but not by much. Looking up, I find the summoned looking at me in mix of fear and disbelief, still breathing heavily, as if they have been running for several days non-stop. It takes several more seconds for them to understand that the enemy is dead. People start scrambling around, screaming for help, as many guards and travelers have fallen down on the sand, and are twitching heavily. As if coming alive, Pamela leaps to me, shoving a small vial with liquid in my face and screams.

"Drink this! The poison should not have gone too deep." 

"I'm immune to poison.”I look into her eyes and state shorty.

She looks at me in confusion and uncertainty, as her lips move, but don't produce any sound.
People continue running around trying to help each other, they scream for a healer and Pam, after looking at me one more time, runs to the injured and poisoned to help them. I look around in apathetic indifference. One single wyrm caused this. Something similar to this happens every time a creature a bit bigger than a cockroach pops up.

Is this the best we can do?

Are people destined to live like this for all eternity?

...

    The night was generally quiet, people were tending to the injured, trying to heal as many as they can. There weren’t as many injured as I originally thought, only two dozen, and thankfully for them, the healer had a huge mana reserve, as all of the summoned usually have. In order to heal all of the critically injured, she had to buy few mana potions from a merchant traveling together with the caravan for a sum which I believe to be several times higher than the market price. The ironic thing is that she spent her own money for that, which won't be reimbursed by the caravan leader, as by contract, he isn't required to spend any additional money in case the guards get injured.

But that is not all.

It also seems like the potion merchant is a close friend of the caravan leader, and it's not hard to guess that he receives a percentage of all transactions done during the trip.
Oh you got injured? That is sad, but fret not, here is an exclusive potion merchant, which sells exclusive potions, for an exclusive price. Oh? You're not OK with price, that's very sad. But it's even sadder that there are no other potion merchants for hundreds of kilometers around.
What are we going to do?

Business, nothing more.

Same thing everywhere.

    While people were resting, I was busy with a bit of a different task. The small heap of bloody fingers lying near my legs is proof of that. Throughout the tests and experiments I've found out several things.

First of all, I don't need to send the whole body into the burning state, as I usually do during fights. The solution is to simply increase the blood pressure in the arteries, while keeping the pressure in the veins stable. There is also breathing rhythm thing, but it's not as important.

Second, there's a much bigger increase in healing speed if the blood travels through specific areas of the body beforehand. The inner core of the bones. I still don't understand what the bones contain inside of them or how exactly they increase the regeneration speed, but that doesn't matter right now.

Third, the internal mana shouldn't be directed on increasing the blood pressure and temperature of body, but rather directed to ‘feed’ flesh from my liver into my blood. I'm not sure what exactly that does, but it simply works.

So many questions, and no answers whatsoever. In order to truly improve I'll need answers, and if no one can provide then I'll have to the same thing I've always done, learn myself.

A single book, just a single damn book, that's all I ask.

Should I ask the summoned about 'anatomy'?

No, they're just kids. There's no way they could know how the body works.

    Anyways, I can heal a single finger within a dozen seconds if I focus on it, and if I don't, it takes a bit less than a minute.

Hooray I can heal fingers.

Kingdoms weren't built in a day.

[But kingdoms had time. We don’t]

    Hearing very soft footsteps, I shove the sand over the small hill of fingers, hiding them as much as I can. A person walks out from the side of the rock that I'm hiding behind, and stops. I slowly turn my head and look at the new arrival's sky blue eyes, but she doesn't meet mine. Her ears are pressed against her skull while her long black tail hangs down lifelessly.

"The caravan will resume the travel within an hour." she states with barely audible voice

"I will be ready. Thanks."

She opens her mouth to say something, but instantly closes it with a click. She stands there for several long seconds, waiting for something, but then suddenly turns around and starts walking away.

[We could-]

Enough.

    As soon as I can't hearing her footsteps, I resume the experiments, but this time I cut two of the fingers on my left hand, and count the time it takes to fully heal them. To my astonishment, the healing time doesn't double as I expected, but only by about thirty percent. I repeat the test several more times, to ensure that the result is valid, and it simply wasn't a product of ‘chance’.

Wait.

What chance?

There can be no chance in healing...

Chance? Huh, what can actually create a 'chance' in healing? 

When did the speed of healing usually drop?

    As if hit by inspiration, I cut a single toe on my right foot and a single finger on my left hand, and test the time it takes to heal wounds on opposite sides of my body. As if possessed, I start alternating between the number of toes and fingers, trying to see the limit, the bottleneck. I get so into it that I nearly forget about the caravan. Standing up, I quickly shove more sand over a much bigger heap, and I start walking in the direction of caravan, all the while healing the toes and fingers in an unfocused state.

    Quite quickly I stand at the same position as I did during the travel, and I start thinking about the results. How to either circumvent them, or understand what exactly the limits are or what the cause is.

This isn't enough.

Maybe for someone healing a finger within dozen seconds would be some kind of an achievement, but not for me. Everyone else has something else to balance their strength, external mana, spells, comrades. I have none of that, and there's only one path for me.

Those that want me dead, and which I want dead myself, are not humans. It's even hard to call them mortals. They're gods on this planet, titans of destruction and carnage, this world bending according to what they desire with but a thought.

And I'm but a bug, nothing more.

Bugs survive, but they do not win.

...

"Paul...what...is that?" Pamella whispers, barely audible.

"I-I don't know..."

    Standing on big cliff, all of our gazes are fixed on what we see beyond, at least a dozen kilometers away in the distance. A huge sand storm is circling around a huge black levitating pyramid turned upside down, which should be at least half a kilometer in height. It's hard to tell how big it actually is because of the strong storm of black and red sand, which looks so thick that it resembles liquid. The pyramid is so close to ground that one would believe that it's touching the ground, but if you look closer, you'll find out that it's not. But that's not all, there are at least a dozen smaller pyramids slowly circling around the central one, as if they are attached to it with a string.

"That, is Zanta-bhu, Land of the Dead." angrily states the fat bellied leader of caravan.

"Esteemed adventurers, I do not know how we ended up here, but I would strongly advice you not to look at the structure for too long. That black sand and floating stones have always been there, and no one know for how long exactly."

    The moment he finished the last sentence, he starts quickly walking towards the group of guards and guides, shouting commands, berating and insulting the guides in every possible way. The guards look visibly scared, not just because of the furious leader, who promised death and more for bringing the caravan here. The eyes of the many guards are fixed in horror on the black structure in distance. A few short moments later, the caravan leader starts to command the people to gather, saying that we're not staying here for the night, and are leaving immediately.

    While I see all of this happening in background with my peripheral vision, my eyes themselves are fixed on what floats far away. I've seen the structure before, a long time ago, and believed to never see it again.

So this is what you wanted from me Zeron.

I fully agree.

The Empire?

Saint Protus Ghalor?

People?


They don't matter.

This.

I thank you Zeron from the bottom of my soul for this opportunity.

    My legs quickly carry me to the potion merchant, and the moment he sees me, he stops, terrified. I ask for every single mana potion he has, but the voice comes out harsh and commanding, and he shovels quickly around his staff and only brings out ten flasks. He starts begging for mercy, claiming that mana potions are rare, that they're hard to make and find. Not waiting even a second, I throw several gold coins at the merchant, worth several times more than even what he would ask for the potions in total.

    It takes less than five minutes to gather all my stuff and buy everything I would need, including some food and another sword, for dual wielding. I had to make several moves with each sword that I looked at, as the balance was hard to find when one of weapons is far heavier than the other one. Walking back, I return to the cliff and check everything for one last time. Even if I had years ahead of me, I could never prepare decently for what is awaiting me. Even worse, I have to do it all alone, but nothing will change even if I spend several more months planning. Suddenly, Lekana appears before me and clutches my shirt, with her big blue eyes looking at me in confusion.

"What are you doing?"

Looking at her and the people around, I find a few of them looking at me strangely while preparing their things for departure, but most of the people are simply gazing at the thing a dozen kilometers away, which somehow brings bone chilling fear, even from such a distance. Looking back at Lekana I decide to make it as short as possible, there's no need to uselessly stretch it out.

"This is where we part. Live a long and happy life. May your gods be with you."
Lekana stands stunned, a statue, but I don't wait and already start walking to the edge of the cliff. Taking out the mana potions, I gulp one down and start circulating mana with a very specific technique. After which I increase the blood pressure to a bit higher rate, and fix it there. I start breathing deeper to gather as much fresh air as I can. From my peripheral vision I see the caravan leader sweating and running to me.

"Sir, I just heard that you are leaving. Sir you must not. That is Zanta-bhu, no one should go there. People-"

Not waiting for him, I gulp down a second mana potion, and continue the circulation.

"SIR ALAN! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!? YOU JUST DRANK TWO MANA POTIONS IN ONE GO!! YOU WILL DIE BECAUSE OF THE OVERDOSE!" he screams.

    As if by a call, summoned appear and try to understand, they start listening to the screaming of caravan leader. Their eyes start jumping between me and the still screaming caravan leader. The young summoned, Kevin if I remember correctly, starts jumping up and down chanting something in the language of summoned.

"ITS A QUEST! ITS A QUEST! ITS A QUEST!"

The older brother, Paul, shouts at his younger brother to shut up, and quickly walks to me.

"Sir Alan, what are you doing? Is something wrong? Can we help you with something? If yes, please tell us, we owe you our lives."

Thinking for several seconds, hundreds of things come to my mind, different variations and versions of nearly the exact same thing, but in the end I can't find a reason not to be frank with them. This will more likely be last time I see them.

"You are not the only summoned."

All of the summoned instantly become silent and look at me in horror, as if their deepest secret has been found out.

"How-" Paul starts, but I interrupt him before he can say anything more.

"There are many, many more like you. They're stronger, they're faster, and not all of them are friendly."

They need to know.

"Those that wish to use you as pawns have summoned you to this world, and their goals may not be the same as yours."

"Get stronger. Start asking questions. And believe no one."

I gulp the third potion as I continue circulating the chaotic overflowing mana inside of me.

"Sir Paul, Please stop sir Alan!! He has mana poisoned himself with the potion, and he cannot think straight. He shouldn't go to Zanta-bhu, you don't understand what awaits you-"

I look deep into the eyes of the caravan leader as he freezes in fear. I didn't notice, but I already started talking.

"People turn inside out. Skeletons crawl out of bodies and attack every single living being they can find. People go insane within minutes, whispering in the language of demons. Dead turn into Liches. Every Mage and Enforcer turns into 'possessed' and creatures of made of bones and darkness itself drag away those that are left alive."

Looking straight into the eyes of fat caravan leader I see absolute terror, he starts trembling, and makes several steps back.

His lips quiver and barely audible "How" escapes.

"You have seen them, right? The true face of darkness"

"Don't follow me, you will all die." I state shortly.

Turning to the summoned I say the only thing left.

"Vei Lai."

Glancing one last time at Lekana, I start running in the direction of epicenter of the structure. With every step I make, I feel as if the very air starts becoming thicker, while the body feels heavier and heavier, as if someone is stacking more and more stones on my shoulders. The sand storm continues to blow with its speed only increasing the closer I get, and the moment the grains of sand hit my face they dig into it, like tiny hooks.

    It takes a bit less than an hour, but I finally get to the epicenter of it all, and I find a huge pyramidic deformation with a structure made of black stone in the center of it, directly under the tip of floating upside down pyramid. Walking down the slope to the black structure I look up at the pyramid. It feels as if the whole monstrosity will fall down any moment, but it won't, at least not now. I take out another potion and drink it in one go. Except for the sound of the ravaging storm wind, the whole area is submerged in absolute silence.

    Walking closer to the structure, I find a wide staircase leading down into the darkness. Taking out both swords, I grip their pommels tighter and start walking down the staircase. With each step the whole area becomes darker and darker, until there comes a point when the darkness consumes everything and the world submerges into absolute silence. I continue my descend and after several more minutes I start hearing a quiet whisper somewhere behind me.

    I stop and drink another mana potion, increasing the speed of the mana circulation into my head, but keeping the heartbeat as stable as possible. Breathing the stale and heavy air in deeply, the whisper slowly starts disappearing, as if they haven't been there from the very beginning. My jaws creek, the teeth grind against each other and I scowl, as I come very close to the critical point.

Right after the voices come the hallucinations.

There's no one with me to wake me up. I could've met my end.

    I resume my descent deeper and deeper into the darkness, and even though there is absolutely no light anymore, I still am able to see the stairs and wall. After another dozen minutes of walking, I see the stairs end and an absolute, endless darkness begins. As soon as I step off the last step I find myself in a room so enormous that even its approximate size couldn't be estimated.

    Even though there isn't a single speck of light in here, there is sound. The sound of an uncountable number of objects grinding against each other, like ants deep inside of the colony. Soon, my eyes adjust to the darkness and I find myself standing on a small cliff, and making several steps forward, I look down into the deep, nearly endless pit. A few moment later my eyes adjust even more, and I find the whole floor of the enormous pit is moving, as if the waves of an ocean, but looking closer I find the texture of waves different, more granular, as if made out of solid objects rather than liquid. The sea of objects could be by some mistaken for a sea of bugs, which are crawling over each other like in a pit of snakes, but I know that they are neither snakes nor bugs.

As if by a queue, all the tiny creatures turn in my direction.

Millions upon millions of skeletons, all of them rattling their bones in absolute hatred at the intruder. Different sizes and forms, from what could be described as normal, two meter tall human skeleton, to ones several times that size, with three pairs of arms and horns. But the rattling and movement suddenly stops, and the room returns into absolute silence for several long seconds.

    One by one, lights start shining deep in the pit, mostly green and blue with rare few red ones. The whole floor starts shining, lighting up the whole endless pit, as if lit on fire. Soon all the rattling changes and is replaced with high pitched screeching.

Liches.

Not the feral ones, no, a different kind, the ancient ones, the true Liches.
They all start screeching louder as thick black fluid drips out of their eye sockets, mouth, and chest. The next instant, all of the screeching stops and millions of Liches jump into action, moving nothing like the feral ones, no, these ones move like puppets, not limited by the structure of their bodies, their limbs move in all direction. Millions of Liches start crawling up the wall in one single direction, mine.

They all serve one being.

I gulp down all five flasks left in one go, and send the chaotic mana circulating to levels I have never known before. I should've controlled my body, controlled the blood pressure and mana circulation, but all of it is lost and forgotten as a deep inhuman roar escapes me and explodes throughout the pit.

The last time I was in place like this, I lost more than half of my Brothers, and received that accursed scar.

All of the colors invert as I leap at the enemies.

Now it's my turn.


Lucy, I'm home.

Chapter Twenty-four
Table of Contents
Chapter Twenty-six