Agni watched as the black crystal wolf was being frozen alive and smiled triumphantly when it fell on the golden ground, not moving anymore.
“I meant it when I said that I was going to kill you, stupid dog”
He was very pleased with himself and would have been gloating in front of the dead beast a little longer if not suddenly remembering his broken sword. His wound was also hurting so much that he could barely stand on the ground. Agni sit down leaning on the sparkling sapphire tree trunk and pressed his palm on his chest. After concentrating a bit, a snowflake tattoo on his palm flickered a few times before starting to emit cold air. It slowly spread over his wound and formed a light red, from mixing with a blood, ice layer. As for the other wound on the shoulder – it wasn’t serious so he just let it be as it was.
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t have any healing powers. I can only depend on my little knowledge of human body to make it heal a little faster.”
Agni gazed at his palm with a complicated expression, where a blue snowflake resided. It was something that allowed ordinary people to use a power, commonly called ‘magic’.
To start from the beginning, people who can travel to other worlds through the passages connecting them are called ‘gate travelers’. Basically, they are people who can sense the worldly essence and therefore use it. They can easily find gates anywhere in the world whether it is a common rock near the road or a lake in the countryside. It’s because a tremendous amount of worldly essence is used to open and maintain the gates. That amount is so big that even a complete newbie not having any knowledge of the subject or having a little talent in this area can easily pinpoint the exact location of the nearby gates. That being said, just sensing worldly essence doesn’t make one a gate traveler. Even though the passage created by world spirits are pretty safe, going through it without any preparations is just a death wish. People would just get smashed in the meat paste before even reacting, because of the terrifying pressure brought by a space. So going from one world to the other one requires being able to mold a worldly essence around oneself to make a shield, because it counters a space pressure. If it wasn’t so, all worlds would have been already broken into countless pieces from the said space force long ago. Luckily, worldly essence covers every planet and nothing can happen to them, unless the world spirit dies or some extremely powerful expert decides that some planet should disappear.
As for ‘mages’, they are something above gate travelers. Gate travelers can use the worldly essence to help them to go from world to world, but that’s it. Other than defending from a space pressure, worldly essence doesn’t have any other properties. The mages, on the other hand, are the gate travelers who after many years of meddling with a worldly essence or simply having a better talent, can gain an insight in it which makes them to be able to change this energy to their desired element. For example, a human who understands all principles behind a fire and who has a good control over the worldly essence, can use it to stimulate a reaction required for fire to appear. This human then with a bit of practice can use a fire however he wants. The same goes for a healing magic. It just doesn’t require an understanding of fire, but a detailed knowledge of a body anatomy. It can be used to stimulate the regeneration of the dead cells, healing whatever wound one wants on a human, animal or even a plant. However only a few have such a knowledge and even fewer are able to apply it for a magic uses. It’s because not everyone is talented, hardworking and the most importantly – has access to required knowledge.
When speaking of magic, it is must to mention that every magic performed by different people differs by an attack power or healing power, efficiency, mental power consumption, appearances… That’s why ranking system was created to be able to compare these sometimes so opposite one from another magics. From the lowest to highest it’s a Mortal, Earth, Heaven, Star and God level magic. Of course it doesn’t mean that the person using Heaven grade magic will absolutely win if fighting with a person using Mortal grade magic. What concludes the fight will be the combat experience and the magic manipulation ability. For example, human who was using his Mortal level magic for a decades is definitely superior to the one who was using his Earth, Heaven, Star or even a God tier magic for a week. But it’s on the other way, if there’s no such a huge gap between experiences in a magic manipulation. One thing is for sure – the higher grade your magic is, the bigger its growing possibilities are. Of course, as mentioned above, to get a higher grade magic one has to have a required knowledge which not everyone has an access to, tremendous talent and a very hardworking mindset, because lazy people usually cannot perform even the slightest bit of magic even when their lifespans are at their end.
After a few hours Agni’s wound has stabilized and it didn’t hurt as much as previously. He was a bit angry on himself to not be able to avoid a wound, but this anger immediately dissipated after seeing his beloved in such a wretched state. He stood up and silently picked the pieces of a sword, and after seeing them for a last time, he resolutely buried them in a golden ground.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“I was stupid to not use magic from the start. It was also my fault to recklessly charge into the battle, instead of avoiding that.”
He sighed while gazing at his beloved sword grave. He seemingly realized that he could have used his magic when the battle started, avoiding breaking his sword and being injured. But he didn’t do so. In fact, any experienced fighter would also do the same, because using magic for the first time brought many unknowns. He just got it from the world spirit as a present, but hadn’t had the chance to use it. What if his magic was too weak to even scratch the surface of the beast? Or if his magic was so strong that it could harm not only that beast, but the magic user too? Or maybe if he was too concentrated to cast magic and didn’t notice how the beast was already before him, ready to bite him to death. There were too many ‘ifs’ to take the risk.
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Agni was already walking through this gemstone land for a day. Evening was coming and he was starting to get worried. Through the whole day of traveling between these flickering, glittering and almost blinding trees, there were still no human activity signs, if this world was populated at all. His food reserves had also decreased from pitifully small, to almost negligible amount. Not forgetting his depleting water reserves, which just couldn’t be filled up, because apparently, there was no such thing as water in this world. Or he just hadn’t spotted any water source since starting his travels on this planet. However he thought – it was the worst situation he could get in.
Since killing the black wolf, he has met many similar beasts. They just were smaller, weaker, slower and dumber than the first one. Agni killed them all without too much difficulty by using his ice magic. But he understood that controlling it to do more complicated things was impossible, as just making his ice sword was hard enough for him. It was also tiring, not physically, but mentally. He felt like his brain was swollen and just thinking about something made his head hurt.
Despite these things, Agni had to go forward, because there was a hope to find something. He didn’t exactly know what to expect. Humans? Or maybe some other race, only mentioned in the legends, like famous elves. Or maybe a residence of a rich god who owns this luxurious world. Either way, he would be fine with anything if he got to fill his stomach and drink as much water as he wants. Of course, he always thinks like that, but after filling his stomach once, he ventures to some uninhabited planet once again, until his food reserves disappear.
Luckily, there had been no dangerous beasts like the first one anymore. Only weak ones. Agni speculated that the black wolf was probably the king of these smaller wolves. Maybe there were more of these kings of the black wolves, but Agni rather not fight them anymore. He loved fighting and hated seeing someone being stronger than him, but deep in the heart he knew that fighting with them more would just result in injuries and maybe a death.
Just like this he was walking and thinking various things to lift his boredom, because after walking for a day the beasts he encountered and could kill had dwindled to the point where he couldn’t even see one in the past two hours.
Finally, after the only sun in the sky settled, he decided to rest. It wouldn’t be good to continue walking with his weary mind, least he accidentally walked into the tree. He thought like that while gazing at the night sky. It was the first time he saw it. The last time he was too tired after venturing a Snow Graveyard, so much that didn’t have any mood to gaze at the stars. What kind of views he hadn’t seen – he thought. And he was awfully wrong. This kind of sky he definitely hadn’t ever seen in his whole life.
Three moons hung above him like a gods overseeing the mortal realm. One of them, the white and the biggest one was right in the center of the sky, as if declaring that it was the mightiest one. The other, on the other hand, was like weak sister hiding behind her mighty brother, being blue in color, smaller and positioned behind the white moon. As for the third, it was like a once strongest emperor, who ruled the whole universe and whose word mattered the most. But now it was injured, bleeding from the wound, inflicted by an enemy who suddenly attacked him. It was floating near the horizon and emitting a piercing cold, bloody red color. This moon once was gigantic planet, now, however, only third of it was left. The other two thirds looked like they were gnawed out by an unimaginably big and powerful creature. Or like a remnants of the two powerful experts fight.
Around these three moons there were an unimaginable amount of small stars, flickering endlessly. There were green, blue, white, red and violet stars, which seemed like a precious gems, that the moons owned. Or like a spectators of their life. They painted the whole sky with different colors, making it seem like an art piece.
Agni just stood there, fascinated by the view. It was the first time he saw something like that. But he suddenly felt extremely uncomfortable. He was like an ant, witnessing the giant fight. Unworthy and weak. This feeling was strange and foreign to him and he felt weird. Agni realized at that moment that he was lacking in everything. And he didn’t want to be like this. He wanted to be able to gaze at the sight and say to the moons and creature who almost destroyed the whole third moon – you are just a flies in my mind, not worthy of my time. He wanted to be the strongest. Then even searching for his memories would be piece of cake.
Agni slowly retracted his eyes from the sky, now filled with resolution. Even if this dream was laughable, he was sure that one day it will become the truth.
Then he noticed something. Far in the distance, there were a faint lights. They were very far away, but Agni could see a rough outline of a city, illuminated by these lights. Only now he realized, that he came out of the sapphire tree forest. He was really too drawn in by the view above him.