Mash sat with Igan and the others after the test. There weren’t any tables set out, but Igan did give everyone some strange fruity drink. It was oddly purple and made his tongue feel a little weird as he drank it. They didn’t sit in silence, and Luke had asked about his shirt. Nobody commented on the test answers yet though, and that question would lead them there. That didn’t stop Mash, and he told Luke the truth. He was also loud enough that the others could hear.
It opened the conversation up, and they began discussing the test more openly. They talked about their answers. Mash had to explain some of his reasoning, but the nodded once he kind of explained his thoughts. They all had similar answers if written in odd ways. Red and Luke had written down what he had initially wanted for the first question. But it felt like they had just gone for a straightforward answer. Jill’s answers were a little different, but they weren’t unexpected. For the first, she had described that god thing that had tortured her, and she had just drawn an arrow pointing upward for the second question. Jill’s hatred for that monster was complete. She had explained what had happened to her, although Mash couldn’t actually imagine it.
Mash and Jill had answered genuinely even if they were odd. On the other hand, Red and Luke felt like they wrote the correct answers. Not in that anyone could be wrong, but just that they did what was expected of them. It didn’t seem to matter to Igan. He spoke butting his way into the conversation rather than letting them drag on.
“You will have time to talk later. We should move on to some of the more important information. Nothing I tell you will be any major secret, but I believe that some of the information will come as a surprise to you all.”
Igan’s way of speaking still felt odd to Mash. It felt like he was shifting between two different people. The annoying and pompous Fifty-One and the more casual Igan that sat before them now collided as he spoke. Not something to comment on.
“Levels predate the class system. It is also known that it was a choice at one point. Not all people would level, some would reject it. The same was true of the class system. The current world owner isn’t the creator of either, though they had changed it. Made it so than everyone got a class and levels.”
Igan continued, and his words changed. They felt less like a statement of fact. Slowly, the information turned in to something like a story. Igan spoke of a time when the world was imbalanced. When only a handful of individuals had classes or levels. The tale was unbelievable. Mash couldn’t even imagine what that would be like. Igan talked about how the current world was just based on the old one. Kings were kings because of their class and little else. Even now a person would need a class to have the position. None of it made any sense, and Mash had a thought wiggle its way into his mind.
“How old are you? I mean, were you alive back then?”
It had taken him a while to understand his thoughts. His question came out the moment it clicked. Igan talked about the world like he had lived in it. There was no way, right? The man hadn’t been smiling as he told the story. But that changed with Mash’s question. Igan tried to give Mash a smile although a strained one. One that gave him an answer without any words. Everyone went silent at the realization. It lingered for a while, even after Igan said his goodbyes and left. He told them that they were free to explore the city if they wanted and told them that they couldn’t enter the higher floor of the towers.
None of them bothered exploring the city. They just sat and watched Igan as he left the room. It took a while for them to process the story. It wasn’t the secret they had been expecting, but it was well worth the investment. The information wouldn’t make them stronger or anything. But it was important. More important than something that just gave them power. Mash’s understanding of the world had changed again. He didn’t know if it changed anything, but he thought that it should. At the very least it had affected what he thought about the world owner. He had assumed that all world owners were these all-powerful beings. That they were the strongest in the world. Igan’s story told otherwise.
The current world owner had replaced the previous. Mash imagined that there was only one way to do that. No. He consciously stopped that line of thinking. And he didn’t let that assumption remain. He had made more than a few stupid assumptions and stopped himself. Maybe, the previous world owner had left, or relinquished their position. Maybe they just lost their position. Igan’s tale would imply that he lived through more than one world owner, and that was enough for him. It probably meant that the world owner wasn’t the strongest or oldest. It was just a position and one that could be taken or lost.
Again, that changed what he thought of the still mysterious world owner. Mash wanted to meet them, but this organization didn’t seem like it would actually do it. Igan had said that they supported the world owner, not that they knew them. They knew of the person and some of their exploits. But that was the extent of their relationship. According to Igan, this group acted for the betterment of the world as a whole. Their group just believed that the current world owner acted in their best interests as well. Mash wasn’t so certain about that. But that uncertainty only made him desire a meeting. What he wouldn’t give to know what it meant to be a world owner.
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He owned a world, but he didn’t think he qualified as a proper world owner. Then he paused and reconsidered that thought. If a world owner wasn’t decided by power or age, what made someone a world owner? Why wouldn’t he be considered one? Those questions had some rather heavy implications, and he got the sudden urge to check on his world. He was the owner, regardless of whether he was like the others. And he had been neglecting his world, only using it to escape from his own problems.
He had left one of Priscilla’s bodies there to run things, but that wasn’t the same thing. He wished he could check with Priscilla, but that wasn’t possible. She only got information when the two worlds were connected. The same thing prevented him from communicating with his siblings when he was in a dungeon. The others were seated running through their own thoughts. Mash opened the portal to his own world.
“Let’s go. We can talk inside.”
The biggest benefit of his having his own world was this. A safe and secure place to talk about whatever they wanted to. The value of that could not be understated. Mash entered his portal first. He didn’t have to tell Priscilla to get information. She could read his intentions and start as soon as he stepped inside. He let her do that and turned towards the others as they entered.
“Red, who is Igan?”
“Whose Igan?”
The question didn’t just come from his mouth. Luke asked the same question as he entered. Luke had recognized the name but hadn’t known much else. Jill was looking at Red with just as much curiosity. Red sighed but answered their prodding gazes.
“Igan Wyrmin, otherwise known as Igan of the Scorched Lands was a famous soldier. And I don’t mean famous ten or a hundred years ago. I mean famous a thousand years ago. He was a soldier on another continent as well. The southeastern continent of Fira. I’m fairly certain that the continent was named after him. Well, his king. Igan wasn’t a simple soldier, but a direct vassal to the King of Flames.”
That was a name that Mash had recognized. Although, he only knew of the king of flames for a single reason. He had conquered his entire continent and started to destroy foreign ones. He was the first and last king to try that. A cruel one if Mash remembered the story correctly. The King of Flames didn’t seek to conquer. He simply destroyed the land he invaded. Forced people into slavery and burned the land as he moved. An impressive story for sure, and now Mash had an idea of how Igan got his name. Red wasn’t done though.
“Most people know the King of Flames, but only nobles would be bothered learning about a common soldier. Even if he was one of the biggest contributors to the King’s rise. Either way, Igan was well known for a single action. He didn’t get his name from burning the lands oversea, though I'm sure he did that too. No, he got his name from something he did at home. The King of Flames only faced one real challenge when he united his home. The Kingdom of a Dozen Sands had opposed him last, and they had more than enough mercenaries to fend off the king for years if needed. Although, they were defeated by a single man. A simple soldier, who should’ve earned much more attention.”
Red introduced many names that Mash didn’t recognize. A kingdom, he didn’t know, on a continent, he didn’t care about. The next thing she brought up, he did recognize though.
“Igan had never given the Kingdom the chance to fight back. To utilize all the mercenaries, they had paid for. Igan destroyed it with a single attack. The story claimed that he brought the sundown. Scorched the kingdom and torched the lands until even the desert began to melt. Lava flooded the lands, and only fire monsters remained. Igan of the Scorched Lands received his name from creating the famous lava fields of Firas.”
That was something he knew. The open-mouthed stare on Luke’s face said that he recognized it as well. Jill still seemed confused, but he didn’t explain it. he just thought about what that meant. The lava fields were just that. Rivers of lava and melted stone had drawn powerful monsters to it. People even claimed that dragons would land there. To hear that a human made it was amazing. Although what he found odd was that he could believe it. He was beginning to understand what people from his world could accomplish. Turning a desert into a lava swamp didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility. Although that alone would mean that Igan had lived for five hundred years. He did wonder why Red knew so much, and why he hadn’t heard the name before. While he wasn’t the best at history, a person like Igan should not be unknown.
“Where did you learn all that?”
“I learned it at home. Back when I still wanted to live up to the family. I think most notable families teach their children about the powerful people in the world. Especially those on other continents. Most normal wouldn’t care though. They would never meet someone like that. Especially not anymore. The world no longer lets people like that fight normally. They get teleported to another space to fight with other people at their level. It happened with the demons.”
“Oh yeah. I do remember that.”
Mash nodded along as he remembered what she meant. Although he knew that even that system was flawed. It temporarily stopped high-level people from destroying the world, but they were free to do it outside of a fight. The high-leveled demon that he had fought had nearly destroyed a city. And the king had killed every single demon when he rejoined the battle. The world delayed the destruction. It didn’t stop it. Maybe it couldn’t.