“Welcome to Avalon, traveler
On behalf of the council of fae; I, Vex, the dark fairy, as one of the administrators, I welcome you to the island of miracles.
You have been summoned here by the consciousness of Avalon, and granted the authority of Avalon.
I have written your current status on the back and gave you some of your essential calling equipment.
I wish you good luck in Avalon.”
***
“What are you training for, ____? You know there is no point to it, we can’t do anything anyway. We only have five years left, just indulge yourself and enjoy what little time we have left.”
The sun had set a long time ago, but ____ is still swinging his sword. Brad can’t fathom why his best friend likes to train in swordsmanship so much. There is no point to it, the devils use every sentient being at the age of twenty for the rituals to awaken their so-called ‘Savior’ who will bring the end of this world, or so they say. Brad doesn’t care about it that much. Many people had tried to resist them but they had failed miserably.
“I know, Brad. But I just can’t stomach surrendering our self like that. There are still lots of things that I haven’t done yet.” ____ continued swinging his sword in the air. Brad wondered why the devils even gave them a sword to train with. Maybe healthy sacrifice makes their savior awaken sooner. The devils gave them almost everything they want, except freedom. Food, liquor, and all sort of entertainment. One has to wonder who cook for them if all of them are lazing around doing nothing.
“That’s why you should stop training and do the stuff you want to do.” People their age already satisfy their carnal desires to the extent that he thinks it’s too much.
“But five years won’t be enough…”
“…That’s why they called you a weirdo. Then I can’t do anything but spar with you now, can I? Just swinging your sword in the air won’t take you anywhere, ____” Brad picks up his sword. Even though it is pointless, he couldn’t hate people who won’t give up. ‘But maybe this is the reason that they are friends’ he thought.
***
“This is the tenth time this month, Mary. You should already know that I won’t take any disciple, ever”
“Archmage ____! Please just take me as your disciple!” Mary shouted while on prostrating herself.
____ glanced at the young girl in front of his laboratory. For the past six months she has been pestering him nonstop, causing him and his lab fairy headaches.
____ sighed. “With your current level of magic, you can ask Aron and Cassie to teach you, though Cassie specializes in demonic rituals. Their rank is higher than me.”
“But that’s because you holed up in your laboratory for the last fifteen years. Besides everyone knows that you are the most powerful magus in the empire!” Tears start welling up in Mary's eyes. “Please master ____, you are the only one who accepted my theory. Every other mage still believes that mana is a gift from God, I won’t get anywhere studying with them.”
“How should I deal with you I wondered.” He grumbled. It’s a wonderful news that there is finally someone interested in his theory, ‘mana is just another form of energy, like heat and electricity’ which mages seem to hate so much that some of them even tried to brand him a heresy, though not as bad as when he announced the fruit of his research, ‘All form of magic, weapon aura, priest spells, and divinity is just energy and magic system is just a preference, all it does is transforming energy.’. That one almost got him killed by sword saints and the church, and this time the church truly declared him a heresy. Stills he doesn’t want to take in a disciple personally, his research has so much left undiscovered.
***
“This week harvest isn’t going well huh?” Jack looked outside the window, only to see the sea raging.
“Of course. Which idiot is going to set sail in a weather like this?”
“Well, I guess we are the idiot then.” Jack took a sip out of his almost empty glass of ale. Their freshwater is running out but oddly they still have enough liquor to go on for months.
“Did you just realize that? Why did I even listen to your suggestion of becoming a pirate in the chaos sea”
“Hey! I preferred the word ‘fishermen’; it’s just that we fish for people instead. And it pays well doesn’t it?”
“Only criminals on the run or merchants who want to cut the cost would use this route so of course, it is profitable. Just one target and we could live in luxury for months”
The siren rang. A man wearing a black sailor uniform entered the cabin.
“What happened, Theodore?” _______ asked.
“Corrupted Seafolk. Lots of them” Theodore picked up his harpoon from the cartographer table.
“Goddamnit.” Jack cursed. “And their meat tasted terrible too.”
“You ate them!?! They are called corrupted for a reason!”
“That time the jerky ran out so…….”
“Get your gear ready. This time they also brought the Kraken.” Theodore started loading his beloved revolver, which has killed over ten tribes of Seafolk. ‘The fish slayer’ named by the one and only idiotic Jack.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“At least this time I can make some dried squid.” Jack started skipping out of the cabin in delight.
“With this weather they would get soaked instead.”
***
“The light chosen one, even if you kill me there is nine of my kind left, humanity shall fall into our hand.” said demon lord Venur, the self-proclaimed natural disaster and the lord of this world.
“Yeah, yeah demon still have secret weapon blah blah blah. The last four I killed said the same stuff so I know the drills. Now I should say ‘No matter what, humanity will persist!’”. The chosen one replied, clearly bored out of his mind.
“WHAT!!! Four have fallen?”
“Nope, five. You’re the fifth one.” he said as he stabbed his ‘holy sword’ into the demon lord chest. The demon lord screamed in agony before dispersing into black mists.
The chosen one doesn’t think the demon lords are threats anymore. The demon lord may be evil, but they are evil openly. He fears the conflict between empires more. Humans aren’t born good as the church said. They leaned toward the evil.
Even the holy church is so corrupted, from what he had heard they have considered declaring the sword king as the eleventh demon lord because he is going to convert his country to the new order. He also has been getting threat letters from the higher up of the empire almost twice a week and his companions had tried so hard to rope him in for their country that he had to disbanded the team.
Sighing to himself, the chosen one continued his quest to eradicate all evils from this world, although he seems to fail miserably at eradicating the one in human hearts.
***
“Lich _______! I have come to slay you for killing Catherine and laying waste to my kingdom!”
_______ glanced at his unwanted visitor. They have been visiting him more often ever since he did some pest control last decade.
“Dear visitor, did you know that the concept of door has been invented for thousands of years? Damn it, why don’t any of you use the front door, I had repaired my wall six times this week. I even made the front door big enough that it can fit a fully grown dragon.” _______ complained. Since his wall was engraved with runes, the dwarfs charge him a fortune for it, those scammers don’t learn their lessons if he doesn’t use them as research materials once or twice a decade.
“I, the chosen one of the goddess of life Naie, have come to punish you, pay for your sins with your life!” The hero and his party charges into _______’s room.
“Holy armor!”, the priest chanted his spell.
“Flame pillar!”
“Rune element : Holy.”
The visitor started preparing for battle, one after another.
“Well, well. Looks like I just got some more test subjects huh? Great I was running out of them, but now I can continue my research.” With a sweep of his hand, the lich activated the castle magic circle.
“Shadow bind.”
Shadows underneath the ‘test subjects’ start wriggling, turning into jet black chains binding them. The ‘test subjects’ tried to break out of their binding, but to no avail, after all the spell may share the same name as the elementary binding spell ‘Shadow bind’ but it is something else entirely. The spell was recreated carefully by the genius lich _______, making the spell completely restrict the victim freedom and also dispel any other buff weaker than those that the gods cast themselves.
“Take them to experiment 05.”
His faithful undead servant, formerly ‘visitors’, carried out his command carrying the ‘test subjects’.
“Now I have to repair the wall again.” The lich grumbled.
***
”Arghh. My heads…”, he groaned. Waking up from what seems to be a really deep sleep, he rose unsteadily. Looking around he found out that he doesn’t know where he is. Did Jack dump him in the middle of nowhere again?
No, that’s not it. He remembers that he was dealing with the unwanted guests. But he also recalled that he was on the way to slay the demon lord Vastis.
Trying to deal with a mess that is his memories, he tried to calm down and grabbed the letter lying on the ground.
Avalon? What does it mean by status? Flipping the letter, he found a table written on the back.
_____________ Race Undead Calling Necromancer Job Unselected Unselected Crest Stage 0 [Unawaken]
Undead? He stared at the table before trying to circulate his mana. He can circulate mana just fine but his circuit is a mess. Absorption is fine, manifesting weapon aura would take time, and look like his heart isn’t beating or neither is his lung working.
He doesn’t mind being an undead, at least he isn’t a skeleton, his time as a lich has taught him how valuable the flesh body is. His memory is a jumbled up, only some events can be recalled and looks like foreign memories are also mixed in.
Who is he? The lich? The chosen one? Sword saint? Pirate? Archmage? He can’t recall his name either. He checked his body, his hair dyed jet black, eyes as red as a ruby, and pale white skin, the norm for an undead. A black flamed shaped crest on his right hand.
His surrounding is a vast plain, with a mountain about sixty kilometers to the right and a forest about twenty kilometers in front of him. ‘Where am I?’, he thought, only to be interrupted by a robotic sound.
Crest authority activated
Crest? he looks at the flame-shaped crest on his right hand, the crest glowing red, and radiating mana. It must be activated when he circulated mana.
Stage 1 Awakened : Aseperiot, the All-Seeing eyes. Augmenting user eyes, granting them the ability to see all realms. For example mana, souls, heat, vector, elementals and spirits. Spells related with eyes will be absorbed by the crest then empowered by Aseperiot.
His vision suddenly expanded, filled with colors that shouldn’t be perceivable by human eyes, well he is an undead but it still shouldn’t be perceivable.
Mana? The colors sway like the wind. Some seem like a raging fire and some seem tranquil like a pool of water. The colors pour towards his body, getting absorbed.
Focusing his eyes, the vision changes entirely. Instead of seeing the wonderful colors, he sees the shades of red and blue. From what he had heard from the voice, it seems to signified temperature. Then again, the vision changes, this time the world is full of lines and arrows. The lines direct how the wind blows and how the critters will move.
He tried to control the visions, only for them to changes rapidly making him dizzy. After about an hour, he seems to be able to control it a little.
After his visions returned to normal, he ponders. What is the crest? Authority? What does that mean? And why did it grant him the eye? Who is he? And how did he end up here? From the letter, it looks like he had been summoned to this place called Avalon, from the sound of it, there should be some people here. He will try to acquire any information if he encounters one.
The letter doesn’t mention his name, and he can’t recall it either, but he can’t not have a name either, he will call himself Flama for now, signifying the word ‘Flame’, from the shape of the crest on his left hand. He will use the name if he ever encounters another sentient being.
In the sky, the sun is setting, he has been hearing the sound of beasts for a while.
Circulating his mana, augmenting his leg. He set out to find another sentient being, and possibly any sign of civilization.