A week passed, and everything went back to normal.
Well, mostly.
I’m now on a carriage to the nearest teleport hub, where Niten and I could easily reach Silver Academy, as there was another rune there connecting the two places.
As for the whole menstruation thing, well, I went straight to Aunt Aspasia, and she calmed me down.
It was kinda odd, knowing that she’s the empress of the elves, but still willing to advise me on the ...finer points of the female body.
Also part of the reason I calmed down so quickly was a fact that she told me— Elves only have to go through this once a year, unlike humans, who deal with the pain every single month.
I don’t know what’ll happen to me, with my mixed blood, but I think that I should lean more towards the elven side on this. Or, I hope I will.
And then there’s that title I gained.
〖Immortal〗.
It gives me an infinite lifespan, but only if I don’t die from warfare, diseases, or stupid mistakes. It says I’ll stop aging as soon as I reach adulthood, growing at a slower pace until then. However, there’s a small problem with that.
When’s adulthood?
Is the metric the age of the body? The mind?
I’ll be in serious trouble if it’s maturity of the mind. I mean, I’ve lived five lives before this, adding up to about seventy years of experience. To human standards, I’m almost an elder.
And my mindset is likely many years older than that, due to the many things I’ve seen, lived through, and died from.
But then, if it’s the body, then how long will I have until reaching adulthood? How slowly will I age?
This title just brings too many questions along with it. When I used〖Analyze〗on it, I got some more information, though not as much as I wanted.
This title was gained through the intermingling of two powerful bloodlines, resulting in a more perfect being. Many of the other holders of this title gained it through the partial mastery of magic.
All it told me was why I had the title, and how others could get it. Not every useful for me, who was having a small crises over other things.
In the end, it looked like I would just have to wait to see what happens.
The teleport hub was filled with elves and merchandise moving all over the place, being shuttled from building to building.
There were five such hubs in the empire, and most of them had capital city's built up around them with the various royals deciding to take advantage of the wealth passing through these areas.
There were teleport hubs in the other continents as well, with the whole system forming a complex web across the seas. Though, the teleport hubs leading into and out of the demon continent are strictly monitored, for obvious reasons.
Our little carriage, with only Niten and I occupying it and the imperial insignia painted on it, was sent to the front of a line traveling to a town near the school. I stayed inside the carriage the entire time, keeping my head down to avoid any issues, while Niten handled the finicky things like verifying the number of people traveling and paying for the transport.
When it was our turn, we were ushered into a warehouse style building, with a large stone arch standing in the center of it.
The arch was made of a white quarried stone, and had runes carved into it, then filled back in with a special red clay. This connected it to another gate somewhere else, folding the space in between them through a type of advanced astrophysics.
Well, I say this, but it’s just a pet theory developed after hearing Niten’s description of the gates. The truth is that no one knows how to make them anymore. There was once an attempt to study one of the gates but it ended in disaster, with a large amount of space around that gate and it’s counterpart on the other side of the space fold having exploded, vaporizing two small cities.
After that, people were completely content with not knowing how the gates worked.
Going through the gate was somewhat disconcerting, not because of any odd sensation from being transported over a distance that would take the better part of a year to cross, but rather the lack thereof.
You stepped through the gate, and boom, you were in a completely new place, with no other indication that anything had happened. This made something as profound as teleportation feel profoundly...ordinary.
Like walking through a normal door.
On the other side, we exited into another warehouse building, one every similar to the one we had just left. This added to the illusion that we hadn’t actually gone anywhere, though on closer inspection you would notice things like how the warehouse was made of a darker wood, and had subtle differences in architecture.
Outside the warehouse, the fact that we had just traveled thousands of kilometers in a single moment sunk in. The warehouse had a good sized village around it, with half the buildings in the village being inns, for those who had gone through the gate late at night.
Off in the distance, I could see a large city though the carriage window. This was Offenheim, where the Silver Academy had been established.
It would take the rest of the day to reach it, and then we would rent some inn rooms, and go to the academy the next morning to register me for my class.
Until then, I get to sit in this carriage, and watch as the landscape rolls past.
The rest of the day's going to be rather boring.
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In a remote and mostly undiscovered dungeon residing in the middle of the Grey Fang mountain range, found in the very northern reaches of the Human continent, an intense battle was unfolding.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Three high level monsters from the dungeon squared off against a single figure, who was so tall that he might have been mistaken as a monster himself.
The man was encased in crude looking armor, battered and scored deeply in places. If you looked closely though, you would notice that even though it was crude looking, and fashioned out of what looked to be iron, the workmanship in the armor had reached a fantastic level of practicality, allowing the man to move easily and attack as if the extra weight wasn’t even present.
The three monsters he faced certainly required a full range of motion.
There was one hydra standing at a good two and a half meters tall, and two lesser wyrms, all clad in black scales capable of repelling all but the best of strikes the man threw. Every time they clashed, sparks would fly from the man’s greatsword, which was equally as battered and battle-scarred as his armor.
Every now and then, a low blue flame would appear on the sword, able to literally cut through the scales. Whenever he used it though, he would visibly tire, his movements just that much more sluggish and weak. On other end of the scale, the blood pool on the ground also grew larger with every successful strike.
For nearly an hour, these four combatants played a deadly game of cat and mouse, where the man would dodge blows from three directions, and send retaliatory strikes every now and then.
Eventually, one of the wyrms fell, it’s tubular body pierced and it’s massive heart cut in two.
Before the second one fell, the hydra lost two of it’s four heads, and then lost the other two soon after the remaining wyrm fell in a similar manner to the first.
Exhausted, the man fell to the ground, removing his sweat soaked helm and exposing fiery red hair sheared short, and a well trimmed beard the same color. A ropy and relatively new looking scar stretched across his nose, and went all the way to his right ear, or the half that was still left.
He grinned slightly, and murmured under his breath.
(Hogvir) “Finally reached hundred and fifty, eh. Took me long enough.”
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In a hastily constructed structure, a certain group of powerful men were meeting, their attention focused on a massive rune drawn into the hard-packed ground. A separate group of powerful magicians were feeding their mana into the circular rune, which had begun to glow softly, gently lighting the interior of the one-roomed building.
(King Raleigh) “Are you sure this will work, Archmage?”
(Archmage Raeson) “Absolutely. I have records of it being used before.”
(High General Savant) “What can we even expect from the thing? You haven’t told us anything beyond that ‘it will bring being of power to our aid.’”
(Pope Nicholas) “I agree. While I trust you completely, old friend, I feel that it’s high time of all the mystery to be unveiled.”
The archmage nodded, and with the circle itself glowing ever brighter in the background, he explained it’s functions.
(Archmage Raeson) “Well, to put it simply, this ruin teleports people who have both great power, and willingness to help us to our realm. It chooses seven such individuals, and passes them through the world veils—Which should give them some unique abilities. If they're lucky, then one or two of them might be blessed by a god on the way here.”
As soon as he finished the explanation, the luminosity of the circle grew exponentially, and reached a peak. The whole room seemed to shake from the sheer amount of mana pumping through the circle at that moment. It reached a crescendo, and faded, leaving seven people standing in the middle of the circle.
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(POV: ???)
I’d felt that tugging sensation once before.
Like that other time, I hadn’t been doing anything particularly important—at least not on the cosmological scale.
No, the first time I had felt it, I was only taking the SATs, and was brought to this world along with six of my classmates.
And now, I’m in the middle of my own execution, condemned by the five remaining classmates. I think it was divine intervention, you know, preventing me from dying by forcibly transferring me to another world.
Though, this time, I’ll make sure the entire party survives, if it’s the whole ‘summon the heroes!’ thing again.
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(POV ???)
What!? Someone actually dares to summon the great and powerful me?!
Ha!
They’ll learn that summoning a grand necromancer comes at a price!
Should I have them pay me in sweets and chocolate? Or should I leave as soon as I arrive, to go wandering?
I recall that interesting man once mentioning reading something where that happened—Hero is summoned, then refuses to help!
Hehe. I think I’ll have a little fun with my summoners….
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(POV ???)
NO! I can’t go yet! I still haven’t avenged him!
Don’t take me from this world!
Bastards! I was nearly there!
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Watching those pitifully small people summoned into their vast and beautiful world, The gods decided to take a little action, and get a little more involved in affairs.
They’ve been so terribly bored in the past few thousand millennium...
They brought the would-be heroes into their realm for a brief moment, to have a little chat with some of the more interesting ones.
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