The Goddess was the empress of her dominion, an absolute ruler of Elyund. However, in the eyes of the divine, the heavens are but a speck of dust within the greater cosmos. To be wise is to understand how little one knows, and to be powerful is to understand how weak one is.
The Goddess knew she could not achieve her ultimate goal alone. She would need servants greater than the angels and more importantly, children to impart her legacy and dreams. However, she knew very little about creating the best servants, and even less about parenthood. This would be a long journey, filled with small steps.
One of her first order of creations was the World Beasts, inspired by the primordial dragons that once ruled the land, now dispersed to the four corners of the world, these creatures would protect a singular entity or idea, whether that be a treasure, location, person or ideal.
Amidst the myriad of creatures, only one could claim the title as her child, all others mere servants. The battles were fierce and deadly -- they were expendable after all. In the end, only one World Beast remained. The beast built in the image of mankind, Reginn became the child of blood.
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The hero reminisced his past as a mere machine, a guard dog for humanity. However, ever since he became the child of blood, he took pride in his work, and he would not allow this World Beast to taint the reputation of his kind.
His pupils sharpened like a snake’s and carefully analyzed his opponent. The frantic flow of mana told Reginn that his opponent was not in a clear state of mind. However, panicked or enraged was not the right word, perhaps… passionate? Aroused?
Reginn put the ridiculous thought aside. They were weapons of mass destruction, something strange was happening here. The stranger, clearly a boy from where his mana was flowing, must have triggered a reaction from this one. On a second look, he did indeed have a strange aura…
His train of thought was interrupted by the World Beast slamming its colossal feet at the hero. Sivrit and the stranger were blown away by the force of the impact, rolling them on the floor. Thankfully, they found themselves protected by a thin filament of mana, a translucent blue protecting the two from all damage.
After the wind settled, returning the leaves and dirt to the ground, Sivrit saw that Reginn was still standing his ground, the earth-shattering before him. The hero used both arms to stop the attack but did not seem to struggle, even pushing back against the weight.
Eventually, Reginn threw the weight back at the World Beast, pushing it off balance. The forest quaked and the skies shuddered, but his opponent managed to regain footing. Now it knew exactly what kind of opponent it was facing.
In the short period of contact, Reginn was also able to gather some information about the beast from its mana signatures. Its name was Har-Meggidos and unlike the World Beasts he knew, this one was created by one of his brothers -- Elem.
In his era, Elem was but a young boy fascinated with the creatures of the lands, skies and seas. He was rebellious at times, disagreeing with the Goddess on the value of human life and the life of her servants, but he was still one of the most loyal. As one of the youngest of the children, he wasn’t particularly powerful, but it seems that that has changed in the past two thousand years.
“It’s too bad I’ll have to break one of Elem’s toys,” said Reginn, “I hope he’ll understand”
Reginn gathered the mana from the surrounding area, carefully regarding the two humans in the vicinity. Har-Meggidos could feel the mana rapidly evaporating from his body, and retaliated by launching a massive ball of flame appearing above his raised tail.
The ball of flame was like a small star, illuminating entire mountains and casting harsh, jagged shadows. To Reginn’s surprise, the ball of flame was not born of mana particles, but was a true fireball, meaning that he couldn’t simply disperse the mana with his mana control. This would also damage him greatly.
Though he was sure he would survive, the humans most definitely wouldn’t. He began to convert the accumulated mana into a small ball of concentrated mana, a bomb if you will. It was tightly packed with a Maginn, condensed like a black hole. Reginn shot the spell into the centre of the slowly growing fireball, then activated its conversion.
The spell then enveloped the sphere in a thin filament of mana, then resized into its bullet form. Multiple floating Maginns were formed around it, imitating seals to encapsulate the heat and the fuel. Now with this container, he had full control.
Reginn jumped up onto the beast’s back, then held the small sphere of blaze in his palm. While merely approaching this star would incinerate any other living being, for a World Beast like him, especially to a child of the Goddess, it was no different than a warm bowl of soup.
Atop the beast’s expansive shell, each individual hexagon began floating out of the World Beast. Reginn was amused by this, but not surprised. Every World Beast had a trick or two up its sleeve, lest they face humiliating defeat. To them, being defeated was worse than death, for it is to lose their single purpose in life -- to protect.
The hexagonal drones, each a large floating spikes, began zapping Reginn with powerful lightnings, each causing an ear-piercing thunder. It was the same as last time, true electricity instead of mana-lightning. Elem must’ve created this World Beast with care for him to go above and beyond. With true elemental powers, these attacks would be impossible to block with magical shields. Only specific physical shields would be useful, though they were incredibly rare in his time. Seeing how reliant Har-Meggidos was in using his elemental abilities, they must still be uncommon.
Reginn swiftly blocked the lightning strikes by summoning temporary materials out of thin air -- or more specifically out of atmospheric mana. Of course, it was impossible to create anything with too much mass, but even simple water droplets would be enough to redirect the electricity. The hero opted to create little copper pieces to act as lightning poles to then redirect to the World Beast. However, it seemed that the World Beast was one of the few enemies with total elemental resistance, fitting of a World Beast. Though even with complete immunity, would his insides also be immune?
Har-Meggidos could not do much against such a small and swift opponent. He was used to battling a raid party or at least a group of adventurers, but not a solo warrior like this. However, before he could fully regain his senses, Reginn leaped off from the top of his head after leaving the top of his shell. In his hand Har-Meggidos could see the concentration of flame, blazing with the strength of the sun. Time seemed to move slowly as he realized the implications. But he should be fine with his immunity, right?
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In an instant, Har-Meggidos retreated back into his shell, and the next few seemed like an eternity. However, nothing happened. No explosion, no burning sensation nor the sound of thunder.
“It seems that fear has brought you back to your senses,” said Reginn
Reginn revealed the flame he was hiding within his palms, illuminating the cavern within the World Beast. It was extremely spacious and with the dirt, rocks and a rough surface, it was no different than a common mountain cave. It seemed that the turtle was deeply connected with nature in more ways than one.
“Do you hear me now, World Beast?” said Reginn in a threatening tone, a bomb in his hand.
To Reginn’s relief, it seemed that at least the World Beast seemed to speak Elysdionn.
“I… Are you a World Beast?” exclaimed the turtle monster after a careful reevaluation “I thought I was the only one left in Avangarden!”
“Hm? How come?”
“Well, most of them are dead as they keep precious treasures and the adventurers just keep getting stronger and stronger! Anyhow, my name is Har-Meggidos. It’s great to finally see another of my kind.”
“...Hmph. My name is Reginn, the second hero, the child of blood and the World Beast of Alsland.”
“Alsland… I think I’ve heard of that name before.”
“Perhaps you will remember if you were born more than two thousand years ago similar to me. The only difference is, that I died along with the nation but was resurrected in the present time.”
“I see…”
“...Anyways, what were you doing chasing this human?”
“I-uh… Well, she was in my domain, so I had to do my job, you know.” nervously replied the beast.
“This is far beyond your domain, is it not? I can’t sense another domain within a thousand paces, why leave your treasure vulnerable?” probed Reginn, “Also, this human is clearly a boy, have you lost your mana vision?”
“...Well, it was nice meeting you and you’re right,” nervously replied Har-Meggidos, pushing Reginn out as he retreated back into the sunlight, “I need to see to protecting my treasure, thanks for the reminder. Cheers!”
Har-Meggidos hurried back to his abode, causing echoes slowly dying each step. He was attempting to be as stealthy as a mountain could as if desperately keeping something a secret and it strangely worked, his steps blending into the sound of nature. However, Reginn could tell that there was something far greater than the intrusion that fuelled this chase, but lowered his guard and extinguished the flame in his hand.
The hero turned to the stranger who was on the ground but then realized that she too could not speak Elysdionn. This frustrated Reginn to no end, who never had to speak to humans this much before. Usually, his siblings or the Goddess dealt with the people while he guarded the nation. He was even forbidden to learn Alsdionn, not that learning that would be any use now. Everyone seemed to be speaking a new language, something that was phonetically closer to Kalgansdionn than Alsdionn.
“Human, give me everything you have with words on them.”
“Uh… For what?”
“Right now.”
Sivrit unenthusiastically handed him various objects ranging from books to food products with labels on them. She was still curious about what he would do next, carefully watching a master at work.
However, contrary to Sivrit’s assumptions, this was the first time Reginn had ever done something like this. However, his knowledge of magic would help him greatly, especially his relationship with magic.
Most think of mana as a foreign substance, leaking into the real world through the imaginary space. However, Reginn knew that it was far greater than simply interdimensional particles -- it was the truth of the world, the voice of the world.
All creatures with a soul are born with the ability to control mana particles to varying degrees. While the rest think of this as the natural consequence of life, taking it for granted, Reginn could see far more. There was more to mana than being a tool.
His main philosophy was that each and every particle of mana was unique and retained information that differed from all others. They weren’t just particles with theoretically infinite potential energy, they were like universes within universes.
Even more so, each mana particle remembered recent events such as being transformed into gold and decaying back into mana or being transformed into information and back. It even retained some information about its users and victims, their souls unconsciously permanently changing each and every particle they came across.
Using this information, Reginn could view glimpses of the memories of those who read the words through the memories of the mana particles. Each represented a fractured, incomplete blurb but combined, they could form full sentences. However, as he thought, this was simply not enough information to learn an entire language.
“Human, face this way quickly,” said Reginn to Sivrit.
Sivrit, of course, followed and turned to the hero while still sitting on the ground, her properties laid across the dirt. She was a bit worried about what would happen next, considering the spell that taught her a new language, the encounter with the wolves, the encounter with the strange turtle creature that Reginn identified as a World Beast and now this. But wasn’t this what she was always hoping for? An exciting adventure? If she survived these encounters, surely this would be the beginning of her own journey. Only then could she even dream about becoming a hero.
“A-alright, now what?”
“You don’t have to worry about that.”
Reginn held up his hand and a small Maginn circled the two, the strange white-haired girl watching curiously. Unbeknownst to Sivrit, he would try to reverse engineer the ⌈Sixth Path Conversion⌋, taking information from her mind instead. However, it would be difficult to know exactly what pieces of information he needed.
“Well, here goes.”