Within the ruins of a once majestic castle lay a fossilized body. For generations, it has remained there collecting dust and began to show the signs of time. The fossil looked as if it was waiting for something. And wait it did until one day, a magical ring formed underneath the fossil, and the fossil exploded, and in its place a sleeping youth that looked to be about 18 years of age was napping on the ground.
“Damn. Is it morning already….. Where the hell am I?” (Youth)
The teenager slowly stood up and straightened his black hair and rubbed his eyes. When he opened them once more, piercing brown eyes carefully surveyed the surroundings.
“Well shit…. Either my friend is playing a massive prank on me or I have been kidnapped… Alright guys. Real funny. Your lovely friend Cal finds this real funny. Now come on out and let’s get out of here….”
Cal suddenly paused when he saw the throne. Or what was left of it. The passage of time was not kind to its form; however, it was clear that it used to be a throne where a king once sat and ruled over his realm. Cal scrutinized the throne room once more and looked over the room much more carefully. It was extremely familiar to him. No. He had been here before.
“This land is Terr. Isn’t it. I never thought I would come back…. Okay calm down. If this really was Terr, I should be able to use magic.”
Immediately, he began to concentrate and began to sense his inner life force or the mana that resided within him. He clicked his fingers, and a ball of flame appeared, floating on top of his hand. He quickly accelerated his brain with magic.
“Damn. I really am back................................. FFFFUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKK. God damn it, I really liked life on the other side. It was just so peaceful. I didn’t have to worry about getting assaulted. I had family and friends, and I didn’t have to worry every day about losing them. Why the hell did I come back so soon? I knew that I would come back eventually, but… It is not like as if anyone here cares for me… that spell… I don’t get it. All the bonds should have been broken, and a new bond should have formed. What the hell… Obviously the second part of the spell worked. I can’t sense any malicious energy around this area nor on me. I can't sense it. I can rest easy with that, but the first part of the spell... I reincarnated? Is that… Gah. Worrying about this won’t get me anywhere. Okay. Let’s get my mind straight. Let’s see.”
He immediately stood up and dusted himself off. He took a deep breath and walked out of the throne room. The sun began to shine through the windows lighting up the corridors. When Cal looked out the window, he saw two suns.
“Yup. I am back. Okay let me think. Alright. Calm down, Cal. You can control yourself. Okay. I highly doubt that I would be able to return to Earth. The amount of energy required for to do that was astronomical previously, and it will cost even more to do it this time. Which means that I am now officially stuck here. Now the next question is how did I come back so quickly? It should have taken me a lot more life cycles for the gravity to bring me back, much less simply 18 years. I didn’t feel any damn ruptures nor folds so the only way for me to have come back was if something manipulated the multidimensional gravity pull to bring me back. But who? There should be no one that would do that for me… Worrying about it here would do me no good. Let’s get out of this hell-hole. It gives me the damn creeps. Now if I remember correctly…”
After walking through the twists and turns of the ruined castle and getting lost occasionally, he finally found the exit of the castle and was met with the sight of a run-down city.
“Damn…. This place officially turned into a ghost town. Just how long was I gone?”
Cal looked around and began walking through the blood red town. Thankfully, many of the bodies have decomposed so he did not have to worry too much of the smell; however, it seemed that the remnants of the magic of the ghost town absorbed and preserved the blood. Cal took extreme care as he skirted around the rusted metal swords, armor, and shards.
“Okay… Considering the state of all these weapons, I can safely say that I have been gone for an extremely long time. I know that the imperial guards were equipped with some of the finest metals, and it takes an absurdly long time for this type of alloy to rust. Whoooop. That was close. Thank God for tetanus vaccines just in case.”
As Cal picked through the streets, he grew depressed at what happened to the once glorious city, feeling great shame for what has befallen it. He wondered why the princess did not rebuild the capital of the Requiem Empire. Wasn’t there a promise to rebuild the empire? After the banishment, it should have been safe to come back. He knew that an evacuation order was given, and the princess was within the evacuation group, and he saw the princess leave himself when he was on his way back from scouting the enemy base. He considered walking over to her but decided against it. It was not the time and place to reveal himself to her amid all the fleeing people. As he continued his way to the southern gate of the city, he saw a sword stabbed into the side of the building with the scabbard in the shadow of the sword. He immediately walked over to the sword and pulled it out of the wall and marveled at how the sword was still in tip top condition.
“Wait a minute. This was the enchanted sword of one of the top mercenaries at that time. I heard that the royal family paid that guy thousands of gold coins to help with defending the capital. Humph. He must have died in the first wave. What an idiot. Well, he was known to be a lone wolf so I guess it makes sense that he did not really listen to the defensive strategy laid out by the princess. Well, he isn’t using it anymore, and this sword is good quality. I do need a weapon too. This isn’t Earth. Oh well. I feel kinda bad looting like this… Wait a minute… Shouldn’t the castle have a treasury? It would be a real pity if there was all that gold just lying there… But I am already so far away… Ah. Duh. I’ll just use magic to teleport there. It has been some time, but my skill should not have rusted that much. Sigh. The fact that I am talking to myself right now does not bode well for my mental state.”
He quickly walked to the nearest shadow and concentrated as he stepped into it. Instead of smacking right into the building, he reappeared in front of the locked treasury room. Time has resulted in the weakening of magical defenses of the door so it was easily picked with a small manipulation of magic. When he stepped through into the treasury room, he was both shocked and disappointed.
“Damn. I guess the royal family really went on a splurge when they got those reports. Hmm I guess that this one mound is about 1000 gold coins. Sigh. I was really looking forward to hitting it rich from the start. I can’t even find any of those powerful weapons… Ah wait. They gave it away to the defense team. Boohoo. Well I’ll take this small mound at least.”
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When he was reborn in a place that was called Earth, he learned a lot about cool ideas for magic and developed interesting theories. He even was able to gain a new perspective on the natural foundations and laws that govern the worlds to. The only bad part was that the bond really altered his emotional state, and it took most of his childhood to sort out his emotion. However, emotions really do make the world colorful, and he did not regret what occurred even one bit. The experience caused him to truly understand those words that was said in that day.
One cool idea that he could now put to practice was the item storage spell that he learned from most of the RPG games. It existed when he was still at Terr, but it was pretty small and limited. At most, it could hold something about one cubic meter. Also, it was mentally straining for many people so nobody really used it. Now that he has learned a bit more about space and the theories regarding special relativity and the so-called fabric, he found ways to improve the storage spell, its functions, and the costs too. With his improved knowledge, he could easily obtain items from his storage with almost no cost and manipulate the storage spell by warping the fabric into itself causing a much larger opening and storage. He quickly stored the mound of gold into his storage and used his shadow walking spell to return to his previous place. Once he arrived, he immediately knelt and began breathing and coughing severely.
“The hell? This body can’t take the effects of that spell? Just how weak… even though I am in top condition… Damn. Ugh. *cough* So god damn weak. I almost miss my previous body now. I guess this *cough* just means that I can’t use those kind of spells in this state. A real shame too.”
After clearing his throat and steadying himself, he walked to the southern gates and readied himself.
“This is it. I am back now. I have come back world. Don’t be afraid.”
He opened the gates that showed fields of blood red grass and vegetation. There a thick miasma of energy that settled the lands. Immediately, Cal readied himself noticing the heavy atmosphere that the grasslands were giving off and took a step forward in what could be called the start of his true introduction back to the land of Terr. What immediately “welcomed” Cal when he took that first step was five blood-red vines covered with sharp thorns that immediately shot out at Cal.
Pov: Cal
Well, I have to say. This was a crappy day. First, I got wrenched out of a peaceful world and dumped back into my shithole home where it is essentially a free-for-all. People (I consider elves and sentient beings people too) and monsters continuously struggling against each other to live or to simply be a dick. And that was why I… The second reason was that as soon as I step out of this god damn ghost town I get attacked by a bunch of thorns. Plants. Fuckin plants attacked me. Now I really wanted to say that I did this cool movie dodging skills and counterattacked. I could, no, I would have done that if I had my previous body. However, the body I am in currently has not been battle tested, have not been strengthened nor accustomed to this world that now has magic, and the mental state has not been completely prepared.
So what ended up happening was that I made this god awful gurgling sound and fell backwards. Right after the thorns shot past my head and took a couple pieces of my hair, I quickly scuttled back like a freaking mutated crab with four legs along with a nice healthy push of a wind spell. Before the vines could rewind to attack me again, I quickly shut the door and ran into one of the empty house. And I did not even go through the door in case it would not open. No. I instead jumped through the fuckin window. Now, I am just laying down here in a sort of daze covered with sharp pieces of glass. But no. The worst part did not even arrive yet.
The worst part was the intense pain from the jumble of emotions that suddenly attacked me. You see ever since that bond was created, I began to have all these jumbled emotions. Normally living beings are supposed to instinctually order their emotions, know when they should appear, and usually control them; however, I can’t do that. At Earth, it only made me extremely confused and really weird. In fact, my mom at Earth even brought me to a psychiatrist to see what the hell was wrong with me.
The psychiatrist has never seen a case like mine, of course. However, she deduced a couple of things. The jumble of emotions occur when I go through an intense emotional stage. In my case after the near miss, normal living beings would go through the intense emotion of fear, surprise, and relief. Not me. My body doesn’t have that natural ability.
Two, this is no longer Earth. This world is Terr which is a world with magic, and my soul is originally from Terr. In Terr, emotions can be tied with mana. Consider it a defense mechanism in which a living being in a highly emotional stage can exhibit stronger control and output of mana or energy in case of emergencies. (Really I just use these terms interchangeably. Yeah, there are some differences but they are all just technicalities. Like mana is a type of energy and etc. Do we have to go through this now?) For a better example, it is like when bosses in video games go into “rage mode” when you bring them into a certain health range. It can be a double edged sword since the emotional stage can also impair judgement, but it can bring the impacted out of really tight spots. Again, normal living beings have natural control over this too. In fact, many sentient living beings have to train in order to properly connect their emotions to mana or else they will simply get emotional with no changes in their ability with mana.
Again, I am NOT normal. When I went into that jumbled emotional stage while I was unprepared, the mana within me just started rampaging throughout my flesh. Immediately, I put into practice a trick that my psychiatrist gave me. Quickly choose the easiest to choose emotion from that jumble at that moment and show it. In the case right now, the easiest to choose emotion right now was humor. (at least that is what I call it. There are so many god damn emotions and ways to call them so I don’t really care if humor is not really an emotion. Cut me some slack right now will ya?)
So now, I am rolling around on the ground that is by the way covered in broken pieces of glass laughing like a maniac with cuts, scrapes, and blood all over my body while tears of pain ran down my eyes. Yeah. Not a pretty picture. But don’t lose hope for me just yet! I still have hope. It turns out that my body can learn to sort these emotions. I can essentially learn/ teach my body which emotions to display in situations that causes the intense emotional state. For example, one emotional situations that I learned really quickly was when I was really happy. When I first experienced extreme happiness (my first birthday party), I went through something like a seizure. After that embarrassing incident, I did not go through that anymore (for birthday parties only. Not with other cases that could cause happiness.) Now, the rate at which I learn can differ per emotions or if I even want to learn certain emotions with certain situations like the emotions that come with the death of loved ones. There are also certain emotional situations that may be even impossible for me to learn because the situation may actually cause me to end up temporarily emotionless as the jumble cancel each other out. Those circumstances can end in real nasty situations especially in this world…
So the psychiatrist recommended my parents to let me experience as much of life as possible so I can learn these emotional states and deal with them quickly. Since my parents traveled all over the world due to their work, it was easier for them to let me experience all sorts of cultures and emotional states. However, two problems exist right now. First, I still did not properly go through all the emotional states, integrate them into my body, and live life to its fullest at Earth. (How can I even do that in 18 years?) Also, this is Terr so the experience of life can differ. For one, there AREN”T ANY GOD DAMN PLANTS THAT TRY TO KILL ME IN EARTH.
Okay. I calmed down a bit; I stopped laughing like a freakin maniac. After I stood up and carefully walked out of the glassy bloody mess, I sighed.
“That was so stupid of me. This isn’t Earth. There are a lot of things here that would love to kill me. Jeez, how naïve can I get?”
Immediately, I sat down and straightened out my mana and started to investigate the parameters of my capabilities regarding the body by running mana through my body. The physical aspect right now wasn’t really worrying. I would heal from these wounds quite quickly if I used my energy to support my cells in the healing process. Also, I exercised quite frequently in Earth and did some martial arts. (6 packs are so cool. Movie 300 inspired me. Not a good inspiration but sadly it happened during those emotional stages again, and 300 was on at that time. Enough said.) So the only modifications I did to the physical part of my body was strengthening my nerves for much faster reaction and thinking time, kind of like thought acceleration.
The mana aspect of my body was the worrying part. It could only hold and utilize a ridiculously small amount of energy that I had in the past. Now that doesn’t mean it is really bad. I still have a larger than average mana storage and manipulation. Also, I still have some of the perks from the bond like I can see dispersed mana outside of my body and manipulate it (normal humans don’t have this ability). But… it was still a bit uncomfortable. Also, I couldn’t use some of my old spells because my physical body wouldn’t be able to handle the stress.
Other than that, I should be all set. I also set something like a cushion on my emotional states so if I went through something like that again at least it would lessen it or at least delay it somewhat. With this, I was ready to take on those damn plants.
I walked to the gate that was riddled with holes and stood there for a bit. Drawing my sword, I cut down the gate and started running (or jumping?) through the grassland with mana strengthened legs. Did you really think I was going to fight those things? I don’t even know how to properly fight them for they did not even exist when I lived in Terr and fuck fighting those freaking vines. It reminded me of tentacles… enough said. When the vines tried to go after me, it was already too late. I was already far far away heading off into the second setting sun.