I have a childhood friend.

That friend became ‘The Hero’ who saves the world.

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Laughed together, cried together.

Played together, fought together.

Slept together, woke up together.

Basically, we were always together.

We were orphans. We were family.

Among them, I was particularly close with one… my friend… my best friend.

That was natural, of course. In our entire family… Only the two of us were born in the same year, went to the same class and sat at the same desk. So, we were always together. It’s not like we never fought. We fought often, but we got along well enough. We were family, after all. I didn’t have any complaints.

But as we aged, I came to find out. Unlike me, who was just a geek, he was special. A born leader. Charismatic and courageous.

Even before we turned 12, he started showing the signs of his genius. It was the time of war with Demons, and strength is what the Kingdom sought. Thus, they established battle tournaments. Each school had to organize such a tournament every month.

There were 2 types of tournaments - Solo and Team.

The solo tournaments were conducted for Juniors ( Age 11-14) and Seniors (14-18). In the solo tournaments, he was the unparalleled champion among the Juniors. The top 3 juniors were allowed to compete with Seniors and even among the senior camp; he was a formidable opponent.

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In the group battles, he was always our leader, the pillar who would often lead us to victory. For some reason, he would always discuss the strategy with me, not that it would have ever helped him. Our personalities were completely opposite, after all. He was the courageous, charismatic type who would always go forward, while I erred on the side of caution to a ridiculous degree.

Once, he was sick, so he declared I will captain the team this time. It turned out to be a complete headache for me. I was no leader or strategist.

Still, I had to do the job. So, I planned out a strategy… revised it… scrapped it… planned a new one… revised it again… scrapped it again… and repeated this unnecessary process over and over. Over the next couple of nights, I meticulously planned our team strategy to the T. I was not sure, but I had a faint expectation that it might just work. And so I went to discuss it with my friend.

“This is amazing!” he told me. I was excited and escalated. Will my strategy really work? Is it good enough? At the same time, I started to really have a hard time in anticipation. Before I knew it, I was revising my strategy again.

The next day, I decided to discuss it with my classmates. But their reactions were different… completely different. There was no excitement. Just okay, we will do so. It hurt me a little, but since there were no issues, I decided to go ahead with that.

But of course, the strategy was a failure. We lost badly in the tournament. I found it hard to face my classmates, moreso my best friend who trusted me to captain our class. Even he was probably disappointed with me. He always took the initiative to start a conversation with me. But after this event, he started to avoid me.

And so, I decided to coop back into the library. The Holy Place.... the place which refuses no one.

Time passed and things went back to normal. In the next tournament, my friend won the tournament again for the class and the class was gung ho again.

Yes, everything was normal….

But it was all set to change all.

The knights and Mages of the empire came to our village. But no one knew why?

Rumours were that it was in search of new knights and mages.