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Chapter-1 Past Life

He felt something long and hard in the palm of his hand.

Looking down, he saw it was an iron sword—its cold blade stained with crimson blood, the hilt gripped tightly in his trembling hand.

“Wha-”

The sword was buried deep in his chest, piercing straight through his heart. A jolt of panic surged through him. How was he still conscious? How was he even alive when his heart was pierced by a sword? Shouldn’t he have died in that accident? How was a sword piercing his chest all of a sudden?

The world around him blurred, and his mind clouded with darkness. Memories—his previous life memories—flooded back like a tidal wave.

Eric was an orphan, abandoned at birth and raised in a series of bleak foster homes that offered him nothing but coldness.

All the orphanages in the country were overcrowded, and the caretakers were often cold and indifferent towards kids in the foster homes. At a young age, he learned that the only person he could rely on was himself.

By thirteen, he had dropped out of school. The streets became his classroom, and survival was the only thing he needed to look out for. He fell in with a local gang—not out of desire, but necessity to live.

He needed to learn how to live alone, and because of his limited options, he chose to join that local gang.

For years, Eric navigated the muddy underworld of petty crimes. Even among his misfortune, his saving grace was his natural talent, being a quick learner, adept at reading people and situations.

He took advantage of his natural talent to quickly rise in the gang ranks despite his young age. He continued to work for the gang for years, but the glamor of the pathetic life soon faded, replaced by the harsh and grim reality of violence and betrayal.

Those people who were his friends for years betrayed him quickly over a few scraps, the loyalty being as fleeting as the wind among his kind.

With a tired yet melancholic mood, he left the gang in his early twenties, determined to forge a new path and leave his old ways behind.

“Sigh, if nothing else, I need to look for work so I won’t starve to death.” He said with a tired expression and went out of his room in the slum to look for work.

He looked around in a lot of places, thinking with his experience in the market it would be easy to look for a job, but reality hit him hard.

As he got rejected from one place to another due to his past and his low qualifications, he got demotivated to find more work.

He still continued his search until after a few weeks the gang where he used to work found where he lived now, but before they could pinpoint his location, he heard news about their arrival and he fled the scene.

Eric fled to another nearby city entirely, but he couldn’t find any work there as well because he had no qualifications. He sat down inside an alleyway, looking listlessly towards the sky.

Time passed but he didn’t move from his spot as snow started falling soon. His body shivered from time to time but at this point, he couldn’t even move due to hunger and cold.

His body fell sideways inside the alleyway but the passing crowd didn’t even spare him a glance, the evening soon turned into night as the people going to and from the road got fewer.

While Eric’s body curled up due to cold, he felt his vision darkening, he felt his body turning cold as his consciousness began to fade away.

But before he fell down and lost consciousness, he saw an old man walking towards him.

“Ugh…” Eric groaned, slowly opening his eyes to see the ceiling of a room, but all of a sudden his head throbbed with pain as he instinctively grabbed it. His body was heavy, weighted down by fatigue and starvation, but something warm was placed on his head.

As he raised his hand to pull it up, he realized it was a damp towel placed on his there to warm him up.

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‘Where am I?’ he asked himself in confusion.

He tried to sit up on the bed but he couldn’t muster enough strength so he fell back on the bed again.

Just then, he heard a faint chuckle, “Hohoho, calm down young man.”

Eric turned his head to see a jacked old man stepping through the door towards him while smiling amicably.

“You’re inside my home right now safe and sound if that’s what you are wondering about. And yes, I saved you from that alleyway.” the old man finished speaking.

Eric's body tensed as his eyes darted around the room, trying to look for any possible escape as he cautiously asked the old man, " “Who are you?”

“Now now, that’s no way to talk with your savior.” The old man smiled while looking at him.

Eric blinked, his head still aching with a dull pain, his thoughts scrambling. Saviors weren’t something he encountered often in his life—if at all. He should be dead while starving in the cold outside…his hand clenched beneath the blanket, his body tense.

But as the old man walked towards him, his thoughts turned smoother as he calmed down—either due to the old man’s natural calm aura or the warmth in his voice. His suspicions also went away, and he figured that if the old man had any malicious intentions towards him, then he wouldn’t be alive currently.

Slowly, his shoulders relaxed as he let out a sigh, “...I’m sorry,” he muttered in a soft voice, “I didn’t mean to be rude earlier. Thanks for saving my life.”

“Now that’s more like it.” The old man chuckled as he got closer to Eric and pulled a chair to sit down.

“You were in quite a rough shape when I found you in the night. Curled up in the snow like that inside of that alleyway. You were one step away from meeting with the gods.” He looked at him curiously, and asked, “If you don't mind me asking, how did you end up like that?”

Eric hesitated, his past was not something that he was proud of, and neither did he like to share it with others. He had been running for far too long—running from his old life, running from his failures.

But looking at the old man, he felt a strange bond, seeing him being genuinely curious about his past made something inside of Eric crack. The need to tell someone, to finally let it out, grew too strong to resist.

“Haa… It all started when I dropped out of school at a young age…” Eric began speaking slowly, but as he continued, the word tumbled out. He told the old man everything—about his life in foster homes, his life in the gang, the betrayals he faced, the endless cycle of survival that had nearly driven him mad as he arrived on the streets.

It felt like a burden had been lifted from his shoulders, as if speaking about his past with someone lessened the weight that he carried for years.

The old man listened to his story intently while Eric also needed someone to share his problems with as he had bottled them up for far too long.

As the story progressed, his expression shifted from amusement to solemn understanding and finally to pity. His gaze softened, and Eric noticed a flicker of recognition in his eyes as if the old man saw a reflection of his own past in Eric’s story.

“Sigh…you have suffered child.” The old man expressed his pity while patting Eric’s shoulder.

Eric shrugged, “It’s all in the past now. I need to see if I can find work somewhere or if I’m doomed to die from starvation.”

The old man looked at him silently for a while, “Boy, what do you think about working under me?”

Eric’s guard raised as he sharply turned his head towards the old man before asking, “What kind of work? I have already left the underworld so if its someth-”

“Woah, woah! Calm down, young man,” The old man's hearty laugh filled the room as he clapped Eric’s shoulder with enough force to make him winch, “No need to get so worked up, I’m just your average blacksmith, nothing shady. And I was asking if you want to work under me as an apprentice blacksmith.”

The tension in Eric’s body slowly drained away, replaced by embarrassment. He coughed, awkwardly scratching the back of his head. “You should’ve said that from the start,” he muttered. Then, as an afterthought, he added, “You still haven’t told me your name, sir.”

“Hahaha! You’re right, I haven’t.” The old man leaned back in his chair, folding his arms. He answered with a proud tone, “Name’s Darin Emberstone. Of the Emberstone clan.”

But Eric’s doubtful voice soon makes his lips twitch, “Emberstone? Isn’t that the clan that’s practically disappeared? No one’s heard of it in years.”

The old man knocked on Eric’s head as he spoke, “The fuck you mean my clan’s disappeared? As long as I’m breathing, the Emberstone name is still alive and well.”

Eric rubbed his head as he inwardly thought, ‘So, the old man is the last member of the Emberstone clan.’

What Eric didn’t know was that the old man’s family had died early in an accident, so he was the last surviving member of the Emberstone family.

The old man decided to save him due to the condition he found Eric in—tattered clothes and his body covered in frostbite, it was similar to his own bleak situation.

Eric finally made up his mind as he struggled to sit straight on the bed and spoke energetically, “I would like to work under you from now on, boss.”

Darin smiled amicably and reassured him, “No need to thank me, just keep doing your work and live with your head raised. You don’t need to live that dirty life again.”

“Yes, I will do as yo-” Before Eric could finish his sentence, his stomach growled, making the old man laugh heartily.

“Hahaha, looks like it's about time for a meal.” Darin stood up with a smile and headed outside of the room, “Wait a while here, I’ll cook something up for us today.”

Eric smiled looking at the back of the old man.

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