It was a quiet winter night. The sky was cloudless, the countless stars and the two bright moons illuminated the entire forest. The winter breeze chilled the temperature in the surroundings, making the air feel as cold as ice. Snowflakes fell from the sky nonstop turning the forest into a pure white.
The ground suddenly shook and the air became hard to breathe. In the sky glowed an expanding red sphere. The sphere started to grow bigger in size at an alarming rate and simultaneously the tremors got stronger, as a result the earth started to split and break apart, while some of the trees got forcefully uprooted from the ground.
Crimson magic circles encompassed the sky, red chains emerged from inside and started to coil around the sphere, trying to prevent whatever the sphere would do.
A burst of blinding light discharged from the sphere, covered the entire forest in a light as red as blood. The sphere continued to expand and the chains shook as it tried to hold the sphere in place.
The chains creaked as deep cracks started to appear on it's surface as it continued to futilely tried stopping the sphere's expansion.
There was a defeaning sound of something snapping and the chains that tried hindering the sphere's growth shattered into tiny peices. As the chains gave in, the magic circles followed and broke like shattered glass.
Without anything hindering it, the crimson sphere grew much faster. After reaching the width of three pine trees in length the sphere stopped expanding. Magic circles formed under it all the way towards the deformed land.
In an instant all the energy that was stored in the sphere shot down to the ground with a loud explosion. The ground trembled at the power of the blast as it decimated everything, leaving complete annihilation in it's wake.
It only lasted a few second before the bright crimson pillar dissipated into nothingness. The dust settled revealing a gigantic crater in the ground covered in strange glowing red runes.
In the middle of the crater was an unconcious naked boy. He had long black hair and a well built physique, he also looked to be around 15 to 16 years of age but a bit taller than some boys at that age. On the boy's right arm were strange black symbols which looked like they were etched onto his arm.
After a few more moments the runes on the ground disappear in a similar way the pillar of light did, leaving only the unconscious boy in the middle of the destroyed forest.
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Emir is a travelling alchemist who was looking for some rare herbs in the Evermoon Forest, it was said that in this forest during winter rare herbs were abundant. Being the alchemy fanatic that he was, he was unable to resist the chance to get rare herbs despite the possible lurking dangers.
He came from the nearest village from the forest, yet even though it was the nearest village it was still atleast 50 miles away from Evermoon Forest since there have been many reports of monsters coming from the forest that is why the no village was built near the forest.
Emir walked towards the forest early in the morning without anyone accompanying him and with only a map which was roughly made to guide him towards his destination.
It was already evening when he reached the forest and it was even more dangerous now, yet without any regard towards his own safety he quickly went in the forest without a second thought when he arrived.
While searching for some Soul Grass, a rare herb which had strong healing properties, he heard a low growl from the bushes behind him.
Without any combat experience whatsoever he was helpless if he was attacked by a monster now. He turns around and sees a pair of glowing eyes staring at him.
Cautiously he reaches for his pouch and pulls out a vial with a violet solution inside. Before he could chuck the vial at the creature within the bushes it was scared away by something else and ran away as fast as it could.
Now even more nerveous than before to what had scared the beast away Emir looks around at his surroundings while trying not to attract attention from anything dangerous.
Suddenly, a powerful gust of air struck his body lifting him off the ground and the force was enough to send him flying a few meters away.
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He landed on his back after getting blown a good distance away from where he original position. He tries to stand up but the ground starts shaking violently causing cracks to appear on the surface. He struggled to stay up as he continued to wobble while the tremors got worse.
In front of him was a scene which looked liked the beginning of armageddon, pine trees were getting uprooted as the land itself started to split and break. Up in the sky was a red sphere entangled by countless red chains.
He held on to the tree nearest to him for dear life and when he thoight he was about to die the tremors stopped and a blinding light covered everything followed by the defeaning sound of a loud snap.
That was when the real terror started. A giant pillar of light struck the ground, decimating everything it touched, the destruction was incomprehensible, it felt as if the world was about to end. After the longest 20 seconds Emor has ever felt in his life the pillar of light disappeared and it was quiet once again.
His was relieved when it finally stopped and just dropped to the icy ground while panting heavily while grasping his chest. He was almost sure it was the end of the world at that time, well he was just happy it wasn't.
After a few moments he regained his composure and stood up from the ground and steeled himself as he headed to the direction of where the pillar of light struck the ground.
He walked through dozens of fallen trees and the unbelievably deformed land, he even found some monster corpses that were crushed by the fallen trees or some who were just not strong enough to endure the shockwave of the blast because they were too near.
He cautiously proceeded, looking out for any dangers that may be lurking in the shadows. Soon he reached his destination, he was at the edge of a massive crater that was covered in red runes he has never seen before and in the middle was something he could not make out.
He tried to lean in to get a better look but the rock under his feet crumbled and he fell inside the crater. He rolled down the steep rock uncontrollably, he lost momentum after rolling to the flat portion of the crater which was quite deep into the ground.
Emir stood up while removing the dust from his clothes with his hands. He looked at the fogure in the middle of the crater and saw a humanoid figure sprawled on the ground. He proceeded with extreme caution, after a while the red runes disappeared without a trace from the crater like the beam of light.
He closed in on the humanoid figure in the center of the crater and was shocked to see an unconscious young man. The boy had jet black hair reaching his shoulders, a body which looked like it belonged to a warrior who trained everyday yet not made up of overly huge muscles. The face of the boy could be considered a handsome one with facial features that looked so sharp it was as if it was carved by a dwarf who has mastered carving. What piqued Emir's interest the most was the black markings on the boy's right arm it was nothing he had seen before, it looked like some kind of humongous black beast it would seem, he checked the boy's pulse and realized that he was very much alive and was only exhausted.
Emir looked at the unconscious boy and immediately took off his coat and put it over the boy after thinking about helping the mysterious young man or not. He decided to help the boy since it would just be heartless to leave the poor boy alone in the freezing forest even if he didn't have anything to do with the boy.
He took out the folded tent behind his back and started to set it up. After he fixed the tent he took out vial in his bag containing a white solution and sprinkled it over the camp.
The potion was supposedly able to hide the prescence of whatever drank it or had physical contact with the white solution, it was quite a rare potion but Emir was not gonna trade his life for a concealing potion.
Emir took out some rations in his bag and ate, he then quenched his dry throat with the water inside his waterskin. He looked once more at the unconsciou boy inside the bedroll beside hin to see any signs of discomfort or waking up, but alas there was nothing.
He then lied down using his bag as a makeshift pillow to support his head, trying to calm himself of the unbelievable things that he had experienced this day.
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It was morning, the sun's rays peekd through the thin walls of the tent and was hitting Emir's face. Slowly opening his eyes while covering his face from the rays of the sun he sat up. Remembering the boy from last night he immediately looked beside him only to see nobody there.
Panic struck his heart when he realized the boy was nowhere to be seen. He immediately took a vial with a violet solution and slowly headed outside the tent.
His eyes widened after seeing the boy a good five meters away from the tent wearing nothing but the coat he put over the boy last night, he didn't even seem to care about the freezing temperatures outside which could easily kill you if you were unprepared. The boy simply had his palm raise towards the gleaming sun while he bathed in it's warmth.
The next moment the boy removed the only cloth that was covering his body which was the coat, showing his well built body and in an instant he was enveloped in black mist that came up from the ground. The black mist quickly disappeared and revealed the boy which was now wearing a black coat over a simple white shirt, on his lower half was black pants and boots while both his hands were covered by crimson gloves.
Emir's jaw hung open, never in his life has he seen something like that! He was sure it was magic but he has never heard of magic that was activated without chants and was able to make material objects appear from nothing.
The boy's emerald colored eyes looked straight at Emir, sensing his presence as he looked behind him. Emir gulped and prepared for the worse as he saw the boy slowly approaching him.