"AAAAHH-!!" These unknown memories were rushing in like a massive flood. The pain was so unbearable that he soon sprawled onto the ground, and started to spasm disgustingly for the next few minutes. Such an appearance didn't even resemble a human and more like a beast.
Around 3 hours later, he soon woke up to discover that his whole face was wet, his expression however did not show any sign of panic, but was instead ecstatic. His current appearance had experienced a major change, because instead of the green colored eyes he had in the past, he now had two, bright red eyes. His skin was paler and smoother than before, his current features seemed a bit feminine, even.
What could have happened?
° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
[Three days ago]
"...!" Inside an alley next to a bustling city street, the only sounds you could hear were punching, and an extremely disgusting screech that no person should make. Inside the alley were two men and one badly injured child, his face was full of bruises. He was grabbing one of man's wrists that was currently holding onto his neck in order to break free.
The man seemed to enjoy the sight of seeing a young boy struggle so he hit him once more to induce panic.
"GAAH!" The child was unable to resist, so he began to claw at the man's arm but up to no avail.
"...That's enough Vyner, you know we don't have the time to deal with this kind of nonsense?" The other man began to warn his friend on how they are beginning to waste their precious time.
"...Tch. Oi, lil' shit, hope you engraved today's lesson to your very bone, because the next time I see your sorry excuse of a person, I'll kill you." The man dropped the bleeding child on to the ground.
"Ugh!" The boy groaned in agony as he fell, he pressed his fingers on the back of his head and felt a light sting. After the man had let go of the boy, him and his friend started to walk towards the street and began to merge with the crowd.
"Hah...ha...hah..ha" After both men had left, the child began to wipe off the blood, snot, and spit that accumulated on his face with his 'scrap cloth' of clothing. After he started to recover for awhile he thought of something and began to rummage through the trash in the corner. He seemed like he was looking for something, and when he was about to give up suddenly a couple of clanging sounded out.
"...phew, at least they didn't find the sack." 'Guess today just wasn't my day' - Blake, this was the child's' current name, and like any other person in the slums, he was just trying to survive in these harsh conditions.
For Blake, he was an abandoned child that got picked up by an orphanage that later went bankrupt. When this happened, all the children were forced to live in the slums, it was very difficult to survive in this type of environment, and to prove it, one of the boys who had left the orphanage along with Blake had died due to falling ill from an infection, while one of the girls were kidnapped and sold off into slavery after trying to buy some medicine in order to save him.
There wasn't really anything special about him besides the fact that he has a special skill that he can't use. As a child who lives alone in the slums, he's been bullied and injured many times throughout the whole time he's been here. However in this world where the medical science has barely advanced, of which the mainstream are spells and potions. Any injury, even if it was light, are considered as deadly as poison for these poor folks.
If they wanted to buy a potion, then with their appearance and disgusting stench, no store would allow them inside, and even the stalls set up in the commercial district had their potions base prices increased, so to these people who lived in an environment where people "dropped like flies", one of the few choices left for them to survive was pickpocketing.
For those living in the slums this was an easy task...as long as the victim wasn't clever. You see, adults are very unreliable when it comes to hiding their facial expression's, untrained and they can easily get caught. So children are mainly used because they can learn much faster than adults, and since they're young no one will really suspect them. So for Blake, today was really an unlucky day.
In this world where the existence of mana has covered the whole planet like air, life had evolved in many dangerous ways. On Vanguard, humans did not dominate the world alone and instead there were other "races" who occupied them at the top of the food chain. While a majority of them did have a humanoid shape, but when compared to the whole of humanity, they were many times stronger than ordinary humans.
However, each of these races had a common enemy, and those were "monsters". These creatures had most of Vanguard set up as their territory, the main reason was because these creatures could "evolve" which made them stronger, and in turn of course made them even harder to deal with. After years of fighting these monsters, the races have documented, classified, and ranked a large amount of different species in categories depending on their "strength".
They used letters as a way to classify their capability, goblins and wolves would be ranked as G-class monsters, and are even further classified with tier 2 and tier 4 respectively. Another example would be a dragon, with the weakest adult dragons being ranked at A-Tier 3. This system was created so that individuals don't die due to facing monsters much stronger than what they're capable of handling. Of course this wasn't easy to set up, and many died trying to evaluate new species.
These races have been expanding and colonizing the rest of the world as best as they can since the beginning, however because of the existence known as mana, Vanguard is 5 times the size of Earth, so the progress has been very slow. So after more than 3000 years since the organization made to kill monsters was founded, we have only managed to claim 37% percent of the world...that is on land. Any large body of water has not been fully explored due to the higher level of danger it is compared to land. Things like mermaids do exist, though they are just disgusting fish/man hybrids.
Because of all these dangerous elements, the human body has evolved in a way so that it can adapt more easily in this chaotic world. Humans are now capable of using abilities that may have been specific to a certain race, such as [Dark Magic]. This type of magic was deemed impossible to be used by any other race than the "demons", and yet humans were capable of using it.
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Of course however, the first ever recorded case of a human being able to use it was actually mistaken as a demon, who was then hunted down by the order of the established monster hunting organization known as "The Adventurers Guild". Since then, there have been many other cases of humans being able to use skills specific to races and have then stopped being hunted.
It is currently June 16 in the year 4837, and from now on the world will experience a change that will cause the deaths of many.
° ° °
"Dyrus, if you do this, you know Sierra will be angry."
"I need to Thana, you and I both know how dangerous the other gods have become."
"...but to use your own child- "ENOUGH!"
"This is my decision, and I WILL see through it!"
° ° °
"Hah, well, guess I should head to the food stall for now."
With that goal in mind, Blake left the alley and went towards the market, ignorant about the soon impending danger.
When he was already halfway there, he then heard a loud bang, and it sounded like it was coming from the residential area. Sure enough, he soon saw both adventurers and guards clad in extravagant armor heading towards that direction.
° ° °
{Adventurer's POV}
"Ha, ha, what happened? Why was there an explosion?"
"I don't know Chris, but it shouldn't be anything goo- *BOOM* What was that!?"
Ahead of them, a large tornado made of flames had suddenly appeared. That wasn't the only one though as, to the right of the original tornado, were 3 additional flame tornado and two of which had exploded within the town square.
"No way, isn't that the intermediate magic [Blazing Inferno]?! Don't mages need to be a dual elementalist in order to cast it, why is someone like that here?!"
[Blazing Inferno], one of the many difficult to learn magic due to the requirement of having to be a dual elementalist, an individual capable of controlling both fire and wind elements. Dual elementalists like that are rare, with even some triple or quad appearing. Usually people with these attributes end up becoming powerful adventurers.
"I don't know, but for some reason they're trashing the place."
Currently the only places where the attacks were focused on seemed to have been the residential area and the town square. The guards seem to be unable to contain the situation however, because another large explosion resounded. This time instead however, there were multiple blazing red lances being launched one after the other, after which there would be a small explosion from where it landed.
"...so many, who could be doing this?" - Random Adventurer
° ° °
"Waaaaaaa-! MAMA!"
Currently within the damaged residential area, where the catastrophe had occurred. Inside the battle scene that could even be called a mass genocide, with an the area containing both falling debris and chunks of burning meat, there was a child crying next to the mutilated corpse of a woman.
"Mommy, where are you!?" The child could not see the woman who lay next to her, if she did she would have realized that she was actually her late mother. She did not even realize that both of eyes were damaged due to being hit by pieces of burning debris. The only thing she could sense or even see were the flashing lights flickering here and there, and the sounds of explosions within the vicinity.
*Thump* Suddenly, the sound of a powerful footstep resounded.
"MAMA!" The child got even more terrified and began to cry even louder.
*Thump Thump* The sound of footsteps got even faster, and even gave the impression of being annoyed.
"MAMA-!"
*THUMP THUMP THUMP*
"MA-*BAM*
"...Disgusting little shit!" The man was annoyed by the sound of a crying child, and began to curse.
"Vyner! I told you to stop messing around with the insects and get your ass to work!"
"C'mon Vyper, we might as well have some fun while we're at it."
The two men whom Blake had met a while ago were the same people currently causing disaster in the city. However their appearance had become very different compared to when Blake had first seen them, because currently they were no longer disguised as humans and were in the appearance of their original forms. Vyner was currently in the form of a large, humanoid shaped reptile with a head similar to an iguana, while Viper had the same appearance but with both arms having become scaly, with fangs hanging out from his mouth.
"Of course we can't, there's still one more troublesome matter we have to deal with."
"Aren't you wasting time then? If we just used one of your spells, then we would have been done with this place long ago."
"...Very well, might as well use it to buy some time. Though we are a ahead of schedule by a bit. Phew-"
"『الزمان والمكان، داخل كف يدي، وأود أن تضحك على جيش الآلاف في لحظة. الإبادة الجماعية، ولكن أريد أن لمس وسرقة نفوس الكثيرين』- [Soul - Destruction]"
....With the activation of the spell, a large domain suddenly appeared and expanded out from their original location.
° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
{Guard's and Adventurers's POV}
When Vyper activated his spell, the sudden exaustion of mana alerted all the magicians among the guards.
"...! Leader, I just detected a large distur-"
"Oi, Chris! Wha-AHG!"
"AHHHHH-!!"
"What's happening? Why is everyone fal-"
Suddenly, everyone within a three-mile radius had begun to fall onto the ground. No one within the city knew what was going on, nor did they have the time to do so because the mana wave killed them instantly. All except one person though.
"Ah shit, looks like we got something troublesome. Oi, anybody still out there?" It was the current guild-master for this city's Adventurers' Guild.
° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
{Narrator}
As for Blake, when the mana wave hit he was no exception. So when Blake had been running along the crowded mass of panicked people, the wave caused everyone to fall on top of each other and thankfully he wasn't crushed. Though I don't think there's anyone inside that empty shell of flesh.