On hot, late summer days, the youth named Andric Avantus worked on his swordsmanship behind a row of four iron smelters, passively enduring the heat they unceasingly gave off. He swung his long, curved sword at a row of three straw dummies, which had been donated by the blacksmiths who worked a few feet away from him.
Although his new world didn’t have swordsmanship as a formal way of combat, Andric brought the art form over from his previous world during his reincarnation, and thus he had a truly unique style in the world of Paege.
His small katana had no sharp edge, guard, or scabbard. Its dull metal gave off no shine, and the leather wrapped around the handle had several gaps in it. Andric had bartered with the owner of the forge until he made the sword for him, and he used various scraps of leather to make the grip. With only his memory to use as a reference, he reconstructed a piece of weaponry from his previous world.
“Andric, help cool us off,” the owner of the forge, Boele, said and beckoned Andric with his hand.
Andric leaned his sword against one of the training dummies, then walked around the row of smelters and entered the main forge area. Here, Boele worked with his three assistants and smelted chunks of iron ore into small iron plates. Those plates would be shaped into a final product once Boele received a purchase, and he usually had enough plates to deliver the next day.
“Sure,” Andric said, and he looked at each of the blacksmiths while flexing his mind.
Each time his mind flexed, spectral particles of mana floating inside his brain flowed out. When they hit his dura mater, they disappeared and created a phenomenon in the body of the blacksmith he happened to be looking at.
One after the other, each of the blacksmiths felt a wave of relief rush over their body. The heat from the summer air and the smelters faded away, their muscle aches melted into nothing, and they even felt a surge of strength bubbling up from deep within. By all accounts, Andric’s rejuvenation magic felt like a miniature miracle.
Boele thanked Andric for his contribution, then returned to hammering a collection of heated ore stone, followed suit by the three assistants. They returned to their work with new vigor, and their efficiency increased by several times. The effect of Andric’s magic eventually faded, but he stood only a few feet away, ready to apply his spell again every few minutes.
Andric’s weekly payment for his services included a small sum of coins, occasionally a new sword, and rarely a chicken. Most of his earned coins were saved in a small box under his bed, awaiting the moment when he discovered a way to build a fortune of wealth with his knowledge from his previous world. The swords were for keeping up with his growing body, which still had some room to grow after reaching thirteen-years-old, and the chickens were for magical experiments.
An hour before sundown, Andric said his goodbyes to the blacksmiths and ran home, to the other side of Gallus Town. He lived approximately thirty minutes away from the forge, and, for safety reasons, his mother wanted him home before dusk. His family knew about and supported his job at the forge, but the time limit was something they couldn’t forgo.
Andric’s magical affinity - the types of magical spells he would use with minimal mana expenditure - caused many of the people who knew about it to become envious. Small cuts and bruises could be healed with an ordinary magician’s ability, but only a magician with Andric’s magical affinity could regenerate entire limbs. When Lieve Avantus - Andric’s mother - first heard about a healing-affinity magician being kidnapped and murdered in the city closest to Gallus Town, she didn’t let Andric leave the house for a week.
At the Avantus house, only Andric’s mother and younger sister - Hedy Avantus - were home. His father - Wolter Avantus - worked until well after sundown, and he wouldn’t come home until the middle of the night. Indifferent to his lack of attendance, Andric, Lieve, and Hedy ate dinner around their four-person table.
“Andy, you should come to Cato’s house tomorrow. She’s been something practicing for a few days and wants to test it,” Hedy said while using her magic to cut kernels off a cob of corn. Though it wasn’t part of her affinity, she could slice up soft vegetables without using too much mana. Otherwise, she would use a knife.
“Why does she need me to come over to test her spell? It is a new spell, right?” Andric replied and asked, raising his eyebrow at the same time. He already had a firm impression of Cato and her tests which only he could help with.
“Come on, Andy, please? I promise it won’t be like last time,” Hedy pleaded and said, and she stared at Andric until he nodded.
He said, “Fine, but I’m charging you a bro point, and let me remind you that this will put you six bro points in debt,” and held up six fingers.
“I know, I know,” Hedy ignored Andric’s fingers and continued eating, and he did too.
The next morning, Andric, Lieve, and Hedy stayed home until Wolter left for work, after which they walked about ten minutes away and visited Cato’s house. There, Susanna Klerske and Cato Klerske greeted them at the door and quietly told them about Heiko Klerske sleeping on the second floor.
Cato’s father worked with the town guard, and his shift rotation changed every week. That week, he happened to work from ten at night until six in the morning. When he got home, he usually slept until afternoon, and being woken up by the sounds of children playing was not something he enjoyed.
“That’s alright. Cato, you wanted to show Andy something, right?” Hedy wasn’t disturbed by Susanna’s warning, and she turned to Cato and asked.
Cato, a girl one year older than Hedy and two years younger than Andric, wore a large grin while looking at Andric and replied, “Yes, let’s go to the left woods to do it.”
Susanna and Lieve walked inside, and the three children ran off to the west side of town. Though Susanna and Lieve were protective of their children, they felt safe letting them go outside the town when they had Andric with them.
Even though a large forest surrounded the northern side of Gallus Town and the mountain upon which it was built, dangerous animals rarely showed up near the town. The logging operation of Gallus Town had already spread throughout the forest, and the native wolves and bears were cleared out long ago.
Andric might have a higher chance of being kidnapped when outside the town - especially when inside a dark forest - but Lieve didn’t need to worry as much when Cato was with him. Unlike with Andric, who she believed to only have a healing magic affinity, Cato’s magical affinity allowed her excel in some forms of combat. Coupled with the fact that her father actively encouraged her learning how to fight, Cato made an excellent bodyguard.
Likewise, when Cato led Andric and Hedy into the forest that bordered the north of Gallus Town, Andric anticipated getting roped into some kind of fight with her. They eventually stopped in an area where the town could no longer be seen, and the gaps between trees stretched for about twenty feet. Some tree stumps were still in the ground, as the only reminder of the trees that had been cut down.
After looking up and making a few mental notes about the height of the tree branches above her, Cato jumped onto a tree stump, placed her hands on her hips, and announced to Andric, “Be amazed!”
She activated a spell, and mana from her brain activated inside her body. The magical energy inside her slowly depleted as it worked to bypass the laws of physics, and the physical world bent to her mana’s will. Without any source of propulsion, Cato’s body began to lift into the air. She rose for a few seconds, achieving a height of about two feet, and then suddenly dropped.
Her feet hit the top of the stump, and she bent her knees to help absorb the impact. Once she stabilized and stood straight again, she quickly glanced at Hedy and then to Andric and said, “That was pretty cool, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it was way cooler than when you just want to throw something at me,” Andric replied in an uninterested fashion, but the manner of Cato’s flight had intrigued him. Very few magical affinities allowed their magician to fly - not even Andric’s.
Cato looked at a rock on the ground and activated a spell, and the rock zapped toward Andric. Luckily, after years of enduring similar attacks by Cato, Andric had the reflexes to dodge most of what she threw at him, and he leaned to the side, allowing the rock to fly harmlessly past him.
She pursed her lips at Andric’s reaction and said, “I’m still working on the landing part, so I need you to heal me whenever I fall. Got it?”
Andric rodded and replied, “Yeah, I understand,” and sat on a stump next to him.
Andric’s magic was abused by everyone who knew he had the affinity for it, most notably: Cato. However, because he had the affinity for it, Andric could frivolously heal small injuries without worrying about running out of mana, and he didn’t mind being used.
Hedy and Cato were good friends, but Andric had little interest in the games of two preteens. If not for his blood relation to one of them, he would have never associated with them. Even after his reincarnation, Andric placed a great deal of importance of blood relations.
For lunch, the three of them ran back to Cato’s house and ate a meal cooked by Lieve and Susanna. Lieve enjoyed cooking, and Susanna couldn’t let her guest do all the work, so they both helped with creating a miniature masterpiece. After eating, Andric, Hedy, and Cato returned to the forest. Then, for dinner, they went back to Cato’s for a slightly less exquisite meal.
In their world, where magicians held supreme power at their fingertips, delicious meals were an important part of their culture. Fruits and vegetables of all kinds were available year-round, and diseases in livestock were practically eliminated.
A few days later, Andric went to work at the forge just like usual. He only came to work when he felt like it, since he didn’t have an essential job to do. As such, Boele paid him at the end of the week, based on how many days he worked. Due to the hassle of counting coins, most payments for routine services were done weekly or monthly. Boele’s ore and coal deliveries, which arrived every morning, were also paid for on a weekly basis.
In the middle of the morning, several hours after Andric arrived but still a few hours before lunch, he paused his sword-swinging to look up at the sky. For a second, he doubted his eyes. He had only seen it at the edge of his vision when he raised his sword above his head, and he otherwise wouldn’t have seen it. High above the town, a flaming object slowly glided overhead, heading away from the mountain.
“What the heck?” just as Andric mouthed a few words, a set of wings on the object flapped a few times, and it barreled down into the town. A huge crash resounded from the southern side of Gallus Town, and small bits of flames slowly fell from where the object passed.
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Boele and the other blacksmiths were intrigued by the sound, and they all walked out from the area around the smelters and stood beside Andric. They had all heard random explosions in the past, so it wasn’t entirely foolish to think they only heard a magician failing a spell. But, when they saw the many small flames dropped by the creature, they had second thoughts.
Boele finally asked, “What was it?” and turned to Andric.
Andric pointed upward, then, with his finger, followed the path the descending creature took and said, “I think it was a chicken, but it was on fire and really big.”
The blacksmiths looked among themselves, not quite sure what to think. Then, when they heard another loud sound from elsewhere in town, they came to a conclusion. One in the back asked, “Are we gonna wait this out, inside?”
Boele replied, “Yes, go close the smelters and head into the basement,” then said to Andric, “If there’s some kind of monster spreading fires in the town, you’re best coming with us. The basement is all stone and iron, and no mutated farm animal is going to be breaking in there.”
The monsters that belonged in children’s stories were not unknown to Andric, and he knew they were every bit real as the magic he cast on a daily basis. Ordinarily, they stayed in the wilderness and lived close to the source of the rampant mana that gave them their strength. When one’s path intersected with a town, it meant certain destruction on a large scale.
The effectiveness of Boele’s forge basement as a defensive area couldn’t be confirmed, and Andric’s first thought after seeing the falling monster wasn’t to hide. After his initial sense of confusion, Andric’s mind worked like a machine, carefully sorting the different emotions he felt and the various ethical, moral, and selfish motivations he contained.
Obviously, hiding away in the basement would be the easiest option for Andric. Just like the blacksmiths were doing, Andric could ignore whatever troubles the people of Gallus Town were facing and hide from the danger. The monster wouldn’t be able to get him, the flames wouldn’t be able to spread to him, and he would simply walk out of the basement after a day or two passed.
Although Andric had no moral against protecting himself before helping others, magician society revolved around magicians helping other magicians. When saving someone’s life was as simple as a thought, magicians were pressured by society to assist wherever their magical affinity might be helpful. Ethics shaped morals, but Andric’s morals had no chance to be shaped by his current world’s ethics.
Boele and the other blacksmiths might not have been able to help kill the monster to stop the flames, but Andric’s magical affinity had a high potential for being able to save lives. After any kind of disaster, healing magicians were a necessity, and Andric’s overwhelming ability made him highly desirable.
Andric could choose to hide and wait until the danger passed, but he had two reasons for wanting to rush across town and help as many people as he could. Firstly, he wanted to make sure his friends and family were fine. Lieve and Hedy were both water magicians, and thus they would be safe from the flames. Susanna and Cato were movement magicians, and they would be able to escape from any danger that approached them.
Wolter, who possessed a rare but relatively useless vegetable magic affinity, was in the most danger, and Heiko, with his fire magic affinity, which would allow him to negate flames with a somewhat lower efficiency than a water magician, was a distant second. Based on the time of day, Wolter could either be at home or at work - at a food cart in the middle of the city. Heiko would be at home, and Susanna and Cato would be near him.
For his second reason for running into town instead of running away, Andric wanted personal fame. He sought three things from his new life: money, power, and fame. To a certain extent, he already had a strong power. Though he only had a little money saved, his power would enable him to acquire much more in the future. For fame, though, only rare opportunities allowed one to gather it. He could either be the kid who hid until the danger was gone or the young man who stepped up to help the people around him.
Was it selfish, taking advantage of the situation to increase his personal fame? Maybe, but it wasn’t unethical, and it wasn’t immoral.
Andric turned around and said, “I’m going to see if I can help out. My healing and regeneration is strong, so I’ll be fine!” and then stabbed his sword into the dirt and ran down the street, away from where Boele and the rest were preparing to barricade themselves.
Boele shouted a few words of caution toward the quickly disappearing Andric, then focused on his and his forge’s safety. He, more than anyone, knew the healing capabilities of Andric’s magic, and he only hoped Andric wouldn’t be placed in a situation where he wouldn’t have enough time to react.
Andric ran down the side street to a major street, where his view wouldn’t be obstructed by buildings. Once he could see further, he looked toward the southern side of Gallus Town and saw many waves of smoke rising in the distance. From where he stood, he couldn’t see the flames, but he could estimate where they were.
Gallus Town didn’t have many large roads, but it was filled with alleyways of less than ten feet width. Those alleyways were excellent for people trying to get across town, but they didn’t allow much view of the sky. For Andric, that meant being unable to adjust his direction of travel in relation to the new location of the monster.
As he ran, Andric also made a simple plan in his head. He would first go to his house, then to Cato’s house. If he found his parents or someone from Cato’s family, he would escort them out of the town. If he didn’t, he would hope for the best while helping others.
Along the way, Andric made a slight detour and went to check on his father. He entered the town’s large center, where many food carts and various merchants without a building had set up shop, but he couldn’t find Wolter anywhere. There were still many people in the town center, and one person was closing down the food cart.
Andric asked him, “Hey, do you know where my father went?”
The man, who owned the food cart and knew Andric fairly well, replied, “He saw the smoke rising from over there and ran off toward it. Your house is over there, so he’s making sure Lieve and Hedy make it out.” He paused to speak to Andric and point at the southern side of Gallus Town, then returned to packing away chairs and said, “You should run to the outside of the town. Mages will encircle the monster eventually, and they’ll kill it.”
“Yeah, thanks mister,” Andric said, and he continued running toward his earlier destination. He ignored the advice of the cart owner, who had a wife and son but seem to care more about his business than his family.
The general movement of the population of Gallus Town was toward the outside of the town. Just like the man had said, mages from the town guard were preparing to intercept the monster, and they would soon dispatch a squad of mages with useful affinities.
To combat the monster, which had the body of a giant flaming chicken, multiple types of magicians would be needed. Firstly, to deal with the flames, water magicians were needed. Fire magicians would also work, but water magicians were the best at putting out fires. Moreover, water magicians could prevent fires, which would be needed when the enemy constantly generated flames on its body.
In addition to water magicians, the mage squad also needed magicians who would be able to kill the monster. In most instances, fire magicians would be picked, but they wouldn’t work against this particular monster. Instead, the town guard had to look for unorthodox combat magicians.
In terms of lethality, lightning magicians were a step above fire magicians, but they were much rarer. In the town’s arsenal of almost forty guards, only one was a lightning magician.
While the town guard attempted to put together a suitable team, Andric made his way closer to the landing site of the monster. Along the way, the crowd of fleeing citizens grew larger, and he had a harder time squeezing through the alleyways. For what distance had taken him only half an hour to walk in the morning, it took him nearly that same amount of time when running.
However, gradually, the crowds became thin, and, eventually, they became altogether nonexistent. Andric ran through several deserted alleyways, then arrived on the small street where his family’s house stood.
The houses in front of Andric, including his own home, were covered in flames from top to bottom. Behind him, the flames were only covering the rooftops and some of the second floors. The street separating the two rows of houses was only about fifteen feet wide, and the sudden change in the amount of flames covering buildings had Andric worried.
He ran forward, to where his house was, and kicked the door open. A small puff of flames burst into the street, where new oxygen fueled the fire. Andric stepped back, then activated a breathing supplementation spell. With his spell, Andric no longer needed to breathe to supply his body with oxygen, and thus he wouldn’t have to worry about suffocating inside the house.
Andric crawled on the floor and entered his house, and he could see most of the first floor after crawling for a few feet. The kitchen and sitting room were completely burnt up, but one piece of damage stood out more than all the others; the back wall of the house had been smashed to pieces.
Andric didn’t look at the destroyed wall for long, because a stream of water flowing down the stairs of the house took his attention. If the water was flowing, it meant it had a source, and his new world didn’t have plumbing. There was only one way for water to be flowing inside his home, and that was for Lieve or Hedy to create it.
Without any hesitation, Andric dashed up the stairway, through the flames that burned along the walls, and swiftly checked the rooms for where Lieve and Hedy were. In Hedy’s room, on the side of the house that had been destroyed, Andric saw Lieve kneeling on the floor.
“Lieve!” Andric shouted, and he cast healing magic on her while entering the room.
She shuffled to the side and said, “Quick, heal your sister!” and showed Hedy smashed between a large wooden beam and the floor. Both she and Lieve were covered in water, and they had a small radius around them where Lieve’s magic had held off the flames.
“Get ready to pull her out!” Andric said, and he cast a strengthening spell on his body. All of his muscles increased in strength by several times, and he then lifted the wooden beam - which weighed several hundred pounds - off from Hedy, and Lieve pulled her away. While he held the beam in the air, Andric cast a healing spell on Hedy.
The healing spell Andric cast on Hedy cost a large amount of mana, but he still had plenty left. Hedy’s crushed body quickly repaired, undoing the smashed portions of her body and generating new tissue where it was required. Due to the situation, Andric used additional mana to ensure the operation completed quickly. He dropped the wooden beam after about a second had passed, and Hedy’s injuries were already healed.
“Andy!” Hedy cried and hugged Lieve.
The latter said, “Let’s get out of here!” and carried Hedy to the first floor and out of the house, and Andric followed closely behind her.
A few seconds after Andric, Lieve, and Hedy exited their house, it completely collapsed. They laid on the ground at the opposite side of the street, catching their breath. Lieve occasionally pressed her palm to her forehead, and Andric suspected it had something to do with mana exhaustion. If he had come a few minutes later, or not at all, Hedy might not have made it out.
Lieve was the first one to speak and asked, “Where’s your father at?”
Andric replied, “His boss said he was headed over here, but I didn’t see him along the way.” Lieve looked worked, so Andric added, “He probably just got swept up in the crowd. There were a bunch of people running away from this part of town, and even I barely made it through.”
Suddenly, before Lieve could say something else, a house about two hundred feet down the street to the left of them burst apart, and a massive, flaming figure emerged from the splintered wood. The figure had a size roughly equivalent to the house it just rammed through, and it spread out to giant wings until they were blocked by the houses on the other side of the street.
The monster had arrived in front of Andric, Lieve, and Hedy, and it only took a second for it to lock onto their position. With a few flaps from its wings, its huge body cannoned through the street and landed next to where Andric, Lieve, and Hedy were laying.
Andric, whose body still had amplified muscles, pushed himself off the ground and jumped back, traveling over a dozen feet with a single backward leap. In front of him, Lieve went to pick up Hedy and also flee, but she was a tad slower than Andric’s augmented body.
The monster’s beak descended like an axe onto a watermelon, and most of Lieve’s upper body and head entered the monster’s stomach. Hedy, too, could do nothing in the face of the mutated creature, and the majority of her body was devoured within a few seconds.
Momentum carried Andric further back, but his legs stopped working. He fell to the ground and watched as the beast ate the family members he had just saved from their burning home. His mother and sister - both wonderful people in every aspect - were bit into pieces and swallowed. All that remained were the splashes of blood that escaped the monster’s beak.
At that moment, Andric felt many things. He knew that his brain contained a power to create miracles, and he activated that power. Without any thoughts to shape it, Andric let his raw emotions influence the spell his mana would create.
The fueling of the spell consumed all the mana inside Andric’s body, and he collapsed on the ground at the same time that his spell activated. He briefly saw the monster’s head explode in a cloud of dust, then immediately lost consciousness.