A woman stood, with her arms outstretched, in an empty room that seemed to go on forever. Its walls were a lightless black and it was impossible to figure out where they started. Although there wasn’t a light source, the woman was visible.
She had long black hair that reached her waist and a face of matchless beauty. She wore a long and golden robe that covered most of her body.
A few seconds went by without any change. The woman continued to stare in front of her with a look of complete concentration.
Then suddenly, something happened. With a flash of light from the direction that she was staring at, something came into existence.
The light, which had blinded the woman, slowly got weaker and the object that lay in the center was revealed.
A small, red object the size of the woman’s first hovered in the air without motion.
Under her gaze, the object slowly grew as it absorbed something very special, mana. The space around the object rippled and sent waves with the object in the center of everything.
The egg breathed in the mana-rich air of the room and slowly reached the size of the woman’s head. It no longer continued to grow.
A smile crept into the woman’s face as she lowered her hands. With a sweep of her right hand, a blue screen opened in front of her.
Name: Unnamed Sex: Male Age: 0 Race: Phoenix-Human(Hybrid) Level: 1, Sp:0 Stage: Embryo Class: None Titles: Born of Mana, Child of Ryeen Skills: None
With another wave of her hand, [Child of Ryeen] title disappeared and Unnamed changed into James Ingis.
She turned away from the panel and looked towards the egg. With a simple thought, the egg moved closer and she gently caught it with both of her hands.
As the woman gazed into the dark red color of the egg with a look that only a mother could have, a man appeared behind her.
Before the man had a chance to say anything, the woman said, “It's done. The egg has been created. It's a phoenix hybrid.”
The man walked towards the woman and looked at the egg for himself. With a hand on the egg, he gazed up. His eyes flickered around and refused to say in one spot. “Half-human… I guess that works perfectly with our plan and his spirit is strong enough,“ said the man in a soft voice.
“But can he get strong enough before it's too late?” asked the woman. A worried look appeared on her face. “There isn’t long before the Calamity and it's not like the other gods will sit still and watch from the sidelines as he grows strong enough to ruin their plans.“
The man let out a deep breath, “I wish I could find out, but alas, I can’t see farther than my demise. It's up to him now, to determine his own fate.” The man gently took the egg off of the woman’s hands.
As the man was turning away, the woman softly whispered, “Are you gonna really do it, Crim? I know we’ve talked about it, but if you don’t want to do it anymore, I would understand. Sacrificing oneself doesn't get any easier as a god. ”
“I don’t really have much of a choice. If it isn’t me, then it has to be you and you're much stronger than I am. You can help him out in the future, but I don’t can’t do that easily. Besides, I’ve lived a long life, longer than any of the other gods. No one has the fate to live forever, even the God of Fate himself.” As he finished speaking, he became blurred and was gone a few seconds later.
14 years later
James laid down on the soft grass of the forest. Beside him were four other people that were either laying on the grass like him and hiding behind a bush or crouching behind a tree.
The smell and the noise of the forest went unnoticed between the tense five men. Each one of them was trying hard to listen to see if anyone was coming down the dirt path in front of them.
They had been in the same position for nearly an hour, waiting. Several people with their horses and carts went by them already, but none of them had what the group wanted. As long as the one leading them, who was on the other side of the road, didn’t give the signal, they wouldn’t make a move.
As the time went on, the expected time of the carriage that they wanted came closer and closer.
James could feel the four other people besides him getting more and more worried. They held their weapons tighter and their breaths were shallow and quick.
“How sure are we that we din’t get duped by that Pit guy? I mean for all we know, there ain't no cart of Max Crystals comin” whispered a guy that was crouching behind a tree. This wasn't the first time this topic was brought up among the group. Although they were doing this together, none of them really knew each other before, so the trust between them wasn’t all that strong.
It also didn’t help that they were all criminals.
“For crying out loud, just shut up. We’ve been over this already, we’ll go and beat Pit to a bloody pulp if that bloody cart ain’t here by sundown,” replied the shot man beside him and the group went silent once more.
John doubted that they could do anything to Pit even if he did lie. The only reason that they were here was because they all reached the maximum level of 10 or 20 and they need to get their hands on a Max Crystal in order to get any further.
The city usually had plenty of them, but they were well guarded and none were given to criminals. This, of course, didn’t apply to any of the actual criminals that were a threat since they all had other ways of getting the crystals.
Stolen novel; please report.
The city had ways to see classes and titles of people and only people that were completely clean were allowed to receive a Max Crystal. They couldn’t have a choice and were forced to use it inside, so Max Crystals were never brought out.
They were easily available in black markets, but they all came with their own issues. Not only were they expensive, but they also had a different price. Some people were forced to work for years doing shady things.
And so, James, who had been stealing for a good portion of his life, had no chance of getting any more levels without taking a big risk. The idea of working for some criminal gang wasn’t great, and James would never do it willingly.
Just to pass some time, he pulled up his stats and looked at himself.
Name: James Sex: Male
Age: 14
Race: Human
Level: 10, Sp:0 Class: Thief (lv.6) Titles: The Bread Thief, The Thief Of 15th Alley Skills: Pickpocketing(Lv.3), Stealth(Lv.3), Dagger Use(Lv.2), Strength: 10 Agility: 14 Wisdom: 10 Will: 10 Vitality: 11 Luck: 10
Although stealing didn’t award much experience to his level, he still managed to get himself to level 10. It certainly wasn’t that easy and involved killing quite a few rats and going after a few people that had bigger pockets.
James was ambitious and he wanted to do something great with his life in the future.
Ever since he was born, only a few people ever wanted him.
One was Lin, who took in him after he was forced out of the orphanage when he turned 7 and taught him how to survive. He gained his first class at level 5 and it was Lin who made it possible that he even had a useful class to pick.
And when he died, James was all alone.
He didn’t like that. Not one bit.
He wanted to be like the heroes and kings in stories, loved by everyone. But James knew that that was just a fantasy. They were stories and he wasn’t in one.
But that didn’t make James’s desire for power any weaker. He didn’t know how he was going to get it or what he was going to do with it, but he could always figure that out later.
The click, clack of horses sounded in James' ear and he quickly waved the screen away. He tried to breathe while making less noise and clutched the dagger in his hands. Sweat started to creep out of his short, black hair and dipped off of him.
The other men also grew quiet as they heard the noise. It was around this time that Pit had said it would arrive and so there was a good chance that this was it.
The sound of the horses and the carts that they were dragging behind came closer and closer until it was right in front of them.
The long-awaited signal, a high-pitched whistle, was heard and the men quickly realized what it meant. A second later, the group of men got out of their hiding spots and a broken log was dropped onto the dirt path, forcing the two carts to come to a stop. The other group, led by Pit, also stood up from their hiding spots.
As James looked on to the clearing of the road, he got a clear view of what they were up against. Two horse-drawn carts, one after the other, and the two coachmen that led the horses were all James could see.
Quickly enough, he realized what was missing, or more specifically who. The 10 or so guards that were supposed to protect the carriages were nowhere to be seen. But if they weren’t here, then who was?
There was no way that two carriages could safely make it through the journey without some type of protection. Bandits aside, small and weak monsters would still attack the horses and the people through the journey.
Unlike James, Pit didn’t really care about it that much.
“ATACK!” he shouted as he activated his [Intimidation] skill. With his sword in his hand, he started to run towards the coachmen and the others followed him.
From what James knew, Pit was level 25 and his swordsmen class wasn't much lower than that, so even in the worst-case scenario, as long as Pit was still around, there wasn’t much of a chance that they would fail. Pit was a bald man in his early thirties wearing leather armor.
But right as James was about to move again, something inside him told him to get as far away as he could from here. His right palm, which was holding the dagger, started to hurt as the guard dug into his skin from clutching it too hard.
While he was hesitating, Pit reached the front coachman and he jumped using his buffed strength stat and swung his large swords, aiming to decapitate the coachmen, who was frozen in fear. Both of the coachmen were commoners that had no experience in fighting and didn’t have any type of armor or weapons.
But the sword never reached its goal as it was stopped by another sword that appeared from the front flaps of the carriage.
The clang of the two swords momentarily stopped the others but they soon resumed as they saw that Pin was alright.
As Pin landed on the ground from his jump, he moved a few feet away and carefully watched the front of the carriage.
“Come out, you sneaky bastard and fight me like a man!” shouted Pin as he got into his stance with his sword pointed up.
“Now, now. That’s not a nice thing to say.” A female voice spoke out and soon enough, the owner of that voice stepped out of the carriage and landed on the dirt.
She was one of the most beautiful women that James had ever seen. She had blond hair and a gorgeous face. Her eyes were a clear blue and gave away her arrogance. She had a silver chest plate, leather pants, and the way she was holding her long sword proved that she had plenty of levels in the skill. Her sword was elegant and long and its hilt was in golden color.
“Hey Jasper, Leo, and Bell, you guys can sit this one out. I got it handled,” she asked as she turned around her head to look at the carriage.
“Don’t turn your back on me, little girl. Just because you defended against me the first time, doesn't mean you can do so the next time.” Pit didn’t wait for her to turn around and swung his sword directly down towards the top of her head.
The other criminals, having reached the carts by now, split up, some went towards the young woman and the others went to the back of the first cart.
The woman, still with her back facing Pit, waited until the last possible second to bring up her sword to block. James realized that the sword didn’t move at all after it blocked Pit’s sword.
The woman turned back and there was a small smile on her beautiful face.
Pit, after the second swing, realized the power in her hands. His annoyance of her turning her back on him disappeared and fear started to take over. He quickly pulled back his sword and started to slowly back away without any of the others noticing.
The other criminals didn’t notice Pit’s actions and continued to surround the woman. As one, they all attacked together without any worry about any potential responses from the woman.
James didn’t notice what happened next as he turned around and started to run. Growing up the way that he did, didn’t foster any feeling of pride. It wasn’t his fault that the others were stupid. If it came down to it, they were the ones to blame.
With his heart pumping as hard as it could, James ran into the trees. He didn’t know where he was going, just that he was moving away from the carriages and that woman. If she wasn’t talking to some imaginary friends, there were three other people in that carriage and they should be all around the same level as her. There was no way that they could win.
But no matter how hard he thought about it, it didn’t make sense that there was a party of high leveled adventurers protecting those carts. He assumed they were adventures because there was no other profession that had such strong people.
For one, those Max Crystals get delivered to Ru every other day, so they were very common and so why defend them with adventures. And secondly, the city of Ru didn’t have a functioning dungeon so adventurers were very rare, so why bother having them protect a cart of Max Crystals.
Just as he thought that he got away, he felt something hard hitting the back of his head. The world began to get dark and James began to lose his consciousness.