The precursors were… strange.

While we knew they were extremely powerful, we didn’t know anything else about them. Each ruin was completely different from the last, so archaeologists concluded that the precursors were split into four nations that destroyed each other.

“You must be joking. If he was one, we’d already be dead.” Not only were precursors hostile, but extremely rare as well due to almost all of them dying.

“His powers are being suppressed. With enough training, he’ll overcome the suppression, and then kill us all.” Aha, I finally knew what she was trying to do.

“So we have to kill him first.” I smiled ear to ear as I looked directly at Ethan, but she slapped me.

“No you idiot!” She raised her voice, and lowered it again, “We should get him on our side. I’ve been trying to do that for years, but he doesn’t budge.” Her face went red, “He follows your orders without a single thought, so you should face him and force him to be your slave by tricking-”

“No.” Blair was pushed back by my aura. “I don’t care if he’s dangerous or not, he’s still a human being. I’ll just go with a generous interpretation of your plan, and become his pal, so he hesitates before killing us.” The best hope we had was that he wasn’t hostile, but the track record of other surviving precursors wasn’t great.

She didn’t say anything else afterwards. She just awkwardly moved closer to the guard until we arrived at the building that could very generously be described as a hotel. The wood was shiny yet uneven, as if someone just lazily applied a bunch of wood oil to make it look somewhat presentable.

The receptionist was sleeping, so I just took the liberty to steal a room key. It wasn’t as if someone was gonna check for us. While I went up, the boy put a coin on the table. He didn’t even realise that it was a southern Chinese coin, and would be practically worthless here.

“This key doesn’t even work! Silvia, toss me a bit of wood from the floor.” She was confused, but ripped a piece out anyway. I used an unorthodox lockpicking method, which involved me feeling the inside of the lock using dozens of tiny summon sticks, and then perfectly carving a piece of wood to fit in. “Ta-da.”

“Woah! How’d you know how to carve it?” He couldn’t have felt me summon the sticks.

“Magic.” He scoffed even though it was technically right. “Silvia and I will take turns guarding you two.” It really should’ve been Silvia doing it all, since Vampires didn’t need to sleep, but the boy would get suspicious if she just stayed up all night and didn’t look tired.

They begrudgingly went to sleep on the hard floor, while me and Silvia were leaning against the wall. The room was completely barren. There wasn’t a single piece of furniture in the whole room, and the dust was so abundant that you could taste it in the air.

“You can go to sleep mercenary. They won’t know.” I could, but I don’t wanna have another nightmare. The last one was particularly bad. Having victory snatched right beneath your feet was disheartening.

“I have really bad nightmares. I’ll stay awake if it means I can avoid them.” She chuckled.

“Oh? Do you need mommy to sleep with you? Of course you do you little-” I cut her off. She doesn’t deserve to make fun of me yet.

“I don’t wanna see my kid die again.”

“Oh… sorry.” She quickly went silent after that, but after a few minutes she piped up, “May I feed on you now?” I nodded and she quickly grabbed my arm. She looked like an addict getting her fix. My blood loss combined with my magical energy being sapped would make me go unconscious.

“Goddamit, drink less next time.”

***

Strange. It has been several minutes, and she still hasn’t transported me into the nightmare. It usually only took thirty seconds, but it was taking far longer this time. I just kept floating around the black void waiting for something to happen. Eventually, I noticed a few smoky spots in the void.

“How can you see me?” Ah, there she was. “Why are you even here? Do you want to be tortured? Oh, I know. You were stupid enough to offer your blood to a vampire. What could your motive possibly be for that?” Dramatica, the witch herself. It was incredibly ironic that a dark magician like her would end up as a mass of shadows.

“You know that my plans always work. I mean, have you seen Aqua? Don’t think so.”

“You’re dodging the question. Answer me. What is your motive for feeding the vampire?” Dammit, she caught me.

“The girl will never submit if the guard does everything she asks. She needs to be totally alone so I can crush her ego.” You couldn’t rebuild a building that hasn’t been broken. My perfect reasoning didn’t dissuade my ex’s worries for some reason.

“I honestly thought you were going for a redemption, and that I was wrong for trying to kill you, but it seems you haven’t changed one bit. You crushed Aqua for being too dangerous to be left alive, yet you think it is wrong when I do the same thing?”

“We both know why I did it. She had infinite potential, I didn’t.”

“Yes you did. Your willpower would’ve allowed you to reach even greater heights. You would’ve ‘culturally reset’ the Japanese again.”

“Are you dumb? We both know Aqua had more potential than me.”

“So what? You killed a fragment of the strongest god. I’m pretty sure you could’ve killed an actual god. Your dad has as much potential as her, but he didn’t even get close to killing a god.”

“Are you actually bringing my dad up? He’s the laziest man alive. Aqua was a workaholic. She could’ve gotten stronger than me if she put her mind to it.”

“Enough! We’ve had this conversation a thousand times, we both know how this ends. Just go back already you hypocrite.” With a snap of her fingers, I was back.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

***

There wasn’t much to do in the city after buying supplies for the journey ahead. We just walked, and walked, and kept walking.

“This terrain is terrible. I hate the tundra.” Blair said, clearly annoyed with the fact that she wasn’t in a carriage.

“Stop complaining. China doesn’t have particularly good weather either.” China was a rainy hellscape thanks to its many lakes and inland seas. The water even glowed in the dark sometimes, which is spooky as hell if you’d asked me.

“Better than this damn snow. It gets in my shoes and makes my socks wet. It’s disgusting.” Did she seriously say that wet socks were worse than twenty four hour glowing rain?

“Whatever you say.” I completely shut down the conversation. I needed to start training them as I couldn’t take out the warlord by myself, and all three of them were nothing compared to the warlord, which means they have to start from zero. “We’ll continue our journey later, we’ll rest here for a little.”

Ethan looked a little disappointed while Blair exhaled in relief. The girl’s lack of motivation was the thing I’d have to tackle second. She had the most potential out of all of us, so she’d be a potent weapon in the future.

“Why do we have to stop? I’ll carry Blair if she’s tired.” Oh no, he did not just say that. I have to distract Blair before she tries to kill him.

“Because you need to start training. Nobody in this world could face the warlord by themselves, so I’ll need your help. That’s why I asked you two to come with me.” I ignored the guard. Silvia had already been trained in an inferior combat art, which would take far too long to change.

“Training?! Surely you won’t force me to–” I cut her off. She’ll be the first.

“I can and I will. Now, get ready, I need to test the limit of your life force.” Life force was technically unlimited, it was just hard to tap into. If you attempted to use too much, it would actually damage your organs, but no matter how little of it you used, it always mentally hurt. The pain wasn’t real, but it still felt real.

“I-I’m not a life force user. The pain isn’t worth it.” Blair stuttered.

“Utterly pathetic. You’re going to use it, or else.” I cleared the trees and snow around us with many small explosions, and charged at her. She barely had enough time to react, but her limited non-life force magic wasn’t enough to even slow me down. I stopped right before hitting her, my fist millimetres away from her face.“That punch would’ve been a lot more painful than life force magic.”

“Y-You… You moron! You shouldn’t have done that out of the blue.” She started yapping, I didn’t pay any particular attention to what she said, as I was focused on creating a training plan in my head. “Are you even listening to me?”

“No. Use all the life force you can muster on me.” The mere suggestion set her off, which was good. Anger amplified will, and will amplified magic power. Her fireball was even more powerful.

The fire completely covered me head to toe. It actually felt a little hot, but I managed to avoid physical contact by constantly summoning small explosions to create an aura around myself.

“Impressive. I’d say you could match someone with four months of experience.” She really was a magic genius. Magic geniuses didn’t have a limit to their power. They would keep getting stronger as they trained, unlike everyone else, who hit a limit eventually.

She was even more livid, and threw several hardened ice shards at me, which I was able to shatter with one punch. She tried using air to move me, but it didn’t do anything.

“Just lie down and die, you stupid commoner!” That's the spirit! She was finally using an advanced element, electricity. Several bolts of lightning shot out, but all of them went right back into the ground as the aura around me would make me a harder target to reach, so the lighting would choose the ground as an easier alternative. “You have to be kidding me. Light blast–” She collapsed to the ground, clutching her heart. She reached the limit of her life force.

“Alright, that’s enough. Drop me five hundred pushups when you’re done healing.” She looked at me, terrified.

“Why do I need to do push ups? I’m a mage.” Oh god, I needed to explain everything to her.

“‘Magic is will made manifest’.” I was quoting my dad. The first magic genius. “I mean will in the very literal sense, and will is increased when you’re more confident. Exercise is the fastest and best way to gain confidence, and by proxy, gain willpower.”

“I can’t even do a hundred pushups. How could I ever do five hundred?” This generation was so much weaker. I did that many pushups when I was eight.

“You’re excused to stop if your bones break. Now, let’s test the boy.” I still haven’t figured out his potential, as I haven’t seen him fight, and I couldn't figure out his power based on the aftermath of the skeleton fight, as there wasn’t any direct proof of what he did, unlike Blair. Before Ethan could do anything, Silvia stepped up.

“My lord should practise his physical power, releasing his latent energy is more important than technique.” So she knows. Good to know. “Battle me instead.” Oh, I see. She was challenging me. She thought that she could show the superiority of her school of combat by showing him that I'm all muscles and no technique.The boy would be more impressed by her, and train under her wing.

What a fool.

“Fine, come at me.” She reached for her spear, took one step forward, “Charge, counter, uppercut.” She stops, raising her eyebrow and backs up.

“How’d you-”

“Continue.” She readied herself again. “Throw, gut punch, grab, stab.” She froze again. I’ve been predicting her exact moves. It would be a little difficult most of the time, but she uses techniques written in a book. I can quite literally read her moves like a book. She tried again, “dust cloud, and then the first thing you tried.” It would be clever if it wasn’t so cliche.

“How do you know what I’m about to do? Nobody has such a perfect memory of a book.”

“Intuition. The small movements you do right before doing something give it away completely. The rest is instinct. Now, keep trying, I’ll be your slave for a week if you can manage to hit me once.”