Prologue;

Jerry looks around frantically, his eyes falling upon mine. I’m already moving, sprinting as fast as I can towards him, to push him out of the way. Light flashes through the canopy above as time seems to slow down. My body feels as if it’s moving through water, but still I run faster and faster.

Everything in my surroundings becomes so much more detailed, the colours vibrant and bright. As if reality becomes more real with every passing moment, for all its horror. A large claymore glints in the scattered sunlight. A middle aged soldier, with a burly  white moustache. His face strained from the effort of swinging down the claymore full force towards my fallen companion’s neck.  

Realisation hits me, I’m not going to make it, I never did.

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Year 403 - early spring – morning

I wake up with a gasp, the sun is already up. I’m covered in sweat from the nightmare, this doesn’t surprise me. The dreams have been coming for months now, becoming more frequent up until today. I do wonder though who this Jerry figure is that always seems to draw the short straw in my dreams.

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I walk outside to wash up with some captured rainwater in a barrel as I consider the day.

Today is my naming ceremony. This is the time where young men and women aged 12 or above will find out what latent talents we have and what role we will take in the society as we receive our status.  

There is a grand festival involved once everyone has received their name and knows their fate, many of the young men even take this festival as the special time to propose to their special someone.

I however, have been dreading this day for as long as I can remember. This is because I want to be an adventurer. And the one thing every adventurer needs, is mana sense, a trait rarely seen in outskirt villages like my own.

My parents are farmers, my brothers are miners, and my grandparents were settlers. While the general opinion seems to be in the direction of “anything can happen today”, I know better. I won’t have the mana sense trait and I will be worthless to any adventuring party.

Mana sense does far more than the name implies, and is not only important for caster type adventurers. Mana lets you manipulate the outside world, or inside. Even a swordsman needs mana sense just so he can learn to manipulate his inner mana for greater strength. A master swordsman without mana sense would be beaten by a novice swordsman that trained with mana.

I shake off my worries as I fix my hair and tidy my outfit. “It’s time to face what’s coming” I tell myself as I walk towards the centre of the village where a wagon is waiting to take me and the others to the main city.