It’s been thirteen years since Walter and his mother was thrown out of their family, currently they are living in a friendly neighborhood. A regular family like any other that is what they currently appear to be if one removes the fact that he doesn’t have a father.

Though they had a hard time at first, his mother still had her inheritance from her family. For the past thirteen years his mother worked hard and now is stably handling a fairly famous bakery. They lost all connection to his father’s family and lived their lives like he doesn’t exist but to him, the past can’t be easily forgotten.

Looking at his mother who was preparing to go to work once more, he could see that behind her bright smile is the heavy burden of losing her husband.

(Provincial Governor Strauss, what do you have to say about the typhoon that just passed?)

On the television is a face that he remembers, although he looked to have gained too much age in the past thirteen years, Walter would never forget the face of his father. Looking at the time he realized that he took so much time watching the news.

“Crap! Today was the planned meeting for the group activity!” he inwardly cursed as he rushed to get his things.

A laptop bag, his wallet and phone with all this he got ready and headed out. Walter looked at to his left, he could see the vast farmlands surrounded by mountains. Next to those are a multitude of buildings of various sizes, and builds.

The merging of urban and rural city scape charmed him; to his left he could see the various buildings of a bustling city. The city had traffic a lot of traffic; he could see the biggest mall in the City. the two huge blue letters could be faintly seen.

“Although I hated this place in the past, I’ve gotten attached to it”

Walter walked towards the jeepney terminal, he remembered about the past. His cousins would constantly belittle those people who rode jeepneys. He looked at the people inside the jeepney as he sat at the place closest the driver.

People of various walks of life were in the jeep, Walter knew that these people could be rich or poor. It’s not like all rich people would ride their own private cars. He understood the convenience of public transport. In fact he hated the private cars that would be the main cause of traffic. Public transportation could carry 20 plus people to a certain destination on the other hand the space taken by a private vehicle would differ but the number of people it usually carried would not go over six. In fact vans could carry more but not all vehicles would try to carry to its full capacity.

As he thought of these things the jeepney arrived at its final stop. The city center there he could see the mall in the distance. He then proceeded to head for the park; he and his classmates would meet here to complete their group project. He walked towards his destination unaware that his life would change at this very day forever.

[Separate Reality]

An ancient archaic voice resounded in the surroundings as time seems to have stopped. The cars everything then disappeared and the world started to turn gray. All color disappeared as a hazy figure appeared in front of Walter from out of nowhere.

“The last surviving member of the Lineage who hold the gene...”

The voice echoed in Walter’s mind as the hazy figure slowly formed a complete image. It was an old man walking towards him. His body is covered in a black cloak, on his left hand he held a staff like that held by Gandalf only it was black. His face is covered by his hood but the long white bearded reached his chest exposing his age.

“Thy descendent of thy mage of darkness, he whom holds the power of the elements. Thy power within shall awaken, revive thy legend and once more become the star of -”

Before he could hear the last words of the old man everything returned to normal, at the same time Walter felt the skin on his hand and his palm begin heating up. He rushed towards the nearest public bathroom; he turned on the faucet and made the water flow across his right hand.

The heat made him sweat and the pain almost became unbearable but the next thing he knew it disappeared, he looked at his right hand and noticed that something was tattooed onto it.

The image is that of a pentagram in the upright position, it was colored black with a red outline. The outline looked like it was a light that came out of the image. He turned his hand and on his palm is the image of an eye with weird tentacles extending out of them. Unlike the star it was colored red but had a black outline that looked like the red of the previous image.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“What the hell is this?”

As he asked this question his head began to hurt again, the pain is like that of a million ants biting his brain again and again. The burning pain made him fall on his knees; he clenched his head as his vision shifted from the colorless world and the regular world.

“AHHHH!”

His wail seemed to make the pain disperse as the world stayed on the colorless one that stopped time. When the pain disappeared Walter felt an influx of memories rush into his head, the memories if they could be considered memories is like a stream of water. It flowed into his head without stopping.

Walter’s eyes became wide open in shock as he realized what came into his mind is not memories but information. Plain information, it was like he was reading through a million books each second. Various terms, words, images... all kinds of knowledge that bordered between real and fantasy ingrained themselves into his mind, what’s more all of these information as well as his previous knowledge merged not only that Walter felt like he could perfectly recall all of it like his brain was a computer.

“Wait this is-”

He looked at the water in front of him and realized that he could, for some reason see through the composition of it. Not only the water, everything in front of his eyes looked like huge bodies of information.

He looked at his right hand again and realized the reason for all that he can see, “Mark of Knowledge”, a mark that causes the bearer to be able to use all the knowledge and information he has to get an understanding of what he sees with his eyes, smell with his nose, feel with his touch, taste with his tongue and hear with his ears.

He then looked at the star on top of his hand, “Magic Gene”, a mutation caused by exposure to mana, this gene would allow the user to connect with the Akashic records of the world and cast spells directly from it using a universal magic circle that can only be activated with the power of Alpha Magic Genes.

“This is more than fantastical; this seems like a dream... I’m not dreaming now am I?”

He said to himself as he walked out of the public bathroom, there he saw the gray world and all the people frozen in time.

“Thy Lineage, he who reached the peak of Babel, he who received the name of the cursed tower for his sins, thy whose veins carry this curse, whose being hold these genes that the gods condemn. In this world now devoid of -”

The archaic voice once again resounded in his mind, but this time the old man never appeared. Though Walter felt that he now barely came into an understanding of the reason for this.

“He who received the name of the cursed tower for his sins...”

Walter thought and realized the meaning behind these words; he could perfectly remember each and every word that the voice uttered was permanently ingrained into his memory. Analyzing the statement that he heard he thought of his mother’s family name.

“Babel-”

The tower that’s aim is to reach God, which caused the creation of various languages leading to infighting of the mortals.

“But wasn’t its construction halted by God by creating the various languages? The peak should not have reached the Gods... or could the tower have been completed? This... there are still many mysteries but... I will find out but before all that”

Walter raised his right hand; he opened his palms and thought hard. He recounted, what to do, how to do it, what he needs. He scanned through his vast knowledge, and came to a halt, in 0.5 seconds since he opened his palm a fire appeared.

It floated in mid-air as it gave a brilliant orange light that brought a few colors to the gray world. He then thought more, chemistry, flame, fuel, oxygen...

[Methane]

The flame suddenly burst with a blue color, the heat did not affect anything around him, and it did not even affect him.

“It appears that I need to see if this will affect the real world”

With that thought Walter returned to the world of color, he walked towards a jeepney terminal as he sent a text to his friend.

At the park, in the location next to the lake a girl with short black hair sat at a chair with four others. They were all looking at their phones and doing their own business until the short haired girl stood up.

“What’s up Laura?” a bespectacled girl with short hair asked the girl who stood up.

“It seems that Walter will not be coming he said it was for family reasons” she answered the girl.

A guy with waxed hair then stood up as he stretched his body, he wore tight fitted jeans and a black polo over a white shirt. He pocketed his phone then looked towards Laura, “Then let’s start the project without him! He’ll just have to edit the video and make it as amazing as he can then!”. Following him another boy wearing the same attire but with messy blonde hair added, “He’s a good tech guy anyway right? Well since he has business to attend to then it’s got to be pretty serious I mean he’s one of the few students who actually give a fuck, aside from miss Laura over here.”.

The rest simply nodded their heads as they knew what type of character Walter had, they have been classmates since their freshman years, as such they have a very good understanding of each other’s character. They know that Walter would not miss something as important as a project just to play around as such they decided to leave him some work to do to give him some load of the project at least.

“Well he could just paste in a photo of himself in the video, let’s start then so we don’t waste any more time.” Laura said as she proceeded to bring out a camera.

“Let’s go!”

“Let’s finish this quickly so I can play League!”

“Hey wanna duo with me later I’m at my plat promos and I want to have assurance!”

“Why don’t you duo with me? But it will cost you, hehehe”

The five students then proceeded to do their filming; while they were doing this the person they thought must be doing something serious could be considered to be doing something serious. Though it’s not known how they would asses it if he told them what he was really doing.

At the rooftop of an unfinished abandoned building a boy with short cut black hair stood with right hand extended in front of him. His eyes were closed as he seemed deep in thought, then in an instant a white flash came out of his hand. It extended towards the tree opposite of him, the white light was like a beam but looking closely it looked more like a winding snake. Though it’s unlikely that anyone would notice this, in fact it’s more likely for them to understand what it is by the sound it made.

The light struck the tree and disappeared faster than one could understand what happened, after it disappeared came the sound that would accompany such a strike.

(Crash)

The sound echoed in the hollow interior of the building, the emptiness made it so that the sound was amplified making it resound in the whole area. The school next to building luckily was empty as it was a Sunday.

“Cool”

Walter stared at his hands and then the tree, his face showed an expression of amazement as he realized just what he had done.

“So it seems that I am limited to the most basic of spells, I have the knowledge but not the power to use it. This magic gene should allow me to use all these spells freely but the repercussions are still unknown. From the knowledge I gained there were no apparent side effects of using this gene, but many of its users were still quite eccentric. It may not be directly linked but I won’t fall into temptation...”

Through his obtained knowledge Walter knows that these magic genes were the results of genes being saturated in mana for centuries. Something that should not exist in this world, it would be similar to a mutation caused by radioactivity but the results are a lot more beneficial than not.

Walton decided to go home but when he turned around he realized that a woman was standing behind him.

Long wavy black hair, clear blue eyes, a perfectly sculpted face with jade like white skin; seeing this kind of beauty in front of him Walton only had one thought, “Wow”. Surprised he’s left staring at the beautiful face but was abruptly brought back to reality when the woman suddenly pointed towards him. This was followed by an explosion.

Walter didn’t know what to expect as such he turned around only to be greeted by an astonishing sight.