"Hey bastard, what are you doing?" A large man holding a bottle of liquor asked a skinny pale black-haired boy in front of him.
The boy was currently just wearing a pair of normal shirts and short pants, sweeping the falling leaves around the area. It was currently winter but the boy's attire was certainly not for winter rather it was more suitable during spring or summer.
Despite being skinny, the boy never fell sick and that's why no one ever care to give him proper clothing for autumn and winter. Fortunately, the two seasons aren't harsh in that area thus the boy still managed to survive without proper clothing and enough food.
However, the boy didn't shiver at all as if he was already used to the cold. The large man who was intoxicated looked at the boy with disgust.
"Hey, when will you die? I thought you will die a few years ago but you managed to stay alive until now. Such nuisance like an insect"
The boy remained silent and acted like the man didn't exist.
"Hey, I thought you only mute? Have you suddenly become deaf huh?" The man's pronunciation had become more uncleared and slurred due to the liquor.
The man kept on babbling random things while the boy continue sweeping the ground around him.
"You trash, we can't even sell you since you looked so sickly. What's wrong with your skin, why is it so pale huh? This skinny disgusting body. If you want to die why can't you just die huh?" The man started to poke the boy's head with his rough callused hand.
The boy could feel the rough hands smacking the back of his head and touching his cheek roughly.
"You, you dare not to respond to me huh!"
The drunk man quickly became angry out of nowhere and a moment later, he smashed the liquor bottle he was holding onto the back of the boy. The boy instinctively put his arms above his head to protect his head.
The man kept on kicking the boy until he fall completely to the ground, covered in blood. The broken glasses on the ground stuck on his skin, causing more blood to come out.
However, the boy didn't utter even a sound. He remained quiet like a corpse. The only thing indicating he was still alive was his wide-opened eyes that would blink every time he got kicked and hit.
"Why don't you just die huh? A cursed being like you should just die. No wonder your parents throw you away," the drunk man continue with his violent antic until he was somewhat satisfied.
"Oh it's quite cold today and my drink has already finished. Hey, kid go buy me more drinks" he nudged the boy laying on the ground with his foot.
The boy remained silent and he didn't move. The man continue to stare at the boy before he walked away while still babbling obscure sentences.
The boy remained laying down on the ground unable to move. The blood coming from his back seemed to have already stopped. Not long after that, the sunset was on the horizon, causing the already damp and cold atmosphere to become even colder.
"Hey look I told you he's dead for sure this time," suddenly a voice of a woman could be heard around him.
"Fuck, he's still alive. How resilient" another voice which sounded like a young man's voice could be heard.
"Shit. Here is the money. I will make sure I win our next bet"
"Hehe told you, this bastard won't die that easily. He has that fancy demon-like name so how could he die"
"Shut up. So what should we do with him?"
"Err treat him?"
"Who wants to treat him? You? Obviously not me," the woman said sternly.
"Tskk don't you say we needed more workers. We can use him right?"
"Fine fine. I treat him but I won't give my food portion to him"
"Whatever who cares"
After the conversation ended, the boy could feel his body being dragged roughly on the ground. Someone was holding his leg ankle and dragged him all the way into a dilapidated building.
The building looked like it going to collapse at any second.
"Hey bastard, I know you are still conscious. Make sure you remain alive as long as you could because I'm the only one betting on you to remain alive while the others always thought you will die. So don't die at least until I could get out from here"
The boy just slightly glanced at the young man who was dragging his ankle before roughly putting him on a hard bed with a thin blanket made out of linen that didn't help in warming his body at all.
The boy could feel his body was extremely painful. He just wanted to close his eyes and didn't want to feel the pain anymore. However just before he completely fall asleep, a rough hand suddenly choked his neck.
Urghhh
He didn't have any energy to resist anymore
'Please let me sleep....'
************************
Gasp
Ares jolted up and opened his eyes in shock as if he was thrown into a cliff. He gasped for air and the back of his body was wet with his sweat as if he had been running on his bed the whole night.
"What was that dream? Is it me? No no, it's different. The atmosphere was different" Ares muttered confusedly.
He glanced through the window, the outside still dark. It was still too early in the morning but he didn't feel sleepy at all, as if all his sleepiness have been scared away by the weird dream.
He tried to recall the dream and he immediately knew the boy inside the dream wasn't him since that boy has blue emerald eyes.
In his past life, he had lived inside a rundown orphanage and was abused almost every day by one of the orphanage workers thus at first he thought the dream was his past life's childhood because the boy has black hair just like his previous body.
However, instead of having dark brown eyes, the boy has blue eyes instead, making him confused about who that boy was.
He glanced towards a large mirror not far from his bed. He could see a red-haired youth with chromatic eyes staring back at him.
"It wasn't Ares either. Who is it?"
He thought the original Ares's memory would slowly come back but that didn't seem to be the case.
Even after a few minutes, he could feel his heartbeat still beating erratically. He took a few deep breaths to calm down.
Ares glanced towards the tabletop beside his bed. There was a bottle of mineral water on it and he quickly opened the bottle cap and pour the water onto the tabletop.
"Tuah, can you come here now?"
The water stains slowly moved.
[Yes]
"Make sure no one detects you. I don't have any energy to explain to my family about you yet"
[Sure. I came as fast as I could]
The reason Ares called Tuah was that he just remembered that in his past life, Druids in mythology were considered experts in mystical things thus he wanted to ask for Tuah's opinion along with discussing their relationship.
Since he couldn't fall asleep, Ares decided to go to his study and read some books relating to mana and beast core.
Unlike monster core, the beast core was far more valuable but it was illegal to hunt beasts which mean there was supposedly no beast core sold in the market but of course, you could still buy them in the black market at an exorbitant price.
It was said the beast core could give humans special abilities like invincibility or camouflage.
"Hmm if I'm not mistaken Cedric must have consumed a holy beast core during this time around right?"
My mind became a bit chaotic due to the dream that he couldn't think of anything else.
While he was deep in thought, suddenly he could feel a presence outside the window of his study. Before he managed to grab a dagger not far from him, a familiar voice made him stop.
"Master, it's me Tuah. Can you open the window?"
'Wait it's not even an hour after I called him and now he is already here. Did he use a teleportation spell?'
Ares immediately opened the window and let Tuah came in. Unexpectedly it wasn't the old man Tuah but a red-haired youth similar to Ares wearing a weird brown-robed while holding a wooden staff.
"How many times should I say not to use my face," Ares said slightly annoyed.
"Then give me another human's face I can use," Tuah replied without any sense of shame.
'Well, he's already too old to feel any shame' that was what Ares thought while he randomly sketch a face for Tuah to use.
The face was a combination of different people such as the eyes were from a random woman he once saw, the nose was from another woman and the mouth, eyebrows and cheeks were from different men.
Instead of looking grotesque, the face looked decent enough.
"Oho, this is quite a nice-looking face but I like your face more" Tuah commented before he turned his face like the one on the sketch.
Ares didn't reply to Tuah's comment and gestured him to sit down on the sofa opposite of him.
"Why are you living in this kind of house?" Tuah said while glancing around.
"Why, did you see any ghost?" Ares asked randomly.
In his past life, he didn't believe in ghosts and in this life he tried to find them since he thought they might exist in this world but nothing happened which made him slightly disappointed.
"Oh so you do know they are here" Tuah nodded his head as if he finally understood.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Eh? I thought you know that there is indeed a ghost here. To be honest it wasn't really a ghost but a deep resentment coming from the remaining soul of someone that died here. Usually, a human priest can purify those kinds of souls but if the resentment is too much, it can curse its surroundings instead like this house. I could clearly feel the curse"
"....Where?"
"What do you mean where? All area in this house was cursed. I thought you already knew about it" Tuah smile turned into a smirk.
'Is he being scammed into buying this house? But it is indeed a nice house if you ignore the curse part' Tuah thought while nonchalantly sipping the warm tea served in front of him.
"So what should I do?"
"Just let it be"
"...."
"I'm being serious here master. You're the heir of the Tree of Life and you once said the Tree of Life is like a parasite isn't it? It is partially true since it could suck any form of energy and curse is a type of energy"
"Just like the dark mages that turned resentment and cursed of the dead into dead mana" Ares muttered.
"Yes, that's it. You're quick on the uptake. That's why just let it be. Your body will slowly absorb the curse and it seems the curse might only cause nightmare at most to the owner of the house" Tuah said while slowly spreading his mana around the room to check his conjecture.
"The owner is me so that's mean the dream I experience is just a nightmare"
"Oh, you already have a nightmare. Is it too gruesome that even you felt uncomfortable?"
"No, I felt like I'm dreaming about my childhood but it's not me"
"Oh, it must be an unpleasant memory then. Don't think about it too much. You just inherited the Tree of Life thus it might take some time to be able to absorb the curse. The nightmare is just one of the effects. But never take it too lightly if you continue experiencing nightmares since the curse might try to corrupt you or someone else purposely cursed you" Tuah advised Ares who he treated as his own kid.
"Hm," Ares slowly became less interested in the dream he had before.
"By the way, why do you call me master?" Ares asked.
"You're the Tree of Life's sole heir and I'm only a servant tasked to guard the Tree Of Life and serve the heir so, of course, you're my master," Tuah answered eloquently.
"So can I know who is your previous master?"
"I'm sure you will know about him by yourself without me telling you"
"Is that some kind of a rule to not reveal the previous master to the current one?"
"No there's no such rule. The rule just stated the heir cannot do destruction that caused the imbalance of the world. That's it. Other than that you can do whatever you want"
" I still don't understand anything about the Tree of Life"
"Ok let me explain. The Tree of Life as you might know was known as the World Tree doppelganger but what most people didn't know was that it's functioned as the Balancer of the world"
"Wait what do you mean the Balancer of the world" Ares suddenly felt that it might be related to the attributes he once saw inside the Codex Silenda diary.
[Blessed with unique authority, the Balancer]
That is what was exactly written in the diary and he almost forgot about it.
"The Tree of Life symbolizes five main aspects, which are interconnectedness, the cycle of life, peace, stability and individuality. These are the five cores of the Tree of Life teachings."
"Wait is it a religion?"
"No, it's not. It's more like philosophical pedagogy. It wasn't meant to be a religion at all"
While explaining about the Tree of Life in more detail, Tuah roughly sketch the Tree of Life symbol that looked like the Yggdrasil and Celtic cross I've seen in my past life. Since it was complex, the symbol sometimes would just be drawn as a simple cross like the tattoo I have on my arm.
"The Balancer related to the five core philosophy of the Tree of Life. With time you will eventually know what it is all about."
"You can't just tell me everything?" Ares asked.
"Unfortunately there's some information that even I don't know and should only be known by the heir thus you need to find the answer yourself"
Ares felt like he got more things to think about and it wasn't a bad thing since he always felt interested to learn about this world and Tuah had given him more reasons to do so.
On the other hand, Tuah continued glancing at Ares from time to time as if trying to confirm something.
Ares's body had already stable since he had all the main four elements fragments inside his body which were the fire, wind, water and earth fragment.
Wind and water were from the Ice Crystal core he consumed and the Earth's fragment was from the branch that entered his body.
However, Tuah still couldn't find what is the power that helped Ares postpone his body from exploding due to clashes of the imbalanced elements inside his body.
That weird book that he said entered his body couldn't have that kind of power. That book already led him to the Tree of Life and made him easier to absorb the Tree of Life's power.
If the book also helped him avoid the clashes of the power inside him for a while, it might be comparable to a mythical artifact and that kind of artifact could only be found when you caught a mythical beast which was almost impossible to do.
Mythical grade artifact is above the best man-made artifact which is a grade 5 artifact. Above grade 5 is the mythical and divine grade which were not made by humans.
Mythical beasts were extremely strong and they were also rare and not many in number. They were even less than dragons.
Most known mythical beasts have been captured thus there was no way this bratty master of mine could find a book which was actually a mythical grade artifact.
"Do you see any weird words appearing on your hands again?" Tuah asked.
"No. Why?"
"Nothing, it seems the book was indeed helping you on being the Tree of Life heir and it already finished its task"
Tuah was now sure there was something else about the red-haired youth in front of him that the said individual himself didn't realise about it.
'Oh well, I have to teach him a lot of things thus I have more opportunities and time to check what it is,' Tuah felt kind of excited for the future since he have been bored for such a long time.
"I can do whatever I want right? Since I don't want people to sense anything weird with me once the school start in a few days," Ares said ignoring Tuah's stares that might poke a hole on his face.
"Yup. Nothing for you to worry," Tuah said reassuringly.
'Sigh, I really don't want to stand out but I need more strength in order to remain alive,' Ares hoped his school days would turn out to be just fine and peaceful until he graduated or until he had to drop out as the original Ares did.