"We'll start with simple questions." Tasim drummed his fingers on the table.
We were sat on opposite sides of a rectangular table. Tasim had explained that when I had fallen unconscious, he and Aledar had brought me to a nearby inn, where there was a spare room for me to rest. The two of them had also decided to use this place as a rest stop, so they could recover from the attack by the undead.
"How much do you remember before you passed out?" Aledar asked, stroking his beard.
"Well, just as it was about to devour me, I felt a surge of mana within me... then I pushed it out of my body in fear that I couldn't handle it. The last thing I saw was the spike." I couldn't help but feel that this magic was locked within me... as if it was within an arm's reach but guarded by powerful forces. Perhaps, in fear of death, my body had unlocked the metaphorical Pandora's box and unleashed evil spirits upon the Enderman.
But I knew I couldn't control these powers just yet. I had to get stronger.
You will go on a series of adventures around the world. And through these, you will recover your memories, and gain this power, the Dern Beast's voice echoed in my head.
A series of adventures... The way he had said it sounded like he had already read my life like a book and was narrating it to me. I wanted to defy him. I wished I could live a peaceful life in Ragni, free of worry...
But I knew that if I led that kind of life, my death would be the first major event in it. I wouldn't even live for long, with the amount of beasts and malevolent forces in the world.
"As you know, you harnessed Corruption magic," Tasim stressed. "What if you cannot control yourself at any time? What if you kill anybody? Whether it be us, or innocent people... the fate of all lies in your hands."
"I know." I rubbed my temples. "But I feel like... like this power only comes to me in times of great need. I know it's in me, like I have the innate potential to use it, but some invisible force is stopping me. I don't think I'll be able to destroy the world with such limited usage of this magic."
"Still..." Aledar rested his head on his arm. "You will be a force to be reckoned with. There's more to you than just Corruption magic."
"You mean my time magic?"
"Y-you - y- what?" Aledar spluttered, nearly spewing out all the water he had just sipped. "You knew of it?"
I wasn't yet ready to tell them about how I had met the Dern Beast and Light Beast, since that would draw an unfathomable amount of attention to me, but they at least needed to know my abilities before things got even worse. Time magic had been nothing more than a myth for thousands of years, and I doubted many even knew what it was.
"I had a dream," I began. It wouldn't hurt to mix the truth with some lies as a starter. "I met someone... or something. It tested me... it showed me time magic. It punched my chest, and it healed."
Aledar glanced at Tasim and nodded. "That seems accurate to what happened to your stomach after the Enderman was killed."
"This thing also showed me other applications of time magic. I saw a woman speeding up the growth of crops, a medic reviving the dead... And then it told me about the destruction of this civilisation - the Olm."
"The Olm..." Aledar whispered. "I thought they were extinct."
I shook my head. "No. It was very real."
"I've believed that the Olm existed since I was a child," Tasim remarked. "Which is why when I became an adventurer, I sought to find these legendary mages. Time magic, eh? There's a remnant of the Olm named Time Valley. It's just a bunch of ruins; some of the structures have inscriptions no one can figure out."
"Yes, I've heard of it," Aledar added. "Apparently, they created our four key runes today: Nii, Uth, Tol and Az. These runes are limited, since the Olm no longer exist to create them, but hold immense power. Only the richest can afford to use them, since they come at a high cost, but the amount of strength you receive from absorbing one of these runes is worth any price."
In a way, the Olm had created an economy around runes. Those who were rich enough could buy runes, and could absorb the runes to gain enough power to go adventuring, and find more of these runes to gain profits. Runes would certainly be very worthwhile if I wanted to become powerful.
"In any case," Tasim continued. "What was it you were saying about the destruction of the Olm?"
"Apparently, a powerful creature known as the Dern Beast brought its armies and attacked them. Few survived, but they suppressed their magic and fled."
"Dern Beast?" Aledar wondered aloud. "I've never heard of such a being."
"Yes, the thing in my dream mentioned that it was very little-known. But... I saw it." I recounted the appearance of the behemoth form as well as the dragon form of the Dern Beast, explaining that the imaginary being in my dream had showed me these images.
Tasim scratched his head. "This Dern Beast seems to wield an incomprehensible amount of power. Here we were, assuming that Bak'al was the pinnacle of power of the enemy forces..."
"Bak'al is still alive, yes?" Aledar added. "It is possible that he was working under the orders of the Dern Beast in the battle against Bob, and may still be doing so."
The mere presence of the Dern Beast had nearly crushed me, and I sensed that even then, it had been holding back. At full strength, it could likely destroy not just little towns, but entire kingdoms or provinces. And if Bak'al, a superpowered human with strength only matched by Bob, who had now been missing for over a century.
As the story went, as Bob was about to kill Bak'al, the leader of the Corrupted had managed to summon a portal and escape. Bob had carried on to guard Wynn, the province we were heading to, but at some point, he had gone missing.
With that kind of power on its side... I shuddered to think what the Dern Beast could do to the world.
"Well, in any case, we should start heading to Ragni, lest we get attacked by more undead or Corrupted." Tasim got up and went upstairs to the room to retrieve his belongings.
"I'll let the innkeeper know we're leaving," said Aledar, and he got up and walked off as well.
I sat there for a while, lost in my train of thoughts. The Dern Beast easily had enough power to overtake the world... so why wasn't he doing it? He wanted me to travel around the world to regain my memories and become more powerful, but couldn't he just give them to me directly? I got the impression that he was using the world as a training ground for me, but why?
After a while, we set out once more on our journey to Ragni.
Our trip was rather uneventful. The whole time, I just gazed out the window, looking at the flocks of sheep wandering around and grazing, the birds soaring and cawing high in the sky, listening to the clip-clop sounds of the horses' hooves against the ground, and such.
The sun began to set as we finally reached our destination.
A large wooden gateway was guarded by a lone soldier, dressed in heavy iron armour and gripping a spear that looked more like a sharp stick.
"You." The soldier pointed at me. "Recruit from Fruma?"
"Uh, yes...sir."
"Escort pass?"
Tasim stepped forward with a card in his hand. The guard nodded and said, "In you go."
We headed through the gateway, with Tasim and Aledar taking the lead. We entered a large cave with ores and crystals of all kinds lining its walls. We dived deeper and deeper into the darkness, the only lighting being the occasional dim torch on a brazier.
All of a sudden, I heard an all-too-familiar groan from my left. Then the clicking and clacking of bones on my right. I sighed. Life really never went to plan, did it.
"Wyatt! Get behind!" bellowed Aledar as he drew not one, but two daggers.
Why didn't he do that in the first battle?
Skeletons and zombies began pouring out of the crevices between the boulders along the sides of the cave, seemingly never-ending.
"Shit," Tasim swore, turning in a full circle to gauge the amount of undead surrounding us.
"Now, I really wouldn't say this under normal circumstances, but it would be nice if you could use your Corruption abilities and wipe them out right now." Aledar spun his daggers in his hands and bent into battle position.
The horde parted.
A zombie donning shimmering gold armour stepped forward. It wielded a massive steel club that I knew could definitely kill me if it hit my head. It rasped something, and the undead rushed towards us.
It seemed that even the undead had their leaders, which meant they had just a slight semblance of intelligence. The question was: how was the Dern Beast producing such large numbers of monsters with the capabilities to carry out his orders? You'd think he could conjure them out of thin air.
Aledar and Tasim got to work, cutting through the undead like they were Swiss cheese. Meanwhile, the zombie general stood behind, not fighting.
With my escorts defending me, I tried my very best to form any kind of spell. I just needed to be able to to that. I focused all of my mana into my wand, trying to connect it to my body as a fifth limb (or a sixth? Does the 'third leg' count as a limb?) and channel mana through it.
That was when it happened.
A beam of light shot out from my wand, burning a hole in the heads of a line of zombies.
Have you ever experienced that feeling when you're trying to learn something and you simply can't grasp it, but when you finally do, it just clicks? Like you suddenly find yourself stupid for not getting it sooner, because it's so easy?
That was how it felt, learning how to shoot beams from my wand. I shot another, and another, with little to no mana cost. The amount of mana required for such a simple action was so small that it would regenerate as soon as it was consumed.
"You did it!" Tasim cried, looking like an overjoyed parent... except for the fact that he was casually slicing off the heads of zombies and skeletons.
I shot beam after beam of mana at the undead, and I was able to hold my own. Within a few minutes, the entire horde had been cleared. All that was left was the zombie general.
It gazed at me with an expression of disdain, lifted its club, and charged.
Thump.
The decapitated head of the zombie rolled on the ground, its eyes still wide in shock.
Behind the zombie's body stood another guard, this one wielding a much more fearsome spear than the one at the entrance of the cave. The blade was encased in light blue flames, and the shaft constructed using a sturdy-looking metal and adorned with sparkling gems.
"It seems that Tyakas didn't escort you through the cave," the guard grumbled. "I will have words with him later. For now, follow me."
The guard lead us out of the cave, and I had never been more glad to see the starry night sky in my life.
"Ragni is right ahead," the guard said. "Good luck, recruit." He patted my back and headed back into the cave, likely going to give Tyakas a piece of his mind.
We trudged forward, and then I saw it.
My window of opportunities.
My entry to this world of magic, adventuring and danger.
The gate to Ragni.