Chapter 5: Damned magic!
The dawn arrived abruptly, signalling the end of the night and the origins of a new day.
Within an abandoned and barren border of a powerful empire.
Stood an odd cottage home, windowless and solitary. Stationed in the aught most peculiar area, on the edge, of a sheer steep cliff.
It was surrounded by a defensive paling, which was now one silver spear short from the previous morning.
The small cottage housed, a small sunny boy with chubby, rosy cheeks and large, sparkling sapphire eyes.
This small child of five months was now scurrying across the rough oak floor, knocking the odd ornate decorations off the wooden walls in the dimly lit cottage. All whilst somehow simultaneously displacing its milk-stained rugs.
Emerging from a misted room fogged by the remnants of a steamed shower, was a man with skin of alabaster.
His long white knee-length hair was dripping wet, soaked in lukewarm water.
Cleansed, from its previously painted dusky dark red. His damp hair stuck to the sides of his elegant, scarred visage.
His white vest cemented to his aesthetically built body, revealing his detailed concrete muscles.
He was kin to art, perfectly proportioned. But, on his right shoulder, a new deep red scar took over a copious amount of his broad clavicles.
The man took a brown cloth from a small wooden tea table, stationed as a central piece of his small living room. He had started to dab his hair dry when.
"Ah! shi..."
The man stood on top of one of the sunny boy's metal toys.
The toy in question was an oddly shaped block with numerous circles on top of it.
The man hopped in pain, grasping his foot, which was now bleeding a bright red before tripping on a displaced rug, causing him to fall dramatically on his rear end.
Witnessing the scene, the sunny boy shrieked and snickered, giggled, breaking down into hearty laughter.
"Ha ha, very funny, I suppose you're willing to drink milk for a while with how easily you mock me,"
convulsed the man as he slowly regained his footing.
To this remark, the sunny boy hastily stopped laughing.
The child the man cared for. Was what most considered a genius.
Able to do feats of strength no human child could ever do, including understanding more complex speeches. This ability was considerably aided, but the fact that the child himself was not human.
The skin on the man's wounded foot began to bubble and stretch...
The wound began to close. Healing itself and leaving a small red scar.
It took the man feeling the worst pain known to mankind, to finally decide that his home was in desperate need of organization.
The man started to clear his cluttered cottage. Sorting through the boy's many impractical toys, including the odd impaling building blocks.
He also removed the milk-stained rugs that had started to emit a stale stench. He tried his very best to clean them of their clotted white stains. Thoroughly scrubbing them bathing them in every aromatic soap and cleansing liquid he owned. Only to be left with the same stained rug that didn't smell.
Before finally restoring his bizarre adornments to their original positions.
After returning his small home to its original glory (post-baby plague.) He sat on his low wooden single bed sunny boy in hand.
As he bottle-fed the boy with his daily dose of legendary monster cores, he began to determine the foreseeable future.
Where was he to go first on his travels?
How does he plan to cross the territories of other kingdoms?
How was he to cross the vast oceans that stood between him and the boy's nation?
No, before that! how is he even planning to make the barrier?
Though the man was a master of mana and weaponry, he had never studied magic, never mind using it.
Now, the man had begun to consider it. Learning magic would greatly aid him on his journey.
He could use magic to defend and protect the boy with barriers. It would grant him the ability to fight from greater distances. Allowing him to stay with the boy whilst keeping him from danger.
Preventing any further incidents like yesterday's bloodied massacre gone wrong.
Also considering the current advancement in magic-related weaponry and items defending borders, it could do no harm to be more knowledgeable on the topic.
Yet despite its numerous benefits, the man made a scornful face as he continued to ponder the idea.
His disregarding of the idea ended when he noticed that the sunny boy had dosed off, sleeping soundly in the man's arms.
He looked at the small infant with tender eyes as he rested the babe on his shoulders.
Babies often took naps during the day almost routinely.
The man had learnt this through studying the contents of the numerous letters from the item rings. That had outlined the sunny boys' daily life on the airship.
He had come to an inevitable decision. Despite his hateful attitude towards magic, there was no denying that if he had the boy's safety at heart, he was required to learn the damned thing.
The man then stood from his tiny bed heading back to his small living room, where he carefully knelt, making sure to keep one hand on the boy's head, keeping the peacefully sleeping boy from waking.
He then lifted one of his larger black fur carpets to uncover a small trap door that was concealed under the monster's onyx hide.
It was a hidden room.
Slowly, the man opened the rusted hatch that creaked as an eerie echo followed.
Before he jumped down the hole and landed softly. Cushioning his fall with his crimson-red mana.
Underneath the small cottage home was a library built as an elaborate labyrinth, the underground maze looked empty, as though no one had entered the library for years giving it an ancient feel.
The many hardback books that filled its endless rows of shelves covered a large variety of topics.
Such as: The Guide to Mana Sword, Hand-to-hand Combat, The Monster Guides, Griffon's Bestiary, and so on, so forth.
Although the shelves were brimming with books, not a single page among them was of magic.
The small narrow corridors were musky and infested with delicate silver webs covering every corner of the twisting maze under the man's small cottage home.
The aged smell of dust filled the vast halls as small particles were illuminated by the even smaller white lights powered by a multitude of monster cores that were mounted to thick stone walls.
The man's footsteps were silent as he ventured further.
He crossed many displayed scales, bones, claws, and teeth that were taller than him in stature matching the unusually large scale that decorated his Livingroom, as well as a few displayed swords that emitted an insidious aura.
Among the displayed weaponry was a noticeably sinister aura, coming from a crate that was sealed with thick black translucent chains.
The man continued further into the subterranean, underground-like catacombs before making a bitter expression, looking at an old burgundy leather case that was cornered, imprisoned, buried under layers of thick, meshed webs.
The man's brows furrowed as he was staring daggers at the tattered case, before falteringly sizing it, freeing it from a cobwebbed tomb.
The man then slowly made his way back to his bedroom making sure to remain silent as he returned.
upon arriving in his minimalist bedroom, he lay the baby boy on his small, low-rise bed.
Surrounding him in a barrage of blankets to prevent him from rolling over.
Once he was satisfied with his reinforced pillow fortress, he sat on the tail of the bed, the man made a look of disdain as he hesitantly opened the leather case to reveal 3 thick leather hardback books.
the three books all shared a worn and tattered appearance, they emitted a potent golden mana.
The man had the urge to burn the books right there. But if that were to have worked, they would already be ash.
Surrounding the covers detailed, expertly carved, layered, and cast in gold, encapsulated in a thick resin made of pure legendary monster cores, infused with overbearing gold mana, were countless protective runes.
Runes that prevented the man from burning these horrid books, that were nothing but an annoying eyesore to him.
In fact, these runes did one more thing that spread hatred into the man's very soul.
These books were enchanted, cursed, and bound to him by blood by the very perverted weirdo that made them.
The man reluctantly grabbed the biggest of these books, which was royal faded red.
In big bold letters, gold writing was deeply etched into the cover filling the entire front of the large leather book...
"Damn, that loathsome bastard one day I'll kill him."
Were these words.
[A BIG BOOK OF MAGIC FOR A BIG DUMB SHIT
Wrote by the best wizard in all existence.]
chapter 5 fin.