Hmmm,
I woke up again tied to a chair. Well, this is new. I looked around, trying to find out where I was. It looked like an abandoned room: cracked walls, spider webs, peeled paint, and the whole shebang. Well, well, well, isn't it just lovely?
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and entered my mindscape. This place was still the same, though my emotional center seemed somewhat bigger. I walked around and found a neatly stacked pile of memory books on my desk. I opened the first book and went through it, then the second, and then another until I finished all five. There was also the old man's message with the job details, but that was for later.
It turned out the old man whisked me away after my ritual was done, suppressed my consciousness, de-aged me until I was one year old, and dropped me in an orphanage in London.
In my new life, I grew up fast, made friends, went to school, became a geek, lost friends, and faced bullying. I fought back, beat up the bullies, got expelled from the orphanage, and lived on the streets for a while. I studied hard and earned a scholarship, finishing my studies up to college by the age of 14. I didn't realize I had issues until I saw how hard I tried to fit in, downplaying my genius and all that. I could have accomplished all of this by the age of ten, but I didn't want to. Though not everything was bad—I still studied alone, gaining a fascination with technology and diving into research and projects on my own. Up until that point, everything was fine, right?
Now, let's talk about the magical side of things. I was stronger than everyone else from a young age, so I learned to control my strength early, which was good. I gained access to the grimoire early as well but didn't study magic, which was bad. I just used it to copy books and comics everywhere and to read the stories recorded in it. That's When I read the story of Harry Potter, I thought it was about me. I was still a kid, I didn't want to be treated as a freak, so I started walking on eggshells around anything magical in nature. I guess I substituted my thirst for magical knowledge with technology, which was valid, I suppose.
Now that I've established that the young me was somewhat naïve, let's look at the benefits of all this. Suppressing my consciousness and keeping it in a sleep-like state helped the younger me experience life, emotions, bonds, and all that crap 100%.
This is how the old man helped me, which I guess I can accept because now my mind and emotional center have an abundance of references to draw upon when matching my old memories and emotions. This also helped me grow as a person. Ah, who am I kidding? The old me was a mess, true, but the new me isn't any better. If I was a big screw-up before, now I'm just a normal screw-up, Probably.
Anyway, now let's discuss the important stuff. I was kidnapped. Who and where is still a blank, but the memories end with the sight of a magical circle.
Hmm, that doesn't matter right now. Now that I've woken up, everything is going to be fine.
I was jolted upright by the horrible screeching sound of the old metal door opening. A blond man who looked like he was in his thirties walked in with swagger, holding a bloodied bag from which various tools were protruding. He stopped in front of me, a confused look on his face.
"Brat, what happened to your magic? You're not leaking any of it now! How did you control it so quickly? Is it your sacred gear?" he asked, his tone filled with malice, scanning me from top to bottom.
There were a few clues about what had happened. It turned out my kidnapper was not just an ordinary man or a pervert. No, he was a magical one. The key word I should ask about was sacred gears. I kept looking at him for a few seconds, then closed my eyes as if I didn't see him. I wanted to rile him up to see what he would do. I was still sitting there by choice.
"Brat, don't you dare ignore me!!!" he yelled, and I guess I had succeeded in riling him up. I opened my eyes to see him stretching his hand forward, and a circle appeared.
From the look of it, he was going to cast some kind of lightning spell guessing by the way the magical energy was behaving. I didn't give him time; my Grimoire appeared, and the ground beneath him began to twist into a muddy spot before quickly taking the shape of a large snake, catching him off guard and causing his spell circle to fizzle away. The snake wrapped itself around the man, restraining him and leaving him too stunned to say or do anything.
I, on the other hand, was just sitting there on the chair, which I had at the same time—transfigured into a sofa. The ropes and chains that had kept me bound were animated and quickly opened and untied themselves.
They then moved by themselves toward the man, shackling and tying him up swiftly. The man stood there, mouth and eyes wide open, as if what he had just witnessed was too much for him to handle. It might have been; the whole thing took just seconds to happen.
"Now then, Mr. Kidnapper, I believe we have a lot to talk about. Thank you for the bag and torture tools, by the way. I believe they will come in handy, don't you think?" I said, my voice soft and a smile on my face. I was genuinely happy; after all, who can say they woke up to such an easy way of obtaining information? No one, I bet.
"What do you think you're doing? Do you have any idea who I am and who you're messing with? I'm one of the magicians of the Chaos Brigade! Do you think they will let you go if anything happened to me??" He started rambling, but I shut him up with a fist to the face.
"Ugh."
I don't have time for this. I wanted to go all mafia on him like a movie I'd seen, but it turned out I didn't have the tolerance for rambling idiots.
Ah, It's good to see that somethings never change.
"Imperio! Legilimens!" I cast two consecutive spells simultaneously on him and dove deep into his mind, extracting every piece of information that he had—which wasn't much. Then, I cast an "Avada Kedavra" and killed him. I vanished his corpse and sat down to start organizing the information I'd gathered from him.
His name was Lucas—— of course why wouldn't a blonde man be named lucas.
He was a low-class magician who had been trained since childhood. He was neither talented nor clever, but he did have some connections. He was also a serial killer, having already killed ten kids with magical potential just to satisfy his twisted desires for dominance. Hmm, Maybe I should have tortured him after all.
Now onto the important stuff: this world is messed up. Gods, devils, angels, fallen angels, youkai—different factions within factions, with this Chaos Brigade taking the cherry on top. I don't know about you, but this smells like trouble to me.
Now I'm not crazy; I know there were powerful beings in my previous world too; I just didn't know about most of them.
Here, well, if what this racist fucker knew was the truth, then I can see why I was sent here. Aside from doing a job, I mean. Here I can grow stronger quickly while also gaining some experience.
Okay. Now that this is all over, let's return to the elephant in the room. Why the fuck are my hands shaking? I feel nauseated and a little bit uneasy. Hmm, is it because I killed a man? I don't know; I may have caught more feelings than I had guessed.
He was a twisted fuck. And he was disposed of; now get over it Harry. Ugh!!
Taking deep breaths for a few minutes, my body finally calmed down. My mind is finally in sync. This never happened. Yeah, I'm not going to catch humanity in here. This is a dog-eats-dog world; no time for the hypocritical sympathies of the 2000s. I may have lived a semi-normal life again, but that doesn't mean I'm going to change who I am now. I like me this way—with very few principles and lines that can't be crossed.
———