"beautiful,"
She was beautiful, more like an angel than a person.
Her delicate sword movements sliced through the necks of the assassins, each strike was indeed gruesome yet it looked graceful, almost like a dance.
He'd always cringed at those fairytale ideas of a prince charming coming to the rescue, the one riding in on a white horse at a person's darkest hour.
It was childish and corny.
And yet here he was, experiencing it firsthand.
She came for him at his most helpless moment.
His gaze drifted from her to the bodies scattered across the ground.
There were so many, two male elves, a handful of human men, and in the corner, lying lifeless and stripped bare, was the bruised body of a woman.
His mother.
The Prince Charming was a little late, huh?
Too late to save her. But then, a thought crept in.
Maybe he was meant to be her prince charming.
Only that, he was too weak, too powerless for that kind of responsibility.
As he stared at her with a blank expression, a storm of thoughts and emotions ran through his mind, numbing him to the brutal pain of his torn arm and the wound piercing his left eye.
Why him?
It was a question he already knew the answer to. But he wasn't asking it on the surface level. He was asking from somewhere deeper, somewhere existential.
What had he done to deserve this?
He was enraged, burning with it, a fire that wouldn't die down and maybe never will.
He wanted revenge on those scheming bastards he once called his brothers.
He wanted to teach his grandfa….no, that old bastard—a lesson for allowing this cruelty or more so, encouraging his own blood to tear each other apart.
He wanted revenge, not for himself, but for the only person who'd ever given him warmth: his mother.
"It's not fair. Why... just why me?"
Tears slid down from his remaining eye, but he kept his mouth shut, the words were trapped inside.
Revenge?
It wasn't even possible anymore.
His mana core was broken, it was beyond repair now.
Now, he was just an ordinary human... No, by this world's standards, he was even below ordinary.
It didn't matter where or what part of the world you consider.
One thing just stayed the same, this world was brutal.
Only the strong had real freedom. The rest were trapped in a loop, working themselves to exhaustion just to breathe in air that gave them no real purpose.
It was foolish, yet there is always a meaning for living, right?
In this place they called Welhemheim, every race competed in a ruthless struggle to become the apex.
They wanted their race to be the only one standing.
And in this fierce competition, humans were seen as the weakest race.
To survive, they should've united with one purpose, a fight for humanity's future. And it was true for the upper, at least from what he knew.
But, at the lower levels where he was, it was nothing more than a disgusting bloodbath over scraps of what little influence you can get.
And he wasn't even worthy of a place in it.
As lost in thoughts he was, a pair of sharp sapphire eyes bore down at him making him flinch a little.
"Do you want to live?" she asked, her tone almost emotionless.
So direct.
What did she even mean by that?
Who asks someone such a question that too just after rescuing them?
But again, what was the point of living now? From here on, it would just be more suffering.
But he wanted to believe in it,
It could be a life-changing chance, the miracle he had been waiting for.
"I... wan...t to."
His voice was barely audible, but as a trained martial artist, she seemed to hear him clearly. With a subtle nod, she took a purple vial from her space ring.
The boy quickly recognized it, a healing potion. And from its colour, a high-quality one at that.
Was she really going to use something so rare on him?
He didn't know much about martial arts, but judging by her precise aura control and now this high-quality potion, she was clearly from a powerful high-ranking family.
She poured the purple liquid over his bleeding arm, now just a shoulder, and remaining over his injured eye.
First, it tingled a bit, then It felt like molten magma searing his flesh, intensifying his already unbearable pain.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
He screamed. Maybe he should've just chosen to die.
This pain was worse than any hell he had ever heard of.
"You should be able to handle this much if you really want to live."
Her eyes, emotionless, lingered on him briefly before she moved on, her own way.
Leaving him lying there.
Gradually, his pain dulled as the bleeding stopped.
He was left with one arm, one eye and tattered clothes.
'Now what should I do?'
Ding!
[All requirements have been met!]
[Arthur Volford, you have been chosen as the new host!]
"Looks like I've lost so much blood I'm even hearing things,"
[Answer: Host is currently in a sane condition!]
...
He stared up at the glowing moon, dazed.
He'd read about systems like this in manga and manhwa. Maybe he was just getting delusional now.
But why now?
Or… maybe it was real.
Was this his chance?
"What are you?"
[Searching familiar terms so Host may better understand...]
[Search complete!]
[I am the Sacrificial Summoning System.]
A system?
"So, the gods haven't forsaken me after all."
[The more souls are sacrificed, the stronger the summon will be.]
"NO, It's the devil!"
❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁
{A/N}
Hi guys, finally published the novel I have been planning for so long. Just, I still don't know if it falls under that new WN competition, it was something about beast-taming.
well anyway, please do tell me your thoughts on the first chapter.
Was it good?
I am a fairly new author, with little to no experience in writing, so the content may lack in quality but trust me, I will continue to improve myself.
And if you guys have any questions related to the story or me feel free to comment or actually do so even if you don't have one.
Just, spare that harem is or not question.
Peace out!!