What a delicious loaf of bread this was! Fluffy with very few corns was truly the best type one could ever get. The cheese was also freshly made, which honestly tasted delicious on my tongue.
I basically salivated over my breakfast, with Ellie, my best friend since I could remember, and the person I wanted to marry someday. While I didn’t have much progress there, I could say for sure that the idiot Schwarz hurt her quite a lot four days ago, even though Lucy looked like always.
“Hey, did you see that?” Ellie asked and handed me the newest edition of the newspaper. While the general part was made in the capital city and was thus already outdated when it was released in Atlantis, there was still the local part, run by a single journalist.
‘S-class adventurer requested. Is the abandoned mine that much of a problem?’ That was the headline Ellie pointed to. At first, I didn’t know what she even wanted, but then I realised that the mine this headline was about had been untouched for years. It probably served as an hideout for a few goblins and such, but nothing that could endanger the town in any way.
“Do you think we are in danger?” I asked in worry. I didn’t think we were ready for something they needed an S-class adventurer yet. We were still horribly beaten by Miss Dove after all. And she didn’t even go all out.
“The others probably are … but this is it Louis. We need to investigate this and if it has anything to do with demons, we need to stop them.” I knew that much. But both of us couldn’t do much yet in the grand scheme of things. We were weaker than others around us, and we were watched by someone who would whisper everything into the demon kings ears.
“But … we couldn’t even beat Miss Dove. And she is … she is just a teacher.” I whispered quietly, still looking down on my full plate.
“Do you really want to chicken out of this, Louis? We are here to defeat the demons and if their king is one of ours, so what? It doesn’t change that we need to protect others.” That was obviously correct, but I still wasn’t so sure this was our time to act.
“I know … but we are still kids.” I whispered back towards her.
“So what? We have blessings which no one knows of. And we have the responsibility to help.” We we’re the heroes of some of the books I had read in my past, that was for sure. Dying to an unbeatable enemy, being given a second chance by the gods … that was our past. And with this past came great responsibility.
“I know … but we don’t even know what this danger is.” I whispered into her ear and looked at Lucy shortly afterwards. She was looking at us with curiosity, but flashed me a smile right away.
“We could search for it.” Ellie explained while I had butterflies in my stomach.
“We cannot leave the group.” I said, knowing full well that Miss Dove would catch us sooner or later.
“Louis … let me give you a tip. Lucy is someone who values actions more than anything else. If you want to impress her, you need to do something big.” Ellie explained and grabbed my hand tightly. “We can do this.” A bit hesitant, I nodded which was maybe the worst decision of my life.
That day, we were scheduled to visit an exotic garden in which we could move around freely. I didn’t think much about our conversation at that time and honestly worried more about Olivia who had fallen sick than trying to find out what was happening behind the scenes.
But Ellie was strangely eager to find out the truth and this grabbed my arm midway through the guided tour.
“This is our chance.” More than anything, I let myself be dragged out of the garden which didn’t seem to be noticed by anyone. We were really lucky, especially because Miss Dove looked around a bit confused, but quickly returned back to her bored state.
“Where are we going?” I asked as soon as we were back on one of the few main streets.
“The adventurers guild. Where else?” She said and walked ahead without looking back at all.
“Hey, are you alright? It’s not like you to break the rules.” I said with a little bit of worry.
“It is … but this letter woke me up. I had thought about it a little and … I’ll stay by your side.” She said and smiled brightly at me. Honestly, I didn’t even know what to do without her at this point.
“That’s relieving to hear.” I said and smiled back.
“But I want to know your thoughts about this matter.” She said and slowed down a little so that I could catch up.
“I … I don’t know who he is … but I will not join his side. Never. He already went far beyond what I can accept, no matter his reasons.” I explained, dead set on putting an end to the evils the demon king did.
“I see … “ Ellie said and guided me around a corner right away. “And here we are! Come on.” She said and entered the guild building right away. Following her, I could see that no adventurer was around, but there was a guy at the reception which immediately greeted us the moment he saw us.
“Hi … aren’t you with that school?” Our uniform gave us away right away, that was for sure.
“We are. But we are also gold rank adventurers, so we were exempt from participating in our activities today. We have read there is a request for aid? What is this about?” Ellie asked right away and tipped onto the wood with her fingers.
“Ehh … can you show me your guild badge?” The receptionist asked which did make me sweat a little. I knew for sure that Ellie never adventured before, so she obviously couldn’t identify herself. Instead, she merely showed him his hand without anything in it, which did do the trick as well, much to my surprise and relief. “Thank you. This is supposed to stay a secret, but we had found the first trace of a necromancer three days ago. And since then, we are getting more and more reports of dead animals within the city and outside. These undead tend to concentrate around an old hut in the north, but nobody managed to get there yet. Well, even if that person attacks, with two more gold adventurers, we are pretty safe in these walls.”
“Hmm. I see. Thank you very much. We will be on high alert.” I said and grabbed Ellie’s arm to drag her out of the guild. I didn’t want her to lie to the receptionist at all, even though she surprisingly didn’t have much of a problem with it.
“What was that? How did you fool him and was it really necessary to lie?” I asked angrily.
“It’s a magic trick I learned a few days ago. And yes, it was necessary to lie. Otherwise we would still be where we started.” Ellie explained, which did make a lot of sense … but it wasn’t the way I wanted things to go.
“And now what? Do you intend to fight that necromancer on your own?” I asked a bit frustrated. We didn’t have what it took to be an a-class adventurer yet.
“Between your blessing and mine, what can go wrong?” She asked and shook my shoulders a little.
“This is definitely way to dangerous. I’m going back.” I said and twisted myself out of her grip. She was way too eager to fight this necromancer, and I didn’t want anyone of us to be hurt.
“Really? If this ends in a disaster because we didn’t do anything while we could, what would Lucy think when she finds out? We are here to fight evil, don’t forget that.” That hit right on the mark though. Bringing my feelings for Lucy into this was mean … but it did the job.
“Fine … do you have a plan?” I asked kind of exhausted and leaned myself against the wall of the guild.
“We’ll need to get to that cabin at night … you do have a spell for night vision, so we have an advantage to most of the monsters the necromancer controls. We need to get going fast, otherwise our classmates will come looking for us.” She explained right away.
“So we are leaving them in the dark?” I asked unhappily. Nobody could help us this was if things went wrong.
“They would stop us otherwise, wouldn’t they?” She was right though. Pushing myself off the wall again, I steeled my resolve and nodded towards Ellie.
“Let’s go then … we may need to take a bit of food with us though. And weapons.” Especially she needed her sword and shield while I could do without. But we needed food and water if we intended to wait for nightfall.
“Already done.” Ellie said happily and guided me towards a chest somewhere near the gates. I didn’t know when she prepared it, but she quickly retrieved her stuff from inside and gave me a backpack.
“Let’s go.” She said and walked out of the gate, ignoring the warnings of potential threats by the guards. We didn’t do anything illegal though, so they had no choice to let us go.
First, we followed the road northwards but after a few kilometres, we stopped and took a rest.
“Can you scout?” I definitely could. Concentrating myself, I closed my eyes and imagine a bird, flapping its wings right in front of me. As I opened my eyelids once more, I could see the animal just like I had imagined flying away from me and crucially, sharing its vision with me which felt weird and wrong. And thus, I closed my eyes and gave my magical creation directions. Indeed, I could see a hut further north with a bit of smoke coming out of the chimney. Additionally, I could see a few dead animals lying around the hut, probably protecting it with whatever was left of their life.
“Let’s take a break here, shall we?” Ellie asked quietly and I nodded right away. I continued to look through the eyes of my bird for a little while until I got really tired all of a sudden and cancelled my creation magic. Leaning at a tree, I looked over to Ellie who nodded and closed my eyes once more, this time because I just wanted to take a nap.
I didn’t feel very comfortable though and only had a very light sleep. Something was snuffing my mind the whole time, but even my weird dreams couldn’t help me with that. Thus, it wasn’t exactly a relaxing sleep, especially not because I woke up with a hand over my mouth and nose, threatening to suffocate me. As soon as I opened my eyes though, my nose was suddenly free and Ellie looked at me while holding her index finger in front of her mouth for a very good reason.
Undead after undead walked past us, armed with everything they got. It were a few hundred goblins probably, but in the distance, I could see even more of them. Thousands of them. If not tens of thousands of undead creatures marched towards the town. Some were demons, others were normal animals but all of them had one goal in mind. To kill.
And we were in the middle of them. “Be quiet. Remember that Illusion magic I showed you earlier? They shouldn’t be able to see us now if we don’t make a fuss. Let’s use this chance we have and exploit the confusion this march must have caused.” She said quietly.
“You want to attack now?” I whispered back.
“The town walls will be breached otherwise.” She said and pointed towards a very fat troll with a whole tree as a club. As far as I was aware, the walls weren’t that sturdy, so she might be right with her assumption. Standing up quietly, I readied myself once more and looked northwards. And then, I made the first step to reach my goal. To protect all my friends. To protect everyone that needed me.
And then the second. Before I knew it, I had already overcome my fear of being found out by these monsters around it and walked casually towards where I noticed the cabin earlier, Ellie right behind me.
Without any issues at all, which was honestly surprising considering how many species and individuals we passed, we managed to get within a hundred metres of the cabin, an old man with hollow eyes and a black robe in front of it.
Despite his age, he did have completely black hairs and honestly, an impressive aura around him. And yet, he seemed to be fooled by Ellie’s magic trick because he didn’t look over to us even once.
“Okay … use your most powerful magic on him. I’ll defend you with my barriers against him. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll dash to the front.” Ellie whispered, ducking beneath a bush behind me. Breathing in once, I relaxed my muscles and concentrated on my right hand.
“Sun of destruction.” I said and stepped out from my cover. Right away, the man looked at me while I started to close my eyes and focused solely on my right hand. It grew hotter and hotter for several seconds until I opened my eyes again and looked at the necromancer, standing there with an extended arm. For a few seconds, I didn’t know what he was doing until I realised he was preparing his defence. As fast as I could, I flung the ball of fire, glowing like the sun in a blazing yellow over to him and started preparing my next move right away.
“Oh, boy…” The necromancer said, merely pointed upwards with his index finger and smiled at me as the miniature sun changed its course towards the sky. There, it expanded at a certain height to the width of my hotel room and then vanished like it never existed before.
“What? Spea-“ I stared, but stopped as I failed to breathe at all. It was like all the air was sucked out of my lungs within an instant and all I could do was to look at how the grass beneath my feet moved away from me in all directions.
“Not even charmless magic? That’s what I am here for? Well, at least the bird was alright … you made it with your blessing, am I right?” Holding my throat in anguish, I could only look behind me towards Ellie who maybe had an ace up in her sleeve. But lucky, I couldn’t find her anywhere around … at least she managed to escape this person, whoever he was. “I think I’ll turn you into one of my research subjects.”
That’s the last thing I could hear for some reason and with that, I realised the gap between him and me. He could control the airflow around me perfectly without chanting and even had the leisure to let me hear what he said.
Afterwards, I fell over and fell unconscious before I even hit the ground.
What a delicious loaf of bread this was! Fluffy with very few corns was truly the best type one could ever get. The cheese was also freshly made, which honestly tasted delicious on my tongue.
I basically salivated over my breakfast, with Ellie, my best friend since I could remember, and the person I wanted to marry someday. While I didn’t have much progress there, I could say for sure that the idiot Schwarz hurt her quite a lot four days ago, even though Lucy looked like always.
“Hey, did you see that?” Ellie asked and handed me the newest edition of the newspaper. While the general part was made in the capital city and was thus already outdated when it was released in Atlantis, there was still the local part, run by a single journalist.
‘S-class adventurer requested. Is the abandoned mine that much of a problem?’ That was the headline Ellie pointed to. At first, I didn’t know what she even wanted, but then I realised that the mine this headline was about had been untouched for years. It probably served as an hideout for a few goblins and such, but nothing that could endanger the town in any way.
“Do you think we are in danger?” I asked in worry. I didn’t think we were ready for something they needed an S-class adventurer yet. We were still horribly beaten by Miss Dove after all. And she didn’t even go all out.
“The others probably are … but this is it Louis. We need to investigate this and if it has anything to do with demons, we need to stop them.” I knew that much. But both of us couldn’t do much yet in the grand scheme of things. We were weaker than others around us, and we were watched by someone who would whisper everything into the demon kings ears.
“But … we couldn’t even beat Miss Dove. And she is … she is just a teacher.” I whispered quietly, still looking down on my full plate.
“Do you really want to chicken out of this, Louis? We are here to defeat the demons and if their king is one of ours, so what? It doesn’t change that we need to protect others.” That was obviously correct, but I still wasn’t so sure this was our time to act.
“I know … but we are still kids.” I whispered back towards her.
“So what? We have blessings which no one knows of. And we have the responsibility to help.” We we’re the heroes of some of the books I had read in my past, that was for sure. Dying to an unbeatable enemy, being given a second chance by the gods … that was our past. And with this past came great responsibility.
“I know … but we don’t even know what this danger is.” I whispered into her ear and looked at Lucy shortly afterwards. She was looking at us with curiosity, but flashed me a smile right away.
“We could search for it.” Ellie explained while I had butterflies in my stomach.
“We cannot leave the group.” I said, knowing full well that Miss Dove would catch us sooner or later.
“Louis … let me give you a tip. Lucy is someone who values actions more than anything else. If you want to impress her, you need to do something big.” Ellie explained and grabbed my hand tightly. “We can do this.” A bit hesitant, I nodded which was maybe the worst decision of my life.
That day, we were scheduled to visit an exotic garden in which we could move around freely. I didn’t think much about our conversation at that time and honestly worried more about Olivia who had fallen sick than trying to find out what was happening behind the scenes.
But Ellie was strangely eager to find out the truth and this grabbed my arm midway through the guided tour.
“This is our chance.” More than anything, I let myself be dragged out of the garden which didn’t seem to be noticed by anyone. We were really lucky, especially because Miss Dove looked around a bit confused, but quickly returned back to her bored state.
“Where are we going?” I asked as soon as we were back on one of the few main streets.
“The adventurers guild. Where else?” She said and walked ahead without looking back at all.
“Hey, are you alright? It’s not like you to break the rules.” I said with a little bit of worry.
“It is … but this letter woke me up. I had thought about it a little and … I’ll stay by your side.” She said and smiled brightly at me. Honestly, I didn’t even know what to do without her at this point.
“That’s relieving to hear.” I said and smiled back.
“But I want to know your thoughts about this matter.” She said and slowed down a little so that I could catch up.
“I … I don’t know who he is … but I will not join his side. Never. He already went far beyond what I can accept, no matter his reasons.” I explained, dead set on putting an end to the evils the demon king did.
“I see … “ Ellie said and guided me around a corner right away. “And here we are! Come on.” She said and entered the guild building right away. Following her, I could see that no adventurer was around, but there was a guy at the reception which immediately greeted us the moment he saw us.
“Hi … aren’t you with that school?” Our uniform gave us away right away, that was for sure.
“We are. But we are also gold rank adventurers, so we were exempt from participating in our activities today. We have read there is a request for aid? What is this about?” Ellie asked right away and tipped onto the wood with her fingers.
“Ehh … can you show me your guild badge?” The receptionist asked which did make me sweat a little. I knew for sure that Ellie never adventured before, so she obviously couldn’t identify herself. Instead, she merely showed him his hand without anything in it, which did do the trick as well, much to my surprise and relief. “Thank you. This is supposed to stay a secret, but we had found the first trace of a necromancer three days ago. And since then, we are getting more and more reports of dead animals within the city and outside. These undead tend to concentrate around an old hut in the north, but nobody managed to get there yet. Well, even if that person attacks, with two more gold adventurers, we are pretty safe in these walls.”
“Hmm. I see. Thank you very much. We will be on high alert.” I said and grabbed Ellie’s arm to drag her out of the guild. I didn’t want her to lie to the receptionist at all, even though she surprisingly didn’t have much of a problem with it.
“What was that? How did you fool him and was it really necessary to lie?” I asked angrily.
“It’s a magic trick I learned a few days ago. And yes, it was necessary to lie. Otherwise we would still be where we started.” Ellie explained, which did make a lot of sense … but it wasn’t the way I wanted things to go.
“And now what? Do you intend to fight that necromancer on your own?” I asked a bit frustrated. We didn’t have what it took to be an a-class adventurer yet.
“Between your blessing and mine, what can go wrong?” She asked and shook my shoulders a little.
“This is definitely way to dangerous. I’m going back.” I said and twisted myself out of her grip. She was way too eager to fight this necromancer, and I didn’t want anyone of us to be hurt.
“Really? If this ends in a disaster because we didn’t do anything while we could, what would Lucy think when she finds out? We are here to fight evil, don’t forget that.” That hit right on the mark though. Bringing my feelings for Lucy into this was mean … but it did the job.
“Fine … do you have a plan?” I asked kind of exhausted and leaned myself against the wall of the guild.
“We’ll need to get to that cabin at night … you do have a spell for night vision, so we have an advantage to most of the monsters the necromancer controls. We need to get going fast, otherwise our classmates will come looking for us.” She explained right away.
“So we are leaving them in the dark?” I asked unhappily. Nobody could help us this was if things went wrong.
“They would stop us otherwise, wouldn’t they?” She was right though. Pushing myself off the wall again, I steeled my resolve and nodded towards Ellie.
“Let’s go then … we may need to take a bit of food with us though. And weapons.” Especially she needed her sword and shield while I could do without. But we needed food and water if we intended to wait for nightfall.
“Already done.” Ellie said happily and guided me towards a chest somewhere near the gates. I didn’t know when she prepared it, but she quickly retrieved her stuff from inside and gave me a backpack.
“Let’s go.” She said and walked out of the gate, ignoring the warnings of potential threats by the guards. We didn’t do anything illegal though, so they had no choice to let us go.
First, we followed the road northwards but after a few kilometres, we stopped and took a rest.
“Can you scout?” I definitely could. Concentrating myself, I closed my eyes and imagine a bird, flapping its wings right in front of me. As I opened my eyelids once more, I could see the animal just like I had imagined flying away from me and crucially, sharing its vision with me which felt weird and wrong. And thus, I closed my eyes and gave my magical creation directions. Indeed, I could see a hut further north with a bit of smoke coming out of the chimney. Additionally, I could see a few dead animals lying around the hut, probably protecting it with whatever was left of their life.
“Let’s take a break here, shall we?” Ellie asked quietly and I nodded right away. I continued to look through the eyes of my bird for a little while until I got really tired all of a sudden and cancelled my creation magic. Leaning at a tree, I looked over to Ellie who nodded and closed my eyes once more, this time because I just wanted to take a nap.
I didn’t feel very comfortable though and only had a very light sleep. Something was snuffing my mind the whole time, but even my weird dreams couldn’t help me with that. Thus, it wasn’t exactly a relaxing sleep, especially not because I woke up with a hand over my mouth and nose, threatening to suffocate me. As soon as I opened my eyes though, my nose was suddenly free and Ellie looked at me while holding her index finger in front of her mouth for a very good reason.
Undead after undead walked past us, armed with everything they got. It were a few hundred goblins probably, but in the distance, I could see even more of them. Thousands of them. If not tens of thousands of undead creatures marched towards the town. Some were demons, others were normal animals but all of them had one goal in mind. To kill.
And we were in the middle of them. “Be quiet. Remember that Illusion magic I showed you earlier? They shouldn’t be able to see us now if we don’t make a fuss. Let’s use this chance we have and exploit the confusion this march must have caused.” She said quietly.
“You want to attack now?” I whispered back.
“The town walls will be breached otherwise.” She said and pointed towards a very fat troll with a whole tree as a club. As far as I was aware, the walls weren’t that sturdy, so she might be right with her assumption. Standing up quietly, I readied myself once more and looked northwards. And then, I made the first step to reach my goal. To protect all my friends. To protect everyone that needed me.
And then the second. Before I knew it, I had already overcome my fear of being found out by these monsters around it and walked casually towards where I noticed the cabin earlier, Ellie right behind me.
Without any issues at all, which was honestly surprising considering how many species and individuals we passed, we managed to get within a hundred metres of the cabin, an old man with hollow eyes and a black robe in front of it.
Despite his age, he did have completely black hairs and honestly, an impressive aura around him. And yet, he seemed to be fooled by Ellie’s magic trick because he didn’t look over to us even once.
“Okay … use your most powerful magic on him. I’ll defend you with my barriers against him. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll dash to the front.” Ellie whispered, ducking beneath a bush behind me. Breathing in once, I relaxed my muscles and concentrated on my right hand.
“Sun of destruction.” I said and stepped out from my cover. Right away, the man looked at me while I started to close my eyes and focused solely on my right hand. It grew hotter and hotter for several seconds until I opened my eyes again and looked at the necromancer, standing there with an extended arm. For a few seconds, I didn’t know what he was doing until I realised he was preparing his defence. As fast as I could, I flung the ball of fire, glowing like the sun in a blazing yellow over to him and started preparing my next move right away.
“Oh, boy…” The necromancer said, merely pointed upwards with his index finger and smiled at me as the miniature sun changed its course towards the sky. There, it expanded at a certain height to the width of my hotel room and then vanished like it never existed before.
“What? Spea-“ I stared, but stopped as I failed to breathe at all. It was like all the air was sucked out of my lungs within an instant and all I could do was to look at how the grass beneath my feet moved away from me in all directions.
“Not even charmless magic? That’s what I am here for? Well, at least the bird was alright … you made it with your blessing, am I right?” Holding my throat in anguish, I could only look behind me towards Ellie who maybe had an ace up in her sleeve. But lucky, I couldn’t find her anywhere around … at least she managed to escape this person, whoever he was. “I think I’ll turn you into one of my research subjects.”
That’s the last thing I could hear for some reason and with that, I realised the gap between him and me. He could control the airflow around me perfectly without chanting and even had the leisure to let me hear what he said.
Afterwards, I fell over and fell unconscious before I even hit the ground.
