The sun was making its descent when Aido made his way back to camp. His armor was a broken mess, shattered and ruined. It weighed down on him as he walked, dripping blood and fueling the soil beneath his feet from injuries long healed.

With each step his armor clanged and creaked. He sighed, ignored it, and continued forward. He walked up what was now a hill, into a sea of trees. Today was nothing but another day that he had failed to die.

The Immortal they called him. Why? Because he would not die. It was not that he refused to die, it was that he would not. At this point, he had made peace with the fact. He would live maybe forever, but he would live. It did not mean that he would not take whatever opportunity itt required to die.

How he had become this way was something he did not possess the complete details of. The king claimed that the only person that knew the truth of what had happened to him was his mother. She had made a deal with the devil to ensure that she never worried for the safety of her son.

And the devil had granted her the wish she had gone looking for him for.

The blessing granted to the mother of Aido was Aido's curse.

Letting out an exasperated breath, he placed his hand against the nearest tree to him. It was sturdy beneath his palm, rough all over. He liked the feeling. He liked it very much.

Leveraging against it, he pulled himself forward and continued on his way. He turned to the side and spat out a tooth as he walked. It had been loose the entire journey here. Even now, hours after his battle, he was dealing with the results of it.

King Oyedi had been a powerful man. He might not have been system sanctioned, but he fought like a king—with his life on the line.

As for the men who had stood behind him—men now leaderless—Aido did not know, and he could not bring himself to care. His duty had been regicide, and he had carried it out dutifully. Now, he was tired.

All he wished for was to close his eyes. Sleep would probably not come, though. It rarely did. But maybe something would come.

Perhaps they will close and never open.

He almost laughed at the idea. If he had, it would've been mirthless. Pain was eternally his friend. Death, however, had since washed its hands from him.

It is a painful thing to be scorned by the one thing you wish for.

Aido shook his head, casting his melancholy aside. Philosophy and the darkness of longing was for the philosophers and the poets. His was the place of war—torn flesh, broken bones, and blood as bountiful as the seas.

Concealed within the sea of trees, he looked back down the path he had come. The orange touch of sunlight cast the world in a warm glow. It was… beautiful.

Yet, it was solemn.

"My Lord," a voice called out to his side.

Aido looked at the soldier. The woman was garbed in the full soldier armor complete with a helmet that concealed her beautiful blonde hair.

She knelt before him, keeping her head to the ground in respect.

"Your subjects are waiting," she said. In the years since she'd begun serving under him, she had learnt very well how to conceal her fear.

The tremor that always stained her voice was almost gone. It saddened him, however, that he could still hear it if he looked for it. It was a stark reminder that his curse had left him belonging to nowhere.

Even his subjects feared him.

"If you are here," he began, voice tired, "then it means that my next mission is already decided." He stood up straight, doing his best to shrug off the fatigue from his posture. He struck a large visage now. "Where will your king send me now?"

The lady dared now to look up. Eyes as brown as the trees around them met his gaze. She was beautiful, yet she was scared.

"We have only been given coordinates, my lord," she answered. "I would not assume to know where his highness sends you."

Aido paused. Cocking his head to the side, he studied her for a moment, as he often did with his subjects. Was she, at heart, one of the deniers? Did she yearn for the true system-sanctioned king to rise and take the throne from the tyrant that ruled?

She squirmed under his inspection, and he wondered at what visage he struck, covered in blood and broken armor as he was. He had just survived a battle that no one at his level should. And for his victory, he had been granted almost thirty levels. Now, he stood on the precipice of another threshold, withheld from growing further until he gained understanding of his manifesting skill. His reward for killing a man that nature of levels demanded he should not be able to kill was another stagnation.

All blessings tried to curse him.

Aido shook his head as he began ripping off the broken pieces of armor from his body and walking forward. He wondered if she would still possess the presence of mind to be scared of him if she learnt that her system-sanctioned king currently suffered torture and imprisonment in the tyrant's dungeon.

He grabbed a piece of his shoulder guard and winced as he pulled it off. The piece of armor did not come away immediately. Unprepared, the pain had taken him by surprise.

At some point in his fight against the king the piece of armor had lodged itself into his skin, taken solace within his muscles.

Aido hated it when that happened. Closing his eyes to the pain, he took hold of the piece and ripped it out with a grunt.

The shoulder piece fell to the soft ground with a silent thud. He spat at it to show his ire before moving on to the other pieces of armor.

The woman followed behind him as he walked further.

"The king has given us coordinates," he said, repeating the piece of information that she had given him.

"Yes, my lord."

Aido sighed. If the king was giving only coordinates, it meant only one thing. He had a means of transportation that involved neither magic nor jepats.

"Are they here?" he asked.

The lady hurried to keep pace beside him. "Yes, my lord."

Aido nodded, unhappy about it. "How large would you say it is?"

"Maybe…" her words trailed off as she took a moment to think about the answer. "As tall as these trees?"

The trees around them were definitely tall. Aido gritted his teeth in annoyance. King Terlernor had devised a method of transportation that worked best for him. It was also the second fastest means of transportation, just a step behind the teleportation magic in teleportation centers.

The rest of the walk was done in silence. Aido pondered on what his next mission was going to be while the lady pondered on whatever it was that soldiers pondered on whenever they moved with him.

A soldier had once grown the balls to ask if his inability to die also granted him an inexhaustible pool of stamina. His answer had been yes, however, the question that had followed had been… intriguing.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

"So, you can fuck all night?" the woman had asked.

Thinking about the event made him smile. It was a pity that he had been the one to cave her head in at her final moments. A fight had eventually ensued with him on the other side of it. She hadn't needed to die. But she had died nonetheless.

Eventually, he and the woman came upon the others. Soldiers stood at attention and he waved them away as he approached the engineers. The woman beside him took upon a sullen look and he paused.

"Is there something that you have to say?" he asked.

She worked her jaw for a time that seemed to go on forever before shaking her head. But he could see it in her eyes, in the way she looked at the contraption in front of them they reached as high as the tallest trees.

"Truth," he said to her.

She shook her head in confusion. "What?"

"Truth," he repeated. "It is the only thing any of us have until the day we die. If you have words to speak, soldier, speak them."

She paused, seemingly moved by his words. Then she took a deep preparatory breath and spoke.

"Why?" she asked.

"Why what?"

She looked at the massive contraption—the massive catapult. "Why do you do these things for the king?"

Aido looked from her to the contraption, then back and shrugged. "Because I can."

Then he walked forward.

"Truth," she said, stopping him in his steps. "It is the only thing any of us have until the day we die." Her voice trembled slightly in fear. "If you have words to speak, speak them."

Aido cracked a smile. He took a moment to look back at her when he answered.

"It is my truth to speak. I will speak it when and where I want to, and to who I want to."

He left her in her silence then.

Aido met the engineers at the other side of the catapult, the side hidden from him. When he met them, they were still calibrating the device, turning winches and adjusting buttresses or whatever it was that they did.

He walked up to the oldest, a man with greying beards and shoulders that looked like they wanted to hunch forward. He wore a robe of blue while his colleagues wore robes of green. His head came up before Aido got to him.

"Ah," he said cheerfully and with raised hands. "The Immortal. I trust your battle was fruitful."

"Armor," Aido said, ignoring his statement.

The man held out a ring to him. "Safely deposited in your storage space. Your measurements remain the same, I take it."

A boy's voice coming from the lips of an old man was never a normal thing to Aido. Taking the ring, he slipped it onto his smallest finger. Removing the ring he was already wearing, he handed it to the man.

The man took it, grimacing at the blood. "No shower before you go?"

"Unnecessary." Aido looked left, then right. He held out a hand. "Map."

One of the men in green robes rushed to place one in his hand. Aido ignored the man. He would not be able to describe him if he was asked to.

Unfurling the parchment, he held it out in front of the engineer in blue. "Where?"

"All we have are coordinates, we do not—"

"Where?" he repeated, cutting the man off.

"Sir, Baragon, this is—" the man tried, only to be cut off again.

"We do not need you to operate the device," Aido said in a simple voice. "Show me, or the next time I see this device, you will not be here to operate it."

The old man dropped his head in resignation, then placed his finger on a spot on the map. Aido turned the map to look at it.

I guess it makes sense.

It was close to the location he had been headed for before the king had redirected him to Dentis.

"Target?" he asked.

The man answered with a resigned annoyance. "They say that something out of the ordinary has happened and while he has just recently been informed, his spies in that region have some information. Here." He held out a different parchment to Aido. "Open it when you land."

Aido looked at the parchment. He was tempted to open it just to spite the old man. He did not. Instead, he absorbed it into his storage space with a shrug of will.

That done, he turned to the contraption and began climbing the catapult.

"Will I have support?" he asked.

The old man shook his head. "None that I know of."

"I see."

He slipped himself comfortably into the bucket and adjusted. He was the perfect payload. He waited as the engineers made a final adjustment to their angles. When the catapult stopped moving, he knew that it was time to go.

They better not miss, he thought, not that they ever did.

"PULL!" someone bellowed, and Aido held his breath.

Ropes unfurled, a lot of mechanical things happened. In the blink of an eye, Aido was sent hurling thousands of feet through the air.

As the wind battered against his very existence and he did his best to keep his eyes shut and his breath held, he had only one thought.

To Trackback.

…

Torat stormed into the room of the master of the Order with a frown on his face. He paused halfway through the door only to find himself completely flabbergasted.

He looked around very slowly and closed the door behind him.

"Is there a problem, master?" he asked.

The master of the Order was lying down on the ground. At Torat's words, he raised his head to look at him.

"Why do you ask?" he said.

Torat looked around once more. "Well," he said. "For starters, you are lying down on the ground."

"I often lie down on the ground, Tarot."

"For enders," Torat continued, ignoring the intentional mispronunciation of his name, "your office is clean."

There were no scattered books as was always the case. No chaos. Only Order. Which was ironic since the master of the Order was arguably the least orderly person in the place.

The master of the Order raised his hand and made a dismissive gesture. "My mind was too clear. All the chaos couldn't make me think chaotically enough."

Torat walked into the room. It was odd having to walk into the room without tiptoeing so that he did not step on something important.

"So, you made order to create chaos in your mind?"

He wondered if this piece of information revealed some kind of insight into the man before him.

The master of the Order shrugged. "Something like that." Then he sat up. "Now, what has you storming into my office."

Torat took a moment to remember. "King Brandis still lives."

"I know."

"We have not heard from the [Sage]."

"I know."

"This will be a stain on the reputation of the Order."

The master chuckled in amusement. "You would be surprised how many assassination attempts we have intentionally failed in history. We are intentionally not perfect, Tarot."

"So, King Brandis gets his freedom?"

"Nope, I just haven't decided on what I want to know from the [Sage] in charge of him. However," he smiled knowingly, "that is not what brings you here. What brings you here, Tarot?"

Torat sighed. He hated it when the man read him like a book.

"Aiden Lacheart," he said.

"Ah, yes," the master grinned. "The boy who lived."

Torat rolled his eyes before he could stop himself. "You make it sound like he got away from me. I let him live."

"While he outsmarted you by eluding the tracking enchantment that you sneakily placed on the knight."

Torat frowned. That was true.

The master chuckled. "Don't feel bad. The kid is interesting. So, what did you want to tell me about the kid?"

"Information reaching us is that he was at the right place at the right time when the [Crystal of Existence] manifested."

The master of the Order paused. Then his smile widened to something mischievous.

"So, he's the one," he mused. "How interesting."

"How did he know the crystal was supposed to manifest?" Torat asked, trying to make heads or tails of it. "It wasn't supposed to manifest for another year."

The only answer he had was the [Sage]s. Whichever [Sage] Aiden Lacheart was under was using him to affect events. From what Torat knew about them the [Crystal of Existence] was a compensation gift given to this side of Nastild when they were separated from the other side. Beings of a certain level were not allowed to interfere in such gifts.

"How sure are you that it was not a coincidence?" the master asked, obviously playing the part of opposition because he could.

"For one, your face," Torat said. "Then there's the part of the information where he went into the town and requested for guides to enter the cave. Guides, not one guide. Everyone knows that one guide is enough to explore, just the same way people know that you need more than three people to access the quest. He has moved suspiciously."

"So, he's the one," the master mused as if he was not even listening.

"Master!" Torat chided. "This is important."

"It is," the master confirmed, rising to his feet. "You should've brought this news to me earlier, then I wouldn't have had to clean my office. It's not every that you pop out of nowhere with answers to my question."

"Answers to your question?" Torat was confused. If the master had a question, there was most likely no one other than a [Sage] with the answer.

"This very subject bugged me for a while," the master said to the office space. "How did he do it? How did he claim it? No one is supposed to be able to claim it."

"Everyone claims the [Crystal of Existence] at least once every two years, master," Torat said, sure that it was not what was being spoken about.

"Yes." The master turned to him with a wide smile. "But no one claims the [Fragment of Nastild]."

Torat's frown was so deep that the master laughed.

"He who claims the fragments," Torat mumbled.

"Claims the world," the master finished.

"You don't mean—"

"Fragments, Tarot," the master said, emphasizing on the fact that it was plural. "There are still at least two more that he has not claimed."

"And if he does?"

The master waved the worry aside. "Unlikely. They are on the other side of Nastild. Unless he becomes king, I see no way for that to happen. Only kings cross. Kings and those with special circumstances. And his circumstance is special that he cannot cross unless he's a king or a [Sage]."

"But the future…"

The master rolled his eyes. Then he moved his hands around for dramatic effect, like he always does when looking into it.

"The future is…" He paused, frowned. "The… future… is…"

Torat stepped forward. "Master?"

The master turned to Torat, wide-eyed and pale.

Torat stepped up to him. The master's fear had infected him for he had never seen the master fear before.

"What is wrong master?"

"The future…" the master of the Order said, staring in horror.

Then his eyes focused and he grabbed Torat by the shoulders.

His next words justified his fear.

"There is no future," he said. "It's gone."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.