Author's rant: I'm still alive!
This new idea came to mind mind when I am currently lying in the hospital and after gaining the true ending of an android game/ visual novel named "An Octave Higher" (which made me nearly throw my smartphone at a wall and screamed "FUCK THIS SHIT! " at the top of my lung, mind you). Goddamnit, it (especially part 2) made me feel like I'm reading a discounted Code Geass with different plot and tons of plot holes! Details, man! They're important!
... I know, I know I'm being hipocritical here. So shut up.
On the side note, except this fic, from now on my co-writer VuTrungThanh will take over the mantle of responsibility until the doctors (I prefer to call one of them the old hag due to her annoying rants, mind you) my sickness is completely cured. So no worry.
This fic is uploaded by my co-writer VuTrungThanh. Enjoy the show, minna-san...
Chapter 1: New hope
The worlds kept changing. They grew, they improved, they rose to their peak. And all it took... was the will of a single man.
But in the end, no matter how grand or small things became... they would come to their fall sooner or latter.
After all... Death took away everything. And after that, new existence sprang to life.
Life and Death. A cycle that could never be broken. For without death, one can't appreciate life.
The healthy human mind didn't wake up in the morning thinking this was its last day on Earth. But it could still be considered as a luxury, not a curse. To know you were close to the end was a kind of freedom.
After all, comparing to losing all the hope a human could have and live like an empty shell, death was a mercy.
[Unknown place, Unknown POV]
*Play music: Reflection (Mirror Night) _ Deemo*
I woke up in a strange room. My hands... were gone.
I stared blankly at the bandages wrapped around what was left of my forearms, wet and red with blood. The nasty stench of blood mingled with the smell of cheap disinfectant and the foul air inside the room. The dirty mattress was drenched with my sweat as its cotton stuffing had long lost its firmness.
But none of those bothered me.
Not even the pain in my forearms, excruciating and agonizing as it was, bothered me.
My eyes were still fixed at the empty air where my hands should have been.
Beside me, Jude, a plain looking young woman with short silver hair that I had once met was sitting. Her lips opened and closed, but I couldn't hear what she said.
My hands.
My hands were gone.
Both of them. Gone.
My life as a magician was over.
My future as a mage was over before it had even begun.
And then I fainted again.
[Short timeskip, unknown POV]
Jude had found me lying unconcious on the street after my hands were cut off outside Maison de Bouvoire, the brothel that had also been the headquarter of Libertad. She had taken me to her house and nursed me until I got better.
Losing so much blood had brought me to the edge of death. I could only lie in bed day after day, for weeks and weeks.
But even after my arms had made some recovery, I still lacked the energy and the will to get up. To me, the sight of Jude's bedroom ceiling was more soothing than the world out there.
Outside was scary. What was a man to do without magic in this day and age?
"He can achieve extraordinary deeds, son. The power of the Will of Humanity is unimaginable. "
A familiar fatherly male voice reached my ears, but I just ignored it and let my mind travel on my train of thought.
During this time, Jude took care of me like a mother took care of her baby. She changed my bandages, fed me, bathed me, helped me with every little thing that I could no longer do myself.
It was shameful.
I had begged her to stop caring for me, to throw me into the sea, to dump me among the garbage, to leave me in a junkyard to rot – anything, anything but suffer the humiliation of living the life of a man lower than any man.
But Jude justed continued to care for me.
[Short timeskip, unknown POV]
I had finally gotten up. But life wasn't kind to me.
There was nothing I could do without magic. I couldn't even work in a factory.
After all, who would want to have a man had no hand work for them?
There was literally nothing I could do.
I had entertained the idea of going back to the city, to find my parents or at least figure out a way to contact them. But I soon gave up that idea.
How could I show myself to my parents and my friends like this? A cripple, incapable of – and had no hope of being capable of – casting magic ever again.
It was better that they assumed I was dead.
I felt so hopeless.
If there's no magic, there's no hope.
And all I could do was sit on the side of the street and wait for a passerby's pity. But life in the proles was hard for everybody. No one had money to give to a mimsy man who had nothing to contribute to society.
On a good day begging earned me enough to buy a small loaf of stale bread. And in the end, I had to rely on Jude to provide for me.
But Jude wasn't a wealthy bourgeoise. No matter how hard she worked, factory labor only paid so much. She had barely enough money to feed herself.
And yet she shared with me.
We shared what little food we had, enduring hunger most days. We shared murky water to weather the sizzling summer, and we shared shabby blankets to survive the dead of winter.
Jude, the one who had saved my life, suffered for my sake as well.
Pathetic.
I prayed to the gods to return my magic. But my magic never returned.
I prayed to the gods to help me. But no help ever came.
I screamed and bellowed and cried to the gods to save me. But they never did.
Still, I prayed.
Each night before I fell asleep, I prayed to the gods "Don't wake me up tommorror".
But they never listened.
Could you imagine waking up feeling dejected every morning, because you were alive? Disappointed that you woke up, despite not wanting to?
That was my every morning. It still was, from time to time.
I wished for relief.
Salvation.
An end to my suffering.
An end to a dream that would never be.
An end to a false hope.
An end to everything.
I wanted... to I never tried.
I couldn't do it, which made me feel even more pitiful. I wanted to end my life yet I was too coward to do it myself. Pathetic.
And everytime when I finally have enough courage to do it, my mind thought about Jude.
She had been struggling everyday so that I could live. Just because I was Elise's friend.
I owed her too much to die.
And thus, I drudged through misery upon misery, sat silently as life spat at me. So that I didn't die.
But it wasn't living, it was just merely existing. Like an empty shell.
*End music*
[Short timeskip, unknown POV]
Another day continued.
Another day of misery continued, sitting and begging in a narrow alley as I always did every day and night. Around me, people ignored my existence as usual while their face was heavy with the burdens of their own lives.
The sky was getting dark and I hadn't earned a single coin. Perhaps...
But suddenly, I noticed something unusual: a nobleman wandering through the proles street. His aristocrat jacket glistened even when the street was lit only by oil lamps as he strutted haughtily through the alley.
For a second, I thought he was an aristocrat I knew, the same one who had taken away my hands and my magic, but no, this man wasn't that man.
Slowly getting up, I dragged my feet and stopped in front of this nobleman, my head hung low as I pleaded him in a low and exhaustinig voice
"My Lord, could you spare me some coins?"
To be honest, I had no idea if this man was a lord or not, but I had come to call any bourgeois and aristocrat 'My Lord' regardless. Sometimes it appealed to their generosity.
But apparently not this time.
With my head still lowered, I took a small peek at the man face. His icy glare was mean and demeaning, disgust colored his face as he studied my malnourished figure. And the moment his gaze met my arms, his eyes widened as his glare changed into curious stare.
And a second later, his lips morphed into wicked, derisive smile before it changed into a loud, drawn-out laughter that echoed throughout the alley.
"What are you doing in Overture with arms like that?" asked the man in a conceited voice as his face settled into a ridiculing smile "If you can't use magic, you're just a liability. You're just taking up space. Your existence is wasteful."
I could only lowered my head lower as I endured his spiteful words. Just like every usual day
"And yet you dare ask money from me?!" the man burst into spiteful laughter again as hatred creeped into his eyes "Go earn your own money, scum! Oh wait, you can't because you don't have hands! You're just a piece of garbage without magic!"
Even I had endured many kind of abuse before, I still felt small under his verbal abuse.
I wanted to talk back, but I couldn't. Not when I knew that everything he said was true.
If only I had had my hands, this man wouldn't have been able to talk to me like this. If only Ihad had my hands, this man wouldn't have been able to walk home tonight.
But then again,if only I still had had my hands, none of this would have happened.
If only...
"I... I'm sorry, My Lord"
It was the only thing I could weakly say before turning and shuffling away.
Suddenly, I felt my back was hit hard and I felt forward, hard. Dust flew up into my eyes when my cheek bounced off the pavement of the street.
"This is your place, scum!" thundered the man as he pushed a foot onto my back "Since you're no better than a cockroach, You should crawl like one. In fact..."
"... why don;t you cut off those legs too, to match your arms?" said the man as he repeatedly stomped on my back.
Trying to endure the pain, I tried to take a glimpse of the man. He was stomping on my back with his right foot while his other foot was rooted to the ground on the left of my waist. With all of my remaining strength, I placed both stumps of my wrists next to my head and pushed myself up before I swung my left leg at his left leg with all my strength.
Hearing his painful yell, I knew that I had swept him off his feet. Without any hestiation, I got up and ran, determined to flee as fast as I could. But no sooner than I had begun to run, I sensed his Willpower.
Summon [Willpower]
Before I could react, the pavement two steps ahead of me rumbled and split, uncovering dirty soil from which a solid rock formation shot up at me, hitting my chest hard and sent me backward on my back with an unbearable pain.
"You piece of shit!" bellowed the enraged man "I was going to let you go, but now I think I shouldn't. You're just garbage anyway and the police wouldn't even bother to have you buried."
He reached down and grabbed my shirt collar as I felt his Willpower again. It reminded me of another arrogant coward aristocrat who also fought with Willpower once upon a time
Nullify [Willpower]
Gravity around me disappeared and the man swung his hands upward, effortlessly hurled me to the sky. My flying body could only came to a stop after hitting the roof of a three-story building. I didn't fall back down because there was no gravity to pull me back to earth.
"Do you like it up there, scum?" shouted the man darkly "No? Well, by all means, I'll Amplify gravity and get you back down here in no time!"
Was this it? I smiled bitterly
Were the Gods finally granting my wish to die?
But suddenly, I didn't want to die. Not like this. Not in the hands of some arrogant prick who reminded me too much about that man. And then, something caught my intention: the end of a hose was hanging off the edge of the rooftop. I hooked onto it with my crippled arm as this would provide me a way to escape to the rooftop.
But that wasn't what I did.
Because the gravity around me was Nullified, no water came out of the hose but I could see some water inside. And an idea struck me
Amplify [Willpower] the man roared in victory
And that moment, sensing the return of gravity, which was much stronger before it was Nullified, I aimed the hose at the aristocrat and squeezed the tip of the hose between my bandaged stumps.
The water inside the hose roared to life in the newly Amplified gravity. It spurted out the hose in a thin yet powerful jet of water, shooting straight at its target with a deadly speed that my eyes could barely follow and impaled through the man's heart.
With his life was gone, so was his finally returned to normal. Holding onto the hose using the crooks of my elbows as tightly as possible, I slowly descented to the ground and stood in silence, my mind was a blank.
I was saved.
I had killed a man. I couldn't look away. I couldn't blink.
His mouth was agape, his eyes were opened as wide as the gates of hell that no doubt he had been welcomed into. His arrogance was gone as his aristocratic face now was hideous as any dead man, spelled horror.
A frantic sound of breathing escaped my already gaping mouth as my lips twitched.
And then a year's worth of laughter followed it.
I laughed and laughed. I laughed so hard. I couldn't stop laughing. Everytime I looked at the man's frozen face filled with shock, panic and regret, I was compelled to laughter. It was majestic and glory.
Just what was this feeling? Happy? No, it wasn't a right word.
Free. Yes, it was 'Free'.
I hadn't felt this this 'free' in such a long time.
But what I felt next mystified me. Envy.
If death was this glorious...
Shaking my head vigorously to clear my mind, I limped over to the nobleman's corpse and examined his body. In his pocket, I found Mana potions and money. A shit ton of money.
Back in the past, having this much money was normal to me, but after living the life of a beggar for more than a year, seeing this amount had become unimaginable. The amount of money was enough to provide for me and Jude for months!
And then my gaze drifted to the Mana potions. I stared and stared long at them, my eyes unblinking. Now here was something I hadn't seen in a very long time. Even though now they were useless to me, I still founf their soft blue tint mysteriously captivating.
And then I realized something important.
I just killed a magician. I came out victorious even though I had lost my ability to cast magic spells.
Maybe life wasn't as hopeless as I had thought.
*clap clap clap*
My blood ran cold the moment the sound of someone clappinig reached my ears. But before I could think, a familiar fatherly voice calmed me down
"I did tell you, didn't I, son? Without magic, human can still achieve extraordinary deeds, son. The power of the Will of Humanity is unimaginable."
Turning my head toward the source of the voice, I saw the old man in his old tattered cloak with a wodden cane stepped out of the shadow. Aside from Jude's care, he had been one of the reasons why I could physically recover thanked to his odd disgusting-flavor medicine he gave Jude to feed me.
This enigmatic old man... he was clearly not someone who came from the proles or just simply an acquantance of Jude. His medicine and the fact that I couldn't even acknownledge his presence even though he stood not exactly far from me were more than enough to prove it.
"This is not a good place to share our life stories, son." Said the old man with his left hand raised "Come with me, son... Or should I call you... Franz Byron?"
It was the second time my blood ran cold because of this old man. Just how could he know my surname? Jude might tell him my name but I didn't even tell Jude about my surname and yet this old man knew.
Who was this old man?
What was he?
"To answers the two questions written all over your face..." the old man turned his back from him and started walking away, which snapped me out of my thought and prompted me to follow him "... I am Ian Moone. And for the second question... I am many things: a simple old man, a Sorcerer, a Hermit, a schoolar,..."
My blood ran cold again the moment I heard the word Sorcerer. He was bluffing, right? There was no way a person who had reached the apex what a magician or a mage could achieve was a prole!
"... but more importantly..."
The old man came to a sudden stop and slammed the tip of his wooden cane onto the ground
"... I was an Assassin."