Long time no see Elsword Archive! Looks like I'll be back for the time being so I hope you enjoy this new story I have up. I honestly actually left becoming an author of this site a while ago, hence my update hiatus starting last January. However seeing a few certain authors perk up again made me try one last shot. So here we go, Chapter One Start!


Chapter 1: First Stroke

Greetings. To the one whom picks up this piece of bound leather full of paper out of simpleminded curiosity I will elaborate, which I may be prone to do so throughout this reading, that this isn't something cheesy like a personal diary, an autobiography about my life that 99% of the population doesn't care about, or research notes dedicated to my findings of some ancient civilization that has long since been forgotten by the passage of Time. Rather this is a novel of mine which, if read in a plentiful and fortunate state, should be completed by the time I left a lasting impression on this world. What, you may ask, can a simpleton like yours truly possibly find remarkable about this world enough to warrant an interest about it? Allow me to brief you in about this world I'm basing my book upon.

This world is vast, land far-reaching more than your typical medieval kingdom. In fact this world has a total of currently eight notable kingdoms that each offer their own meat to the table. A quaint little village of green, a technologically based town with a former tyrant, a mountain-esque region residing a legion of lizards, a secluded island inhabited by mole mine diggers, an ominous and desolate valley, a land rebuilt on the aftermath of an otherworldly invasion, a city pouring with water, and a sandy desert. For a super-continent split in half that number certainly appears minuscule, that is until you'd naturally reach the same conclusion I hope you did assuming you read this far. After all, I must have ties with at least one of these land masses in order to provide noteworthy information about an otherwise insignificant amount of diversity of this world.

However I am not affiliated with any of these nations in the slightest.

If this was only a brief summary of my thoughts then we'd already reach past the shocking climax and wrap up at this time. Unfortunately for those of you who tend to bite off more than you can chew reading a novel of that laughable length would sell very poorly in a local bookstore. Hell it would've been left to rot in a packaging storehouse unopened and you would be blissfully unaware of this documented existence. Luckily for me this means we just got started.

Go find a nice quiet place to read, enjoy the contents of this piece of work as you please.


Drip.

The candle flickered from its stand serving its job as the only source of light, albeit dim, by the table. Said piece of furniture is cluttered with paper scattered across the desktop, all of which are etched with writings incomprehensible to understand. A fountain pen suspended in the air dripped its last remaining ink towards the ground, a sign that it should be refilled by an ink dispenser in order to continue use.

"AHH!" A frail voice, supposedly a young boy, pierced the otherwise silent realm as he stood up abruptly. The boy gazed in pure terror at his legs which were so eager to burst out of being seated by that chair all day. He constantly swapped glances at both his legs and the pen held in his hand, still dripping, and connected the two together. His face grew paler at the sight until he became nearly petrified.

Because one of the leftover residue of the pen splatted on the boy's shorts.

"GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" The boy screamed louder this time, suddenly breaking off into a run around the realm and discarding the pen towards the table. He scanned the area left and right searching for something to no avail. Unfortunately for him the stain grew marginally larger in size by the second.

"No-no-no-no...something...anything...I can get this off..." He reassured himself softly. Time ticked on, however, and the end result was less than pretty. The boy couldn't find any physical substance to remove the smudge of ink on his clothes. "I..." He stared at his trembling hand.

"I HAVE TO...REMOVE THIS!" Gathering courage the boy brought his hand down to his shorts and started rubbing furiously, hoping to smudge the stain away. He managed unsuccessfully to erase the ink's existence, actually the contrary occurred. The more he wiped, the more surface area the stain inhabited. "No..." The boy begged. "No please no..."

"WHY MUST YOU DO THIS TO ME GOD!"


Time springs forward to roughly an hour later. The boy finally gave up trying to get rid of the mess, now appearing a botch attempt of a child's coloring tainting his brown shorts, and rested upon the chair. He sighed and gazed around his surroundings once more. More artificial light crept in through some unknown source and shed some lighting in his area, illuminating a much broader view than it ever did since the boy became trapped within it. An ominous chill ran through the boy's spine, he never expected this place to be so spacious or so grand.

What he did expect, however, was that the place is so empty and lifeless. Not a single soul stirred from within the blue technological realm to greet him or explain to him where he happened to end up. Aside from the aforementioned pieces of furniture the boy used to write illegible symbols down, nearly everything else about this realm was of a transparent cyan color from the ceiling, if you'd call it that rather than an empty void, to the floor, which thankfully feels solid and has the visuals of concrete. The boy headed towards the wall opposite of where his desk stood and stared lifelessly at it.

"At least I have this." He muttered to himself, reaching towards the wall and pulling out a crystalline book.

Rows upon rows of bookshelves filled every inch of the walls that are supposedly around him, and this is merely one of dozens. The boy could only infer that he is in some sort of record keeping realm, a "library" as he would put it, and flipped through the pages of the volume in his hands. Each time he did so a light flicker brightened from the transparent piece of literature indicating a page turn. He finally stopped when the number was marked with a star, the book's way of tracking bookmarks, and finished reading where he left off.

...Because of the deficiency of advanced automation at the time, not one human was able to completely control the robot beings they labeled as the "Nasods", beings created to perform physically challenging tasks for the humans such as digging up and working underground mines, construction to build and pave roads to connect human civilizations to one another, and sometimes to act as guards to protect the king of a civilization. It was thanks to this lack of technology that the Nasods were able to develop a sense of Free Will and began to act...human-like. They start denying requests from the humans, obstruct and destroy the very things they were ordered to create, and eventually instigated a rebellion.

The reason for the rebellion is very simple: Nasods are powered by the El Energy that acts as their power source, a resource that the continent known as Elrios was running out of. Disputes over rationing the remaining pieces of energy led to the humans consuming their greed in wanting to keep that power for themselves, thus leading to the Human Nasod Wa-


CRACK!

"Ah..." The exhausted boy flung the book aside, breaking the hologram once it reached the floor, frustrated at his findings. "That's the 57th book about that stupid war. Every time I go to them for any information to get out of here, that topic always comes up. Always..." Unconsciously the boy felt his hand immediately close on the locket wrapped around his neck and heard his own rasping breathing. With a click he flipped the keepsake open to reveal a picture.

January 1st, XXXX. The year as well as the names of the people inside were all faded away and reverted to becoming similar unreadable symbols. The boy, however, recognized them on sight.

A photo of the boy's parents, himself, and his little sister. All four had white hair and purple eyes, a rarity from the time it was taken, and adorned great smiles.

Drip!

The boy shed tears because he knew the story beyond the photo. He knew because the next day after it was taken, everything in turn was swiped away from him. His parents, his little sister, even his home and birthplace in the picture were forever scarred with the color red on that day. He resented the people who erased everything about them from him right before his eyes. Ever since then the boy looked life through lifeless eyes. One fateful evening he couldn't handle the burden anymore and ran, ran as fast as his legs could take him. The ones who he resented chased after him and cornered the boy. Out of desperation he jumped off and fell and fell, until he hit the ground.

He ended up in the place he resides in now, isolated from everything and everyone save for an unlimited amount of paper and ink as well as limitless shelves of books. Books that are all about the Nasods his parents studied before that one day.

"Forget it." The boy convinced himself. "Even if I can find a way to get out, there's no guarantee the world will just suddenly welcome me back with open arms." He huddled himself within the chair. "It's better if I stay in here...forever." He adjusted his seat and started scribbling more gibberish on a new piece of paper. The boy's understanding of vocabulary is broad and extremely versatile, unfortunately he isn't able to conjure up a legible fraction of his thoughts on print due to lack of experience and because he never deemed it necessary when he lived with his family.

All I want... He thought to himself. ...is to be remembered. I want at least one being to know of my existence if no one will. The boy continued this time drawing pictures, or rather circles to be more precise.

He loved the shape of circles. A shape that has a simplistic charm to it yet holds complex meanings at the same time. To the boy, the circle represents Peace and calmness of the mind. After all, with a symbol that contains no abrupt edges in its path is rather quaint and unique than any other that stops in its tracks in order to continue. His hand feels natural drawing circles of all sizes, some big and some small, as there was no need to break the flow of his momentum and was one of the few things in this realm that kept his mind at ease.

Suddenly as he was about to complete his last circle an abrupt tremor shook the Library Realm, as the boy called it when he first wandered in it. The violent reaction caused him to strike a line through the space where he'd otherwise finish the circle and penetrated the bigger shapes he drew outside of his circle until the pen glided beyond the paper the boy was drawing in and into another piece. Soon after the massive shaking concluded and left the boy to stare at the line striking through his otherwise complete circles.

The line stood there as if mocking him, detesting him. Ruining his perfect circles and rendered them imperfect, unable to fix what has been broken. This angered the young boy, reaching for the paper in order to shred it to tiny pieces.

Huh? He realized exactly where the line halted: Another circle. No...It couldn't be...

Noticing the trend, the boy connected the disruptive line towards all the other circles closest to the last one his pen reached. Finally he connected the single remaining shape back towards the original circle where the line first stroke through it. He immediately caught eye of the design he created, possibly the greatest luck that ever occurred in his life. They formed an object that seemed vaguely familiar, one that the boy can recall from one of the earlier volumes he read about Nasod weapons. One that humanity could never create at that time but only theorize upon its creation, one able to generate and manipulate electricity with ease, and one that just might be the one way the boy can finally rid himself from the prison holding him.

D-Dynamo?!

The boy dropped his pen and started chuckling. "Heh...heh heh..." He couldn't take it and stood from his chair, laughing even harder.

"GEH HAH HAH HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" He let his arms limp as he finished laughing at the ceiling. A ray of hope finally appeared right beneath his fingertips. "I have all the information I desire, and the resources required. I need only time to complete it and bust my way out!" The boy, feeling much more energized and motivated than ever before, slammed his hands down at the table and gazed at his unintentional route of escape once more. A huge grin plastered on his face.

Looks like I'll get my wish after all.


And this marks the end of the first chapter. Wanna let me know what you guys thought of it? Leave a review and perhaps a favorite/follow if you happen to enjoy this story. I'll just throw it out there that, for the time being, I'm going to focus solely on updating this story. Hopefully this will stop my slow updates due to managing between multiple stories. Anyway this bids my farewell for now! See you guys next chapter.