What is a warlock?
Guardian Angels some would say, watching over their allies in battle, granting them mercy dealing sheer, unadulterated vengeance against their enemies and the Darkness. Being life's gardeners regardless of their element or personality, as they leave blinding wells of light and flourishing life in their wake as they traverse the cosmos. Strong leaders and mentors when no one else can be one, passing infinite wisdom down to those who are in need of it, and guiding all to a better tomorrow, bringing positive change at the speed of light.
Uncaring Demons some would say, abusing their power without regard for others, almost like proxies of the darkness. They burn, scorch, annihilate, and torture their foes with cunning traps, puzzles, and terrifying weapons of war that devour life from their victims like black holes, always empty and hungering for more power, more knowledge. They mathematically keep track of everything, coldly lying and abusing their underlings to keep them in their place in the universe, while placing themselves higher. Their precision tends to be as sharp as their wit, putting forth a series of calculations done in a nanosecond to figure out where to land a direct hit with any weapon.
But the truth is about warlocks is that they're all keepers of knowledge, children of history itself. Whereas the titan finds his strength and wisdom in battle, the warlock just takes a glance at titan-made texts. Where hunters find their art and cloak out in the wilderness, the warlock simply reads a detailed autobiography of one. In the end, the warlock gains more knowledge than anyone else of the three humanoid races or guardian classes in the sol system, and in turn, their brain becomes the muscle titans envy as they make precise machines that rival their sheer strength, give them the confidence that hunters lack without having a strong instinct by right of livelihood, all while learning their fighting styles.
If left unattended by the natural pull of life, a warlock can become a dangerous force that rivals the natural balance of the universe. But like every living thing in life, that force will remain without direction, as they have an incremental source of power as time goes on. And to move such a sheer force in one direction requires an equally tempting pull or push that something, anything with such gravity needs to lure the warlock into taking action, and bring forth the collective knowledge of humanity to swamp whatever comes in its way, whether for good or for the worse.
But even the tiniest, incorrect pull can result in catastrophic changes...
I sat myself down against the gate, tired, unexplainably pained and wounded from all the fighting. This is it. I thought to myself as I looked at the HUD, a program of such information that required the newborns of guardians to answer a small quiz about when they first enter the educational program for the guardian classes. I am going to die.
My ammo was non-existent, the light beginning to become strained beyond comprehension, armor beginning to fail, and leave me exposed to the elements. In my haste for knowledge, I didn't expect to encounter a foe such as this during one of my many escapades in Venus. I didn't even expect the Vault to come back to life. And here I was, after grazing death for nearly a whole day, or was it a week? Months? In the Vault, time is irrelevant.
The Templar, and all of the Gorgons were dead, that I managed to do somehow using the tricks I learned from Osiris in the Infinite Forest. Instead of dying like any guardian would in my situation, I had managed to lace my light within the timestreams inside of the Vault of Glass before I fought to escape from this trap I was in, preventing myself from being deleted from reality as I tied myself into the Vault's mainframe by hacking into the Oracles. But it was not easy. For what felt like the longest time, I felt myself being pelted by the devouring burns of the Templar's Aeon cannons, almost feeling like lasers upon my back as they peeled away the skin whilst I used Kabr's shield to hold back, and beat the beast. For even longer, I felt every atom of my being becoming strained with each time I was detected by the Gorgons, feeling myself pop in and out of reality violently as I fought every Gorgon within the labyrinth, while they attempted to try and force my light out of the system.
For an eternity, I danced with death itself. And it had taken its toll.
As the sitting turned into lying limp against the metal mainframe, I looked to the gate. In my hazy senses, I found that it had activated somehow. A glimmer of hope within the dark burning chasms of the Vault. But I knew it would come with a cost, all things do.
In order to use this portal, I had to do the impossible. Which left me with two options. Cut off my connection to the Traveler; or face the impossible challenge of Atheon, who was Kabr's end along with the many Vex that fought him.
The choice wasn't hard to make.
I grasped at my own ghost. It wasn't brimming with life after everything that had happened, now just barely clinging onto consciousness. It hurt nearly as much as everything that we had just been through, and oddly enough it only amplified the pain. The ghost looked at me with its flickering light, as if trying to say it was ok. "Go- odbye- guar-dian.". Even though its voice was glitched, I was still able to hear it
I closed my eyes, and violently destroyed it, allowing myself to be free of the Vault, but forever on life support. I felt my very soul shaking as I crawled with desperation, every inch of my body screaming with agony. I felt as if I had cut the whole lower half of my body off as I strained to get inside the portal next to me. All the while, I just couldn't scream, being too warped by the pain to do anything else but act automatically. Memories flashed before my eyes, of all the people I had met in my guardian career.
Cayde-6 and his existential loneliness, Ikora and her journey to becoming one of the best warlock teachers in the Tower, Zavala and his endless example of being a leader that tried to keep the people's best interests as the goal of all guardians, Shaxx and his willingness to see all guardians better themselves, Drifter and his way of staying in between light and dark, the Bray sisters and their intertwining destinies.
As soon as I entered the portal, everything was gone, as was this life.
I awoke to an unfamiliar feeling around my body. It felt warm and cozy, like that of animal hide with faux fur, and a soft, yet firm feeling beneath me, and it was enough to make me realize that I escaped. Opening my eyes, I came to an unfamiliar room, with what seemed to be three men chatting, though as to what it was taking me a few seconds to ascertain what they were saying.
"...-It's exactly like Emerald Online."
"Never heard of it."
"Huh, seriously? It's huge!"
"What are you talking about? This isn't an online game. It's a new console game I'm playing, called Dimension Web."
A silence then fell upon the room as the three seemed to stare at each other in confusion. I took this moment to try and get myself out of bed, groaning as I did so. The three turned to look at me with waves of shock and relief coming over them.
"Hey, the sword guy is awake!"
"Hopefully he doesn't think this is Skyrim or something."
"What's Skyrim?"
The hell are these kids talking about?
As my vision began to clear up, I was eventually able to identify the strangers before me. Before me were three young adolescents by pre-golden age standards. A short boy with a matching short light brown curly hair and green... gold eyes? It was hard to tell due to the lighting, but I could tell the boy held the fire of a newborn, starry-eyed guardian that doesn't know better, especially since he was wearing the pre-golden age school outfits. He was making his way over to me with a bow and another man who had spiky black hair, a greenish, white tracksuit with black jeans, and definitely sharp green eyes while holding a shield. Meanwhile, there was a blonde man with a red jacket and white undershirt just sitting on his brown cargo jeans as he held a spear in his grasp.
This... did the Vex send me in the past?
Although in contrast as to what they were wearing, the room was anything but the pre-golden age era or post-collapse in architecture and design. Rather, it felt like I was in one of the fables of the medieval times, which had since been lost to the collapse and only given a very general description of.
"You were passed out the moment we got here, in pain even." The spiky-haired man said as he helped me up with the bow kid's assistance. "Are you alright? You looked like you've been through hell and back."
I tried to make a pithy joke, but ended up finding that my vocal cords were gone. All I ended up doing was letting out a dreadful sound that made everyone flinch.
"Yeesh." The blonde man said. "I guess we shouldn't push the dead guy for now. Or undead? I dunno."
The two looked to the blonde man, causing me to be unable to see their expressions. After a few seconds, the curly-haired kid sighed and went back to his spot, while the spiky-haired guy went and got some paper and pen for me to write on. I moved to a chair, still shaking from the loss of my light.
"I'm Naofumi Iwatani." The man said as he handed me the paper and pen. "Those two are Motoyasu Kitamura and Itsuki Kawasumi."
Sensing I had to make an identity for myself, I took a moment to consider things. Using my current name may be recognizable. Language changes a lot over the course of centuries, so if I were to put it down, they may end up making a name for me anyhow... their names sound Japanese. May be best to go ahead and try the earliest Japanese name I could recall here.
After a brief moment of thought, I wrote down the name "Mokoto Hotaru.". After a moment of looking at the paper, they seemed pleased.
"Mokoto Hotaru, huh?" The spiky-haired guy said as he looked at it.
"Sounds pretty good. Kinda girly if you ask me though."
"I think it's quite the name. You may have a challenger, Motoyasu."
Motoyasu huffed. "He can't get more girls than me."
Boy, I've bedded women 14 times your age, and I can tell you're at least 20. I so badly wanted to say, though I ended up just grunting instead.
"I dunno, Motoyasu. He seems to disagree."
"Look, we're getting off-topic here." Motoyasu cut-in, having enough of all the talk. "Itsuki, you said this game is Dimension Web?"
"While you said this was Emerald Online." Naofumi then pointed out. "Are we even from the same worlds?"
Or timelines?
"Let's see about that everybody name the prime minister."
They all said different names and were immediately shocked by the results. They tried more with others, and while they were busy finding about each other, I snuck out of the room to test my own abilities, finding myself in a castle's hallway. There was nobody around, at least from what I saw, and thus I had the perfect opportunity to test my strength. I looked at my armor, a set of simulator armor. I attempt to glide, jumping up into the air and yanking on the gravitational pull of the planet.
Sure enough, I jumped far higher than any normal person could, and had a slow enough descent to keep myself balanced. I then jumped off a couple of tables I stacked to verify if I could stop my speed entirely, and sure enough, I felt myself abruptly stop for a second before touching the ground. Grinning to myself, I then tried to summon a firebolt grenade. The typical ball of flame appeared, and I threw it out of my hands to see a ring of fire pass through everything, before collapsing, not seeing anything as a live target. I then thrust my hand out, seeing a scorch of fire. I then reached for my gun.
It wasn't there. Instead, I had Boltcaster, although it looked weak, cracked even. And on my other side, I felt a new weight make itself known. It was a simple sword, no element to it whatsoever. The sight of the two weapons made me pause.
And that pause was enough for sudden, terrifying realization to make way. I quickly began to hyperventilate, fear striking me. What the hell was I thinking!? Am I even able to do this still?! Where's my fallback?!
As I was mentally berating myself, the others seemed to have just realized I was missing, as I heard the door open. "Yo Mokoto, where you going?"
I turned around to look at Motoyasu.
Motoyasu's eyes widened, and he closed the door. Moments later, the rest of the group came out to check on me, all readied with their weapon as Naofumi went to my side. They looked around as if looking for any intruders. After I calmed myself down, I pat Naofumi on the back to let him know everything was okay, and he signaled to everyone that I was ok.
"What happened out here? What were you doing even?" Naofumi asked as he looked straight into my eyes.
"Yeah dude, you just left us without at least letting us know!" Motoyasu exclaimed. "I mean, you didn't even let us know what world YOU were from, and you have that weird looking dress on you!"
That caused me to glare at him. It's armor, not a dress!
Itsuki sighed. "Mokoto, you have to let us know what you're doing. It's basic party 101."
"Yeah, plus you're mute." Naofumi also added. "You can't call for help or tell us what's going on. We need to keep track of you."
...Naofumi, you have a noble heart, but you don't seem to realize that the best way to cover this deficiency is to be self-reliant and intuitive about others.
"Well, that was a rush..." Motoyasu said as he relaxed, putting the tip of his spear into the sky as he rested it. I simply got up and then walked back into the room, wrote my intentions down and presented it to Motoyasu.
"Library."
"You're looking to go to the library? At this hour?" Motoyasu couldn't help but look incredulous at what I was thinking. I wrote down more.
"Knowledge is power."
Motoyasu then sighed as he looked to Naofumi and Itsuki. "Which one of you two wanna stay up and watch him?"
The two looked at each other.
"Whoever wins has to watch him."
"Deal."
They engaged in rock paper scissors. Naofumi sighed in annoyance.
"It's probably for the best anyhow. You're a shield, so if anything comes your way and we hear it, we might just make it in time. Or the guards, at the least." Itsuki reasoned, before turning to me. "The library is just down the hallway. Try not to stay up too late, please?"
I wrote more on the paper. "I'm fine without an escort. Just had a bad memory come back to me earlier. Also, I've rested long enough, need to do something."
"You don't have anyone to talk for you though." Itsuki reasoned. "At least let Naofumi speak for you if a guard comes by or something."
I frowned at that for a moment, before nodding. We then parted our ways, Itsuki and Motoyasu going back to the room we have, while Naofumi accompanied me to the library. As soon as I got in, I started drinking in information almost immediately as I sped through the books. A niche thing about warlocks is that we're the quickest to learn information, although slow to adapt. In my case scenario, I was perfectly in my environment as I quickly learned the written languages, and I had no doubts that it didn't look like it to Naofumi that I wasn't even reading.
So it wasn't a surprise that he eventually tapped my shoulder after a dozen books. "Uhhh, didn't we come here to read? Not skim things?"
I wrote more on the paper, and turned to him. "Would you like me to make several essays right now about the books?"
Naofumi seemed to be doubting my ability at first, but upon seeing how much I was challenging him on it, he left me be. In roughly a half-hour, I had read enough to have a general understanding of Melromarc itself, as well as how things worked around here, and what was the importance and usage of what now seems to be the most popular thing in the city, judging by the newspapers that were around the library.
Which inevitably lead to me discovering the chat and inventory function activated by looking at a small dot in my vision to open up a menu screen, as I cast away the paper to open it up, metaphysical keyboard in front of me. I type in a text message into the chat, which is stuff only party members and other heroes could see. "Test."
Naofumi noticed it appearing as well, and smiled in relief. "Oh, so this world does have a chat function! At least we won't be needing paper now." He said as he scratched the back of his head.
I smiled as well and typed out a message. "I think that's enough. I'm going to find out what happened to my sword."
"Your sword?" Naofumi said quizzically. I presented Boltcaster to him, and he seemed to understand.
I sat down on the floor to inspect Boltcaster. I put a finger on the Willbreaker shard, and as soon as I did so, the sword crumbled away, as did the rest of the weapon. Naofumi seemed alarmed at what happened to my weapon as the metal fell apart, as the shard turned to dust. I then picked up the dust, examining it closely to see if I could save the weapon. Sighing, I put it away into a pocket, causing a little dust to get onto my other sword. A message then appeared.
Necrotic Sword(Arc)
Unlocked!
Rarity: Legendary
Level 1
Attack:60/5
Weight:4.4lb
Accuracy:22/13
Hands:2/1
Level 1 Perk(Unlocked)
Necrochasm
Passive: Kills with the weapon charge the weapon by stealing the enemies' life force. When fully charged, gain a 2.0x XP bonus, or change into assault rifle mode and gain XP debuff of 0.5x until you run out of ammo.
Level 1 Perk(Unlocked)
Willbreaker
Passive: Non-boss level enemies below level 15 will convert to your side for 2 minutes with each successful hit for a chance of 4%. Active: After leveling up you or the sword, the next person you speak to will obey you for one command.
Level 5 Perk(Locked)
Level 5 Perk(Locked)
Level 10 Perk(Locked)
Level 10 Perk(Locked)
Level 20 Perk(Locked)
Level 20 Perk(Locked)
Level 40 Perk:(Locked)
Level 40 Perk:(Locked)
While there were certainly more perks to look at, there were also other branches, such as the Sol and Void edition of Willbreaker. How I would unlock them though, I had no clue in the slightest, but seeing as that did something to my new sword, I grabbed Naofumi's shield as I once more took the dust out of the pocket while it was still in my hand. He was confused at first, but as his shield changed to that of the Vanquishers on Mars, he figured out what I was doing.
"This... this is amazing!" Naofumi said as he seemed to be in awe of his new stats and abilities. "We need to share this with the others. Can we-"
I motioned for him to do so, pointing at the dust and then moving my hand to the door.
"But wouldn't you-"
"I can defend myself. Get moving." I typed out with my other hand, and Naofumi obliged, gathering as much of the Willbreaker's dust as he could before leaving. As he left, I gathered up my broken metal and looked for the Zeptocyte cores. Zeptocyte cores, despite what some would think, weren't exactly the easiest to obtain materials, and when The Guardian that managed to slay Oryx and replicate his Willbreaker shards with the help of Shaxx first made Razelighter, I and many other weaponsmiths had gone to making different versions with the shard included, eventually making a breakthrough and finding out how to make light-infused swords without Willbreaker at all. Though it wasn't to say none of the efforts I made were easy.
Ah, my beloved Boltcaster... one day, I will reforge you, and leave you in the hands of a capable warrior. I promise you this.
I then stuff the material into my pockets, causing more messages to appear that said the materials were in my inventory. I paid little attention to it, still mourning over the loss of my sword.
At least, the Necrotic Sword seems like a viable replacement... I thought as I went through my usable swords, finding nothing else but the Necrotic Sword. As soon as I equipped it, the remaining sword I had changed into that of what seems to be a mix of Oryx's Willbreaker sword and an Ascendant Sword. The blade itself was jagged, without life, although I had no doubt that if I was to kill things, it would become alight and level up as I fought.
I looked out of a window, watching the night sky as I gazed into the cosmos. I don't know what happened back there. If someone helped me out, or if the Vex, maybe even someone worse than them, had removed me from the Vault to be here. But I promise you, the invisible force who brought me to this underdeveloped world... I will find out who you are. And even though my light is crippled, I will do whatever is necessary to defend humanity.