Note: I am not the author of this work, it is Leon_Hart. And I do not own any of the franchises described below.
Chapter 0
So I was right, and it Hurts, so I quickly passed out from the painful shock... or more likely, I just died.
However, when I regained consciousness, I did not feel any pain and it made me happy... but after a while I also realized that something else was missing, namely my body. After all, a light luminous translucent something repeating a human contour is clearly not my body... rather it was a soul, and this moment did not make me particularly happy.
I looked around better and studied myself even better, and I can make the obvious conclusion that I am now a ghostly silhouette hanging in a gray void.
"So it looks like I'm either dead or close to it, and maybe this is how people feel on the brink of life and death. - I said... and then a strange inscription appeared in front of my eyes:
≪System is calibrated
And away we go... the text in a little-known language began to appear and quickly change before my eyes, like my body... or it was still a soul, it began to feel strange. After examining myself again, I noticed that in the center of my chest some kind of glowing cross appeared, from which multi-colored threads, woven into strange knots and patterns, began to spill over my whole body, then these threads reached my head, I began to see in front of me a kaleidoscope of different colors, and on top of that, there was also a strange text.
This strange process lasted quite a long time, but at first the light ended, and then the text began to take on a meaningful and familiar look.
≪Calibration complete
≪You are greeted by the adaptive system of spiritual development "ArkAnima", also known as the "Ark of the Soul". The creator of this system is your past incarnation. Read more in the introductory message.
Hello future me. My name is Leon Astores, and I am the master of the Eastern European Guild of Mages, which most likely no longer exists, because when a decent piece of the mainland is ripped off the planet and teleports it into the void with an accompanying explosion, you will not envy the nearby territories. And so I was the only surviving person on this piece of the mainland, now floating in dark space. To get out of here, I am preparing to go to the only inhabited world I have found, and if you are reading this, then I partially succeeded.
But let's start at the beginning to clarify the situation.
In 1908, according to the old reckoning, a meteorite about seven kilometers in size flew to Earth, when it fell, it almost completely evaporated in the atmosphere, but its surviving debris fell on the northern part of the Iberian Peninsula. The fall of the meteorite is a huge explosion, and also woke up the volcanoes in the southern part of the peninsula, making the entire peninsula not the most pleasant place to live. But besides death and destruction, the meteorite brought something else. As it turned out, this celestial body consisted mostly of crystallized mana, which, when it fell, began to dissipate in the atmosphere.
After fifty years, when all the consequences caused by the meteorite subsided, and after two world wars, the effect of mana on living organisms began to manifest itself. Some animals and plants mutated, children with inexplicable abilities began to be born, and weak psychics and clairvoyants were no longer considered charlatans.
The time was restless then - post-war, and then a lot of people went to the dissection to the scientists. And scientists did not eat their bread in vain, they found out that the falling meteorite provoked the awakening of a very weak magical shell in a significant part of the population. However, over time and the change of two to three generations, the influence of mana accumulated, which led to a more visual effect of mana on the material world.
Basically, the manifestation of magic was reflected in the form of elemental emissions of mana in children with large reserves of this mana. Scientists also found that although the magical background was most dense near the epicenter of the meteorite impact, the concentration of mana gradually increased in the rest of the planet.
Scientists, along with the governments of the countries, decided that since they could not stop the spread of magic and the emergence of magicians, they should at least control it ... or rather, they began to control magicians. On the basis of research institutes, boarding schools were created, where children with a magical gift and mana reserves were taken. The children were trained and used to further study magic and sorcerers.
As it is already clear, training and research in the military field was carried out with a very strong bias; children were trained as living weapons for warfare. This continued for about twenty years, until a group of magicians rose up and staged a revolution, killing those who did not agree with the freedom and independence of magicians. After a small war, the mages separated from the direct influence of the government and founded the first mages guild, headquartered in western Poland.
Time passed, the countdown of years began from the moment the meteorite fell. Magic became more familiar to people, magicians themselves developed their mystical art, two more guilds were opened in China and America. It also turned out that electronics live for a very short time in the hands of a strong magician or in places saturated with mana, for example, in a place where there are large concentrations of magicians. So very soon such a branch of magic as artifactorics appeared - with its help, magicians first tried to replace their favorite and familiar electronic devices.
So, in the eighty-eighth year after the fall of the meteorite, I was born into the family of an artifactor and a healer. They named me after my grandfather, a native of Italy - Leon. Since the parents had professions requiring relatively little mana but good control, their son had average mana, but control was enormous. At first I studied at home with my parents, and then in the guild, so by the age of forty I became a master of two directions of magic - artifactory and healing.
Since the holy place is never empty, and in the world with relatively recent magic there were no patrons and gods yet, in the one hundred and thirtieth year after the fall of the Meteorite, five gods arrived on Earth: the God of Knowledge - Zion, the god of wealth - Tiatjar, the goddess of love - Fuzuhi , and two young gods with no specific area of worship - Munlan and Mivor. These gods settled on the planet, occupying certain territories. So, Tiatjar lived mainly in North America, Fuzuhi in Southwest Asia, Munlan in South America, Mivor in Africa, and Zion in Europe.
For experienced magicians, practically nothing has changed... well, the gods appeared, well, they work miracles, you think strong magicians can do it too. But for the very weak gifted, who practically do not differ from an ordinary person, and for ordinary people, the gods were just gods. They were worshiped, they prayed, they built temples, especially fanatical ones, even offered sacrifices.
The most active were the young gods who settled in territories with a very favorable population for them. If magicians were born in settlements in these territories, then they could become for the local population with equal chances and respected shamans-leaders-local gods, and be burned at the stake, like the offspring of the devil. And when the young gods came to Africa and South America, they did not waste time, they quickly established their own order and began to build religions, led by themselves.
Well, the god Zion, who lives in our territory, was the most useful, as he shared some knowledge, of course, not for free, but for a reasonable price in the form of mana.
Fourteen years have passed since the appearance of the gods, during which I studied the Magic of Souls and the Magic of Space, well, and a few more directions. And since everything in the world has an opposite side: light has darkness, chaos has order, so the gods have demons.
At first, the arrival of the demons was imperceptible. Devils and demons were the first to come to Earth, they created the undead to help themselves, and attacked distant villages. But here we are sometimes and spontaneously in the old cemeteries of the undead rise no less. So the attacks were quickly dealt with and did not attach much importance to them. But, as it turned out later, it was just reconnaissance, and the demons, hiding, began preparations for the invasion.
The basis for the invasion was the still deserted, occasionally erupting volcanoes in the south of the Iberian Peninsula. Five months later, rumors reached us about the loss of entire villages, and after a couple of days the demons opened a stable breakthrough in Inferno, through which a wave of evil spirits rushed. After three days, the demons were stopped, but this happened due to the destruction of cities in southwestern Europe, the death of civilians, soldiers, and also magicians.
But the demonic invasion did not end there. The war with the demons lasted more than eighteen years, during which the demons first built a stationary portal to hell for a steady influx of reinforcements, and later began to conquer less defended territories such as Africa, Oceania and South America. The local population resisted, but quickly retreated, allowing the demons to build three more weaker portals. And from that moment on, demons became a problem for the entire Earth, and not just for Europe.
Over time, the magicians prepared, and with the support and help of the Gods, people began to fight back, and then even attack. So the Asian guild, with the support of the goddess Fuzuhi, destroyed the portal in Oceania. The people, delighted, attacked the demons even more zealously, thinking that the war would soon end. Even the gods came to Earth, because by helping people to win, they show their strength and gain more and more fans.
Everything was going well until the moment when during the battle for South America, the Demon Lords appeared, in strength comparable to the gods, and during the storming of the portal they killed Fuzuhi. As a result of the battle: demons - two Demon Lords were killed, another escaped, but promised to return. The portal is closed. And among the people, many soldiers and magicians died, including the archmage of our guild, one goddess died, and later we learned that Tiatyar left Earth, refusing to fight anymore. The strongest god was Zion, and he calmly reacted to the flight of Tiatyar, saying that he did not expect anything else from the merchant, and was surprised that he did not wash away even earlier, as soon as he smelled the fried smell.
Sion, using his knowledge in magic, used spells that massacred demons, but he too fell at the hands of the Demon Prince with five crown-shaped horns and a red crystal in his forehead. Before dying, Sion nevertheless took the Demon Prince with him to the afterlife along with another Demon Lord. This happened when a portal in Africa, the second largest portal of demons on Earth, was closed.
We have lost our archmage and god again. Having become the senior in the guild, I was offered to take the place of the archmage, but I refused, citing the fact that it was wartime, and most of me did not have martial skills. Therefore, they agreed that I would be the assistant and advisor to the new archmage, who became a young talented magician who recently became a master of combat, but on the battlefield he always stood out for his incredibly destructive spells of his own invention. during this wartime he was the best candidate for the guild leader position.
As an assistant to the archmage, I helped deal with the aftermath of the battle in Africa, and several things fell into my hands. The first curious find was the upper half of the Demon Prince's skull with the remaining three horns and a red crystal in the middle of his forehead. The second find was the top half of Zion's staff with a blue crystal on top. And the third find is a pyramid of unknown metal with dark blue luminous veins. This pyramid was found at the site of the destruction of the portal.
After the death of the Demon Prince, the demons were quiet for a whole year, which gave us time to prepare for the final battle, and time for me to research the items found. So the red crystal turned out to be the third eye, in which a lot of demonic energy was stored, which, moreover, was gradually generated, and the excess was released outside. The blue crystal contained divine energy, and also some kind of magical structure was woven into it, in which I made out only that it was there. The most interesting thing was the pyramid. Its feature was the material - an alloy of various magical metals, as well as an unknown additive, which is probably the crystallized energy of Space, which gives the alloy the useful property of transferring energy over great distances. This is how this pyramid works: when melting an alloy, demons use magical metals that conduct energy well, store it, and also generate it. After that, "Crystals of the Void" are added to the alloy... that's what I called the materialized energy of Space. When the alloy cools down, you need to continue pouring mana into it so that the energy in the metal is synchronized and the alloy has a single subspace for storing energy.
As a result of all this, if you divide the smelted metal into one large part and several small ones, while putting most of it in a place saturated with mana, where mana will be absorbed into an alloy, or saturating it manually, then through the fragments you can pull energy over long distances. But this energy turns out to be too unstable and heavy to control and at the same time has the color of the energy of the Void, that is, it is ideal for powering stationary portals and for other Spatial Magic, but in other branches of magic it is almost impossible to use it.
While studying these subjects, I noticed their influence on each other. The demonic crystal pulled energy from the pyramid and began to grow little by little. The divine crystal also absorbed the energy of the pyramid, and it went to power the magical structure, the effect of which I did not notice at first until I put all three objects together. The energized blue crystal began to vaporize the red demonic crystal, creating an aura of strange energy. Later, checking the effect of this aura on captive demons showed that this aura neutralizes the magic of demons, and the demons themselves in this aura are very uncomfortable, it even killed some weak demons. In general, from these three finds, I made an anti-demonic amulet. From the metal of the pyramid, I smelted a cross, which I encrusted with demonic and divine crystals, connecting all the parts so that they constantly work to create an aura against demons.
And now the time has come for the last battle. On the side of people: two gods, almost all the magicians of the Earth and many ordinary people, warriors. And on the side of the demons: three Demon Lords, one of whom has already escaped death three times, escaping from the battlefield ... well, and a bunch of demons, different claws and horns. The army of people was divided into two parts: one part was supposed to bind and destroy demons, and the other to close the portal. The gods were supposed to destroy the Demon Lords if possible. I was in the second group.
The battle went on with varying success: at first, the people pressed the demons, then the Demon Lords entered the battle and pushed the people back, and then the gods took over the lords, and the initiative again passed to the people. I broke through with the second group to the portal.
I teleported short distances when dodging, used my most destructive artifacts on demons, healed myself and my fellow mages when injured. At the same time, the aura from the cross-amulet protected me from demonic spells and weakened the demons next to me.
We were already close to the portal when a huge explosion occurred from behind, in the direction of the first group, led by the archmage, directed towards the demons. This explosion immediately destroyed a quarter of the army of evil spirits. On the one hand, it was good, but on the other hand, it was a last-chance spell developed by the new archmage, since I was his assistant, I knew about his developments and even helped to refine it in order to reduce its lethality for the user. The spell was woven in the aura of the magician, and was fed by a large amount of mana, prana and emotions... that is, the energy of the whole soul, which turned into a directed explosion based on the Release of Destruction. Anything caught in the center of the explosion is destroyed... even the soul.
But, as is clear, the price of this spell is the death of the magician... in the original version, in the modified version, the magician is completely deprived of the ability to conjure and shortens his life span to five years, during which he can still try to recover.
Seeing the huge explosion created by the archmage, many people understood what this means, because such spells are not used against ordinary demons. Most likely, the archmage saw that the gods began to lose, and decided to help with the most powerful spell that was in his arsenal. Therefore, our second group hurried and broke into the citadel with the portal. Inside the building, on the ceiling, hung a huge rhombus with dark blue veins, around which were located four glowing blue crystals, tops down, directly on the arch with the active portal.
As soon as we wanted to start destroying the portal, the Demon Lord flew into the hall, starting to break through to the arch of the portal. On the way of the Demon, magicians began to get up, but even being wounded, he scattered them very quickly. And now only I was on the way.
The demon casts the same spell with which he cleared his way from other magicians, and it does not work because of the amulet. Without wasting time, I put up a spatial barrier as quickly as possible and began to feed him as much as possible, starting to draw energy even from the amulet. While the demon broke through the barrier, I recognized him - this was the same Demon Lord who participated in every battle for the portals and always fled, while the other lords fought to the last.
And when I thought that the demon would break through the barrier, those from whom he escaped appeared, namely the two gods - Moonlan and Mivor. They were both worn out, one had no left arm, and the other had a huge wound that crossed his right eye. But despite this, both of these gods just want to kill the demon.
The Demon Lord, unable to break through my barrier, realized his position and shouted: "I will take you with me!" first threw some kind of spell at the ceiling, and then pounced on the gods. And after a couple of seconds there was an explosion.
I don't know how long I lost consciousness, but when I woke up at night on the street under a clear sky, the first thing I felt was wild pain. The pain was especially severe in the chest, and a feeling of strength emanated from the chest.
Having coped with the pain and having healed, I began to look around. There was devastation all around, I was on a hill in the center of a small circle with a diameter of four meters, which was not touched by the explosion. After examining myself, I noticed the cause of the strange sensations in my chest, namely a bluish glowing cross fused into the flesh. Having touched it, I realized that I feel it as my integral part of the body.
Several days passed after my awakening, and this time was enough for me to find out what exactly happened during the explosion.
And this is what happened. The Demon Lord cast a spell that destabilized the storage diamond, causing the magic alloy to shatter and then explode, killing both the demon and the gods. Pieces of this magic alloy kept in touch for some time and managed to absorb the energy of two gods and a demon, but could not process it, so a large amount of energy of the gods, the demon and the energy stored in the accumulator went through an energy connection to the only surviving piece of this alloy, and namely, in my amulet.
Before the explosion, I held the barrier so as not to let the demon pass, and I kept it on my last legs. Mana was running out, and I pulled energy from wherever I could, and the energy came into me also from the amulet. So during the explosion, I continued to hold the barrier, and the energy in the amulet began to quickly arrive, but I sent it to maintain and strengthen the barrier
Later, I began to feel pain, because a continuous colossal flow of energy passed through me. The pain grew, especially it became unbearable when the energy of gods and demons poured into me. Unable to bear the pain, I began to heal myself in the hope of alleviating the suffering by continuing to maintain the barrier.
I continued to hold the barrier, constantly healed myself, but the pain continued to grow, but I continued, because if I let go of the barrier, then most likely I would die. When the flow of energy dried up, I was in an abnormal state, like in a trance, I held the barrier and healed myself until I fainted.
Now, after checking myself, I found changes in energy, the aura increased, the energy began to resemble this, whether I was a quarter demon, a quarter god and half a human magician ... however, my appearance also changed to match the aura, horns grew on my head, the skin has turned black, black wings have grown behind his back, and his eyes shine with heavenly light.
In my former amulet, and now in the fused cross on my chest, I found ba-hion - the energy that makes God - God, and the demon - Archdemon. And since I only recently became a quarter of a god and a demon, I did not have time to appear the ninth shell of the soul, where the ba-hion should be stored, so the energy was accumulated on a physical carrier, that is, in a molten cross created from demonic and divine crystals.
After a couple of months, completely waking up and surveyed the territory, I understood the reason why the sun does not rise. Because there is no sun here. I was in the void of space, on a small island about three thousand kilometers in size. Having explored this island, I did not find any intelligent creatures, except for some mutated animals, famous for their vitality.
In general, I began to think how I got here and how to get out of here.
Having fully explored the place near the portal, I discovered underground voids from a vein of magical storage mineral, which were adjacent to the remnants of a vein of magical ore capable of generating mana. I also found a huge cave, in which, most likely, recently lay a huge meteorite fragment, consisting of crystallized mana.
Those four blue crystals near the portal of demons used to serve as accumulators in which energy was stored for the stable operation of the spatial gate. These blue crystals were connected to the underground veins of magic crystals and ore, and during the explosion, they released enough Spatial energy through feedback to convert the neutral energy, accumulated all the time in the veins, into energy for spatial movement.
However, this island did not move far, it just fell out into some of the parallel realities ... sort of like. So, you can try to return to Earth ... I hope it will work out.
Distance has become a problem to return because, as the magical scan has shown, the Earth still exists in this reality, but over time I am in the distant past. So far that the Milky Way galaxy has not yet flown in this place. From the echoes in the infosphere and astral, I learned that all the nearest parallel realities that I can reach have the same time frame as this one. That is, after all, I was moved very far, both in space and in time ... although it's not for me to complain, it's good that I stayed alive at all, otherwise such uncontrolled movements without specifying any parameters most often lead to the dispersion of the moving object in the Space-Time Continuum.
Well, okay, you have to work with what you have. Having learned the approximate direction of the galaxy from the echoes in the information field and the astral plane, I decided to get there myself. But as far as I do not know how to open portals, so I had to use other methods of movement.
Encouraged by the news of a possible return to my home planet, I decided to draw up a plan for this very return, or rather several plans. A little later, I arranged all the plans so that if one plan failed, another would take over, and so on.
From other bad news, I began to notice that the number of ba-hion on the cross is gradually decreasing, so I decided to spend it and make myself a soul superstructure, similar to those that the gods gave to some of their apostles and priests. Since I was a master in art, healing, soul magic and spatial magic, well, and also a little versed in related areas, I sat down in meditation to make myself a superstructure of the soul, I finished only seven years later, having used up the entire ba-hion and created a whole system of spiritual artifacts. I sewed the basis of this system into the Core of the Soul.
The system had unlimited potential in development, spending time, you can easily deal with opponents of the level of God Zion or Demon Prince. But, in time, I am just limited, it is not known how long the light spatial barrier that keeps the atmosphere of life on the island will last. I, of course, have not felt hunger for the last seven and a half years, but after catching and frying a mutated animal, I realized how hungry I was and during the day, having organized genocide against mutants, I ate them. Eh, that would be another hunger to satisfy...
For another three years, I assembled a capsule-ship for travel through the Dark Space and Hyperspace. I did everything to safely reach the goal: I collected all the metal from the island, used some as material for building a ship, and used some with heavy metals such as plutonium or uranium as fuel in the engine for fission of matter. Magic I made the ship's defense and life support system for me.
I named my system of spiritual superstructures "ArkAnima" - "The Ark of the Soul". After all, she must help me, in the event of the death of the body, achieve the goal, that is, return to Earth in the form of a soul and be reborn, as well as, if possible, preserve my memory.
But even in case so many years pass that protection does not help and my soul begins to disintegrate, I built the System Foundation into the shell of the Soul Core. So the future I will not have to start a new life from scratch every time after death. Here, for the sake of interest, I will place a counter of years in order to know exactly the time elapsed since the creation of the Ark of the Soul system: "5666 years".
And so, after another three weeks, the spatial barrier fell and the atmosphere on the island began to evaporate. I got into my ship and took off low, after which I activated a ritual that began to transform the matter of the island into energy and began to feed it into a magic circle to open the Hyper-Dimensional Gate, which, however, can only slightly reduce the distance to my galaxy, for in the Dark In space, Hyper-Space is practically absent.
When enough energy entered the magic circle, a hole was formed in space, having flown into it, the ship using the tracking system found the Earth and headed towards it. And I, before going into stasis, just in case, compose this message.
I hope that the future me will read this letter with nostalgia ... well, or what is also not excluded, the future me will not remember anything, and from this message he will learn the history of the origin of the System and the history of his past incarnation.
≪ End of message
(Note: If anyone wants to familiarize themselves with the terms used here, such as ba-hion, soul shells and so on. Then look for all the information on the Орто Матезис Сцентия website, but be prepared for the fact that the site is in Russian)
