AN: Hey all. This was the FIRST story I ever wrote back in 2020. It's rough as all hell and uses older content, but I enjoyed it nevertheless.
As you can see, this is a rewrite of the original version. I can't say the story is perfect, there are plenty of choices I made that I would do differently now, but I am trying to stay close to my source material and improve it a bit.
Warnings:
-This is a GARY STU multiverse fic!
. -This is a Semi-Crackfic. For worlds I use, I study the wiki and canon material, I simply choose to change things because I want to. AU characters and new world stuff.
. -This fic will start with the Harry Potter world and carry on into the Danmachi world.
. - There are three pairings. One from HP, two from crossovers.
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Disclaimer: I do not own any source material.
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Prologue:
"Well, it was a fun life." Magus muttered to himself as looked around at the beautiful scenery around him.
The sky, filled with pockets of white clouds stretching for miles. The lush green landscape, the warmth of the sunlight, everything seemed so coherent. You could hear the chorus of the pleasant-sounding birds. The trees looking like silhouettes in the glorious expanse.
The scent of the forest around him, the feel of the light breeze rattling the branches around him as it gently caressed his face like the absent touch a mother he never knew.
It was like a painting, a scenery he could gaze into for years.
But time waited for no man, and the sun began to set, dying the sky in a blazing scarlet of color. From the corner of his vision, an ethereal clock counted down its last few minutes.
Magus could feel the strength begin to leave his limbs. They say a man knows when it was their time, but he never expecting things to be so literal.
Magus E. Mor. That was the name left on his basket as he arrived at an orphanage as a baby.
His childhood was average. From a young age, he enjoyed learning things. If his face wasn't in a book, he was asking the matrons of his orphanage questions while helping them with chores.
They were kind to him, patient with him, and answered his endless curiosity as best they could. By the age of ten, he was already considered a small genius by those who knew him.
Such attention gathered bullies, and the bullies taught him that fighting was necessary in life to be left alone. So, he took to learning how to fight like he learned anything else, and he found his genius extended there as well. He learned to defend himself, and the bullying stopped.
But in the process, he learned to love the act of fighting. Being in control while the adrenaline pumped through him like his blood was boiling and his heart beat in his ears.
His curiosity and desire pushed him on, he wanted to learn more. As an orphan, he didn't have the money or time to spend learning like he wanted, books cost money, and people needed to spend time working to make money, so with a mindset far different from a normal child, he took to reading and learning about how money was made.
The orphanage had a public computer, and the internet was an endless source of knowledge. Reliable or not. But he wasn't a rising genius for nothing.
It took him a year of focused study and testing, but he learned how stocks worked. He took the hundred dollars he 'collected' from various people on the street and made it become a thousand using fake account names. And he took that thousand and made more.
Contrary to his success, Magus felt weird about it. It felt too easy, like somehow whatever he invested in, despite his research, just seemed to be profitable for him.
He could never prove it, so he just learned to ride the wave so to speak. With time and money, he could study more, and study he did. At the age of twelve, he tested out of middle school. At the age of sixteen, he tested out of high school.
He got permission from the orphanage, thanks to showing his intellect, to get an apartment with occasional check ups from one of the matrons and earned his freedom.
And using the money he was making, he enrolled in martial art schools and studied religiously. He didn't spend time with friends, he didn't goof off or play games, he studied or trained. All because he found it addicting. Like playing an RPG, he just wanted to keep leveling up.
Languages, cooking, programming, survival skills, psychology, and dozens more. He wasn't a master at anything but more of a jack of all trades, learning key elements of various areas. And on the physical side, he found more of a connection to specific martial styles and weapon forms. Every hot blooded young guy found swinging a blade around to be cool, and he was no different.
The only thing he did to unwind between studying was read fantasy stories. Light novels, books, fanfiction and so on. They were soothing 'turn your brain off' type of activities he appreciated. And he often found that reading fantasy helped to expand his imagination beyond the sort of black and white look on life most people had.
His life continued at that pace, with the two years until he turned eighteen being purely dedicated to whatever he wanted to study with his freedom.
And then, with his legal freedom and the money he had from investing and making a few successful phone apps, he took to traveling the world.
All the knowledge he learned being made into practical wisdom as he applied things he learned in real time. He even made some real friends while traveling. People who came from various lives but had similar views on living life without hurting yourself to have fun.
Although, without drugs or alcohol, even progressive people had to find sources for fun. And those sources came through high adrenaline sports like skydiving, bungee jumping, snowboarding, and so on.
Magus was a true adrenaline junkie and had no shame in admitting it. He spent years doing crazy stunts until he final began to mellow out in his mid-twenties. That was when things began to turn paranormal for him.
For one, he felt….comfortable…. in the shadows. It was strange to say, and slightly emo to think about, but he always felt relaxed when he was in the shadows for some reason. When he meditated in the shadow of something, it was like he was being hugged, and he often found himself drifting off into sleep when it happened.
For a second, and probably more importantly, on his twenty fifth birthday, an ethereal clock appeared in the corner of his vision, counting down from one year in days, hours, minutes, and seconds.
What it was counting down to he didn't know, but that year wasn't fun for him. Health issues cropped up out of nowhere one after the other. Eventually leading to a scan that showed a rare heart disease forming.
The doctors tried to advise him to sign up for the list of doner organs but Magus denied it in the end. He didn't feel right taking an organ from someone else who might need it. He lived a full life, he had no family to care for, and he had no interest in spending years in and out of a hospital.
Thankfully, with his years of physical and mental training, he was able to continue with life and push passed the pain. And as the year passed, he realized that whatever the timer was, its ending probably meant one thing.
He had his moments of despair, but he pushed passed it as well with time and just accepted things. He formed a will, set all his resources to go to the matrons who cared for him and the orphanage he grew up in, with an added lawyer tagged on to make sure the funds went where they were supposed to with periodic checkups.
And then he kept traveling. A slow and steady pace as he became freer in spirit with every day he accepted what was.
And then came the final question. What way did he wish to go out?
There were thousands of idea's he could choose from, but in the end, he decided to go back to a place that stuck in his memory. A place of natural beauty in the wild he came across in his travels.
Using the experience from all his adrenaline fueled sports, he put together a long cord between two close by natural stone walls and formed what base jumpers knew as a spiders net. Albeit a small one person one.
And as the final hour came by, he sat elevated six hundred feet in the air, watching the horizon by his lonesome as the world seemed to give him a final farewell with the scarlet sky.
Surprisingly, there was no pain at that point. Only a numbing cold that spread through his limbs. He felt heavy, tired, and laid back against the hammock of cords.
A phone to his side playing a Skyrim soundtrack, something he found soothing to listen to.
And as the sun fell and night came, he felt himself be embraced once more by that almost loving shadow. He felt like he was flying as he closed his eyes for the final time, the ethereal clock still there even when he closed his eyes. The seconds ticking until it hit zero and he knew no more.
And as his body grew still and cold, as his soul left his body for a place beyond, the world rejoiced as the shadows welcomed home its son.
