Chapter 3

Shadow of Myself

As I leave my mother's womb I am greeted by that familiar feeling of magic swirling in the air. However, the magic here is purer in a way almost as if the magic was run through a purifier before entering my core. My core now is the same size as before which must mean that my parents are pretty strong, or something else happened to get this magic capacity. After going through all of my thoughts I realize my parents are staring at me with concern and I realize immediately why.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH" I start fake crying so that they know I am not dying.

"WHAT A HEARTY CRY, YOU, MY SON ARE GOING TO BE A WARRIOR!" The guy who I can only assume is my dad yells. My mom on the other hand seems to not have taken the pregnancy so well so she's asleep which after birthing me seems to have taken a lot of her magic reserve. I wonder if it's normal here to try and push your baby out while flowing magic to make them stronger. Either way, I wonder where I got reincarnated, I mean after finding magic I sort of thought that this was possible so I'm not too surprised.

While looking around the room I see a face peeking around the corner, a kid who I can only assume is my sister, she looks horrified, must be from seeing the "miracle" of childbirth I mean it is beautiful but for a kid to see a human body part do that must be terrifying. She's staring very intently at me though, almost as if she's trying to remember every detail of my body, I wish she would stop staring, she's kind of creeping me out. After my birth, my family life sort of slowed down it seems like I come from a line of semi-strong dark knights which explains why I have a big reserve, or at least that's what I think. After examining my sister though it seems there is no way that's the only reason, I haven't started training yet which makes sense because I'm a baby and can't move hence no collecting magic, but her magic reserve is bonkers.

Although it's nowhere near what mine was when I died it's still pretty strong for someone of her age she's only 1 year older than me so how the hell did she get so much magic reserve? "Mother must've pushed her out extra hard," I say in my baby brain. Being a baby kinda rocks, even though I can't train which is a bummer, being able to just sit and relax all day makes my mind feel good. Immediately after thinking that I mentally punched myself in the face, how dare you feel relaxed you're an eminence in shadows you need to be in the mindset of one. Then I realized it, I should make a persona for a relaxed person who doesn't want to do anything except chill, that way no one expects who I could be once I start my slayer routine again.

After growing up a little bit I started understanding the magic of this world a little better it's the same world teleported to but it's confusing, what happened to the 3 moons? Why is the moon so close? What happened to the magic of this world to make it so pure? All of these questions were unanswered so I started walking around the mansion at night so no one could find me reading the history books. After reading a couple of books about history, I started to understand what happened. Someone called 'Aurora The Witch Of Calamity' blew up the smaller moon sending the fragments of that moon onto the world causing a great number of deaths. Aurora? That sounds familiar but I can't remember why, eh whatever must not be important. The other moon however disappeared way before that by a magical wormho… ah, I see. Well that answers that question, good to know, let's just hope no one remembers JUNG LEE.

It seems that after the witch destroyed the moon something called the church of holy teachings began trying to hunt her down and make her pay for her crimes. The books don't get into anything else because I'm pretty sure it's confidential to the church only. The book also tells of how magic was so underdeveloped that they had to harness elements to use magic which I find absurd. If you were strong enough you could use magic however you wanted but using the elements made it so much easier to wield certain effects and this whole book is wrong. That's why the magic is different because no one is using the world's natural magic and instead is just pumping out normal magic into the air.

Also as a result of the missing moons the gravity of the planet was no longer directed to 3 bodies and instead directed to 1 making the moon come closer to the world making it appear much bigger than it used to be. So all of my questions are answered thankfully our library is pretty extensive so it has some old books for me. I still don't know what demon possession is, and I have no idea what happened to the village after my little wormhole incident. I feel someone coming from down the hall so I close the book I'm reading and silently make my way back to my crib where I have to do the unthinkable. I sit and cry and wait for someone to come and take care of the mess that I just made in my diaper.

After another 4 years of living, I have finally turned 6, I have been training for about 3 of those years to increase my magical capacity and finally, I'm almost back to what I was before I died. I've had to find a way to hide it though because my sister Claire seems to have taken a huge liking to my training for some unknown reason and she's always pestering me about sparring with her. With my persona, however I've just been letting her win each fight even though I could kill her or incapacitate her anytime I want. Her style seems to be similar to a style I've seen before so open and easy to break and dodge.

"CMON CID YOU HAVE TO BE BETTER THAN THAT IF YOU WANT TO BEAT ME HAHAHAHA" she laughs as she launches me across the river.

"Sis you're way too strong how am I ever supposed to beat you in a fight?"

"You're right I am super strong I am your older sister after all how can I show my face if I let a little boy beat me."

"It's not fair your only a year older than me and you're still so strong it's like you're a bred fighting bull"

"Did you just call me a bull, I must be hearing things wrong can you repeat that?" she says all the while pulling my collar out of the water and lifting me into the air.

"Of course not sis your the most beautiful bull in the world"

"You just called me a bull again you mother-" Before she can finish her sentence I just start running back to the house at an alarming speed as she tries to catch up to me I parkour over some of the yard's decor. She however just cuts through them without missing a beat and as we reach the door I cling to my father and ask him to save me. However, baldy is just as helpful as a bag of potatoes in front of Claire as she pushed past him right to me. I know this is going to end badly so I just give in and drop dead.

This however, does not work as she picks me up and drags me to my room so she can sit on top of me and keep me there. She does this a lot because she knows how much I hate being stuck under someone, well I'm not actually stuck I could throw her off with any kind of muscle or magic usage at all but in my persona, I'm too weak. After she leaves for dinner I get ready and go down as well, my mother is yelling at my father for not protecting me and tells Claire to stop using the sitting technique on me. She gets upset so she eats her food and stomps up to her room causing the house to shake a little because of her magic. My mom has been a saving grace in the whole fight against Claire although I still don't feel a connection to her as she is almost as old as I am mentally which is kind of weird to think about. After finishing my food my mother kisses me on the forehead and wishes me a goodnight. Claire knocks on the door and walks in after my mother leaves trying to crawl into bed with me and "apologize" Her view of an apology is holding me down until I accept it. So after "accepting" her apology she lays next to me and tries to sleep so I call for my mom and she leaves so fast my mom couldn't even see her leave.

Tonight is the night that I will finally get into my other persona, I use a paper bag and one of my suits that I use at formal events. I leave my house and try running as fast as I used to but my body can't handle the speed I used to go, so I slow it down to only 500 mph. I find a couple of bandit hideouts but ultimately; they are really weak, so I kill them and steal their 'goodies' So far it's only been paintings or jewels that are useless to me. This bandit camp however is different I start killing the bandits, as one does, but then I see it. A strong opponent, well strong for my sister, to me they are like a kid who picked up a gun, sure they are dangerous but in the end they are just a kid. I see them pull out some pills, which must be some sort of steroid they say that they are some kind of first child and that they can't die here, blah blah blah a bunch of side character talk.

After letting them power up they start by lunging at me with their sword. 'PSH, child's play' I say in my head as I use my foot to push the sword aside with a directing kick, after throwing them off balance I use my momentum to cut off their arm. Once they see and feel that their arm is no longer there they scream in pain and start thrashing their sword right at me once again leaving themselves open for so many counterattacks. 'These people never change I mean once you lose an arm as long as you still have your sword you can do so much. Do people not understand that swinging angrily will only lead to more mistakes?' After cutting off another arm it finally dawns on the 'bandit' that they can't win, they start begging and telling me about some sort of cult and how if I let them live they can put in a word to the knights to let me join. I of course killed them because I am no one's servant but what they said sort of intrigued me.

So instead of rummaging through their goodies, I started rummaging through their books and data that they have stored and what I found was intriguing, it's a very 'familiar' symbol. I saw it once back when I was older and still alive since they didn't have any good fiction or any good technological books I just kept reading the books I stole from that lab. Surprisingly they have the same symbol which I found sort of dumb, if you're a secret organization wouldn't you try to be more discrete and change the symbol? Well, whatever, while I'm rummaging through the data I turn around and see the person I knew was watching me. It's a little girl that I've never seen before she has yellow hair and large curls.

"Hel- hello s- sssir?" she asks shrinking into herself while saying it.

Before I say my next words I change my voice using magic on my vocal cords because I am not making the same mistake twice.

"Hello little girl, by your dress, I'm going to guess princess? And not a princess close by because that's Alexia and Iris and they are silver and red hair, so you must be princess of the Oriana?" The girl audibly surprised by my deduction sort of sheepishly nods.

"Yes, these men kidnapped me while I was sleeping and I didn't want to go but I could not fight against them."

"Well you live very far away how do you suppose you are going to get home?" she then realizes she is not anywhere near her kingdom and then starts to bawl.

"Oh um don't cry, I suck at caring"

"HOW AM I SUPPOSE TO GET HOME, WaaaaaH"

"I'll… help," I say, forcing the words out of my throat something tells me that this girl would die otherwise and if she does then if they find the body in my father's land we could lose our riches and then be homeless. Well, not me I have enough money and jewels I could probably buy a small mansion for myself but that is way too much work.

"YOU WILL? *sniff*"

"Yes, I can take you to the nearest town and then you can ask the baron of that land to keep you safe." I know it's my house but I doubt she'll be there for very long and it might even improve our household standing and if my family gets richer then I can steal from my father without him noticing, it's perfect. I knock her out pick her up and start rushing back to the house, I leave her on the front porch of our house and knock, once I'm sure someone is coming to the door I hide. I see my mother open the door and then the 'chaos' unfolds everyone is rushing to her aide and making sure she is okay and comforting her. I rush back to the bandit's base and gather up every piece of information I can find and also snag some other trinkets that they were carrying as well.

As I lay back down on the bed after stashing all of the goodies away in my normal hiding spot my door is burst open. It's my mother and she tells me about what's happening and the visitor on our front porch. As she tells me this I see the princess at the doorway looking in on us talking after my mother sees her too she invites her in and we do introductions. I think she seems to look at me for too long but after that, my mother rushes her down to the kitchen to get something prepared to eat. I walk down the hallway and see my father vigorously writing a note to both the king of Midgar and of Oriana. As he lets them fly with two sky hawks I watch as he sighs with relieved pressure, man he's lame.

I walk into the dining room and see that Claire is trying to "comfort" the princess although she's not very good at it and it seems to me to just be trying to spar with her. The princess, however, seems to be happy with the attention from my sister, finally, someone for her to torment other than me I say in my head. After that night she stayed at our house for a couple of days and during those days she kept trying to talk to me, each time I would give her the plainest responses and give her my persona, showing off how weak I am compared to my sister.

She seemed to believe the persona but holy crap she was way too positive about the fact that I'm going to become stronger, also that I should come to find her once I reach the academy. I said yes like a shy little boy that just found his first crush and immediately after I did that I regretted it because lo and behold Claire just had to be listening and watching me. That night I did not get to do my night training because Claire wouldn't leave my bed. I even tried to get my mom to kick her out but she was useless against Claire and got kicked out of my room. Whatever in cases like that I just silently make myself overloaded so I can try to optimize my core since I can't do anything else silently.

The king of Oriana came to our home he brought his wife as well I could tell from the first glance at her face that she wanted to kill him. The murderous aura around her eyes whenever she looked at him was like daggers in her eyes. Not my problem though, that's their marriage counselor's problem. Anyway, the king gave my father and mother a knighthood in his kingdom along with a letter to the king to give us a larger piece of land for our domain. Before the princess left however she had, just had to kiss me on the cheek, after that she waved after us in their heavily armored carriage. The reason the kiss was so bad was that Claire just happened to be walking by when it happened. So I did not have any good training for the next week after that little stunt she pulled and now Claire demands that she also gets to kiss me on the cheek after that stunt too, so whoop-de-doo!

After another 3 years had passed I finally turned 9 and I am way stronger than I used to be my body can now handle going faster than it used to be able to go and for longer periods. I can cross the entire border of 'our land' which is about 150 miles in diameter now after helping the princess in about 6 seconds which is the fastest time I was able to get by pushing my body to the limit. After that, I passed out for an hour because I depleted my magic way too fast and again scared all of the people around whom I passed because I broke the sound barrier they all thought it was an earthquake. My sister has been kissing me on the cheek ever since that damn princess though, and at this point I just let it happen because otherwise she gets mad and demands I kiss her on the cheek which I don't want to do. I swear that girl has a brother complex.

As well as my training going well I have also been keeping up with my bandit slaying and cult readings. I have found a lot of data on the cult which has been around since before the time when I was here last. They have a secret organization all about the demon Diablos, it's just some powerful dead demon what a bunch of hacks. Well, 12 original members have been around for that long from some age-immortality secret that I haven't found yet, they have to do it every year though so not very effective. I have also found that they have been using children as test subjects to make the blood accumulate in their bodies. They have not been very successful though, as they have only had 4 or 5 successful cases and they didn't survive very long. It appears that they have been using the case for "demonic possession" for taking the children which I found super disappointing because I don't think it's anything really hard to cure. After all, the way they describe it, it just seems like magical overload which shouldn't be hard to cure.

Today, however, after raiding one of the bandit camps I rummaged around through the carriage that they were traveling with and I found one, I found one of the possessed, and to say I'm not impressed would be an understatement because it's just magical overload, only the overload doesn't stop because the core is too small to carry all of the magic that is being created. So all I needed to do was increase the core of the amalgamation beneath me and behold a new crea– or a naked elf girl. This was not what I was expecting, honestly, I don't know what I was expecting but it wasn't this. So this seems like a perfect moment, she seems capable and strong so maybe, just maybe I can pull this off. I sit on top of a crate in a room I was using to cure her and wait as she starts to wake up I get into my character and put on my voice box.

"Arise, elf from the ashes and become anew with my power you have been cured from that curse they have shackled upon you."(EN Arise? *wink wink*)

"What? What happened? Where am I? Who are you? What do you mean cured?" the elf asks covering her body while speaking, I throw her a blanket I had in the corner so she can cover herself.

"You have been treated with hatred and rage for something out of your control, you were subject to a curse, a deadly curse to those who don't understand. You are safe here with me now averted from the eyes of a deranged society that cannot fathom the depths of the curse. I am… … I'm sorry I cannot tell you anymore for fear you might get dragged into this mess."

"NO! Tell me, tell me who did this to me, who stripped me of my life and privilege, who tried to curse me like this."

"If you know you may never turn back, the life that you once knew will be closed off and anyone you used to be acquainted with will be cut off. Is this what you wish?"

"Yes, I will devote my mind and my body to stopping those bastards who caused me this harm, now tell me, who are these people that have done this to me?"

"Very well, they are a cult called, the cult of Diabolos, just like the one demon mentioned in the fairy tale, however, the truth has been covered in shadows and swept away. The real heroes were cursed with the demon's blood and that has carried on for generations. You as well as all of the women who are descendants carry this "blood" so I have ascertained that the heroes must have been women, another one of the cult's lies."

"Cult of Diabolos… I see, they must be stopped and punished for their crimes." After saying this she stands up and rushes toward my face "I will punish them, let me help you punish those bastards, I will devote my entire being to you just let me help."

"Very well, your name from now on is, Alpha any name you had from your past is no more. As for me, you can call me… Shadow, and I am the leader of our new organization we shall be known as Shadow Garden and drive the cult into extinction." as I finish saying that I pass over some slime to her surprisingly she puts on a suit sort of like the one I used to wear back in the day, this surprised me because it took me like a day to learn how to properly weave that around my body. Anyway, this was a super cool talk one that I have had on my bucket list for a while and it seems that she is on board for helping me become a super cool (Power in the Shadows).

I've given her a clay face so she can disguise herself and help the mansion as a servant, at night we can go and train with bandits around the town. After about a week I show her 'my only' info on the cult that I have found. I have a whole lot of information on them but I don't want to overload her right now so I'll just start her off with small stuff, plus I can know more than her and seem a little more omnipotent in her eyes. After one of the bandit raids, however, we find another possessed. Surprisingly, this time they didn't have anyone I would have considered a strong guardian of the carriage. So I started to help the heaping pile of flesh with her core, and although she's not as strong as Alpha's core, she's still stronger than my sister. Curing these girls is going to become a regular thing now, isn't it… and why do they all have to be naked elves?!

(EN: Thank you all so much for the support I have started selling some stuff online that I just thought either I would like or other people would like if you want to check it out go here, shadowmitsugoshi. if you want something added I can try and make it and add it just leave a comment telling me what you want and I can see if I can add it to the store. I couldn't have had as much fun without the support I have gotten and I just want to thank you all.