Chapter 151

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A wave of heat blasted Penelope Tanris in the face. It was a particularly hot and uncomfortable day. She quickly dabbed her forehead with a handkerchief to prevent any sweat from running into her eyes.  The scripts of fragile paper that were laid out over her table were starting to cause her vision to blur.

She had since come to the conclusion that the text was not Iridian language, but a more basic form of the common tongue. It had several roots that seemed to derive from her own language, and she found translating it was becoming easier and easier.

It was an odd finding, to see several documents written in an ancient form of the common tongue on a planet that was most likely one of the Iridian homeworlds, but perhaps this was the Iridian language since no written form of Iridian had ever been discovered before.

This could lead to some very interesting inquiries. Why would Iridians speak ancient common tongue? Did Iridian derive from common tongue? Or Vice Versa? Were they perhaps connected to humanity in some way in our recent past? Or was all language somehow interconnected, and it only seemed to Penelope as if they had some of the same roots?

Either way, the document seemed to offer nothing of use. It told a story, of sorts, but it used many words Dr. Tanris could not translate.  It seemed to involve fanciful creatures that Tanris had never heard of engaging in some kind of competition. It was folklore, most likely. She sighed, putting the document aside. It might be interesting, but ultimately pointless for her right now. Parables served as an interesting delve into a society’s ideals but were not the kind of discovery she was being paid to make.

She wiped her forehead once again as new beads of sweat started to roll down her face. It was the lights, really. She had several bright halogen lights pointed straight down at the table, and they were producing much more heat than she would have liked. The breezes through her open tent flap were unfortunately just as hot and as uncomfortable, although even a hot breeze felt nice against her skin at this point.

Dr. Tanris could not wait until it was fall again. She knew the region tended to have four seasons, and two of them were bearable. In the winter months, she knew she would be able to accomplish nothing and the research would practically stop. It was for that reason that she was so adamant to get as many of the documents as she could translate.

She quickly made a note in her journal, labeled the document, and put it aside for some other person to make a more complete translation. She then set her pen down, leaning back into the cheap folding chair. It creaked and swayed slightly, but Penelope made no attempt to brace or adjust herself. The chair always swayed and always creaked. That chair had been to more excavation sites and archeological finds than most of the staff that worked under her, and she trusted it to carry her.

She pulled her arms out wide and then tossed them side to side, stretching them the best she could without knocking the table or anything that sat on it. The tent around her was of sufficient height for her to stand and move around. This was not because the tent was high, but because she was rather short. The tent was roughly ten feet by ten feet, providing sufficient space for the small desk, a mattress in the corner, and a dresser drawer that contained most of her stuff.

This had been her bedroom and home for about three years now, and she had only abandoned it once prior to restock supplies. Normally, she’d send others to perform the restocking, but in that particular case, there was no one that she felt she could trust to get the tools and supplies she had specifically needed. During the month trip, she had forced the excavation staff to stop working until her return. Fortunately, it was during a winter month, and little work could be performed anyway.

Dr. Tanris’s stomach grumbled and the noise reminded her that she had not eaten in some time. She glanced at the clock and clicked her tongue in annoyance. As a matter of fact, she had not eaten at all that day. She wasn’t hungry, of course. She never was. But she learned a long time ago to remember to eat at least once a day or she might just collapse without warning. It had only happened to her on rare occasions when a particularly astonishing find kept her busy for longer than she had planned. It was never something she wanted to happen though. There were a lot of lost opportunities to work during the two to three days it took for her to recover.

She stood up and walked out of the tent. Once she ducked through the opening, she realized that it was even hotter outside than she had originally thought. The sun blazed down from the sky above, and the heat didn’t provide as much comfort as one might have hoped.

The disarrayed camp around her encompassed various vehicles, tents, and equipment in no particular order. It wasn’t well maintained, but she didn’t really care enough to force her workers into a more organized system. She walked over to the canteen area, or at least the area the food was stored and often prepared.

She noticed the stock master sitting down, whittling away at a piece of wood. He was a broad-shouldered hulk of a man. His waist actually looked too small and petite to hold the body above it. He wore an apron, as always, and a white shirt, making him look more like a cafeteria cook than anything else.

It was his responsibility to make sure that there was a ready supply of everything the camp of roughly fifty people needed to survive. Sometime over the last three years, that role grew into him becoming the camp cook. Every mealtime, he distributed the food to anyone who came by the canteen. He had started this habit ever since a few years ago when he had discovered one of the workers hoarding food.

When he saw her coming, he stood up. His knife slipped into his apron and the chunk of wood dropped to the floor.  He gave her a respectful bow before looking up inquisitively at her.

“I will be needing something to eat,” Penelope told him curtly.

He nodded and opened the crate he had been sitting on. There might have been a time where he would have asked her what she wanted, but after the hundredth time of her telling him she didn’t care, he had finally stopped asking and simply gave her whatever was available.

He pulled out a bag and handed it to her. She took it from him while he turned around to shut the chest closed. She went to another chest that sat across from him and sat down. When he turned back he gave a start, noticing that she was still there. Most of the time, she would immediately head back to the tent to have her meal in solitude. Penelope felt like she could use a little sun today, and besides, she had no room in the tent right now. The last thing she wanted was some food staining one of her documents.

The bag consisted of a beef stew, a canteen of water, and a spoon. She ripped it open, pulling out the bowl and removing the lid. She poured water in the bowl from the canteen and stirred it to suspend the dried kernels. The meal included a heating element, but she decided to simply eat it cold.  It was too hot to eat something equally hot. She ate her meal in silence, enjoying the periodic gusts of wind that seemed to carry the scent of summer. She had stopped sweating now, and the hot breeze seemed to be relaxing in a way. She realized her bowl of stew was almost empty, although she wasn’t aware that she had eaten that fast.

“Pardon me, ma’am,” A voice spoke from behind her.

Penelope cocked her head to the side, observing an unfamiliar man who now stood uncomfortably beside her. He was short for a man, although still significantly taller than her. She never really trusted short men.  He had an oily mustache and with a devil’s peak beard. He had high cheekbones that made his face look both chubby and gaunt at the same time, although the contradiction was a bit unsettling. His hair was black, stringy, and as oily as his mustache. She cringed at the thought of anyone who would have to touch that hair.

“Yes?” She asked, turning her body towards him but remaining seated.

“You are Dr. Tanris, is this correct?” The man asked, his voice displaying a hint of a Sudmarin accent.

“That would be correct,” Penelope responded, attempting to hide her annoyance.

She didn’t fault his accent. She knew that she herself spoke with the chipped off Hucton accent, sometimes making it difficult to understand her. Instead, she was annoyed because of the type of man she suspected he was. This wasn’t the first visit Penelope Tanris had received. The stock master moved off, finding busy work a good distance away from the pair of them. He was a smart man.

“I am here on behalf of Anderus Satre,” the man said, a small smile on his face that he most likely intended to be disarming, “I am here to-”

“I know who you are,” Penelope interrupted,” I know why you’re here. I won’t hear of it. You aren’t the first of your kind to come crawling into my camp. And I will tell you what I told the rest of your bureaucratic hypocrisy. My funding is my own and backed by the Lord Regent, so do not think you can brow-beat me into cutting my resources.”

She stood up, and with an abrupt turn, began walking to her tent.  The man took a few quick steps to get behind her. Despite her short legs, she was a fast walker, and the man had to step quickly to keep up. She was impressed he had reacted so quickly. She had left many a skip sitting slack-jawed in her wake.

“It’s simply that you haven’t found anything in the three years you have dug here. You have not shown any real proof that this was an Iridian homeworld. The amount of money that you have dumped into this archeological wasteland is not inducive of the results,” the man responded, jumping awkwardly over a cord strewn across the camp in a way that could have tripped him otherwise.

“And what research do you offer Skip?” Penelope answered, “I have had dozens of people come landing in my site, interrupting my work, to try to score some money for their own work. Charities, researchers, and Skips like yourself. The last one wanted the money to build an orphanage. At least, I think it was an orphanage; she used the words ‘homeless starving children’ a lot. But I refused her. You know why? Because the work I do here is important, so very important. So what makes you think your cause is so much greater?”

“I will have you know I am not a Sk- I mean doctor. I mean I am a doctor, but I am a doctor of law…” his voice started to sound exasperated.

“A lawyer? Really?” Penelope quirked her eyebrow, “So you only work for a Skip. Anderes Satre was it?”

“Anderus. Actually, I work for several professors at the United University, where there has been a discovery. It is a discovery of incredible proportions. All of the Universities are scrambling to find researchers, time, and money to-”

“And you thought you could just stop here and cut a large piece of my cake?” Penelope growled, stopping short in front of the entrance to her tent, “I apologize, Anderes, but you will need to go home without cake.”

As Penelope turned to enter her tent, Anderus opened his mouth to say something else before suddenly being interrupted by a shout. Penelope turned around to see a man running towards her. He was a grizzled man with thick arms and even thicker legs, but he maneuvered across the camp and its many crates, boxes, cords, and other tripping hazards with the comfort and ease of an experienced man.

“Ma’am,” Distro stated with a nod as he stopped in front of her.

He wasn’t out of breath. Penelope wasn’t sure the man could ever be out of breath. He was possibly one of the most resilient men she had ever known, and for that, she had kept him as part of her team for many years. More than once she had survived digs far more inhospitable than this one only because he held her up when she felt like falling. Despite that, he caught her at a particularly bad time.

“Well, get it out!” Penelope growled, unable to control her voice from the mood the leaching lawyer had put her in.

“There’s been a discovery. You need to come quickly and see for yourself,” Distro bowed, turning as he did.

Distro wasn’t one to call her unless it was needed. And he knew better than to waste her time explaining things. Penelope began following at his pace, which was brisk even by her standards. She was vaguely aware that the lawyer was following behind her, tripping and stumbling on his way to keep up.

Within a minute they had walked to the edge of camp, where Distro’s jeep was sitting. He leaped into the driver’s side and she followed into the passenger side. As the car started, a hand grabbed her arm. She looked at her right to see the lawyer looking at her with pleading eyes.

“I…” She began.

“We don’t want your money, we want you!” He said clearly louder and quicker than he had intended.

Penelope stared at him for a second before nodding. He jumped into the back seat as smoothly as a lawyer could before the car started forward. He wasn’t quite seated yet and stumbled a bit, falling back into the seat with a loud thump. This gave Penelope a bit more pleasure than she might have thought, and she ideally wondered if Distro had intentionally accelerated this hard for her benefit.

The jeep began to bounce and jeer as they quickly made their way to the dig site. Penelope could tell by the direction they were heading that it was Dig Site C.

“This discovery, it’s classified, but whatever it is they want you there. Every archeologist, scientist, and any experienced individual is being called who has any loyalty to the Taerren Alliance. With commitment, you will be offered funding for ten years and tenor at the University.”

“Is that so, Anderes?” Penelope asked nonchalantly, trying to sound disinterested.

“That’s not my name, that’s who I work for, I mean Anderus-” the lawyer looked irritated.

In truth, she had been starting to worry whether this planet has been a waste of her time. But the energy signals? They had to be Iridian. Her financing did not end for another 3 years, and when she had come here, this was the big deal, the place where they wanted her to go. One by one, other archeologists gave up on the findings, until it was only her left. But if she abandoned the place, they would begin settling it with people, and any unfound ruins would be violated and destroyed.  This was the one shot they had to find any information about what happened to the Iridians.

Still, a fresh start would be nice. This new world, it has to have an Iridian signal to generate this kind of excitement. Maybe there was something there that wasn’t here. Maybe this was just starting all over again, and she’d be starting the goose chase again. She is so close this time.

She remained in silence, thinking about what the lawyer had said as he impatiently tried to keep his suit from falling apart in the wind. Dig Site C was not particularly far from camp, and before long they pulled into the unloading area.

“Will you do it?” the lawyer asked, still tidying his outfit.

Penelope glanced back at him before jumping out of the jeep, following Distro. She could hear the lawyer tumbling after her. They walked down a fairly steep crevice that went into the dig site. The lawyer struggled behind her as he attempted to make his way down the hill in shoes that were never fit for walking in anything unpaved.

At the bottom of the crevice was a partially dug up building. A few hints of rusted foundation still sat around it as several diggers attempted to uncover more of the building, but at the base of the dig was something that could only be described as a door. It was a closed door leading into a fully completed and undamaged room. The sides were concrete, and it looked like a solid concrete cube with 6 sides around that closed door.

“A time capsule?” Penelope breathed out.

“Possibly,” Distro answered, “The cube seems to be in some kind of time bubble. It’s emitting some kind of temporal energy similar to what the Iridians used.

“Temporal energy? This looks nothing like anything Iridian we have ever seen,” Penelope frowned as she stared at the odd building up and down.

“It is difficult to say. The bubble seems to have protected this building and slowed down the effects of time. It is actually the source of the Iridian signals we have been tracing for years. Even now, most of our equipment is going haywire around it. But I would say whatever it is, it predates the Iridians.”

Penelope’s eyebrows rose as she looked around. Many of the workers had stopped working and were now all anxiously watching her.  The lawyer had stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the half-buried room as if he had never seen one before.

“I want that door open!” She shouted.

The lawyer jumped, but everyone else sprang into action, just waiting for the order. Within a few seconds, several people had forced crowbars into the edges and were forcing the door open. It cranked open with an incredibly loud whine. Air rushed in as the pressure rapidly altered between the two environments.

Perhaps she should have been more patient. Analyzed, checked, and ran results before opening the door, but she had already been patient for years. Now she had to know why that signal was here.

The door was finally wedged open enough for a person to fit through. Penelope pulled a protective breathing device over her face, grabbed a flashlight, and plunged into the darkness. Distro cursed before following while quickly covering his own face. The inside of the room was unremarkable. Her flashlight showed concrete walls and crates after crates of unidentified stuff. At a first glance, there was certainly no power source that could be creating the temporal energy.  Then, her flashlight beamed across the table in the center of the room.

On the table sat what could only be identified as a coffin made entirely of metal. She walked up to the table. Distro cautiously followed behind her. The metallic coffin possessed a glass window that allowed her to shine her light into the box. What she saw shocked her.

It was a person. He looked Taerren, with dirty blond hair, a moderately strong chin, and full cheeks. His skin looked clean and washed. He looked to be asleep, and he was in perfect physical condition. How is that possible? She glanced over to Distro, who glanced back at her and gave a shrug.  When she turned around to the entrance, the lawyer had his head peaking through the crack and was staring in shock and wonderment at the place her light had touched.

“The answer is no, Anderes. I think I have work to do.” Tanris muttered. “Distro, get a hold of Vanderra Station. We have artifacts to transport.”

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I was born to fap. Rather, I was born fapping.

When I exited my mother’s womb, when I took my first breath, when I cried for the first time and even when I fell asleep in my mother’s embrace…

I refused to let go of my dick.

It was then that my parents realized that I was destined for great things.

Greatly erotic things.

They tried their best to curb my perversions as all parents are wont to do.

They cut my allowance, they threw away my porn, they restricted my internet access…

They tried, they really did…

But my faith was stronger than theirs.

In the end, they resigned themselves to being the parents of a masturbation addict.

One day, as I was milking my snake for the fifth time that day, the first of the nuclear bombs that started the chain explosions that wiped out all life on earth dropped right on top of our house.

I died.

I was born fapping. I died fapping.

A samsara. A cycle.

Taken alone, each of these incidents might be enough to make a person a butt of sexual jokes throughout their lives.

But taken together, they created a miracle.

***

 

When I woke up, I found myself naked in a forest.

It was a really weird forest.

Like really, really weird.

First of all, it was an odd mix of conifers, deciduous and rainforest.

Like I saw a snow-covered pine growing right beside a bonsai sequoia.

Then the colours were totally off.

I’m sure leaves aren’t supposed to be hot pink.

If I removed my gaze from a particular patch of vegetation, the moment I turned back, it would change.

Trippy.

Psychedelic.

Like what I usually do when I’m stressed out, I reached down and began to stroke myself.

So, there I was in a forest straight out of a druggie’s dream, walking around naked while beating my stick.

I heard a rustling from behind me.

I turned around swiftly to find myself facing a girl with vines for hair, leafy wings and a tail that was actually a vine tipped with a leaf.

Welp, there’s a succubus-alarune hybrid if I ever saw one.

We stood there, two naked people.

One a fantasy creature of unearthly beauty, one a horny boy.

We stood there facing each other and I masturbated.

More rustling.

One after the other, girls started appearing out of the woods as though they had been spirited there by magic.

They were all different.

Height, body type, hair colour, eye colour, skin colour…

Different.

Except for the common ground that they all had a pair of wings and a tail.

They stood there with dilated pupils and flaring noses as they watched me do what I do best…

Fap.

Then as one, they got down on all fours and crawled up to me, their eyes fixed on my dick.

If this was a wet dream, it was my best yet.

It seems that my imagination had upgraded when I hadn’t noticed.

I sped up my strokes as I felt my balls contract.

With a spike of pleasure that made my legs tremble, I shot my thick, hot load on the faces of the girls that were within an inch of my dick by that time.

They gasped in surprise at the suddenness of my climax, specially the alarune-succubus hybrid whose face was directly in the way of my cum when I shot.

She got the most of my cum on her face.

Her pink tongue darted out and licked a bit of the white stuff from her lips.

Closing her eyes, her face devolved into one of ecstasy.

The same for the other girls that had all put my semen in their mouths.

Suddenly they all woke from their blissful states and began tussling amongst each other for my cum.

It was super-hot.

I just stood there dumbly and watched as several naked women with exotic and magical features wrestled each other for my cum.

My softening dick grew harder in my hand as I watched a girl with pure white feathery wings and a white tail tipped with a bunch of feathers lick some of my cum out of the navel of a girl with scarlet dragon horns, leathery black-red wings and a classic succubus tail.

Suddenly, the girls all froze and turned towards me in unison, startling me.

“Master.” “Lord.” “Saviour.”

They called out to me at once.

“Fuck us.”

Well, as this was a dream, definitely a dream.

I might as well grant their wishes.

At least I’d finally lose my virginity in my fantasies.

 

***. ***.

Explanation:

Alternate earth of 2019 with the difference that souls exist… they just haven’t been detected yet.

Whenever any living organism dies, their souls disintegrate into aether and float up to join an undetected layer just above the stratosphere.

Over the millions of years that life has existed – trilobites to humans –souls have added to the layer, making it thicker and thicker.

[the more sentient the creature the stronger the soul – human souls are top quality.]

Finally, with the population boom of humans, the layer finally crossed a critical point and turned into a Dreamland.

Whenever we dream, we are actually travelling into the Dreamland and experiencing the scenery there.

Emotional energy exuded by humans have affected Dreamland, leading to the formation of sectors.

7 emotions -> 7 sectors.

Our MC has landed in the lust sector.

Due to humanity being wiped out, the sectors, without the supplement of emo energy are dying out.

The happiness sector is already gone – cause it was the smallest sector.

The lust sector – second largest after the envy sector and a tiny bit larger than the worry sector is also slowly dying.

Only MCs semen can save it.

*Pa PA pa pA*

Yeah… that’s it.

Pack up folks… story’s over.

I love a girl who is destined to bear another’s child.

They call her the Saintess.

They call him the Hero.

The simply call me Cuck.

Well, they don’t actually call me that… it’s what I call myself.

After all, it rhymes with my name: Chuck.

I am supposed to be the Saintess’ bodyguard.

I’ve known her all my life.

We grew up together.

Both of us were orphans in the church-sponsored orphanage in the Royal Capital.

Then one day, a large crowd gathered at our doorstep, headed by the Pope himself.

He announced that he’d received an oracle from the Goddess of Fertility.

Something about our birth rates declining and how we needed a man from another world to offset it.

Sierra, my friend and the current Saintess was supposed to be the one with the most compatible physique to breed with the Hero.

Hero… psh.

Getting summoned to another world and then impregnating the Saintess.

I thought Heroes were all about sacrifice.

Some sacrifice.

Sigh…

Maybe I was being too harsh on whoever the guy would be.

After all, he was being ripped away from his family in an irreversible ceremony.

But…

But, what about me?

I loved her, you know?

Her frown, her smile… it kept me up at night.

Who am I kidding, I still love her.

She still keeps me up at night.

When the Pope told me I was supposed to be her bodyguard, I was really happy.

I could still stay by her side.

I could still see her every day.

And maybe, just maybe, I could save her from this so-called Hero.

So, I threw myself into my training.

Heart and soul.

I had talent.

Extreme talent.

Otherwise, how could I be prophesied to be the Saintess’ bodyguard?

The guard of her future children.

The would-be Saviours of our world.

Well, I did intend to guard her children.

Just, they would be with me.

Not with some lucky bastard from another dimension.

Sierra and I still talked to each other every day.

Sometimes, after I had finished my training, I would find her waiting with a towel and water.

She said it was all she could do for me who was working so hard for her sake.

One day, I had been punching an iron slab to toughen my fists and my hands were bruised and bleeding.

I couldn’t hold the water jar to drink on my own.

So, Sierra helped me drink.

She wiped my sweat with the towel, all the while scolding me for not taking care of myself.

I stared at her in silence, infatuated.

When our eyes met, she turned away bashfully.

Noticing the blush on her cheeks, I finally gathered the courage to say the three words I had been telling her in my mind every time I saw her.

“I love you.”

She didn’t answer then, wringing the towel in her hand as she studied her feet.

Finally,

“Me too.” She whispered.

After that, we started meeting at clandestine hours in clandestine locations.

We began to discuss how to escape.

The nuns made her wear a chastity belt – a holy artefact.

So, we couldn’t use the crudest means of getting her pregnant to get her out of the sticky situation.

I was strong.

Much stronger than even the strongest paladin.

I was blessed by the Gods after all.

But even then, I wasn’t stronger than the forces of the entire kingdom.

Let alone, my powers were granted by the favour of the Gods.

If I rebelled, would they take it away?

Would it turn into a curse?

We didn’t know.

Somehow, we had to use the Hero.

He was the key to our freedom.

In the end, we found it.

A spell that had been banned by the church a long time ago.

Soul-possession.

When the Hero arrived, I would use it to temporarily inhabit his body and make love to Sierra.

If not in body, I would have her in spirit.

Pushing her soft body against the wall of the secret passageway we had found in the church where we met secretly, I bent down and kissed her deeply.

I ran my palm up her soft stomach and grabbed her breast above her clothes.

My fingers sank in.

So soft.

My Sierra.

Tomorrow would be the day of the Hero summoning.

They’d cast a spell on her that would bond her to the Hero, making her untouchable to any other male.

I broke our kiss, a silvery trail of saliva joining our lips.

Unlacing her gown, I let it fall, pooling around her feet.

Her wonderful mounds bounced a little as they were set free.

Her nipples were rock hard in anticipation.

The only flaw in something perfect: her chastity belt.

It was the last time I’d be able to feel her with my own hands, with my own lips.

So be it.

Today, I would burn the feel of her body into my heart and mind.

---

Had a weird idea…

Is this NTR?

Netori?

I’m confused.

Part 2

---

“There is only one path to power – Eat and grow strong!”

– Khara, Rakshasa General

 

Humans are creatures of perception. Sometimes all it takes to inspire them is watching someone they thought of as inferior to them struggle and overcome a hurdle they themselves failed at leaping. They think, ‘If he can do it, I can too.’ Even when that isn’t necessarily true. But throughout the ages, it is these very humans who have created miracles. Based upon their tenacious faith, false has been turned into true.

 

Sand watched helplessly as the other slaves bustled about doing his work for him. When he had decided to use the hard labour to break through into the initial stage of magic, he hadn’t planned for his actions to affect the other slaves so profoundly. He hadn’t planned to affect them at all. After all, in his tentative plans, the mine was only a short pit-stop in his journey to reclaim the power he had lost to the river of time.

But he had underestimated the influence watching a ten-year-old child silently, stubbornly complete his tasks despite his wounds and their taunts would have on the slaves. A man could survive on only food and water but to live, he needed hope. And as a slave, hope was in very short supply. Sand had given it to them. They couldn’t help but be affected.

After he had deposited the last basket of rocks in the cart, successfully breaking through into the echelons of a Red Mage in the process, the slaves had forced him to rest and tend to his wounds while they deposited whatever ore they mined into the cart on their own.

Sand sighed inwardly. ‘All I wanted was to seize the opportunity to stock up on some red mana. How am I supposed to do that if they do all my work for me?’

Sitting on a rock in one corner of the cavern, Sand had taken his shirt off and unwrapped his bandages, placing them in a neat pile by the side. He didn’t want them sticking to his reopened wounds as the blood clotted after all.

Shaking his head in resignation, he turned his attention back to inspecting the condition of his body after his breakthrough.

‘The amount of mana is a bit low. To be expected. I couldn’t close all my pores in this inexperienced body… I’ll have to work on it.’

The method of mana generation was quite simple. Every creature in the world followed the law of tenths. Whatever the creature ate, only about a tenth could be utilized by its body while the rest would be lost to the world as heat. Mages went against this natural law by preserving this energy, which would have otherwise been lost to the world, within their body.

To do so, one had to perform strenuous exercise to generate heat and lock it within their body by shutting all of their pores. Once the heat went beyond a certain level, it would coalesce into another form of energy known as mana. Depending on the density of the mana, it would have different colours leading to the differentiation of a mage’s stages.

The first stage of mana was red. Hence, mages at this realm were called Red Mages.

‘The efficiency of conversion is around nine-tenths. A bit lower than I remember. I guess my talent isn’t fully mature yet.’

The magical talent of a mage was measured by inspecting what fraction of the heat energy locked within their body they could transform into mana. Anyone with an efficiency of ninety percent or higher was considered to have top grade natural talent and expected to reach the level of a Violet Mage somewhere down the line. An efficiency of eighty percent or above was considered a highly talented individual with the prospect of reaching the level of a Blue Mage if they were diligent in their efforts.

A medium level of talent implied that the mage could convert over seventy percent of the heat to mana, demonstrating the potential to reach the level of a Green Mage. A low-level talent could hope to reach the level of a yellow mage in his or her lifetime but further progress was unlikely. They had around sixty percent conversion efficiency. Finally, anyone with above fifty percent efficiency was classified as barely talented and a Red Mage was their hard limit.

Anyone with less than fifty percent efficiency wouldn’t even be able to condense mana in the first place. Their path to magic severed even before they could begin walking down it.

Of course, there were skill shards that could improve the magical talent of a person but without exception, they were consumption class skills. This meant that once they were used, they would integrate with the physique of the owner and improve it, thereby getting consumed in the process. Such skill shards were extremely rare and precious and almost never appeared on the market. After all, who wouldn’t mind a bit more natural talent and magical potential?

As for Sand, in his heyday he’d had an efficiency of over ninety-five percent. There was a reason he had been able to rise to the level of a Dungeon Mage despite the oppression of the orcs.

‘But my mana is getting consumed to heal my wound. This way, I won’t be able to increase my mana until I convalesce fully. Actually, this is good. I was worrying how I would hide my natural talent but if I use this wound well, I can give off the impression that I have a medium level talent. Even that will cause a commotion but there’s nothing I can do about that.’

Having mana in one’s body provided a mage with all kinds of benefits. Enhanced endurance and accelerated healing were the two most prominent effects. As long as a mage had mana, he or she would not tire. At least not bodily. Mental fatigue was still possible therefore mana didn’t eschew the need for sleep. And as long as a mage had mana, any injuries they had would heal much faster.

Both these abilities consumed mana and were automatic in nature, meaning that a mage couldn’t just ‘turn them off’ as required. Therefore, mages took great care of their bodies, avoiding overworking themselves or any form of injury like the plague.

‘Really, this body needs a lot of work.’

One more benefit that came with mana – well, not exactly a benefit but a feature – was the ability to sense one’s own mana.

Now, this was a lot more useful than it sounded at first. Mana permeated every corner of a mage’s body. Sensing mana meant that that the mage had a panoramic awareness of his entire body. That allowed him to stay in the best possible shape and diagnose his own illnesses with extreme accuracy.

Sand couldn’t help but frown as he found exactly how damaged his young body really was. The wounds on his back were merely the tip of the iceberg. The ten years of malnutrition and misery heaped on him since his birth had taken its toll on him, leaving deeply rooted imperfections that couldn’t be resolved without some sort of healing skill or magical potion.

But soon, his eyebrows stretched as he relaxed. It was a problem he had dealt with in his previous life. There was no reason he wouldn’t be able to resolve it in this life as well. Especially with all the advantages he had.

Snapping out of his contemplations, he cast a glance at the slaves who were struggling to complete their quota. His mask of apathy cracked slightly as he watched their struggles. These men weren’t important in the grand scheme of things. He’d never heard of a freedom fighter remotely related to anyone from the silver mines on the outskirts of Gehenna. Helping these men wouldn’t advance his cause. In fact, if his performance was too striking, it might arouse the vigilance of Kreg. The best course of action would be to just ignore them.

‘But I am the reason they are running behind schedule. If they didn’t stand around idle, gawking at me lugging some rocks about, this wouldn’t have happened. Anyway, if they overshoot the requirements, Kreg will allow us some meat. This body needs whatever extra nutrition it can get.’

Having justified his actions to himself, Sand wrapped the bandages around his wounds. The wisp of mana he’d managed to generate had already clotted the blood, getting consumed in the process. Donning his shirt, he stood up and went over to Crooked.

“Hey,” he said, “Don’t you think the work is going slowly?”

Turning around from his excavation of the ores, the sturdy man spoke in a surprised tone, “You can walk? How? It’s only been what – an hour.”

Sand waved his concerns away. “I’m fine. I’ve always recovered fast. Now, don’t you think that the work is going quite slowly?”

Despite looking at him with suspicion, Crooked shrugged and answered, “Nothing I can do about it. That orc’s target was impossible to reach anyway. The miser wasn’t going to give us any meat.”

“Well, I might have an idea as to how to reach that target,” said Sand. “And it’ll take less effort than now.”

“Really?” asked Crooked, licking his lips in anticipation.

The team had been mining the ores individually, picking a spot and taking their pickaxes to the rock. But that way was quite inefficient. The veins of silver were distributed throughout the rocks unequally. A lot of the slaves were wasting their efforts by digging away at regions of quite low concentration. In the absence of unity, a hierarchy based on strength had formed were the strongest slaves worked where the mineral was richest. After all, their rations would be distributed on the basis of their individual contribution.

Crooked had even been thinking of collecting some commission from them for reporting their contributions to Kreg accurately. But after Sand’s performance, he’d given up that idea.

Now, under Sand’s guidance, the team only mined the most mineral rich areas of the cavern and rotated the workers, allowing them to be well rested when their turn came again. That way, they managed to speed up the production process several fold. Therefore, when the middle-aged man who’d shown them the ropes finally came by to inspect their progress and dismiss them for the day, he was shocked to see the cart overflowing with ore.

“Well, that’s quite the day’s work,” he commented before leading them to the front of Kreg.

The orc narrowed his beady eyes as he studied them before his eyes fell on Sand. Striding up to him, he grabbed his wrist in a crushing grip. Immediately, Sand felt a foreign mana invade him, and prod around his body for a while before retreating.

Letting go with a jerk that nearly dislocated Sand’s arm, Kreg addressed the slaves with a chuckle, “Looks like that Gura trained ye pretty well. Tell the cook that I said that ye did some good work today.”

He walked away, leaving a few words behind: “The lad decides who gets what. The runt can have the leftovers.”

 

That night, in the mine’s mess, Sand observed the rest of the slaves being moved to tears at their first proper meal in ages. Looking down at his own bowl, his gaze grew profound. Gruel that threatened to brim over, several scraps of meat of indeterminate origin, some greens; his bowl had the largest amount of food, more than even Crooked’s – a result of contributions from all the slaves.

As he raised the bowl to his mouth and took the first sip, he came to a decision. ‘If I get the chance, I’ll come back and see them freed.’

“Money, money, money… all I talk about is money? Of course I talk about it! Not only do I talk about it, I think about it, dream about it… It has become my entire life! And why shouldn’t it?

“I’m a mage and magic is just a gilded grave. The grave of Wealth.”

– Shylock; Executive Head, National Guild of Mercantor

 

When every step you take has to be calculated for profit and loss, you naturally become extremely prudent. Magic is but a game of strategy. One with as many approaches as there are mages. Some freeze up when it is time to take action, indecisiveness binding them in shackles stronger than steel. Some are overly reckless, trading momentary magnificence for years of grief. Others hoard their wealth, finding the very idea of using it abhorrent. Yet others perform those calculations with every effort, alas, reaching all the wrong conclusions. These people – without exception – don’t live very long.

 

Dawn dyed the sands of the Tyhr the colour of the rising sun, the scarlet rays illuminating the figure of a boy running laps around the housing complex where the ore slaves lived. As he ran, his shadow ran along with him, stretched long and thin by the slanting sunbeams. Each of his steps was the same as the last, lending a cast of perpetuity to his motion. He didn’t pant, he didn’t sweat, the only sign of his exertion was the ruddy flush that was visible even on his sun and wind burnt skin. The boy was Sand.

Following their first day at work, the slaves from Garo’s caravan had been distributed among the various veteran groups and put to work. And they had been given an introduction to Magic. The temporary atmosphere of harmony that had come about on the first day had been shredded like the flimsiest of parchments under the enticement of a path to power. Magic meant status and for those at the bottommost rung of the social hierarchy, nothing was more important.

Sand gradually slowed from a run into a walk and then came to a standstill in the shadow of the short and squat wooden buildings that served as their dorms in the short periods of time the slaves were allowed to rest. He exhaled slow and long, the scalding hot breath fogging up in the chill of the desert dawn. Inspecting the state of his body, he couldn’t help but frown slightly. His wound was mostly healed and with the meagre wisps of mana he had generated with this run, it would finally be enough for him to climb out of the red and finally start building his reserves.

‘It took too long. Barely a week left…’

When Kreg had announced that they had a chance at becoming mages, he had also set a date for an inspection a month later. The slaves with the most talent would – in his words – be destined for greater things in life. Including, but not limited to the halidom of mages: a skill shard. Understandably, that had sent the slaves into a tizzy of activity. It had become every man for himself and every other slave was a competitor. Hostility was the only emotion that defined their relationship these days.

Sand sneered inwardly, even with the memories of his future, he had been caught off guard by the sinister tactics of the slavers. He had been too gullible. ‘Too naïve.’ All it had taken was sharing a meal for him to mellow out towards them.

But he couldn’t be blamed, after all, most of his interactions with humans in his last life had been with former slaves who had scratched and clawed their way out of their cages. The cream of the crop. It had skewed his perception. The way the slaves fawned over and flattered Kreg while scratching and biting at each other at the mere promise of an advantage sickened him. He turned his dark eyes towards the dorms. ‘I wonder how they’ll feel when they realize what exactly that skill shard is.’

It was a very sound tactic. Separate the slaves and then promise them an overwhelming advantage, setting them at each other’s throats. Even after it was all over, after the truly talented had been sifted out, the ones left in the mines would be in a state of utter disunity. The grudges accrued over this period of infighting wouldn’t allow them to unite in revolt against their masters. And it had worked like a charm.

As Sand stepped into the communal sleeping quarters, a hayloft with a few worn blankets spread out serving as their beds, he was greeted by the stench of unwashed bodies and fart. Ignoring the noxious odours by habit, he walked over to his own ‘bed’ to retrieve his shirt which he had left behind for his morning run. When his hand came into contact with it, his eyebrows twisted into a lump as he found it soaked through, and going by the dark patch on his blanket, it was too. He didn’t need to investigate further to realize that someone had relieved himself on it.

“It’s time for food, squirt. Or, maybe you don’t need it? You seem to have too much energy, running like mad in the mornings.” Crooked’s mocking voice came from behind him, revealing the identity of that someone.

Sand’s expression grew icy, “I’ll be there,” he replied unemotionally.

“Hmph!” the sturdy slave turned around and stomped away with a derisive snort.

Crooked’s intentions were sinister. A wet blanket in the frigid desert night would mean a cold at the very least, if not a fever. Both causes for a missed day of work. A missed day of progress.

Tossing the shirt onto his blanket, Sand simply left them there. He still had his bandages wrapping around his torso, they would have to do. He could understand why the slaves were so hostile to him. He had demonstrated extreme tenacity and determination, and while those were desirable traits in an ally, in a competitor, they were most unwelcome.

Progressing through the ranks of magic was like climbing up an oiled pole. For every few feet up, you would slide a foot down. The only way mana could be supplemented was through strenuous exercise and to fuel that, large amounts of nutritious food was required, otherwise, instead of generating mana, the body would only consume it. And all this laboriously generated mana would exhaust itself to heal a minor scrape if one was a bit overzealous in their efforts.

Simple exercise was way too inefficient. Supplementing one’s energy through food was the legitimate way. And food was rationed based on contribution. Work hard, eat more, generate more mana, work harder – it all spiralled into a cycle that could be considered positive or vicious depending on one’s perspective. Clever rationing by the orcs ensured that the humans saw progress, while at the same time, were kept hungry for more.

‘Seven more days…’

Shovelling down his meal, Sand walked over to the clay pit and slathered his body with a layer of the sticky mud then waited for it to dry, blocking all his pores. The only reason he could close his pores was the experience he had carried over from his previous life. The slaves had no such advantage. Therefore, they had to resort to the layer of clay to make up for their deficiency. To fit in, he had to use it too.

And clay in the desert was expensive. If not for Gehenna’s proximity to the tributary of the river Jhelum that cut through the edge of the desert, the cost would have been too prohibitive for the orcs to bother with investing the resources on human slaves. As it stood, the income barely justified the expenditure. So, if one couldn’t emerge from the slaves and get selected during the inspection, their path to magic would forever be cut off and they would be doomed to languish in the mines as mortals.

‘Well, it’s not that the mages will have a better fate. It’s a better looking cage, but still a cage in the end. A much sturdier one.’

After the clay dried, he made his way to his workstation and invested himself in the work. It was monotonous, mind-numbing labour. Sifting through the piles of rock dug up by the miners to separate out the ores, filling baskets with them and finally, lugging the heavy baskets, dumping their contents into the cart. The only solace was the steady stream of red mana filling his body. Now that his wound was healed, he could finally accumulate mana.

At the end of the day, he dragged his aching body to the clay pit where he cracked up the layer of dry clay and dusted it off his body before going to the mess to receive his second meal of the day. The orcs didn’t allow the waste of even a bit of soil.

The advantage Sand had over the other slaves was his high natural talent and ability to seal his pores even without the clay, allowing him to gain mana from his morning jaunts. If the others tried that, they would find it unfeasible.

The next few days passed by in a blur of gluttony and labour until the sun rose over the horizon, bringing with it the promise of a brighter future. Usually, only one in ten people had magical talent and out of that the majority fell firmly in the category of ‘barely talented’ therefore, it was no surprise when out of the eight slaves sold to Kreg by Gura, only two demonstrated magical talent. In fact, it was a great ratio and Kreg couldn’t keep a grin off his ugly face.

Over the years, there had been many a batch that hadn’t produced even a single mage, rendering all his investments moot. But this year, it seemed that Lady Luck had taken a shine to him and blessed him with not one but two valuable commodities.

An enslaved mage was obviously much more valuable than a mortal, enough to justify the training costs several times over. Unlike Garo, as the supervisor of the silver mine, he had a lot more spare cash from his embezzlement and could afford one or two years of failed harvest if it meant an ultimate profit in the end. The fact that all the slaves he bought were healthy young males made his success rates higher as well. There seemed to be a vague correlation between magical talent and physical or mental aptitude. For all races, children that had higher strength inborn or were unusually intelligent seemed to make for the best mages.

The six other slaves had tried their utmost to condense their mana but had to give up in the face of destiny in the end. They left the chamber under Kreg’s orders, shooting backward glances of hatred and envy at Crooked and Sand, leaving the two newly awakened mages alone with Kreg.

“Well, well, well… who’d ‘ave thought it’d be ye two in the end?” he said, looking down his snout at the two of them. “Then again I guess it makes senses for it ta be ye two. The strong one and the stubborn one, ain’t it?”

Sand remained silent as Crooked heaped flattery on the orc. Curiously, Kreg tilted his head as he sized up the small form of the boy. It had only been a month, but with proper food and a lot of exercise, his body had improved drastically and now, rather than his ribs jutting out of his skin, there was a visible layer of developing muscle. He had even become a mage, overcoming the hurdle of his wound in the process. ‘This one’s more talented than ‘e lets on,’  thought Kreg. ‘All the better for me though. I can sell ‘im for more. But before that…’

“I promised ye a shard if any of ye made it. But ye should know by now that there’s nothing in this world such as a free lunch. If ye want it, ye earn it. Take the day off, stuff yer face as much as ye want. And tomorrow ye’re comin’ to the city with me. Whether ye get that shard or not, depends entirely on ye.”

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Enjoy! It has a slow start so it will take some time for the main heroine to be introduced but I think that when she comes, it will be worth it.

And what kind of skill do you think Sand will get? And more importantly, what kind of skill do you want to see? Let me know in the comments.