The Guardians' Throne - The First Magic Swordsman

When Zaos landed on that land, he felt something weird about the place… it seemed a bit nostalgic for some reason. He thought that he had come from that world, but he never saw anything like piles of rubble and an endless sea of blood that surrounded everything in his dreams. 

"He escaped from my hand…" Zaos frowned since he only noticed now.

The monsters that Zaos had seen before finally approached, but he paid them no mind since Drannor jumped using the piles of rubble to land and get closer to the monsters. Instead of that, he wanted to find Elisius… the self-proclaimed demon god.

"Where are you looking?" Elisius asked. "Can't you see me? Can't you feel my presence? I wonder why…"

  Zaos ignored those mocking words because he was expecting something like that. Elisius could become invisible, and with his magic presence, he was the best mage that the world had known, after all. It would be weird if he couldn't escape Zaos' radar, who decided to follow the path between magic and Swordsmanship.

Suddenly, from the depths of the blood ocean, a massive creature jumped and headed toward Zaos with its massive mouth open. It seemed like a fish and had the shape of a fish, but it had a skeleton on the exterior of its body. Not to mention, it had some vicious red eyes… Zaos jumped to dodge the creature, but just enough to escape the damage and still attack the monster's head. With all his might, Zaos made his sword pierce the skull of the beast, and while he could feel the brain being pierced, Zaos didn't feel the presence of the monster disappearing.

The monster destroyed the pile of rubble, so Zaos jumped on the creature's back and then did it again to reach the other nearby while the beast disappeared in the ocean of blood.

"I can't feel its presence inside the blood… the blood is filled with mana?" Zaos thought.

"Your name is Zaos… why are you working for her, Zaos?" Elisius asked. "While not as much as me, you suffered a lot in this world while you were following someone else's orders. First was your father, that forced you to move away from home again and again, and thanks to that, you couldn't help your mother. Then the king who used you to create a loving story for his daughter. Father and daughter were so messed up that they even asked you to kill and kill again… you did what they told you, and in the end, you were branded as a traitor."

"You talk as if you aren't a part of the problem," Zaos said while looking around to prevent surprise attacks.

"True, I won't deny that my actions also caused you problems. It was because of me you were summoned in this world, after all," Elisius said. "Still, that doesn't change the fact that you were used for someone else's conveniences time and time again… will you become a puppet until the very end?"

"I am not a puppet. I am doing what I want," Zaos said and then enhanced his sword with wing magic when he saw the blood moving strangely in front of him. "I didn't become Ameria's friends on someone else's orders, I didn't try to protect her daughter because someone told me to… if your enemy is the person who summoned me to this world, I have nothing to do with her. Bringing me to this world and sealing away my memories… there is no way I would trust such a person."

"You say that, but you are dancing on the palm of her hands," Elisius said. "Join me, and I will make you recover your memories… even without them, you can feel some nostalgia toward this place, am I correct? Do you know why?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Zaos asked.

"I can tell… we were summoned from the same world… this world," Elisius said. "Once I realized that my previous world had been destroyed by monsters that I fought to protect another world, I asked her why she summoned me to summon her world, but not my own… she never gave me any answers. She didn't do a single thing when my tribe was treated like criminals either… to her, we are just tools. Let's bring her down and all the others like her. We can take her place and become immortals."

While that was indeed a good offer, and Zaos was a bit interested in his possibilities if he becomes immortal, he couldn't ally with someone that used Milliendra and caused so much suffering to her. Even if he granted him ten thousand years of lifespan, it wouldn't make up for the ten years Milliendra lost and for the death of her mother.

"My answer is… fuck you," Zaos said.

The very next moment, several others of those giant fish jumped from the blood ocean and tried to attack Zaos, but with a single swing of his sword, he split all of them in half. Still, he could tell that they weren't dead… it seemed like they were undead creatures that could regenerate while using the blood ocean, and while Zaos tried to drain the mana from the blood, he didn't get a single point.

"That is disappointing… you chose to side with someone that treats you like a tool instead of siding with someone that understands your struggles," Elisius said and then sighed. "That truly is disappointing…"

Zaos prepared to fight, but Elisius didn't do anything. Meanwhile, Drannor was retreating, and Zaos could see hundreds of monsters chasing him… it seemed that Elisius didn't actually defeat all the monsters of that world…

"Did you know? She forged those swords to be useful against beings that use dark emotions and turn them into mana. It is a perfect counter against me," Elisius said. "But what about beings that don't use mana? How useful are those?"

"Well, if you don't know, let me show it then," Zaos said.