The Star Of Annihilation

The Star of Annihilation

Chapter 4 – The Ruins (1)

Written by : eleven

* * *

2 years later…

“Hahaha!”

It was a complete 180 from the time Roy and Nate had met 2 years ago. Nate’s hair had grown a bit longer down to his shoulders and his blonde hair turned wavy. His skin had become more fair and his hands had turned more calloused.

The biggest change however, was his willingness to display his emotions. Nate and Roy had been together for the past two years and weren’t slacking around doing nothing. Roy had given Nate the basic spell compositions of something a standard 1 star wizard would be able to use and Nate had awakened his first star within his mana core.

Nate laughed out loud as he was playing with Roy using the spell [Water Ball].

They were throwing several balls of water at each other, playing around and trying to dodge them outside on the field behind Roy’s house.

[Haste].

Bwoosh

“Hey Roy, you asshat!”

Roy suddenly cast haste, speeding up the speed of the water ball he had just thrown at Nate, causing Nate to yell out at him for cheating.

Roy had quickly learned over the past two years that Nate probably had a very innate talent for combat, and more specifically, in using magic and spearmanship.

Roy was more familiar with the saber and had felt his movements become a little less disjointed over the countless spars they had done.

“Hah… Hah…”

The interesting thing was that Nate also had a very adept body now that he had been hanging around Roy and eating at Roy’s house a lot. 

Roy didn’t give up on his ideal of needing to learn swordsmanship in the Imperial Royal Academy of Magic and Knighthood, but he was becoming more aware of his body’s limitations. He realized now, that he was not very strong and did not have great stamina, and if he tried to continuously exercise, it was almost negligible growth compared to Nate.

Roy bent over, putting his hands on his knees, gasping for air as he had been feeling really exhausted.

“Haaah… Don’t blame me. You were the one who wanted to learn magic, and yet you still haven’t learned how to multicast yet.”

In reality multicasting was incredibly difficult, and only certain mages within the Empire were able to do it. However, Roy felt that Nate could definitely learn how to do it eventually, as Roy had been able to, seeing that Nate’s monstrous combat talent was also very applicable to Nate’s talent for absorbing magical knowledge.

“Yeah whatever Roy, I’m assuming you want to call it quits now?”

Nate asked Roy as he looked at him gasping for breath, clearly exhausted.

Compared to the other boys in the village, Roy was actually stronger and had a bit more stamina than them, combined with some extremely basic combat moves he had been practicing with Nate, he had no problem completely taking them on when it was a one on one situation.

Of course, if Roy used magic as well, it would be a completely different story. He could probably take them all out within seconds with magic.

Raising himself upright, Roy shook his sweaty hair side to side, getting the water and sweat out of his bangs and looked at Nate.

‘Still not sure how to avoid the accident that will happen soon…’

Roy, recently had been getting anxiety attacks in his sleep, afraid of the carnage that would meet the village in half a year. During that time, he was sure that Nate died along with everyone else in the village, Roy’s mother Mathilde included.

He had been stuck with the dilemma of how to warn the villagers that there would be an attack on the village.

He still remembered that day from his previous life vividly.

It was a rainy day, cold in the winter season of the year. He remembered the bright red flames burning and the villagers crying. He remembered even the cruelest moment that made him almost lose himself.

‘No… I can’t think of that.’

Roy shook his head and erased the horrific image he specifically remembered that he so desperately tried to forget from time to time.

“Yea, let’s call it a day.”

It was still summertime, and there was a lot of time left until the massacre. Roy decided not to think too much of it, as there wasn’t much left for him to think about other than getting his mother out in time.

Heading back to his house, Roy had grown accustomed to taking Nate with him to his house. Nate didn’t have… the best of parents to say the least.

Nate had started to show more of a smile when he spent more time with Roy. Roy had originally just thought of teaching Nate a bit of how to read runes at first; the basic ones his mom had even given him to not arouse suspicion, but slowly, Roy started to notice abnormalities with Nate.

“Have you started to form your second star yet Nate, or are you still stuck on accumulating more mana?”

“I still need to work on accumulating more mana. The breathing technique you gave me isn’t as good as the one you use, you know that.”

“That’s only a matter of perspective, I’ve taught you well enough to know that by now.”

Roy retorted, though Nate had a point.

Roy’s breathing technique was something he could never give out. It wasn’t that he wouldn;t want to give it to a sincere friend or loved one, but if they were caught with it and the Empire found out about the reverse flow breathing technique, they would be tortured for it and that was not something Roy wanted on his conscience.

Nate scoffed and looked down at his drenched shirt as they walked into Roy’s home just in time for supper.

* * *

“Hey mom.”

“Hey kids! Oh my gosh, what did you guys do to your clothes?”

Mathilde rushed over to them, leaving the porridge in the pot cooking as she saw their drenched clothes.

“We were just fooling around practicing some basic spells mom.”

“Yeah, until Roy cheated!”

Nate quickly didn’t forget to rub it in on roy for cheating by multicasting a haste spell on top of his water ball spell.

“Well alright kids, come inside and get yourselves some new clothes while I get supper finished up for you.”

“okay.”

The boys responded in unison and made their way over to Roy’s room. Inside, the room’s messiness had not changed much, but there were a lot of new diagrams and papers spread out all over the floor.

The biggest change though, was that inside the room, there was now a bunk bed that Mathilde had let Roy build with Nate if Nate ever wanted to stay over, which happened to be more nights than most.

“Phew…”

Nate sighed as he took off the drenched shirt and took a tunic out of the pile of clothes that Roy messily threw in a corner of the room.

“Are you almost ready for tomorrow?”

Roy asked Nate as he changed his clothes.

“Yeah… Are we really going through with it?”

Nate asked back to Roy with a nervous expression.

“We are. If we don’t, we’ll have a hard time getting out of this village on our own. Well, at least you will.”

Roy replied stoically, hinting that Nate needed to improve. They were going to be exploring outside of the village for a few days and had gotten permission from his mother after a few weeks of nagging and eventually showing her a 2-star spell, fireball.

“Fair point I guess, but where exactly are we going? You haven’t told me yet and it’s seriously not helping me at all here.”

Nate retorted, still feeling anxious about the whole deal despite knowing there was probably nothing that could possibly defeat his friend Roy, within the entire village.

Roy waved his hand and a small portal opened up in the middle of the room, the size of fist. Roy stuck his hand inside and pulled out a silver saber. It was a simple subspace magic that was the basis to every ‘true magician’ of the empire.

Taking the saber out he also pulled out a small wooden spear with sharpened silver daggers tied to the ends of both sides to make a spear.

Roy tossed the spear to Nate, remaining silent.

“Hey what the hell Roy?!”

“We’re going tonight instead.”

Roy spoke with a firm expression as he looked outside his window.

Outside, Roy could see massive fluctuations within the mana in the direction he was planning this ‘trip’ of sorts.

Nate couldn’t see mana fluctuations all that well, but when he saw Roy’s eyes looking outside the window, he turned his head in that direction and felt his body shudder. Nate’s intuition could be said to be otherworldly, and that wasn’t something you could necessarily train, hence why Roy thought Nate was worth taking along with him.

“You’ll see when we get there tomorrow, but we leave by night.”

“Okay.”

Nate gulped down his saliva as Roy’s green emerald eyes gleaned in an odd glow. Nate wasn’t too sure if he was just seeing things at that moment, since the glow went away as soon as it came, but he knew Roy had his own secrets.

Chapter 4 – Fin

.