Birth of the Legendary Battle Mage

A New Man

Waking up in a daze with a bright beam of light shone on his face through the light vegetation covering the space above him, Julius tried to sit up. As he tried to move, he was immediately braced with excruciating pain that covered his entire body. It seemed he was laying in a poodle of water that was just the right size to cover his entire body, leaving only his face and parts of his body uncovered. In this position he was in, Julius couldn’t process too much of what was around him or make adequate judgments. Before long, after he had just regained his consciousness, he drifted back into a deep sleep.

Opening his eyes, this time it seemed to be evening, as the shade from the covering above let through little rays of orange evening sun light. Julius was unsure of how long his unconscious body had been laying there defenseless. He could only praise his luck for being so good, as no mana beast had found him throughout the time he was there. He rolled his tongue over his lips as he felt a little sting in them, he had sustained injury not only on his lips but on different parts of his body. Luckily none were life threatening.

Finally, he gained a little strength to roll onto his stomach so that he could crawl out of the stagnant water. As he pushed himself off the ground trying to sit up, he noticed that a sizable tree branch had pierced through his thigh, damaging some tendons in the process, so he could only move that leg to a certain degree. After dragging himself out of the water, Julius sat in between the roots of a large tree that seemed to have larger roots than its own size.

After expanding the little energy he had regained, Julius decided to remain there for the time being. Coupled with his physical condition, he was almost next to the River of Ends, where even demi-god class beasts avoid, else they be crushed by the pressure. Hearing the sound of the calm river flowing, he thought to himself. ‘That is definitely the River of Ends. Luckily, this can be considered the safest place in this forest. But how am I able to survive in this place, being so close to the river? This is strange. I need to find a way to get out of here fast before this luck turns to misfortune’. As these thoughts went through his mind, he looked up for a moment, then sighed. Thinking about it alone was very tiring.

“I wonder how I ended up off the river. As I recall, Bael dropped me directly over the river” With a gasp of surprise or perhaps remembrance, Julius’s eyes lit up as he turned to check his lower back. ‘Its glowing!’. “So this tattoo artifact must have prevented me from falling directly into the river. I’ve only ever used it for flight, ‘even though I had flight magic’, it utilizes mana from surrounding and since it was supposed to be an artifact left by the gods, I kept it. It must have activated automatically.” ‘It’s safe to assume that the artifact is what is making it possible for me to still be able to even breath while being this close to the river’.

Julius sat by the tree thinking about plausible hypothesis and solutions as the sun gradually went down. Soon it was dark. Unfortunately, the moon wasn’t up, but that left the sky filled with stars that Julius couldn’t enjoy the full view of, as the trees above covered most of it. Finally, he concluded and drew a most realistic explanation for why he could stay alive so close to the mysterious river. “Since this artifact I got was rumored to be left behind by the gods, it’s safe to say that it possessed other abilities and uses that I didn’t know about, ‘not that I looked or anything’. There was that one time I almost flew out of the earth’s atmosphere but could still breathe perfectly at that altitude. So this protection and the artifact are definitely related. It would be stupid to get complacent even if I had suffered these injuries. The protection won’t last forever, and I’m guessing not for long either.”

The next day, around the time the sun rises past the horizon, Julius woke up feeling no better than the previous day. The branch was still in his thigh and he had more broken bones than flesh wounds. There could have also been internal injury, but there was no way of knowing for sure since he couldn’t use his magic. Some time had passed after he woke up, he sat still thinking of what to do next. It was quite clear that he needed to put something in his stomach, as it has been days or maybe even weeks since ate something. As Julius sat between the large roots, thinking of how he would manage to pluck some fruits from the nearby trees, seeing as he wouldn’t be able to hunt animals, the heavens blessed his morning wonderfully. While he ran through different ways he could get the fruits from the lowest closest tree, and which one might be edible, so that he would go straight for that one instead of going around checking individually, a bunny looking animal that had what seems to be an apple growing out of its head fell before him, just a few feet in front of him. The little animal quickly stood back on it’s feet, staring the injured man in the eye, as if to say ‘watchu gonna do about it’. It might not have looked like it could talk even, but it sure gave Julius that kind of vibe.

The miserable-looking man who was sitting under the short tree, with a sizable branch stuck to his leg, could only give a sour expression, for what was before him was just unimaginable. ‘Unthinkable, this is what has become of me, a Grand Mage. Even a stupid bunny dares to look at me in such manner’. As these humbling thoughts went through him mind, little tears could almost be seen forming at the conner of his eyes, this was truly humiliating. ‘So the heavens have decided to s**t on my face, sending this rabbit to torture my pride. This is beyond embarrassing’.

Just as he was about to really cause the heavens, the apple on top of the rabbit’s head fell to the ground, then it rolled to the spot where he was sitting. ‘Huh, what kind of cliché scenario is this? What, I’m supposed to eat this apple now? From a beast I’ve never even heard of before. It may look harmless, but the fact that it can survive this close to the river of ends is enough proof’. “Then again, I can’t feel its magical energy since I’m still under the artefact’s protection, if not, I would have been able to tell which class it was in.” ‘I’m not in a hurry to perceive mana still, if not for the artefact’s barrier over my body and senses, I would have been crushed by the mana surrounding this place’.

As Julius contemplated on what he should do with the fruit, he decided to eat it, there wasn’t much of a choice to begin with. Besides, something like this from a mana beast had a 50:50 chance of having negative or positive effects. Taking his chances, he gulped down a ball of saliva before bitting into the apple, taking just a little chunk of it into his mouth to sample it before eating. As he observed, the inside was white, and it tasted more like a berry than an apple, but there was something else that was weird about the apple. Unfortunately, Julius didn’t recognize this particular trait until he had eaten almost every bit of the hand sized fruit. He turned his head to the side as he felt a seed in his mouth, he didn’t know if the seeds were edible, so he was not going to ingest them, so he spit out the seed together with a bit of saliva. To his surprise, although more of a shock, his saliva was blood red, this made him pour out more to his side to confirm his suspicions. The saliva remained unchanged, still dyed red like blood, at the same moment, the remaining piece of apple he held started turning red. The juices from the apple almost resembled the animal’s own blood, but it still tasted sweet. Before Julius could do anything, he felt an enormous amount of mana starting to fill his body. It wasn’t long before it became uncontrollable for Julius that had lost his ability to use magic because of the damage his core suffered.

Mana cores were the center of mana in the body, a spot in the abdominal section of the body. Although not physically manifested, the mana core was still present and, at the same time absent within the abdomen. This mana core acts as the container that stores an individual’s mana, and according to how much mana one’s core could contain and how pure the mana was, it would determine the class of that person. Connected to the core are mana veins, which work in a similar way just as the veins and arteries that circulate the blood pumped by the heart through the body and back into the heart. Mana veins spread out from the mana core to various parts of the body. Unlike the cardiovascular system where the arteries spread out blood and the veins bring blood back into the heart, the mana veins only send out mana and do not receive or return mana back into the mana core. Regardless of the fact that they function as arteries and not veins, they are still referred to as veins. At this moment of ingesting the fruit, although delayed, the eruption of mana from the fruit in Julius’s body was like pumping water into a full tank that has no opening for the extra water to go out, this could only lead to one outcome, and that would be an explosion of the vessel.

Since Julius’s mana core was already damaged, the enormous amount of mana couldn’t be absorbed and had no outlet, causing it to stock up. Julius was well aware of what was happening and immediately thought of an idea to expel the excess energy. ‘Hmm, this is bad. Who knew this fruit had this kind of effect. I have to think of a solution fast, if not I might die this time’. “Arck! Mph” ‘I think I’ll use that, it should work’. As Julius thought out a plan in his head, he immediately sat up straight, suppressing the pain from the broken ribs and other bone which at this moments were significantly less painful compared to what he was feeling now. A few moments of intense pain and suffering passed as what looked like heat waves rose from Julius’ skin like a hot desert road. After sometime had passed, Julius calmed down, but was still breathing hard like he just finished a hundred meter race. Thanks to the technique he used he was ok, but had sacrificed a large number of his mana veins in the process.

When he thought of solution, he remembered one particular magic that he created. It was a simple magic, but overly effective, he had created it in order to combat enemies or beasts that uses large spells. It was still effective as anybody affected by this magic would rather not use magic, if not, they would end up killing themselves, and since mages were weak physically, it was game over as they were useless without their magic. This particular spell would block the flow of mana through mana veins so that whenever a mage tried to cast a spell, the mana would have nowhere to come out, and since mana veins cannot take mana back into the core, the vein would eventually explode. As so, if a powerful mage were to cast a large spell that utilizes the mana in them, an enormous amount of mana would clog the veins rapidly, causing instant death. All Julius needed to do was add a little variation to the spell, but since he couldn’t cast magic spells, he had to rearrange the mana veins in some parts of his body manually with the little perception of mana he had, making them function as actual veins. This forced the mana veins to suck in the excess mana inside his body into his damaged core, while simultaneously releasing the mana through the remaining veins that were left unaltered.

Thanks to that, he survived but damaged most of his mana veins, and his mana core that had already been damaged, broke down completely, bringing a cold reality. There was no longer a way for Julius to regain or repair his core.

As of this moment, he had become as ordinary as an ant that cannot even perceive mana.