Birth of the Legendary Battle Mage

Chapter 25

The cursed witch is a name that was prominent hundreds of years ago and often mentioned in some stories in the present day. Long ago, there existed a place on the earth, known as the temple of the gods, where the power of all the gods supposedly resided. It only existed in legend, and nobody knew if it really existed. Because of that, many groups made finding the temple of the gods their goal. One of these groups stood out the most, as this group had many extremely strong and talented individuals, and among these individuals was the mother of Emilia’s great grandmother, from her mother’s side, Zaphyr. Zaphyr was an exceptionally gifted woman. She became a mage at a very young age, and specialised in magic that had to do with supernatural and psychic. Back then she was the only one that used this type of magic, and due to the nature of the magic, people frowned at it and discriminated against her. Although, these days more people have been born with Zaphyr’s type of magic, none of them have reached the level she reached or even close because of how obscure this branch of magic is.

During the golden ages of the rumoured Tomb of the gods, the legend said the location of the temple was somewhere within the uncharted land of the dead which was an island just off the coast of the northern side of the continent. Many groups of aspiring people headed into the island in search of the treasure, but many never came back out. The island was very big, about the size of a small state, and had a lot of ground that had to be covered. But starting from the coast of the island, dangerous monsters start attacking any intruder they see, and the island being home to the freakiest of monsters, a low tier monster in the island may possess traits that make them harder to deal with than a higher tier beast. These kinds of groups are what have come to be known as adventuring groups, and the people adventurers. For the countless of years that these sort of groups searched for the Temple, none ever found it, or any evidence that it exists, but for some reason, they keep going. Nobody succeeded, at least not until Zaphyr’s group decided to try. Although in the end they succeeded, the whole team died, leaving only Zaphyr as the only survivor. Nobody really knows what happened during their expedition because Zaphyr who was the only survivor refused to speak about it, and the opportunity for her to say anything never came.

When Zaphyr returned to the city, she had grown extremely powerful, far beyond anyone was at that moment. In the present, mages that practice her type of magic have not been heard to go beyond the Heaven class because of how obscure and difficult this branch of magic is, and for the few who have broken into the Master class, they can be counted with the fingers in one hand. Yet, before Zaphyr and her group left for the island, she was already a Master class mage, and she came back from the island as a Demi-god class mage or at least close to that, maybe a pseudo Demi-god class. With her return and massive leap in strength, it was clear that the Temple existed, but something else was confirmed. The gods really didn’t want anybody near that place. Because of that, one of the gods instructed the church to prosecute Zaphyr, accusing her of sacrificing her whole group to get the power she now has, and that the power was granted to her by a demon.

These prosecutions continued for years, and during that period of time, she conceived a child with her husband, while they were in hiding.

A few months after she gave birth, now the baby was just 7 months old, the churches of different gods attacked again, this time joining hands with the nations soldiers, under the guise of eradicating a witch. And during that particular attack, a god seized an opportunity to curse Zaphyr, a brutal and wicked curse that could pass through bloodlines. The curse was that, any man who saw her face, except for the man she loves and have chosen to spend her entire life with would die. Her husband was able to escape with the baby, while Zaphyr herself stayed back to fight the churches and soldiers. Due to the nature of her magic and her class, she was able to destroy most of the attackers, excluding the ones affiliated with a church, since the gods shared some of their power to the churches in other to stop her, but due to the greed of the god that cursed her, the curse started working against them, as any man that saw her face would just fall dead after a while. In the end, she was able to kill the tens of thousands of attackers, leaving only some church heads and others that the gods favoured deeply, but even with that, they still couldn’t defeat her.

Finally, 2 Popes and a bishop sacrificed themselves in order for a god to be able to descend with most of their power onto the earth, and even with that, a god without their full power was just a god in name when facing someone like her. It took the assist of two more gods to be able to produce a solution to this problem. The 3 gods sent her to hell, within the underworld, where she was chained and imprisoned ever since.

Her child, Emilia’s great grandmother also inherited this curse, but except for her, Emilia was the only other person to have inherited the curse.

...

“Even with that, you’re still suspicious.”

“I know we might have been enemies before, but at least we’re together now.”

“Hmm. We should specify what kind of relationship we have, and also set some ground rules.”

“mm.” Emilia nodded her head in agreement.

They ended up sleeping late that night, and although Julius was at a level where he could stay awake for long periods of time, Emilia wasn’t, and she was also not in good physical condition. They agreed to various rules including the rule that they would respect each other’s privacy and not pry into the others life, unless necessary, and that they would refrain from betraying each other throughout their stay in the underworld. The last one was Emilia’s idea, and Julius was a bit hesitant to accept, but he later did. Their relationship was that of partners with one being under the other, but at the same time not like a slave or maid, probably like the relationship between a boss and their employees. This was also suggested by Emilia after she rejected Julius’ idea of them being partners who assist each other when help is required.

Some days later, just before noon, Julius noticed something off about Emilia, she seemed to be having a fever. “Hey Emi, what’s wrong? You’re burning up.” He said as he helped her up. He had started calling her Emi as a short form, not because of familiarity or any of the sorts, but because saying her full name every time was just stressful for him.

“Ahh, hehe. Looks like I’ve become a burden so soon. Please forgive me. I don’t really know what’s wrong with me.” She said while lying down.

“Of all times to be sick, it’s when we enter the underworld. And I don’t even know if I can find medicinal herbs here, and I purposely didn’t buy any medicine because I don’t get sick. Heh..”

“haha.” She let out a soft painful laugh.

“Rest up, I’ll be going outside for a bit.”

Emilia lay there while Julius went outside the cave to look for medicinal herbs. After some hours of searching, he gave up on the idea of searching for any medicinal herb. ‘This place really is barren. All that’s here is just normal grasses and plants with no specific importance except for beautifying the place.’ While on the thought, he came by a big stream. The water was clean and clear, and it went up to waist level. As he drank from the flowing water, an idea popped into his head. “How about holy magic? I should give that a try.”

Julius returned to the cave he made, where Emilia was. By that time, it was already almost evening, so he started preparing what they would eat that evening. Good thing he stocked up on many ingredients and supplies, so he made her a little soup. He used a towel to cool her down, and after that he fed her the bowl of soup before eating his own food. Even though she was a bit hesitant, there wasn’t much she could do since she was in that condition and couldn’t do much herself. The next day, Julius decided to try holy magic, after practicing and experimenting a bit throughout the whole night. Emilia, was still overheating, and he had to look after her while practicing the holy magic. She was still asleep when he used the holy spell he had been practicing on her, one that he had seen in a book before. After about a minute of casting the spell, Emilia woke up.

“You awake?” Julius asked as he lifted the towel from her forehead. Although she might have been blushing in the moment, there would be no way to know since her mask was still on.

“Did you?”

“No. I only broke the top part away. Initially i was just using magic to control water onto your forehead, but that wasn’t really effective. So I broke the top part of your mask. I hope you aren’t mad about it?”

“Yes, I, I mean no, I’m not, mad or angry or anything. I was just thinking that it was dangerous to do that because of my curse. You know?”

“Don’t worry. It seems that one has to see your full face before the curse will take effect. And it seems the holy magic I used was effective.”

“You can also use holy magic? Just how many types of magic can you use?”

“Every kind I can comprehend.”