Note: I know that there are some words that need fixed in chapter 1, not a lot but a few words I believe. Once I have my new laptop battery, I shall fix those. Also, this is open for anyone to comment on and give their general idea of the story so far.
Prologue
Spoiler: show
Hello true believers! New on the wikia, but not new to monster girls. I've visited this wiki a few times over the years, but never really got into reading it all that much. Spent the last few days reading around the wiki and so now I am trying my hand at a fanfic. Be warned; I've only ever done one fanfic before and that's it, so the story might not be to everyone's liking. I will say this though, I am rather fond of the energy of the MGE universe, it's a very interesting concept and I'm going to have one of the main focuses of the fanfic on the energies. But this will be the Prologue, chapter one will be coming soon though. Until then, enjoy!
Prologue: The Incedent
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The man walked down the long hallway, wondering just how things could have went the way they'd gone. It was clear the man was old, middle aged likely from the pieces of gray hair that were present in his slicked back short black hair. A middle aged man walking down a hallway wouldn't be anything special, however the man in question was in a suit of armor commonly woren by many knights and the hallway in question was inside of a large castle. With the man lost in thought, in no time he was entering a large room where a group of people were gathered around a large round table. "Sir Garuda, where have you been? We have been waiting for your arrival for the last half hour." Spoke one of the people gathered around the table, a man dressed in holy robes who clearly was a priest.
"Forgive me, Father Cornelo, I was away from the castle and just now got back by horse back." Sir Garuda told the priest. From there a loud slam was heard inside the room, everyone turning to look at the angry man. "Enough! I could care less about where you were Garuda. We all came here about Lagarge and the guy in the dungeon." Spoke the angered man aloud. With those words, a silent cloud of darkness came over the room, the kind of darkness that people felt when they were at a funeral. The gathered people came to the table and took their respective seats at it, knights, mages, priests, and everything else inbetween could be said were gathered at the table that day.
After a moment more of silence, Father Cornelo spoke up to break the silent room. "As Amato said, we did come here about those two subjects, so let's get this meeting started. We have all gathered here because the city of Lagarge was systematically wiped off the very face of the planet..... and the only survivor is locked up in the castle dungeons at this time." Cornelo told those who had yet to know the full details of why the meeting was held. Before the discussion went any further on the two subjects, Garuda spoke up. "To everyone who may be wondering this, the survivor is locked up in the dungeons at this time for his own safety. We don't know who, or what, destroyed Lagarge and because of that, we can't have the only survivor be just anywhere. For that reason only, we've had him held in the dungeon of this castle to keep him safe." Garuda told them all before ending his talk. With Garuda having finished his small speech, a small discussion started to take place at the table between the people at it for a short while.
After the short discussion between everyone, the first person to speak up was Amato, with the same angry tone in his voice still. "I say it was those monsters, it had to be. With all the demonic power those creatures keep storing up, wiping out a single city couldn't be that big of a problem for them!" Amato spoke aloud to all at the table, many of the people nodding in agreement to his claim. The next to speak up was an elderly mage, someone clearly old enough to be someone's grandfather. "I have to disagree with you Amato. While I have my own dislike for those monsters, since that succubus became the demon lord none of the monsters have killed anyone unless they tried to harm the person they consider their 'husband' or another monster tries to get him. While they should have more than enough demonic power to destroy a city, possibly a continent even, why would they suddenly destroy a whole city? It doesn't add up." He told them all. Because of all the reports they had gotten over the years, it was clear the mage held a very firm point since not a single report ever talked about the monsters showing signs of violence towards anyone, aside from raping people that was.
Another knight, one who served the ruler of the castle they were in, raised up his voice to speak. "It could be that humans destroyed the city. In recent years, many of our heroes have been either turned into incubus by the monsters or broken by them from encounters. Heroes rebelling against the church isn't unheard of now a days and Lagarge was one of the cities with the largest church and population of priests left. None of us want to think it, but the possibility is still there" Spoke the young blonde haired knight. While it was something many at the meeting didn't wish to bring up, such a thing was still there and a few at the table did agree it could have been rebel's who were against the church. It was clear to everyone there that finding out who or even what destroyed Lagarge over night would be hard, since not only rebel's and possibly monsters, but even others who could have done it just to make the war even worse was there along with other ideas. Instead of focusing on Lagare for the time, Father Cornelo raised his hand to silence the room. "It is clear we will have to spend many a time investigating this matter, but let us change the subject at hand to the second reason for this meeting; the survivor." The priest finished speaking.
It was at that moment the room went silent for a long moment, none wanting to discuss just what they would all have to. To break the silence yet again, Sir Garuda spoke up yet again. "The survivor, a lone man, a man that has in fact been asleep since we found him a week ago. For the last week my scouts have been searching the lands for anyone who may know who the man is. I myself have even went into both anti-monster and monster friendly communities trying to find even a single clue as to who the man is. I'm afraid to say I have yet to find anyone who know's who the man is." Garuda told them, before finishing. The news that no one had been found who could actually tell them who the man was was disappointing, but such a search to find the identity of one single person could take months and everyone at that table new that. Next to speak was the priest, Father Cornelo. "I, along with several other priests, have run tests on the man in the dungeon after he was treated by a doctor to make sure he wasn't a monster. From what we gathered, the man is a normal human and doesn't show any signs of having demonic energy on him or inside of him, but he doesn't seem to have high levels of spirit energy either. In fact, the man actually show's signs of having a below average production of spirit energy, something rare among any man, be they human or monster. Yet for some strange reason all the priests and myself have felt a strong demonic like feeling coming from his body, yet at the same time it doesn't feel the same as demonic energy should. It's rather odd." He told them.
A single man who had survived an entire city being destroyed over night, the man in question appearing to be an average human with below average spirit energy production. He didn't have a single trace of demonic energy at all on him or inside of him, yet he had a strong demonic like feeling coming from him that felt different from demonic energy itself. It was something that did puzzle everyone at the meeting, a city wiped off the planet over night and a man who shouldn't have survived did, even giving off a demonic like energy yet didn't have any demonic energy at all. "The demonic feeling put me and the priests with unease, so we did do something hours ago that should prove if he truly has demonic energy or not..." Cornelo said, though in a rather low voice compared from the other times. "And just what was that?" Asked Amato, curious as to what a priest could have done after having tested the man with god only knew how many things.
"We've had a pair of rings made with gems from the demon realm capital for months, we planned to use them as a last resort to measure the level of demonic energy or spirit energy someone has. To be on the safe side, we placed both rings on the man, though a ring per hand. We'll be able to tell just how much spirit or demonic energy he has by the glow of the rings, the brighter they glow the more he has. It's been enough time for the rings to have an accurate grasp of either energy by now." Father Cornelo told everyone. With that, the gathered people left the room and went down to the dungeons, heading for the survivors room to see what the rings would say. To make certain nothing could get to him, they had placed him in one of the dungeon rooms with brick walls all around it and an iron door. Once they reached the iron door, Sir Garuda put his hand on the handle of the door and pulled it open slowly, though as he did a beam of light came out of the room until it was blinding them when the door was fully open. Father Cornelo was in shock, seeing the bright beam of light from inside the room coming out. "Dear god..... What is he?" He asked in awe.
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''I hope you all enjoyed the prologue, next will come chapter one. Till then, farewell true believers!''
Prologue: The Incedent
----------------------------
The man walked down the long hallway, wondering just how things could have went the way they'd gone. It was clear the man was old, middle aged likely from the pieces of gray hair that were present in his slicked back short black hair. A middle aged man walking down a hallway wouldn't be anything special, however the man in question was in a suit of armor commonly woren by many knights and the hallway in question was inside of a large castle. With the man lost in thought, in no time he was entering a large room where a group of people were gathered around a large round table. "Sir Garuda, where have you been? We have been waiting for your arrival for the last half hour." Spoke one of the people gathered around the table, a man dressed in holy robes who clearly was a priest.
"Forgive me, Father Cornelo, I was away from the castle and just now got back by horse back." Sir Garuda told the priest. From there a loud slam was heard inside the room, everyone turning to look at the angry man. "Enough! I could care less about where you were Garuda. We all came here about Lagarge and the guy in the dungeon." Spoke the angered man aloud. With those words, a silent cloud of darkness came over the room, the kind of darkness that people felt when they were at a funeral. The gathered people came to the table and took their respective seats at it, knights, mages, priests, and everything else inbetween could be said were gathered at the table that day.
After a moment more of silence, Father Cornelo spoke up to break the silent room. "As Amato said, we did come here about those two subjects, so let's get this meeting started. We have all gathered here because the city of Lagarge was systematically wiped off the very face of the planet..... and the only survivor is locked up in the castle dungeons at this time." Cornelo told those who had yet to know the full details of why the meeting was held. Before the discussion went any further on the two subjects, Garuda spoke up. "To everyone who may be wondering this, the survivor is locked up in the dungeons at this time for his own safety. We don't know who, or what, destroyed Lagarge and because of that, we can't have the only survivor be just anywhere. For that reason only, we've had him held in the dungeon of this castle to keep him safe." Garuda told them all before ending his talk. With Garuda having finished his small speech, a small discussion started to take place at the table between the people at it for a short while.
After the short discussion between everyone, the first person to speak up was Amato, with the same angry tone in his voice still. "I say it was those monsters, it had to be. With all the demonic power those creatures keep storing up, wiping out a single city couldn't be that big of a problem for them!" Amato spoke aloud to all at the table, many of the people nodding in agreement to his claim. The next to speak up was an elderly mage, someone clearly old enough to be someone's grandfather. "I have to disagree with you Amato. While I have my own dislike for those monsters, since that succubus became the demon lord none of the monsters have killed anyone unless they tried to harm the person they consider their 'husband' or another monster tries to get him. While they should have more than enough demonic power to destroy a city, possibly a continent even, why would they suddenly destroy a whole city? It doesn't add up." He told them all. Because of all the reports they had gotten over the years, it was clear the mage held a very firm point since not a single report ever talked about the monsters showing signs of violence towards anyone, aside from raping people that was.
Another knight, one who served the ruler of the castle they were in, raised up his voice to speak. "It could be that humans destroyed the city. In recent years, many of our heroes have been either turned into incubus by the monsters or broken by them from encounters. Heroes rebelling against the church isn't unheard of now a days and Lagarge was one of the cities with the largest church and population of priests left. None of us want to think it, but the possibility is still there" Spoke the young blonde haired knight. While it was something many at the meeting didn't wish to bring up, such a thing was still there and a few at the table did agree it could have been rebel's who were against the church. It was clear to everyone there that finding out who or even what destroyed Lagarge over night would be hard, since not only rebel's and possibly monsters, but even others who could have done it just to make the war even worse was there along with other ideas. Instead of focusing on Lagare for the time, Father Cornelo raised his hand to silence the room. "It is clear we will have to spend many a time investigating this matter, but let us change the subject at hand to the second reason for this meeting; the survivor." The priest finished speaking.
It was at that moment the room went silent for a long moment, none wanting to discuss just what they would all have to. To break the silence yet again, Sir Garuda spoke up yet again. "The survivor, a lone man, a man that has in fact been asleep since we found him a week ago. For the last week my scouts have been searching the lands for anyone who may know who the man is. I myself have even went into both anti-monster and monster friendly communities trying to find even a single clue as to who the man is. I'm afraid to say I have yet to find anyone who know's who the man is." Garuda told them, before finishing. The news that no one had been found who could actually tell them who the man was was disappointing, but such a search to find the identity of one single person could take months and everyone at that table new that. Next to speak was the priest, Father Cornelo. "I, along with several other priests, have run tests on the man in the dungeon after he was treated by a doctor to make sure he wasn't a monster. From what we gathered, the man is a normal human and doesn't show any signs of having demonic energy on him or inside of him, but he doesn't seem to have high levels of spirit energy either. In fact, the man actually show's signs of having a below average production of spirit energy, something rare among any man, be they human or monster. Yet for some strange reason all the priests and myself have felt a strong demonic like feeling coming from his body, yet at the same time it doesn't feel the same as demonic energy should. It's rather odd." He told them.
A single man who had survived an entire city being destroyed over night, the man in question appearing to be an average human with below average spirit energy production. He didn't have a single trace of demonic energy at all on him or inside of him, yet he had a strong demonic like feeling coming from him that felt different from demonic energy itself. It was something that did puzzle everyone at the meeting, a city wiped off the planet over night and a man who shouldn't have survived did, even giving off a demonic like energy yet didn't have any demonic energy at all. "The demonic feeling put me and the priests with unease, so we did do something hours ago that should prove if he truly has demonic energy or not..." Cornelo said, though in a rather low voice compared from the other times. "And just what was that?" Asked Amato, curious as to what a priest could have done after having tested the man with god only knew how many things.
"We've had a pair of rings made with gems from the demon realm capital for months, we planned to use them as a last resort to measure the level of demonic energy or spirit energy someone has. To be on the safe side, we placed both rings on the man, though a ring per hand. We'll be able to tell just how much spirit or demonic energy he has by the glow of the rings, the brighter they glow the more he has. It's been enough time for the rings to have an accurate grasp of either energy by now." Father Cornelo told everyone. With that, the gathered people left the room and went down to the dungeons, heading for the survivors room to see what the rings would say. To make certain nothing could get to him, they had placed him in one of the dungeon rooms with brick walls all around it and an iron door. Once they reached the iron door, Sir Garuda put his hand on the handle of the door and pulled it open slowly, though as he did a beam of light came out of the room until it was blinding them when the door was fully open. Father Cornelo was in shock, seeing the bright beam of light from inside the room coming out. "Dear god..... What is he?" He asked in awe.
---------------
''I hope you all enjoyed the prologue, next will come chapter one. Till then, farewell true believers!''
Spoiler: show
Hi once again true believers! It's been a long while since I updated this, but I had complications with my laptop but I'm certain I've found the problem to it; which is I need a new battery soon. Should have a new battery by the start of september, if not this will be the last update to my fanfic for a while. But onto the story! Without further ado, I give you chapter 1.
Chapter 1: A New World
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A cold, crisp breeze blew through the city as if death itself had rode into the giant modern city with the knowledge that someone would meet their untimely fate that stary night. The city itself was busy like usual, people going to clubs and resteurants, partiers and buissness workers just getting off the clock. It would seem the night was normal, but that was the night that a certain young man would have his future changed forever, some even calling it a work of fate itself. Holding onto the man's arm, a young woman with neon green hair was enjoying a night on the town with her boyfriend when a man came crashing into them as if hell itself was after him. "Watch where you're going jerk!" The woman yelled at the man as he kept running, a few seconds later having not one, but two groups of people running around them like they were chasing the devil himself out of town.
The man who was running as if a ghost was after him was Drake Blackwill, someone who had done what most people thought impossible; he'd managed to get just about every gang, crime organization, and outlaw in the city gunning for his head. Two groups of people chasing him were clear signs of that, given they were sent out along with many others that night to locate and kill him. Turning his head slightly back to see if he was gaining any lead on them, he saw the same dozen people still running towards him, after almost ten blocks of none stop running. His lungs were burning, his legs were feeling heavy and the only reason they hadn't caught him yet was solely because he was running for his life; plain and simple. Cursing under his breath, he knew someday that someone would try and kill him, but he sure as hell never thought so many people would be aiming for his head for the same thing.
"You can't run forever Blackwill! You gotta stop sometime and when ya do! Oh I'm crying just thinkin' bout what'll happen to you!!" Yelled one of the people chasing him. Drake had tried just about everything he knew to lose the people all but grow a pair of wings and fly away. Watching alleyway after alleyway pass him by as he ran, he'd thought a few times to try and lose them in an alleyway, but the thought of possibly running into a dead end was the only reason he hadn't yet. He could see a corner coming up and new that if he could pass it, he may be able to possibly duck into a building and pray to god they don't find him. Among the group of people chasing him, a few of them new the part of town they were in well and came up with a plan, splitting up into two groups. One kept chasing Drake and the other ran down an alleyway to try and cut him off on the other side. Without looking back, Drake pushed himself as hard as he could and turned the corner after what felt like minutes.
As he came around the corner, he saw the streets were almost completely empty save for a few people. The lights in the buildings were all off, meaning locked doors all around sadly. Figuring his ducking strategy was out, he planned to just keep on going and halfway down the street he saw some of the people who were chasing him come out from in front of him at the end of the street. He'd have came to a halt then and there from the surprise ambush, but instead he turned to the only place that was open and ran towards the railing at the other side of the street. Once at the railing, he had to come to a stop and turned quickly, breathing heavily as the two groups stopped running and took their time walking towards him slowly, catching their own breaths. "You really screwed yourself this time Blackwill. You've gotten a few of us arrested in the past, even busted up a drug shipment or two, but our bosses liked having you around because you actually stood up to them; gave them a challenge. But now they want you as dead as everyone else." the chilling words came from one of the men who ambushed him.
The people started to pull out weapons, some took out knives and guns, while others took out the classic brass knuckles. Among the group a woman with a revolver was learing at him, ready to put at end to him. "You should have quite while you were ahead Blackwill, but I guess if we could make you quite that easily the bosses would have had you killed a long time ago. But you really did it this time, putting five of our top drug trafficers in jail and giving evidience about one of our bosses to the cops; if nothing else, you've got balls and a lot of us can respect that. But this time, you're a dead man!" the woman spoke, almost a creepy joyus sound in each word she spoke. As the large group of people steadily came toward him with a massive killing intent coming from them, he knew he was looking at possibly the last faces he'd ever see. Backed up against the railing, he turned his head slightly to see the scenary behind him; which was the outline of the other half of the city, the river only inches away being the only thing that split the city in half from his view point.
Mind racing, blood pumping throughout his body at high speeds and heart pounding as if someone was already beating him in the chest, he was trying to think of a way out. He couldn't move to the sides or go forward, his killers would just catch him that way likely and kill him. The only thing left was what was behind him, namely the river. Drake wasn't the best of swimmers, but he could swim well enough to not drown. Possibly he could dive into the river and swim away from them, but depending on how fast the group was it might not matter. There was the possibility that they could jump in after him and drown him, try to shoot him even. But given he was backed into a corner of life or death, he wasn't picky on options at that moment.
After he realized he had managed to catch his breath from the ten block sprint, he gulped and jumped as high as he could backwards, not wanting to take his eyes of the people wanting him dead. "You're bosses all should be in jail, but getting one of them is better than none at all! Besides, they most really think I'm not that tough if they think I could get killed this easily. See ya later!" He said mockingly at them, seeing them starting to move forward as he went over the railing with his jump and was headed straight for the river. It was at that moment fate dealt Drake a hand that was in many ways, a blissing along with a curse. Behind him, only a foot away in the air, a strange light appeared and stopped the people coming after him. It was at that same moment he turned his head seeing the light and saw he was going straight for it. Drake wasn't what the light was, it was as if time itself stopped for that one moment as his life flashed before his eyes. The sounds of people yelling, gun shots and the like, none could be heard at that single point in time.
A bright flash came from the light that engulfed anyone within sight of it for only a few seconds. As the light slowly faded away and vanished, the people left there could only be struck with awe as they wondered what had happened and what the light was. In that same instant, Drake was hovering in the air, thinking he may have been dead. But within seconds, the realization that he was alive came into effect, but then why wasn't he feeling the cold embrace of the river? Opening his eyes slowly, what he saw made him question his very sanity. All around him he could see a rainbow of colors, going so far he could swear that the colors would never come to an end. What made him question sanity itself though was all the things around him; orbs. Thousands upon thousands of orbs were all over the place, though some he could see into looked like what most people see into a snowglobe. "Just where the hell..... am I?" He thought aloud, struck so massively with awe that the words just slipped from his mouth.
With what he could see, it was as if he was inside a movie, or was in a place right out from a cartoon or anime. Drake wasn't sure where he was or how he'd gotten there, but he was just glad he was alive and thankful for the moment that he'd managed to survive a brush with death. However that moment was shortly lived as he saw two of the thousands of orbs coming close together in front of him, thinking nothing of it as he could just push them aside. It was however that as he came closer to the two orbs, he realized that they were steadily growing bigger and bigger as time passed by. Trying to move away from them or even stop, Drake couldn't do anything but thrash around in the air as the two orbs became larger and larger the closer he came to them.
What he thought were two small orbs were slowly becoming to him nothing short of two small planets coming towards each other. The only thing he could do was to wait and pray that he wouldn't be killed by two planets. Once he was starting to get between the two's course, he could see them getting closer and was trying his best to speed himself up to get out of the way. But seconds passed by that felt like minutes to him as the two came closer, soon only a few feet away and he knew then and there that he was going to die. Seeing the end was near, he was giving a final prayer and awaited his time, however it wasn't his time just yet. When the two orbs were only inches away from touching, he was going towards the point they would touch and when the two touched, a large flash that left like a bolt of lighting came from it. At that very moment, he crashed into the two and instead of dying, some could say a much worse fate came upon him.
Pain so intense it could drive a person mad came over him, nothing coming out of his mouth but silent screams, unable to say anything. It was as if he was being pulled apart and at the same time, rebuilt. Drake could feel power, power so great he felt like he could do anything flowing into him but it was a power that consisted of two, feeling like polar opposites as they flowed into him and only increased the pain as the two forces battled over dominace over his body. Hours, it felt like nothing short of hours passed by from the intensity of the pain that being inflicked upon him. Yet only a minute passed and he was out of the clashing powers, feeling no pain what so ever oddly, but he was just happy he wasn't feeling that pain anymore. For a moment he grabbed all over his body to make certain he wasn't missing a body part or was alive, once that had been confirmed, he thanked god over and over, probably would have kept thanking him for years if he wasn't able to actually remember what he'd seen during that intense pain.
The images he saw were as if he had been split between complete different worlds. His left eye during that painful minute could only see a place that some might call heaven, not because it was in clouds or had angels flying around in it, it was just that amazingly beautiful. If he hadn't been in so much pain, he'd have actually enjoyed the sight. In contrast, his right eye saw a place that was dark and creepy looking, the very land itself giving off an intent for his blood to be spilled onto it. Drake wasn't sure what he could make of it all, but he was certain he knew what insanity felt like after that. Not knowing where he was, how he'd gotten there or even where 'there' was for that matter, he wasn't sure anymore if he was still even in reality.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a glimpse of something sparkling and turned to see if it was that same light that brought him there. With his head turned, he saw what sparkled and it was the light! Thinking he could get back to his home, he tried everything he could to get to the light, though it was tough since he was trying to basically perform the dog paddel in mid air. Though it seemed to be working if nothing else since he was getting closer to the light and after a few seconds stopped because he was starting to speed up rather fast. He discovers however that he only kept gaining speed, as it seemed he was being pulled towards the portal. If he wasn't trying to brace himself for possibly being thrown into cement going over thirty miles per hour, he'd have been throwing out every curse word in the book and then some.
Only inches away from the light, he braced for impact when he suddenly came to a complete stop, almost making him vomit from the sudden halt. He'd been pulled into some strange place, crashed into two small planets, went insane for a minute, possibly seen a glimpse of heaven and hell, and now was about to throw up his dinner. If anything else could happen to him after that....... he really hoped it wouldn't. Moment's later he was being pulled slowly into the light, this time however he didn't close his eyes and was greated by a group of men dressed up as...... priests? The men before him where easily five dozen if not more and all laughing and cheering for some reason. Then came in a man dressed in black robes, breathing heavily and looking in utter shock at Drake. "By the Gods! You FOOLS!! That spell was forbidden by the Cheif God for a reason!" Screamed the black robed man.
It was only seconds, but when they all turned back to face Drake, their faces changed from cheerful to in horror and then a giant blast of fire came crashing into all of them, escaping the room and turning all things in it's way into nothingness. At that moment, Drake could only hear himself screaming in his own mind at the horror, having seen five dozen or more people killed in front of him in an instant. People often said that fate was a cruel mistress, for Drake Blackwill, he would be forced to learn from then just how cruel fate truly was. Raising up like a bolt of lighting from the bed, Drake was covered in sweat and screaming hard enough to wake the dead up. It took him a few moments to figure out he was in a bed and covered in sweat, slowly calming down. After he had calmed himself down, he saw he was in a bed and put his hands over his face, rubbing his face to get the sweat off of it.
"Fuckin' hell..... ain't had a nightmare like that in years...." He breathed out in a shaky voice, still unable to put into words just how he felt after that nightmare. Turning in the bed, he pulled his legs out of bed and sat his feet atop the floor, a shiver running up his spine as he felt the cool touch of stone on his feet. Looking down, he saw a stone floor and knew he wasn't in his room at that point, spinning his head around the room to see where he was. From the looks of things, he was in a stone room, something that reminded him of both a kind of jail and a dungeon from an old castle. Not sure what the heck was going on, he got up and went over to the mirror in the room. Drake figured if he was in a place like that, someone may have drugged him and took him some place, so he was going to check to make sure he still had all his organs and hoped he wouldn't find a scar on his body.
Once he was in front of the mirror, he was in shock at what he saw. Instead of himself, he saw a man with long messy crimson hair, easily reaching down to the middle of his back, staring back at him. Grabbing at his head, he pulled his hair and saw the person in the mirror do the same and when he felt the pain from pulling, he knew he was looking at himself. Drake could have laughed honestly, since he was certain someone was playing a prank on him since somebody had to dye his hair red. Sighing, he figured that a few people must have been pulling a prank on him and sighed, deciding to check his body to see if they wrote anything on it. When he took his shirt off, he was about as shocked as anyone could get. The last time he'd seen his body; rather his stomach up to his neck, was normal looking, maybe a bit of fat on his stomach but nothing that bad. Now he had a six pack of abs, and muscular body and a scar that looked horrible running straight down from the bottom of his neck straight down the center of his body, vanishing into the raggy looking pants he was wearing.
If he had a scar like that on his body and it kept going even into the pants he wore, he honestly had a fear that his crotch might have been scared or worse..... electing a chill to run up his spine. Gulping down a heavy knot in his throat, he jerked his pants down and instead of looking down, just looked at the mirror partly out of fear of what he'd see. Once he took a glance down below his waist line, what he saw shocked him. Drake was given a shock not by a scar or even something missing, no he was shocked because of two things he could see clearly. The first was the fact that his lower body was just as muscular as his upper body was, making him wonder just how the heck his body had changed. What gave him his second shock however was his crotch, his manhood having been below average without blood going into it and now it was maybe half a foot long without blood going into it.
Strange things were afoot and Drake didn't have a single answer for anything; heck he couldn't form a question from all the shock's he'd been given so far. It was at that moment the sound of a door starting to open snapped him out of his shock endused daze and pulled his pants back up quickly. Not wanting anyone to see the scar on his body, he turned around to face the door and saw a man coming in as he was getting his shirt back on. He took note however while he was turning that he saw a glimpse of the same scar on his back, making sure to remember that for later. As he was finishing getting his clothes on, the man who'd came into the room was just smiling at him.
"I trust you aren't feeling bad are you young man?" The man asked Drake with a kind tone of voice. Since he wasn't feeling any wicked intent coming from the man, he simply shook his head, never taking a step near the strange man. Not sure where he was or how he even got there, the only thing's he could remember was what happened to him back at the river and everything up till those priests. "That's good to hear. Me and a few others were starting to get worried about you; not very often someone sleeps for a week straight you know." Was what the stranger said, which had Drake give a shocked look at him. He'd been asleep for a week!? It had only felt like he'd been out maybe a few hours, heck even a day at the most but a whole week? More things kept coming at Drake and he just kept getting more questions.
"Was I really asleep..... for a week?" He asked the stranger, not sure how to take the news. Giving a firm nod, the man was clearly going to stick with that and since he'd given Drake no reason to not trust him, he didn't have much a reason to think he was lying. Heaving a deep sigh, he slowly slide back against one of the cold stone walls of the room, coming to a halt once he sat down. "Since you were out for a week, I take it you're hungry right? I thought you might be, so I had a few things made up for you when the person in front of your door told me you woke up" Was what he heard the man say. Gesturing to whoever was outside, a few people came in and laid in front of him three trays with plates filled with food. Having learned how long he'd been out, his body was starting to slowly come to terms with it and hunger set in not a moment later when the fresh scent of warm food hit his nose.
Normally he wouldn't have eaten anything a stranger gave him, but he was slowly starting to get hungrier and hungrier, along with having noticed something of the man. He was wearing a black robe and had a white collar around his neck, resembling a priest from church. Taking the fact he was pretty sure a priest wouldn't poison someone's food, he started to dig into the food before him. Whoever had cooked the food did a remarkable job, he'd never eaten food that tasted so good before. Before an hour passed by, the three trays were empty and a stuffed Drake was leaning against the wall breathing out a light sigh, feeling like a turkey during thanksgiving.
Glancing over at the priest who was still there, he felt a bit embarrassed he hadn't offered him anything. "Sorry I didn't ask if you wanted some of the food, kinda got carried away." He said, apologizing for not having asked him. Shaking his head, the man, who likely was a very real priest, simply gave a warm smile. "It's fine, besides from the way you just ate, you needed the food more than me young man." Spoke the priest before the room fell silent for a few moments. After wondering what to say or do, he finally voiced a question of his. "I don't mean to seem rude or anything sir.... but how did I get here? The last thing I remember is a bunch of priests and then nothing." Drake said. While he wasn't telling the whole truth, he wasn't telling a lie either, wanting to leave the part about the blast thing out just in case.
Having seen the young man finally ask a question, the priest was more than happy to answer. "Well you see young man, a few soldiers had gotten a report of signs of an attack having been launched on a city and so, along with myself, a few squads of soldiers and a knight went to see about this report. When we reached the city, named Lagarge, we found nothing but what could all be called a crater where the city once was. We couldn't figure out what had happened but then a soldier spotted you coming out from behind a few trees. You were wounded rather badly and before we could get to you, you hit the ground. Since then you've been here asleep." The priest told him. Cocking a brow at that, Drake wasn't sure just how to make out what he'd been told. From the sound of things, he most have gotten away from those priests and traveled to that lagarge place, likely only missing being blown up with the city by a few seconds or minutes even. With the realization that he likely only missed being killed by mere moments, so far since that light at the river he'd had nothing short of crazy thrown at him.
Deciding to think about how close he'd been to death countless times later, he asked another question, one he would like know the answer to. "Well thank you for bringing me here sir, but just where is here if I may ask." Drake asked the man. Having known that question would come up before he likely left the room, the man was prepared for it. "You're in the dungeon of a castle young man. Since no one could figure out if you were possibly a part of Lagarge being destroyed or if you were the only survivor and knew something, we couldn't take any chances and put you in here to keep you safe." He stated matter a factly. From what Drake gathered from that answer, he was more or less a prisoner until he gave them answers to their own questions.
As if reading his mind, the man quickly spoke up. "However since you just told me all you could remember up till waking up in here, I believe you weren't apart of Lagarge's destruction and since you saw a group of priests last, you may not even be a survivor of the city since there are quite a few cities near it with churches." He said, giving Drake a sign of sorts that he wasn't a possible prisoner. With the most important of questions out of the way, Drake wasn't sure what he should do since he wasn't certain just where in the universe he was. "Forgive me young man, but with all of these questions and your meal, I forgot to introduce myself. I am Father Cornelo, head priest of a church just a few cities over from where we're at right now." He said, introducing himself. Seeing as how it would be rude to not at least give his name to Cornelo, he decided what the heck. "Name's Drake Blackwill, pleasure to meet you." He said in a rather neutral tone of sorts.
Silence set into the room for a brief moment before a guard came into the room and started to talk with Cornelo in whispers, which made him curious. Not long after, Cornelo gestured for the man to leave and did as such. Raising a brow, he would have asked what that had been about but couldn't even prepare to speak before Cornelo gave him an answer. "Since you've been in this room for a whole week, your body be rather stiff and likely you want to know about the city your in right now as well. That guard who came in a moment ago is going to get you a change of clothes since what you're wearing seems rather off putting. I trust I don't have to tell you that you shouldn't try to leave the city?" He said, all while having a smile on his face. So they were going to let him go looking around, but they were going to likely make certain he didn't leave the city. Well he couldn't complain, since by all means they could have just kept him locked in the room he was in.
After a few minutes passed by, the guard from before came back with a set of clothes and a pair of shoes. Placing them on the bed, the guard and Cornelo left the room, likely so he could get dressed in private. Between being able to see where he was at and possibly being able to learn something of where he'd landed, he took the chance he was given and stripped down to the nude, quickly putting on the clothes they brought him. With a white t-shirt and a pair of long pants, he seemed to look ok when he checked himself in the large mirror, though his hair was still rather messy. Taking a chance, he knocked on the door and it opened, walking out into the hallway he was greeted by a guard at the door. "Be back by sundown or I'll have to send people after you." was all he said before leaving.
Figuring he wasn't sure just how long he had, he went and got out of the castle as soon as he could, which took a while since it was a castle he was in after all. Once outside of it though, he was certain he wasn't in his world. All the buildings he could see didn't look like modern ones and there weren't any vehicals of any kind. Walking around the streets for a little bit, he had to admit if nothing else the place seemed a lot nicer than his world, also didn't have any chances of being ran over by cars to boot. Soon though he saw how far the sun was in the sky and figured he'd better go and find a library to see if he could learn anything.
Surprisingly enough it didn't take long to find one, it wasn't a big place, by the standards of libraries in his own world it was a normal sized one actually. Before he did anything else, he went and looked for history books, wanting to learn if nothing else just what kind of world he had been brought to. After locating and bringing a couple of books about histories ranging from the world, to a small island country named Zipangu, he started his reading. Reading about history wasn't something he enjoyed, but after he finished the last book he'd gotten, his neck couldn't be anymore stiff than it was. Possibly because of just how he'd gotten to that world, what he learned about it didn't give him much a shock. From what he could gather, the world he'd been brought to was like something out of an rpg game, consisnting of monsters and magic. His thoughts brought him to the idea of medival times mixed with dungeons and dragons, or possibly some fantasy tv show.
Peering out from the table he was seated at to a window, he saw the sun was still out enough that he likely had at least another hour to kill. Once he put the books back where he found them, he decided to look up about something he'd been hearing all across the city while he was looking around it, something called the 'Cheif God', which made him think of an indian cheif who could do godly things like make it rain or bring a dead person to life. Curious as to what the cheif god was, Drake looked around the library until he came across a few books on religion, namely about the cheif god herself and the other gods that were with her. Deciding it'd be in his best interest to know the religion of the people he was dealing with, he started to read the books. He'd only managed to get about halfway in one book that was just about the cheif when he saw the sun was slowly starting to set.
Knowing he had to return to that castle, he gave a sigh and put the books back up before leaving the library. Drake had spent his time wisely that day, he'd learn a good deal of the worlds history, well at least the history that was written in books, and got an understanding as to what the cheif god was. On his way back to the castle, he thought it over in his head about how similar the cheif god and the god he believed in were. Though there were a few difference's between them, namely the fact that the one he believed in was the only god while it would seem the cheif god's religion had her and a few other gods as well. To each their own he thought, since he didn't believe in forcing his own religion on others nor arguing about religions since it would only cause to much trouble.
Once he arrived at the castle, he spotted Cornelo waiting at the front of it with that same smile as before. "Glad to see you didn't try to run away. I hope you enjoyed the city Drake" He said, a cheerful tone in his voice. Giving a simple nod, he stopped, since he did want to learn more about the cheif god and Cornelo was a father of the church after all. "I was at the library most of the time. I'm not from here, so I was studying the history of this country and reading about the cheif god. I only got to about half of one of the books though with the cheif god, so I didn't get to read much about the religion. Since your a priest, do you think you could tell me about the cheif god and the other gods in her religion?" He asked, curious to know more about them. At the thought of being able to share the teachings of the chief gods to a new person, Cornelo smiled and nodded, gesturing him into the castle.
Instead of going back to the dungeon, they ended up going to the room Cornelo was staying in currently. There in the room, Drake took a seat in a chair as Cornelo sat on the bed, thinking of where to begin. Moment's passed before the priest decided to start with the chief god herself. "I've got a lot to tell young man, so you'd best be comfortable for a while. I'll begin with the chief god herself, seeing as she is the almighty creator of the world and us all. As I just said, the chief god is the almighty creator of the world and humans, giving us her divine protection from all evil. It is with her that we all shall be saved, for she loves all of humanity. To prove that very point, she has given her powers to many people and deemed them heroes, just so that they can fight against the evil monsters that evil itself created to destroy us." He said, sounding just like you'd expect a priest to sound like.
Taking his time to figure out which of the gods to speak of next, one came to his mind that would seem like it would fit Drake. "Then there is the goddess of war, Ares. She is a high ranking god that is worshipped manly by those who are warriors and love to fight. She blesses those who fight to improve themselves, to earn something or to protect someone. She doesn't however bless those who would fight to simply take the lives of others, seeing it as an evil act unbecoming of true warriors. However because she is a neutral god like others, she has both humans and monsters who worship her." he said, making a bit of a scrunching motion with his face. He wasn't certain, but Drake figured he didn't like the goddess of war because monsters worshipped her to and she didn't kill the monsters. Well he didn't really care, he made it a point to never get involved in fights that are about religion for many reasons.
After taking time to readjust himself, Cornelo went on to another god. "Now then, the next god in question would be one that many women actively worship, the goddess of love, Eros. She is a mid ranking god in the heavens who governs love. She believes that the love that living things direct at each other is beautiful, and often blesses couples of the opposite sex that are in love with eternal. Just as she does that however, she is rather stric about betrayal and other things that could destroy love. If one who worships her performs infidelity, namely cheats, she will curse them to be unable to be loved by anyone for all eternity. Just like Ares, she is a neutral god and as such, she also has monsters who worship her believe it or not. It's said that those who worship her who are in love will never have their bonds broken with their love as well." He said, informing him of the goddess of love's powers.
Drake was surprised if nothing else, honestly the last two gods seemed like one's he would be a believer of if he didn't already have a religion. For the next few hours until late into the night, he listened intently as father Cornelo spoke of the gods of his religion with passion and vigor. The following morning, Drake forced himself out of bed and slipped his clothes on. Doing the same as before, he knocked on the dungeon door and the guard let him out, saying to be back before sundown just like yesterday. Yawning, he was tired after only sleeping a few hours, but the lost sleep was well worth having learned about the religion of the country he was in and not just the religion, but that a great deal of the country itself held that religion as a state religion in many of it's states, though he was uncertain as to how many states they even had.
Going back to the library, he wasn't going to try and look up the number of states, but rather he was going to study about the monsters of the country and more so the world. It'd taken Drake almost fifteen minutes before he'd gotten to a table with a mountain of books, but he was determined to study about the monsters since he wasn't sure how he would even get back to his own world. It took him surprisingly only a few hours to go through the mountain of books, only because a lot of the monsters the had were ones that were told of in his world, though they were only written in stories, myths, and legends but he was happy he liked reading about them since it saved him possibly days of reading. Seeing most of the books they had on monsters he'd had at the table, it was safe for him to say that he'd pretty much studied about as much of the monsters as he could at that library. So after he placed the books back on the shelves, he thought of what he could do next.
It was at that moment that he spotted a rather fancy book out of the corner of his eye and went over to see what it was. After skimming the table of contents of the book, seemed it was a book about the heroes of the world. Figured, seeing as they had magic and monsters, naturally heroes would have to be there as well. Taking the book back to the table, he opened it up and started to read it. The book was actually very informative, telling the tales of heroes from the past, the most recent of heroes within the last few years and what they had been doing before the book came out only months ago. In that book he took notice of two things that he thought were important, the first being the hero who betrayed all of humanity and the next was the pages consisting of the fall of a nation called Lescatie.
From what he could make out of the hero who betrayed humanity, he turned against humans and joined the current demon lord of the monsters, a few things actually hinting it possibly having even married the demon lord. As for what he could tell from the pages about Lescatie, it wasn't much honestly. There wasn't anything about how the nation fell aside from it being an invasion during the night by a powerful demon who was possibly the demon lords daughter, along with all the names of the fallen heroes and soldiers stationed in Lescatie. Once he was done with the book, he gave a heavy sigh as it seemed to him that the monsters were just like they would be in a video game. But Drake knew one thing for certain from his own life; never judge a book by it's cover and until he came across one of those monsters, he wasn't going to think of them as being evil.
Time slipped by as the rest of the day was spent looking around the city and playing with some children he'd come across every now and then. To the surprise of the guards, Drake came back to the castle an hour before he could have, though they weren't complaining since that meant they could rest easy. Spending a few minutes looking around the castle's first floor, he'd soon managed to find Cornelo and was going to ask him about a few things consisting of the heroes he'd read about in the book, but was stopped when he heard a scream from above. Everyone turned and gazed upwards as they saw someone falling from the fourth floor of the castle. Before any of them new what had happened though, Drake had ran towards the falling person and jumped into the air to catch them, though he didn't realize at the time he'd jumped high enough to almost reach the second floor without using stairs.
During that short time, the only one to see what had happened was Cornelo and it was that very thing that made his idea for Drake worth the risk that would come with it. As the guards rushed over towards Drake and the person he'd caught, while standing up straight, he saw a woman looking up at him with her arms around his neck and a light tent of red across her cheeks. Setting her down onto her feet, the guards came over at that point and started to ask her if she was ok, had she been hurt. He could understand why they were asking all those things, she had just fallen from four stories high after all. It was then that the guards turned to Drake and stared at him, which made him wonder what he'd done to make them stare at him.
What he thought would be some kind screaming going on at him, was instead them praising him and some even patting him on the back. It was weird actually, he'd always been one for helping people but he'd never been given praise for it, let alone what was going on in front of him. "Drake, I don't think you realize just WHO you saved. Allow me to introduce to you, the first princess of Rosengrave and the next heir to the throne, Rias Rosengrave." Father Cornelo told him, which was the first actual thing that did shock Drake since he'd woken up in the dungeon. With magic, monsters and heroes all over the place, princesses shouldn't have something that surprised him, but he'd never thought about princesses being around at all. As the woman bowed with her legs bent, she smiled at him, the light redness never fading from her cheeks. "Thank you Drake, I'm in your debt." Rias told him in a polite, yet surprisingly cute, voice.
Not really sure just how to act since he'd never been in front of royalty before, he just smiled. "Your not in my debt, I saw you falling and ran to save you, anyone would do the same thing, princess or not" He said, rather forwardly. He'd managed to get a laugh out of the guards if nothing else, though he wasn't looking at her, Rias Rosengrave was actually looking down and blushing, not from how forward he spoke but from making it rather clear that he'd have saved her even if she wasn't a princess and didn't think about it as her owning him at all. Placing a hand atop Drake's shoulder, Cornelo pulled him away from the guards and started to walk him away from them, mostly to avoid the guards telling their bad jokes which he couldn't stand. Taking him back down to his room in the dungeon, Cornelo himself at first wasn't sure about his plan for Drake since it was a long shot with more than a few risks involved with it, but after seeing what he'd done when he saved the princess, he was more sure of his plan.
As he was getting settled for what was likely a long night before he'd go to sleep, Cornelo spoke up about something that surprised him. "Drake, do you want to leave this city?" He asked him. "Of course, I want to find a way back home and I can't do that stuck in a city." Drake told him, rather plainly but his point came across none the less. Smiling, Cornelo sat between side Drake on his bed. "Then I have a deal for you. We'll let you go anywhere you want, but you must come back here in a year. Now if you find a way back to your home, then you won't have to come back here, but otherwise you have one year. Do we have a deal?" Asked the priest, extending his hand to seal the deal. Drake firstly had to admit, he wasn't sure what was up with the deal or what Cornelo himself would get out of it, but it was one of those deals that nobody could pass up. If he managed to get back home he wouldn't have to come back and even if he did end up having to come back, he'd at least have seen the world he was currently in and know what to expect. Figuring he wasn't likely to get the deal again and god only knew how long he'd be stuck in that dungeon, so taking Cornelo's hand, they shook on it and the deal was made.
For the next five days he spent most of his time at the city library or looking around the town. He would at times pass by Rias and have a short conversation with her, which she herself would always start for some reason or another. Time went by rather fast for Drake honestly, but when the day came that he could leave the city, Cornelo gave him a pouch filled with coins. "A hundred coins, that should start you off nicely since we found you without any money on you at all. Before I forget, we also found this on you as well, I've been meaning to give it to you but I never see you long enough to give it to you." He told him, taking an earing out of his pocket and handed it over to Drake. Looking at it, Drake had actually forgotten all about the earing since he'd came to that world, for clear reasons to.
Putting it back onto his right ear, he was happy to have it back. The earing was a cross, which actually looked alot like the crosses that were in books about the chief gods religion. Thanking him, Drake started out of the castle, while also saying his farewells to the guards as he had come to like them, though after one night of being invited to play cards with them, they'd forbidden him from ever coming to card games ever again. Once he was on the city streets, he glanced back at the castle and saw from a high window that the princess was looking down and waving, smiling he waved back in return. Before he left the city Drake figured that he would need to buy a weapon, since monsters were real in that world and he may have not seen any, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
Before that though, he wanted to get some new clothes since wearing a pair of pants and a t-shirt all the time was getting a bit boring. Walking for a few minutes, he arrived at a tailor's shop and went in, being greeted by a nice young woman. Looking around the shop, Drake was rather surprised at how many things of clothing they had, more so at how a few of them actually looked. After picking out a few things, he went over to the woman who greeted him and asked if there was a place he could try the clothes on at. Within seconds he was inside of a changing room and was trying the clothes on, though the belt was giving him trouble.
Finished with the clothes, he stepped out of the room and walked in front of a mirror to see how he looked. Drake thought he looked pretty good, with a short sleeved red t-shirt and a black jacket that reached to his waist with a kind of fire like symbol on the back. With a nice pair of black pants and boots, he looked rather nice. The only thing that seemed out of place on him was the belt he'd found, which had large pouches between the loops on the pants where the belt went. Coming over to him, the woman smiled and said he looked nice, though she'd rarely seen anyone get the kind of belt he wore. After he asked about the belt, it seemed that only mages really got that kind of belt and since it was rare for anyone in that city to be a mage, they rarely sold those belts.
Once he paid for the clothes, he added up what he had left of the money and figured he'd spent half of all the money just on the clothes alone. Heaving a heavy sigh, he was going to have to ask for prices on things when he bought something next time from a shop. While walking towards the south exit of the city, he came across a small shop that sold items and after thinking for a second, decided to go in and try to buy a bag since he likely would need one at some point. Looking around inside the shop, he found a rather nice bag that he could put over his shoulder and would go across his body, it wasn't that big but not that small and after asking the price, found it wasn't that bad of a deal either. Taking a thought, he went around the shop for a second trip before coming back with three notebooks and a few pencils, since if he did get back to his own world he could always write a book about his time in that world and possibly get rich from it.
Paying ten coins for the bag and stuff, he left the shop and put the coin pouch into the bag. Seeing as he still had a good deal of money left, he figured he could go and get a decent weapon before leaving and possibly have some money left over. With those thoughts in his head, he couldn't help but wonder what kind of weapon he should get, though he was struck out of his day dreaming by a loud scream. Upon hearing the scream, Drake ran towards where it had come from and saw a few people running away in the opposite direction, making him wonder what had happened. Once he reached where the scream had came from, he noticed two things.
The first was that the south exit wasn't that far away, so he at least now knew where the exit was so he wouldn't have to waste any time in finding it. The second thing he noticed were two women that looked rather...... odd to say the least. One of the girls was wearing a green leotard over her body, with what possibly were leg guards located just below her waist in the form of what looked like a large reptials foot. What caught his attention about her though was the fact she had lizard like hands and feet, seemed to have what was likely ears in reptial form and...... a long green tail? It was something weird to say the least, though her friend on his right was actually more weird looking then she was.
Having light red skin and red shoulder and leg guards, she looked a bit off for a woman. Such a thing was only made more clear by the fact she had lizard like hands and feet as well, though they were red instead of green like her friends were. Also unlike her friend, instead of a leotard the red skinned girl was wearing what seemed to be..... a bikini? To just top it all off, she even had a tail just like the other one, though her's was red just like her scaly hands and feet, but hers was..... on fire!? Rubbing his eyes, he looked at that tail again and saw the flame's on it were still there, which meant either he was seeing things or something was just wrong.
"Can't believe we ended up in one of those anti-mamono cities. This is the last time I let you lead us anywhere Flare, I mean of all the places, you had to lead us to one of the places that have people who actively hate our kind and would send an army just to kill the two of us!" Said the green wearing girl, a clear tone of anger in her voice as she glared at the red skinned woman, who's name was Flare it would seem. Rubbing the back of her head, she could only try and chuckle at what she'd gotten them into. "Well look on the bright side Emma, we might be able to find strong husbands here! Wouldn't it be great to go back home and show our parents we got strong, powerful husbands!!" She said in a passionate way, almost as if fire itself could be seen blazing in her eyes. Cocking a brow at what he was seeing, he gently eased himself over to the only person that hadn't either ran or hid inside a building with the doors locked.
"Say, just what is going on here? Who are those two girls and why do they..... look so weird?" Drake whispered over towards the man, having learned from his years that if you were to say anything that might sound rude to a woman, to do it in a low voice so they couldn't hear it. As the man's head shot up to see Drake, instead of answering him, he saw his earing with the cross and almost cried with joy, which both surprised and weirded him out. "A soldier! Oh thank the gods! Please, you most deal with those monsters, or they'll take us away and eat our flesh!" the man cried out, though from behind the counter he was hiding behind. Turning his gaze back at the two women, who thanks to the man speaking so loudly were staring in his direction, he felt a tad embarrassed. Having seen them both twice now, they did look weird if nothing else, but he wouldn't call them monsters.
"Umm, I'm sorry but could you two please leave? These people seem to be scared of you two, I don't know why, but they are. So could you two please leave?" He said, feeling embarrassed that he was having to ask two people he didn't even know to leave the city. As the two just kept looking at him, after a minute of awkward silence, the leotard wearing girl, who was called Emma, stepped forward. "That man called you a soldier right? Does that mean you're a warrior Sir" She asked him, with a bit of a hard look directed at him. While he wasn't a soldier or anything like that, he did study martial arts and kendo when he was in his world, so they could call him a warrior of sorts. Giving a nod, it was right after his head lifted up that he saw Emma pointing a sword at him with a smile on her face. "Then I challenge you to a duel!" She said, a fire of passion blazing in her eyes.
Seeing as he wasn't certain what to do, he would have declined her offer had he not thought of an idea that would work for everyone, both the people and the girls. "Ok then, but I have one condition for you. If I take you both on in a one on one fight and beat you, you have to leave the city, agreed?" He said, seeing as the condition wasn't really that bad, he hoped they would accept it. Raising a brow, Emma the lizardman was about to accept the deal when her passionate friend Flare jumped into the conversation as if it was nothing at all to do. "Deal!" Flare shouted from beside Emma, which made her ear ring from a few moments thanks to her friend. If she hadn't already decided to agree to the offer, she'd have hit the salamander over the head with her scaley hand, but since he did offer to fight both of them she figured the poor girl couldn't control herself. Emma couldn't very well blame Flare either, it had been a long time since anyone did accept their challenge and even put forth a condition if they won, which meant the man in front of the pair had confidence in his skills and that made both of them happy.
Once the condition was accepted, he was ready to fight them, however he did have a slight problem with that. Having been on his way to look at weapons he could buy before he heard the scream, he never got to see any weapon shops so he didn't have any weapons. Scanning the streets, he was hoping that maybe someone around there sold weapons, which wasn't looking like the case until he looked past the two girls. Just a few feet away from them was a weapons shop believe it or not, something Drake could count up as just dumb luck on his part possibly. Putting his hands up, he told them to give him a minute and ran past the two towards the weapon shop and started to bang on the front door.
When not a soul came to the door, he said he was the one who was fighting the two in the street and needed a weapon, at which point the door was flung open and he was all but jerked into the shop so hard his feet left the ground. Who greeted him wasn't a large built man or even a man at all, it was a middle aged woman who didn't look middle aged aside from the gray hairs she was growing. Telling him her husband, the person who ran the shop, was out of town at the moment, she told him that if he could get rid of those two outside she'd give him any weapon he wanted from the shop for free. Drake wasn't about to take advantage of the woman, but once he saw the prices of some of the weapons, he wasn't about to decline her offer. Looking around the shop, his eyes came across a longsword, nothing special at all about it and by any standard, it was a normal longsword plain and simple.
Taking the sword, he thanked the woman and left the shop, running past the two yet again and stopped after a few feet. Facing Emma, he put his sword in front of him with both hands and concentrated right at her. Telling her he was ready, that was all she needed to hear as she leapt forward with her sword raised up for an attack. With the girl only a foot away from him, she brought her sword down and Drake dodged it easily by stepping to the side, which gave Emma a thrill as that meant she had a good opponent at last. However the reason Drake dodged the attack wasn't because of skill at all, to him he thought she was just slow, having focused totally on her when she moved and swung to hit him it looked as if she was in slow motion sort of.
Curving her sword, she swung towards his side and yet again Drake dodged her by jumping, though the jump itself surprised her and Drake. Drake had meant to jump so he could dodge her attack and since he wasn't the best jumper, he used all his force on it. Instead of jumping a foot or two into the air, he managed to jump into the air high enough to face a second story window which surprised Emma but both surprised and freaked Drake out. Landing a few feet away from Emma, Drake was looking at his feet and moving them around against the ground, though they felt normal to him. Not sure what was going on, he looked up just in time to see Emma bringing her sword down from a horizontal angle and back stepped out of the way.
While he was out of her range, he was trying to figure out just how he was able to jump so high and once he thought about it, realized he'd jumped that high before when he saved the princess from falling. He ran a few idea's through his head, none making much sense but one and the only one that did just seemed unlikely, but given he was in a different world, unlikely didn't seem very unlikely to him. Drake thought that maybe, just maybe the world he was in had a different gravity which would have explained how he could jump so high, or how Emma looked like she was going in slow motion. The theory was sound given that many planets, depending on their size, had different gravity so it could have been that. Either way, since he realized he was likely faster than the two girls, he could use that to his advantage and win without having to hurt them hopefully.
Once he stopped moving, he saw Emma charging at him with a heavy swing but, instead of moving around to dodge it, he stayed in the same place and moved his head out of the way as it went past him. For the next minute he did that same thing, moving either his head, a limb or just turning his body. Either way he never moved from the spot he was standing at, or at least not fully. Since he could jump higher and move faster from what he could tell, he wanted to test himself to see just how far he could go with how things were. With attack after attack dodged by him, Emma was getting both a thrill from how strong he must have been to be able to dodge all of her attacks like he'd been doing and frustrated, since she hadn't had such a tough fight since she sparred with her parents.
Bringing her sword above her head, she swung it down as fast and hard as she possibly could, which made the sword to any normal person look like a blur at that moment. However to Drake, who had watched her almost in slow motion the whole time, the sword had only started to go fast enough that it looked some what normal in terms of speed at last. Instead of dodging that attack however, while she was bringing her sword down at him, he pushed forward and slipped past the attack, leaning forward towards her side. Feeling something poking her, she instantly stopped her attack before she could move an inch further, looking down where she felt the poking sensation and her eyes grew wide with awe. Right at the front of her neck was the tip of Drake's longsword, poking at her flesh but not having drawn blood thanks to her stopping when she had.
Turning her head to face him, she couldn't help but look at him with her mouth agap, staring at the man who had beaten her without ever being hit once. Pulling himself, and his sword, back from the lizardman, Drake gave a small smile at her. "Thank's for the match, you were a good opponent." He told her, which both aggrevated her to no end and made her face flush with a light shade of red. Straighting herself, she kept her eyes on him and just felt confused by him. She couldn't hit him once, he dodged all of her attacks and never tried to hit her, to make it worse he could have finished her at the end and probably at any time during the challenge. Even when she had match's with her parents she could still get in a few hits or make them have to attack, but the match with Drake was nothing short of being completely one-sided so badly it hurt.
Emma was aggrevated at him, but she also felt kind of happy as well since he said she was a good opponent, which meant that even if the match had been one-sided, he did see her skills and acknowledged those skills, along with her as a warrior. Her mother had always told her to find a strong man to become her husband and she knew, she just knew that she'd never find anyone as strong as Drake even if she tried for her whole life. Walking forward, she stopped when she was only a foot away from their bodies pressing against each other as she looked up at him, still a shade of red on her face. "You're very strong, the strongest person I've ever seen, so..... would you marry me?" She said, in a rather cute sounding voice that still had a hint of the passion she'd shown at the start of the match. Raising a brow at what he'd just heard, he wasn't sure if she was for real or not, but he wasn't looking to get married to somebody he didn't even know.
"No thanks. I'm not really looking to get married right now and I don't even know you, well aside from your name." He said, trying to sound as polite as he could given what he was dealing with. Looking down, the woman had been all but shot down, but she wasn't going to give up that easily. As she walked away from him and towards Flare, she was going to change his mind about marrying her even if it took years! Mean while as the salamander was getting ready for her match with Drake, she watched Emma walking back towards her and gave her a hard slap on the back, which made the lizardman jump in surprise and scowled at the smiling salamander. "Cheer up! Once I win my match, we can just drag him home and show him just why he should marry us both. Sound good to you?" Flare asked, showing a toothy grin at her declaration of victory.
While Emma would love to have just her and Drake, she was more than happy to share him between the two of them, not to mention the thought of them being pregnant at the same time did make her rather giddy. The grin never leaving her face, the hot blooded salamander walked up to Drake and got ready to fight, holding her sword in one hand while her tail started to burn hotly from thinking of how good a fight she would have. Flare had never once seen anyone beat Emma aside from her own parents and Flare herself a few times, but the guy they were fighting beat her without being touched once. Just the thought of a man that strong fighting her made her tail ignite into a blazing tower of fire, twice the normal size of her usual fire when starting a fight. Placing his sword in front of his body, such a passionate woman in front of him would have probably disliked him dodging her all the time so he wasn't going to dodge her.
Flare made the first move, rushing in to attack by bringing her sword above her head and ready to swing it down with all her might at him. Seeing as he wasn't going to dodge her, Drake instead went for an attack that without his new physical abilities he would likely have never done so quickly in a fight. Dashing forward, he held the longsword in both hands until he was close to Flare, her sword starting to be swung down at that point. Letting go of the sword with his right hand, he pushed it upwards while bending his wrist, aiming for Flare's own wrist. At that same moment, he was turning the sword horizontally and was bringing it up to her neck. Once his wrist hit hers, he forced the hand she held her sword in to bend upwards, causing her grip to loosen and with the power she'd put behind that swing, sent the sword flying from her hand into the ground at least a foot deep.
Looking down, Flare couldn't believe her eyes and if the look on Emma's face was any clearer, neither could she. In one move Drake had disarmed Flare and had her life in his hands, it was in that one move that she realized even if she had tried to fight back, as she was then, she hadn't a prayer of winning. Staring at him, as if in a daze, the salamander wasn't even sure if she could call him her most worthy simply from how one-sided the fight had been. The confusion however didn't stop her tail from burning hotly and never going down once in flames, instead only growing. "So, I take it this is my win?" Drake asked, smiling a bit at Flare. Her face flushing hotly, she simply gave a nod and went to get her sword back, that being the first time she'd had mixed feelings about anything aside from what kind of meat to eat first.
Once she'd gotten her sword, she went back over to Drake and just from seeing his face, her chest throbbed with lust as her whole body was burning up with a need. "I love you so please marry me!!" Shouted Flare, which in turn made Drake jump back a bit just from the sudden shouting. Realizing only seconds later what she had actually shouted, he was red in the face by it. Not only one, but two women asked him to marry them in less than an hour? Either the women in that world were very easy, or love at first sight was very common. In either case, he declined her, giving her the same speech he'd given to Emma only minutes earlier.
Pouting at the declined proposal, the saddened girl went back over to Emma, her tail lower than it was before. "We've got to get him! A guy that strong is rare, even our dads aren't that strong. Emma, we'll follow him till he agrees to marry us even if it means spending our lives trying!!" Flare declared proudly, though in a hushed voice since she didn't want anyone to overhear her for once. Giving a firm nod, Emma was more than in agreement with Flare. Turning her head, Emma looked back at Drake and had thoughts of what strong children they would have one day, but until then she would try her best to get him to change his mind about marriage. "As promised, we'll leave the city. But you haven't heard the last of us!" She told him, the two women starting off towards the southern exit of the city.
Having gotten rid of the two girls, at least for the moment, Drake had to wonder just what in the hell he'd gotten himself into. As those thoughts were going through his mind, the people were coming out of the buildings and cheering for him, a few running up to him and saying he was brave or what'd done was amazing. While he didn't think he'd done anything amazing, since his body seemed to be a lot stronger and faster if he'd been watching the fights from the side from before having gotten to the world, it probably would have looked amazing. Getting away from the small group of people around him, he went to the weapons shop to return the longsword but the woman told him to keep it, a sort of reward for driving those monsters away. That was the one thing he didn't get about the people, why they kept calling those two girls monsters.
While they both did look weird, he wouldn't go as far as to call them monsters, but they may have done something in the past to make people think of them as monsters. Either way, he couldn't do much about it so he left the thought alone for the time being and decided to look around the shop. Getting the longswords sheath, he decided to get another longsword since he liked the feel of them and was going to end with those two until a large sword caught his eye. Going over towards the far corner of the shop, he found what possibly was the largest sword he'd ever seen in his life. The blade itself was easily two feet wide and four feet tall, leaving the rough stone handle to add another foot onto it. The guard of the sword looked rather normal compared to the rest of the sword, with the ends pointed and going out from the sword about an inch.
Wondering what could be taking him, the shop owners wife looked around and saw Drake in one of the back corners of the shop, realizing where he was she walked sted fast to him. Seeing his hand going for the sword, she grabbed it when it was only a few inches away from the sword and told him to not touch the sword. Upon asking why, she told "That sword is cursed. It's last two owners met with horrible deaths and the creator of that sword was said to have made a deal with a devil to make that sword stronger than any other. It's a cursed sword, so for your own sake don't touch it." She'd told him, a look of fear present in her eyes. Having heard that, the story instead of scaring him off did the opposite, as he reached forward and took the swords handle with a firm grip. Lifting it up, he held the giant sword in his hand and looked at it, grinning. "How much do you want for this?" He asked, not even looking at her.
She was in shock, not because he'd picked the sword up, but after hearing the story he actually wanted to buy that thing! Not sure what to say, the woman just couldn't believe anyone would want that sword aside from a mad man. "How much? After hearing that story, you actually want that sword?! You can have it for free, just don't ever bring it here again." She told him, shaking a bit at the thought of that cursed thing finally being out of their shop. As the two walked to the front of the store, Drake had placed the longswords each on a hip and the giant sword was strapped on his back, the leather holding it there going across from his left shoulder to right hip. When he asked how much the other longsword would be, she told him to just take it, since he would need all his money for his funeral when the sword claimed it's next victim. Drake believed in a lot of things, though curses weren't among those things.
Walking to the south exit, he was going to finally start his journey to find a way back home and during that time, see the new world he was apart of. Leaving the city, he was walking down a path in the large forest when he heard a twig snap hear by, but thought it was only an animal. Thanks to his long time of having to look over his shoulder back home however, his body turned instinctively and would have seen nothing but the forest. However, from the side of one of the near by trees, he saw a green scaly tail on the ground and remembered what Emma had said before leaving, realizing what she'd met. Sighing, he shook his head at having probably earned himself two stalkers that day. "If you two are going to follow me, might as well come out of hiding." He said aloud, which caused another twig to snap.
Next came a pair of familiar women coming out from behind a tree, both a bit red in the face. "We really suck at stealth don't we?" Flare asked Emma, at which point the young lizardman could only nod. Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Drake waited till the two were close enough and wasn't very sure how to go about the situation he was placed in because of those people back in the city. "So, were you two going to try and follow me in secret for a while or what?" He asked the both of them. Raising her head up with a tent of red still on her face, Emma gave a firm nod "We were going to follow you until we could figure out a way to get you to change your mind about marriage. We'll keep asking till the end of time" She stated matter of factly, like it was nothing short of a fact of life.
Realizing he really DID have a pair of stalkers on his rear, he couldn't just tell them to leave since they clearly wouldn't do that and he couldn't have them arrested since they could just say they were going to the same place he was. To say he was in a pickel was an understatement, but since he couldn't do anything short of losing them or killing them, the latter something he wasn't about to do, he figured out an idea. "Ok then, since you two clearly aren't going to leave me alone anytime this century, you can travel with me since I'm going to be traveling the world." He told them, then turned back around and started walking down the path. Drake figured that after a while, those two would hopefully get bored of following him and leave him alone, hopefully being the major key word in that idea.
As the two girls caught up to him straight away with big smiles on their faces, the three would never guess in all their lifetime the path they were walking on would lead them through hell itself and cause them to be key factors in the worlds future.
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Well now, a lot of things happened in just the first chapter! Drake was brought to a new world, learned about monsters, a new religion, and magic. From saving a princess too fighting a pair of beautiful lizard women and gaining a cursed sword, interesting guy ain't he? But the future is bright for these three and their journy! Or is it? Who can tell with fate. Till chapter 2, farewell True Believers!
Chapter 1: A New World
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A cold, crisp breeze blew through the city as if death itself had rode into the giant modern city with the knowledge that someone would meet their untimely fate that stary night. The city itself was busy like usual, people going to clubs and resteurants, partiers and buissness workers just getting off the clock. It would seem the night was normal, but that was the night that a certain young man would have his future changed forever, some even calling it a work of fate itself. Holding onto the man's arm, a young woman with neon green hair was enjoying a night on the town with her boyfriend when a man came crashing into them as if hell itself was after him. "Watch where you're going jerk!" The woman yelled at the man as he kept running, a few seconds later having not one, but two groups of people running around them like they were chasing the devil himself out of town.
The man who was running as if a ghost was after him was Drake Blackwill, someone who had done what most people thought impossible; he'd managed to get just about every gang, crime organization, and outlaw in the city gunning for his head. Two groups of people chasing him were clear signs of that, given they were sent out along with many others that night to locate and kill him. Turning his head slightly back to see if he was gaining any lead on them, he saw the same dozen people still running towards him, after almost ten blocks of none stop running. His lungs were burning, his legs were feeling heavy and the only reason they hadn't caught him yet was solely because he was running for his life; plain and simple. Cursing under his breath, he knew someday that someone would try and kill him, but he sure as hell never thought so many people would be aiming for his head for the same thing.
"You can't run forever Blackwill! You gotta stop sometime and when ya do! Oh I'm crying just thinkin' bout what'll happen to you!!" Yelled one of the people chasing him. Drake had tried just about everything he knew to lose the people all but grow a pair of wings and fly away. Watching alleyway after alleyway pass him by as he ran, he'd thought a few times to try and lose them in an alleyway, but the thought of possibly running into a dead end was the only reason he hadn't yet. He could see a corner coming up and new that if he could pass it, he may be able to possibly duck into a building and pray to god they don't find him. Among the group of people chasing him, a few of them new the part of town they were in well and came up with a plan, splitting up into two groups. One kept chasing Drake and the other ran down an alleyway to try and cut him off on the other side. Without looking back, Drake pushed himself as hard as he could and turned the corner after what felt like minutes.
As he came around the corner, he saw the streets were almost completely empty save for a few people. The lights in the buildings were all off, meaning locked doors all around sadly. Figuring his ducking strategy was out, he planned to just keep on going and halfway down the street he saw some of the people who were chasing him come out from in front of him at the end of the street. He'd have came to a halt then and there from the surprise ambush, but instead he turned to the only place that was open and ran towards the railing at the other side of the street. Once at the railing, he had to come to a stop and turned quickly, breathing heavily as the two groups stopped running and took their time walking towards him slowly, catching their own breaths. "You really screwed yourself this time Blackwill. You've gotten a few of us arrested in the past, even busted up a drug shipment or two, but our bosses liked having you around because you actually stood up to them; gave them a challenge. But now they want you as dead as everyone else." the chilling words came from one of the men who ambushed him.
The people started to pull out weapons, some took out knives and guns, while others took out the classic brass knuckles. Among the group a woman with a revolver was learing at him, ready to put at end to him. "You should have quite while you were ahead Blackwill, but I guess if we could make you quite that easily the bosses would have had you killed a long time ago. But you really did it this time, putting five of our top drug trafficers in jail and giving evidience about one of our bosses to the cops; if nothing else, you've got balls and a lot of us can respect that. But this time, you're a dead man!" the woman spoke, almost a creepy joyus sound in each word she spoke. As the large group of people steadily came toward him with a massive killing intent coming from them, he knew he was looking at possibly the last faces he'd ever see. Backed up against the railing, he turned his head slightly to see the scenary behind him; which was the outline of the other half of the city, the river only inches away being the only thing that split the city in half from his view point.
Mind racing, blood pumping throughout his body at high speeds and heart pounding as if someone was already beating him in the chest, he was trying to think of a way out. He couldn't move to the sides or go forward, his killers would just catch him that way likely and kill him. The only thing left was what was behind him, namely the river. Drake wasn't the best of swimmers, but he could swim well enough to not drown. Possibly he could dive into the river and swim away from them, but depending on how fast the group was it might not matter. There was the possibility that they could jump in after him and drown him, try to shoot him even. But given he was backed into a corner of life or death, he wasn't picky on options at that moment.
After he realized he had managed to catch his breath from the ten block sprint, he gulped and jumped as high as he could backwards, not wanting to take his eyes of the people wanting him dead. "You're bosses all should be in jail, but getting one of them is better than none at all! Besides, they most really think I'm not that tough if they think I could get killed this easily. See ya later!" He said mockingly at them, seeing them starting to move forward as he went over the railing with his jump and was headed straight for the river. It was at that moment fate dealt Drake a hand that was in many ways, a blissing along with a curse. Behind him, only a foot away in the air, a strange light appeared and stopped the people coming after him. It was at that same moment he turned his head seeing the light and saw he was going straight for it. Drake wasn't what the light was, it was as if time itself stopped for that one moment as his life flashed before his eyes. The sounds of people yelling, gun shots and the like, none could be heard at that single point in time.
A bright flash came from the light that engulfed anyone within sight of it for only a few seconds. As the light slowly faded away and vanished, the people left there could only be struck with awe as they wondered what had happened and what the light was. In that same instant, Drake was hovering in the air, thinking he may have been dead. But within seconds, the realization that he was alive came into effect, but then why wasn't he feeling the cold embrace of the river? Opening his eyes slowly, what he saw made him question his very sanity. All around him he could see a rainbow of colors, going so far he could swear that the colors would never come to an end. What made him question sanity itself though was all the things around him; orbs. Thousands upon thousands of orbs were all over the place, though some he could see into looked like what most people see into a snowglobe. "Just where the hell..... am I?" He thought aloud, struck so massively with awe that the words just slipped from his mouth.
With what he could see, it was as if he was inside a movie, or was in a place right out from a cartoon or anime. Drake wasn't sure where he was or how he'd gotten there, but he was just glad he was alive and thankful for the moment that he'd managed to survive a brush with death. However that moment was shortly lived as he saw two of the thousands of orbs coming close together in front of him, thinking nothing of it as he could just push them aside. It was however that as he came closer to the two orbs, he realized that they were steadily growing bigger and bigger as time passed by. Trying to move away from them or even stop, Drake couldn't do anything but thrash around in the air as the two orbs became larger and larger the closer he came to them.
What he thought were two small orbs were slowly becoming to him nothing short of two small planets coming towards each other. The only thing he could do was to wait and pray that he wouldn't be killed by two planets. Once he was starting to get between the two's course, he could see them getting closer and was trying his best to speed himself up to get out of the way. But seconds passed by that felt like minutes to him as the two came closer, soon only a few feet away and he knew then and there that he was going to die. Seeing the end was near, he was giving a final prayer and awaited his time, however it wasn't his time just yet. When the two orbs were only inches away from touching, he was going towards the point they would touch and when the two touched, a large flash that left like a bolt of lighting came from it. At that very moment, he crashed into the two and instead of dying, some could say a much worse fate came upon him.
Pain so intense it could drive a person mad came over him, nothing coming out of his mouth but silent screams, unable to say anything. It was as if he was being pulled apart and at the same time, rebuilt. Drake could feel power, power so great he felt like he could do anything flowing into him but it was a power that consisted of two, feeling like polar opposites as they flowed into him and only increased the pain as the two forces battled over dominace over his body. Hours, it felt like nothing short of hours passed by from the intensity of the pain that being inflicked upon him. Yet only a minute passed and he was out of the clashing powers, feeling no pain what so ever oddly, but he was just happy he wasn't feeling that pain anymore. For a moment he grabbed all over his body to make certain he wasn't missing a body part or was alive, once that had been confirmed, he thanked god over and over, probably would have kept thanking him for years if he wasn't able to actually remember what he'd seen during that intense pain.
The images he saw were as if he had been split between complete different worlds. His left eye during that painful minute could only see a place that some might call heaven, not because it was in clouds or had angels flying around in it, it was just that amazingly beautiful. If he hadn't been in so much pain, he'd have actually enjoyed the sight. In contrast, his right eye saw a place that was dark and creepy looking, the very land itself giving off an intent for his blood to be spilled onto it. Drake wasn't sure what he could make of it all, but he was certain he knew what insanity felt like after that. Not knowing where he was, how he'd gotten there or even where 'there' was for that matter, he wasn't sure anymore if he was still even in reality.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a glimpse of something sparkling and turned to see if it was that same light that brought him there. With his head turned, he saw what sparkled and it was the light! Thinking he could get back to his home, he tried everything he could to get to the light, though it was tough since he was trying to basically perform the dog paddel in mid air. Though it seemed to be working if nothing else since he was getting closer to the light and after a few seconds stopped because he was starting to speed up rather fast. He discovers however that he only kept gaining speed, as it seemed he was being pulled towards the portal. If he wasn't trying to brace himself for possibly being thrown into cement going over thirty miles per hour, he'd have been throwing out every curse word in the book and then some.
Only inches away from the light, he braced for impact when he suddenly came to a complete stop, almost making him vomit from the sudden halt. He'd been pulled into some strange place, crashed into two small planets, went insane for a minute, possibly seen a glimpse of heaven and hell, and now was about to throw up his dinner. If anything else could happen to him after that....... he really hoped it wouldn't. Moment's later he was being pulled slowly into the light, this time however he didn't close his eyes and was greated by a group of men dressed up as...... priests? The men before him where easily five dozen if not more and all laughing and cheering for some reason. Then came in a man dressed in black robes, breathing heavily and looking in utter shock at Drake. "By the Gods! You FOOLS!! That spell was forbidden by the Cheif God for a reason!" Screamed the black robed man.
It was only seconds, but when they all turned back to face Drake, their faces changed from cheerful to in horror and then a giant blast of fire came crashing into all of them, escaping the room and turning all things in it's way into nothingness. At that moment, Drake could only hear himself screaming in his own mind at the horror, having seen five dozen or more people killed in front of him in an instant. People often said that fate was a cruel mistress, for Drake Blackwill, he would be forced to learn from then just how cruel fate truly was. Raising up like a bolt of lighting from the bed, Drake was covered in sweat and screaming hard enough to wake the dead up. It took him a few moments to figure out he was in a bed and covered in sweat, slowly calming down. After he had calmed himself down, he saw he was in a bed and put his hands over his face, rubbing his face to get the sweat off of it.
"Fuckin' hell..... ain't had a nightmare like that in years...." He breathed out in a shaky voice, still unable to put into words just how he felt after that nightmare. Turning in the bed, he pulled his legs out of bed and sat his feet atop the floor, a shiver running up his spine as he felt the cool touch of stone on his feet. Looking down, he saw a stone floor and knew he wasn't in his room at that point, spinning his head around the room to see where he was. From the looks of things, he was in a stone room, something that reminded him of both a kind of jail and a dungeon from an old castle. Not sure what the heck was going on, he got up and went over to the mirror in the room. Drake figured if he was in a place like that, someone may have drugged him and took him some place, so he was going to check to make sure he still had all his organs and hoped he wouldn't find a scar on his body.
Once he was in front of the mirror, he was in shock at what he saw. Instead of himself, he saw a man with long messy crimson hair, easily reaching down to the middle of his back, staring back at him. Grabbing at his head, he pulled his hair and saw the person in the mirror do the same and when he felt the pain from pulling, he knew he was looking at himself. Drake could have laughed honestly, since he was certain someone was playing a prank on him since somebody had to dye his hair red. Sighing, he figured that a few people must have been pulling a prank on him and sighed, deciding to check his body to see if they wrote anything on it. When he took his shirt off, he was about as shocked as anyone could get. The last time he'd seen his body; rather his stomach up to his neck, was normal looking, maybe a bit of fat on his stomach but nothing that bad. Now he had a six pack of abs, and muscular body and a scar that looked horrible running straight down from the bottom of his neck straight down the center of his body, vanishing into the raggy looking pants he was wearing.
If he had a scar like that on his body and it kept going even into the pants he wore, he honestly had a fear that his crotch might have been scared or worse..... electing a chill to run up his spine. Gulping down a heavy knot in his throat, he jerked his pants down and instead of looking down, just looked at the mirror partly out of fear of what he'd see. Once he took a glance down below his waist line, what he saw shocked him. Drake was given a shock not by a scar or even something missing, no he was shocked because of two things he could see clearly. The first was the fact that his lower body was just as muscular as his upper body was, making him wonder just how the heck his body had changed. What gave him his second shock however was his crotch, his manhood having been below average without blood going into it and now it was maybe half a foot long without blood going into it.
Strange things were afoot and Drake didn't have a single answer for anything; heck he couldn't form a question from all the shock's he'd been given so far. It was at that moment the sound of a door starting to open snapped him out of his shock endused daze and pulled his pants back up quickly. Not wanting anyone to see the scar on his body, he turned around to face the door and saw a man coming in as he was getting his shirt back on. He took note however while he was turning that he saw a glimpse of the same scar on his back, making sure to remember that for later. As he was finishing getting his clothes on, the man who'd came into the room was just smiling at him.
"I trust you aren't feeling bad are you young man?" The man asked Drake with a kind tone of voice. Since he wasn't feeling any wicked intent coming from the man, he simply shook his head, never taking a step near the strange man. Not sure where he was or how he even got there, the only thing's he could remember was what happened to him back at the river and everything up till those priests. "That's good to hear. Me and a few others were starting to get worried about you; not very often someone sleeps for a week straight you know." Was what the stranger said, which had Drake give a shocked look at him. He'd been asleep for a week!? It had only felt like he'd been out maybe a few hours, heck even a day at the most but a whole week? More things kept coming at Drake and he just kept getting more questions.
"Was I really asleep..... for a week?" He asked the stranger, not sure how to take the news. Giving a firm nod, the man was clearly going to stick with that and since he'd given Drake no reason to not trust him, he didn't have much a reason to think he was lying. Heaving a deep sigh, he slowly slide back against one of the cold stone walls of the room, coming to a halt once he sat down. "Since you were out for a week, I take it you're hungry right? I thought you might be, so I had a few things made up for you when the person in front of your door told me you woke up" Was what he heard the man say. Gesturing to whoever was outside, a few people came in and laid in front of him three trays with plates filled with food. Having learned how long he'd been out, his body was starting to slowly come to terms with it and hunger set in not a moment later when the fresh scent of warm food hit his nose.
Normally he wouldn't have eaten anything a stranger gave him, but he was slowly starting to get hungrier and hungrier, along with having noticed something of the man. He was wearing a black robe and had a white collar around his neck, resembling a priest from church. Taking the fact he was pretty sure a priest wouldn't poison someone's food, he started to dig into the food before him. Whoever had cooked the food did a remarkable job, he'd never eaten food that tasted so good before. Before an hour passed by, the three trays were empty and a stuffed Drake was leaning against the wall breathing out a light sigh, feeling like a turkey during thanksgiving.
Glancing over at the priest who was still there, he felt a bit embarrassed he hadn't offered him anything. "Sorry I didn't ask if you wanted some of the food, kinda got carried away." He said, apologizing for not having asked him. Shaking his head, the man, who likely was a very real priest, simply gave a warm smile. "It's fine, besides from the way you just ate, you needed the food more than me young man." Spoke the priest before the room fell silent for a few moments. After wondering what to say or do, he finally voiced a question of his. "I don't mean to seem rude or anything sir.... but how did I get here? The last thing I remember is a bunch of priests and then nothing." Drake said. While he wasn't telling the whole truth, he wasn't telling a lie either, wanting to leave the part about the blast thing out just in case.
Having seen the young man finally ask a question, the priest was more than happy to answer. "Well you see young man, a few soldiers had gotten a report of signs of an attack having been launched on a city and so, along with myself, a few squads of soldiers and a knight went to see about this report. When we reached the city, named Lagarge, we found nothing but what could all be called a crater where the city once was. We couldn't figure out what had happened but then a soldier spotted you coming out from behind a few trees. You were wounded rather badly and before we could get to you, you hit the ground. Since then you've been here asleep." The priest told him. Cocking a brow at that, Drake wasn't sure just how to make out what he'd been told. From the sound of things, he most have gotten away from those priests and traveled to that lagarge place, likely only missing being blown up with the city by a few seconds or minutes even. With the realization that he likely only missed being killed by mere moments, so far since that light at the river he'd had nothing short of crazy thrown at him.
Deciding to think about how close he'd been to death countless times later, he asked another question, one he would like know the answer to. "Well thank you for bringing me here sir, but just where is here if I may ask." Drake asked the man. Having known that question would come up before he likely left the room, the man was prepared for it. "You're in the dungeon of a castle young man. Since no one could figure out if you were possibly a part of Lagarge being destroyed or if you were the only survivor and knew something, we couldn't take any chances and put you in here to keep you safe." He stated matter a factly. From what Drake gathered from that answer, he was more or less a prisoner until he gave them answers to their own questions.
As if reading his mind, the man quickly spoke up. "However since you just told me all you could remember up till waking up in here, I believe you weren't apart of Lagarge's destruction and since you saw a group of priests last, you may not even be a survivor of the city since there are quite a few cities near it with churches." He said, giving Drake a sign of sorts that he wasn't a possible prisoner. With the most important of questions out of the way, Drake wasn't sure what he should do since he wasn't certain just where in the universe he was. "Forgive me young man, but with all of these questions and your meal, I forgot to introduce myself. I am Father Cornelo, head priest of a church just a few cities over from where we're at right now." He said, introducing himself. Seeing as how it would be rude to not at least give his name to Cornelo, he decided what the heck. "Name's Drake Blackwill, pleasure to meet you." He said in a rather neutral tone of sorts.
Silence set into the room for a brief moment before a guard came into the room and started to talk with Cornelo in whispers, which made him curious. Not long after, Cornelo gestured for the man to leave and did as such. Raising a brow, he would have asked what that had been about but couldn't even prepare to speak before Cornelo gave him an answer. "Since you've been in this room for a whole week, your body be rather stiff and likely you want to know about the city your in right now as well. That guard who came in a moment ago is going to get you a change of clothes since what you're wearing seems rather off putting. I trust I don't have to tell you that you shouldn't try to leave the city?" He said, all while having a smile on his face. So they were going to let him go looking around, but they were going to likely make certain he didn't leave the city. Well he couldn't complain, since by all means they could have just kept him locked in the room he was in.
After a few minutes passed by, the guard from before came back with a set of clothes and a pair of shoes. Placing them on the bed, the guard and Cornelo left the room, likely so he could get dressed in private. Between being able to see where he was at and possibly being able to learn something of where he'd landed, he took the chance he was given and stripped down to the nude, quickly putting on the clothes they brought him. With a white t-shirt and a pair of long pants, he seemed to look ok when he checked himself in the large mirror, though his hair was still rather messy. Taking a chance, he knocked on the door and it opened, walking out into the hallway he was greeted by a guard at the door. "Be back by sundown or I'll have to send people after you." was all he said before leaving.
Figuring he wasn't sure just how long he had, he went and got out of the castle as soon as he could, which took a while since it was a castle he was in after all. Once outside of it though, he was certain he wasn't in his world. All the buildings he could see didn't look like modern ones and there weren't any vehicals of any kind. Walking around the streets for a little bit, he had to admit if nothing else the place seemed a lot nicer than his world, also didn't have any chances of being ran over by cars to boot. Soon though he saw how far the sun was in the sky and figured he'd better go and find a library to see if he could learn anything.
Surprisingly enough it didn't take long to find one, it wasn't a big place, by the standards of libraries in his own world it was a normal sized one actually. Before he did anything else, he went and looked for history books, wanting to learn if nothing else just what kind of world he had been brought to. After locating and bringing a couple of books about histories ranging from the world, to a small island country named Zipangu, he started his reading. Reading about history wasn't something he enjoyed, but after he finished the last book he'd gotten, his neck couldn't be anymore stiff than it was. Possibly because of just how he'd gotten to that world, what he learned about it didn't give him much a shock. From what he could gather, the world he'd been brought to was like something out of an rpg game, consisnting of monsters and magic. His thoughts brought him to the idea of medival times mixed with dungeons and dragons, or possibly some fantasy tv show.
Peering out from the table he was seated at to a window, he saw the sun was still out enough that he likely had at least another hour to kill. Once he put the books back where he found them, he decided to look up about something he'd been hearing all across the city while he was looking around it, something called the 'Cheif God', which made him think of an indian cheif who could do godly things like make it rain or bring a dead person to life. Curious as to what the cheif god was, Drake looked around the library until he came across a few books on religion, namely about the cheif god herself and the other gods that were with her. Deciding it'd be in his best interest to know the religion of the people he was dealing with, he started to read the books. He'd only managed to get about halfway in one book that was just about the cheif when he saw the sun was slowly starting to set.
Knowing he had to return to that castle, he gave a sigh and put the books back up before leaving the library. Drake had spent his time wisely that day, he'd learn a good deal of the worlds history, well at least the history that was written in books, and got an understanding as to what the cheif god was. On his way back to the castle, he thought it over in his head about how similar the cheif god and the god he believed in were. Though there were a few difference's between them, namely the fact that the one he believed in was the only god while it would seem the cheif god's religion had her and a few other gods as well. To each their own he thought, since he didn't believe in forcing his own religion on others nor arguing about religions since it would only cause to much trouble.
Once he arrived at the castle, he spotted Cornelo waiting at the front of it with that same smile as before. "Glad to see you didn't try to run away. I hope you enjoyed the city Drake" He said, a cheerful tone in his voice. Giving a simple nod, he stopped, since he did want to learn more about the cheif god and Cornelo was a father of the church after all. "I was at the library most of the time. I'm not from here, so I was studying the history of this country and reading about the cheif god. I only got to about half of one of the books though with the cheif god, so I didn't get to read much about the religion. Since your a priest, do you think you could tell me about the cheif god and the other gods in her religion?" He asked, curious to know more about them. At the thought of being able to share the teachings of the chief gods to a new person, Cornelo smiled and nodded, gesturing him into the castle.
Instead of going back to the dungeon, they ended up going to the room Cornelo was staying in currently. There in the room, Drake took a seat in a chair as Cornelo sat on the bed, thinking of where to begin. Moment's passed before the priest decided to start with the chief god herself. "I've got a lot to tell young man, so you'd best be comfortable for a while. I'll begin with the chief god herself, seeing as she is the almighty creator of the world and us all. As I just said, the chief god is the almighty creator of the world and humans, giving us her divine protection from all evil. It is with her that we all shall be saved, for she loves all of humanity. To prove that very point, she has given her powers to many people and deemed them heroes, just so that they can fight against the evil monsters that evil itself created to destroy us." He said, sounding just like you'd expect a priest to sound like.
Taking his time to figure out which of the gods to speak of next, one came to his mind that would seem like it would fit Drake. "Then there is the goddess of war, Ares. She is a high ranking god that is worshipped manly by those who are warriors and love to fight. She blesses those who fight to improve themselves, to earn something or to protect someone. She doesn't however bless those who would fight to simply take the lives of others, seeing it as an evil act unbecoming of true warriors. However because she is a neutral god like others, she has both humans and monsters who worship her." he said, making a bit of a scrunching motion with his face. He wasn't certain, but Drake figured he didn't like the goddess of war because monsters worshipped her to and she didn't kill the monsters. Well he didn't really care, he made it a point to never get involved in fights that are about religion for many reasons.
After taking time to readjust himself, Cornelo went on to another god. "Now then, the next god in question would be one that many women actively worship, the goddess of love, Eros. She is a mid ranking god in the heavens who governs love. She believes that the love that living things direct at each other is beautiful, and often blesses couples of the opposite sex that are in love with eternal. Just as she does that however, she is rather stric about betrayal and other things that could destroy love. If one who worships her performs infidelity, namely cheats, she will curse them to be unable to be loved by anyone for all eternity. Just like Ares, she is a neutral god and as such, she also has monsters who worship her believe it or not. It's said that those who worship her who are in love will never have their bonds broken with their love as well." He said, informing him of the goddess of love's powers.
Drake was surprised if nothing else, honestly the last two gods seemed like one's he would be a believer of if he didn't already have a religion. For the next few hours until late into the night, he listened intently as father Cornelo spoke of the gods of his religion with passion and vigor. The following morning, Drake forced himself out of bed and slipped his clothes on. Doing the same as before, he knocked on the dungeon door and the guard let him out, saying to be back before sundown just like yesterday. Yawning, he was tired after only sleeping a few hours, but the lost sleep was well worth having learned about the religion of the country he was in and not just the religion, but that a great deal of the country itself held that religion as a state religion in many of it's states, though he was uncertain as to how many states they even had.
Going back to the library, he wasn't going to try and look up the number of states, but rather he was going to study about the monsters of the country and more so the world. It'd taken Drake almost fifteen minutes before he'd gotten to a table with a mountain of books, but he was determined to study about the monsters since he wasn't sure how he would even get back to his own world. It took him surprisingly only a few hours to go through the mountain of books, only because a lot of the monsters the had were ones that were told of in his world, though they were only written in stories, myths, and legends but he was happy he liked reading about them since it saved him possibly days of reading. Seeing most of the books they had on monsters he'd had at the table, it was safe for him to say that he'd pretty much studied about as much of the monsters as he could at that library. So after he placed the books back on the shelves, he thought of what he could do next.
It was at that moment that he spotted a rather fancy book out of the corner of his eye and went over to see what it was. After skimming the table of contents of the book, seemed it was a book about the heroes of the world. Figured, seeing as they had magic and monsters, naturally heroes would have to be there as well. Taking the book back to the table, he opened it up and started to read it. The book was actually very informative, telling the tales of heroes from the past, the most recent of heroes within the last few years and what they had been doing before the book came out only months ago. In that book he took notice of two things that he thought were important, the first being the hero who betrayed all of humanity and the next was the pages consisting of the fall of a nation called Lescatie.
From what he could make out of the hero who betrayed humanity, he turned against humans and joined the current demon lord of the monsters, a few things actually hinting it possibly having even married the demon lord. As for what he could tell from the pages about Lescatie, it wasn't much honestly. There wasn't anything about how the nation fell aside from it being an invasion during the night by a powerful demon who was possibly the demon lords daughter, along with all the names of the fallen heroes and soldiers stationed in Lescatie. Once he was done with the book, he gave a heavy sigh as it seemed to him that the monsters were just like they would be in a video game. But Drake knew one thing for certain from his own life; never judge a book by it's cover and until he came across one of those monsters, he wasn't going to think of them as being evil.
Time slipped by as the rest of the day was spent looking around the city and playing with some children he'd come across every now and then. To the surprise of the guards, Drake came back to the castle an hour before he could have, though they weren't complaining since that meant they could rest easy. Spending a few minutes looking around the castle's first floor, he'd soon managed to find Cornelo and was going to ask him about a few things consisting of the heroes he'd read about in the book, but was stopped when he heard a scream from above. Everyone turned and gazed upwards as they saw someone falling from the fourth floor of the castle. Before any of them new what had happened though, Drake had ran towards the falling person and jumped into the air to catch them, though he didn't realize at the time he'd jumped high enough to almost reach the second floor without using stairs.
During that short time, the only one to see what had happened was Cornelo and it was that very thing that made his idea for Drake worth the risk that would come with it. As the guards rushed over towards Drake and the person he'd caught, while standing up straight, he saw a woman looking up at him with her arms around his neck and a light tent of red across her cheeks. Setting her down onto her feet, the guards came over at that point and started to ask her if she was ok, had she been hurt. He could understand why they were asking all those things, she had just fallen from four stories high after all. It was then that the guards turned to Drake and stared at him, which made him wonder what he'd done to make them stare at him.
What he thought would be some kind screaming going on at him, was instead them praising him and some even patting him on the back. It was weird actually, he'd always been one for helping people but he'd never been given praise for it, let alone what was going on in front of him. "Drake, I don't think you realize just WHO you saved. Allow me to introduce to you, the first princess of Rosengrave and the next heir to the throne, Rias Rosengrave." Father Cornelo told him, which was the first actual thing that did shock Drake since he'd woken up in the dungeon. With magic, monsters and heroes all over the place, princesses shouldn't have something that surprised him, but he'd never thought about princesses being around at all. As the woman bowed with her legs bent, she smiled at him, the light redness never fading from her cheeks. "Thank you Drake, I'm in your debt." Rias told him in a polite, yet surprisingly cute, voice.
Not really sure just how to act since he'd never been in front of royalty before, he just smiled. "Your not in my debt, I saw you falling and ran to save you, anyone would do the same thing, princess or not" He said, rather forwardly. He'd managed to get a laugh out of the guards if nothing else, though he wasn't looking at her, Rias Rosengrave was actually looking down and blushing, not from how forward he spoke but from making it rather clear that he'd have saved her even if she wasn't a princess and didn't think about it as her owning him at all. Placing a hand atop Drake's shoulder, Cornelo pulled him away from the guards and started to walk him away from them, mostly to avoid the guards telling their bad jokes which he couldn't stand. Taking him back down to his room in the dungeon, Cornelo himself at first wasn't sure about his plan for Drake since it was a long shot with more than a few risks involved with it, but after seeing what he'd done when he saved the princess, he was more sure of his plan.
As he was getting settled for what was likely a long night before he'd go to sleep, Cornelo spoke up about something that surprised him. "Drake, do you want to leave this city?" He asked him. "Of course, I want to find a way back home and I can't do that stuck in a city." Drake told him, rather plainly but his point came across none the less. Smiling, Cornelo sat between side Drake on his bed. "Then I have a deal for you. We'll let you go anywhere you want, but you must come back here in a year. Now if you find a way back to your home, then you won't have to come back here, but otherwise you have one year. Do we have a deal?" Asked the priest, extending his hand to seal the deal. Drake firstly had to admit, he wasn't sure what was up with the deal or what Cornelo himself would get out of it, but it was one of those deals that nobody could pass up. If he managed to get back home he wouldn't have to come back and even if he did end up having to come back, he'd at least have seen the world he was currently in and know what to expect. Figuring he wasn't likely to get the deal again and god only knew how long he'd be stuck in that dungeon, so taking Cornelo's hand, they shook on it and the deal was made.
For the next five days he spent most of his time at the city library or looking around the town. He would at times pass by Rias and have a short conversation with her, which she herself would always start for some reason or another. Time went by rather fast for Drake honestly, but when the day came that he could leave the city, Cornelo gave him a pouch filled with coins. "A hundred coins, that should start you off nicely since we found you without any money on you at all. Before I forget, we also found this on you as well, I've been meaning to give it to you but I never see you long enough to give it to you." He told him, taking an earing out of his pocket and handed it over to Drake. Looking at it, Drake had actually forgotten all about the earing since he'd came to that world, for clear reasons to.
Putting it back onto his right ear, he was happy to have it back. The earing was a cross, which actually looked alot like the crosses that were in books about the chief gods religion. Thanking him, Drake started out of the castle, while also saying his farewells to the guards as he had come to like them, though after one night of being invited to play cards with them, they'd forbidden him from ever coming to card games ever again. Once he was on the city streets, he glanced back at the castle and saw from a high window that the princess was looking down and waving, smiling he waved back in return. Before he left the city Drake figured that he would need to buy a weapon, since monsters were real in that world and he may have not seen any, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
Before that though, he wanted to get some new clothes since wearing a pair of pants and a t-shirt all the time was getting a bit boring. Walking for a few minutes, he arrived at a tailor's shop and went in, being greeted by a nice young woman. Looking around the shop, Drake was rather surprised at how many things of clothing they had, more so at how a few of them actually looked. After picking out a few things, he went over to the woman who greeted him and asked if there was a place he could try the clothes on at. Within seconds he was inside of a changing room and was trying the clothes on, though the belt was giving him trouble.
Finished with the clothes, he stepped out of the room and walked in front of a mirror to see how he looked. Drake thought he looked pretty good, with a short sleeved red t-shirt and a black jacket that reached to his waist with a kind of fire like symbol on the back. With a nice pair of black pants and boots, he looked rather nice. The only thing that seemed out of place on him was the belt he'd found, which had large pouches between the loops on the pants where the belt went. Coming over to him, the woman smiled and said he looked nice, though she'd rarely seen anyone get the kind of belt he wore. After he asked about the belt, it seemed that only mages really got that kind of belt and since it was rare for anyone in that city to be a mage, they rarely sold those belts.
Once he paid for the clothes, he added up what he had left of the money and figured he'd spent half of all the money just on the clothes alone. Heaving a heavy sigh, he was going to have to ask for prices on things when he bought something next time from a shop. While walking towards the south exit of the city, he came across a small shop that sold items and after thinking for a second, decided to go in and try to buy a bag since he likely would need one at some point. Looking around inside the shop, he found a rather nice bag that he could put over his shoulder and would go across his body, it wasn't that big but not that small and after asking the price, found it wasn't that bad of a deal either. Taking a thought, he went around the shop for a second trip before coming back with three notebooks and a few pencils, since if he did get back to his own world he could always write a book about his time in that world and possibly get rich from it.
Paying ten coins for the bag and stuff, he left the shop and put the coin pouch into the bag. Seeing as he still had a good deal of money left, he figured he could go and get a decent weapon before leaving and possibly have some money left over. With those thoughts in his head, he couldn't help but wonder what kind of weapon he should get, though he was struck out of his day dreaming by a loud scream. Upon hearing the scream, Drake ran towards where it had come from and saw a few people running away in the opposite direction, making him wonder what had happened. Once he reached where the scream had came from, he noticed two things.
The first was that the south exit wasn't that far away, so he at least now knew where the exit was so he wouldn't have to waste any time in finding it. The second thing he noticed were two women that looked rather...... odd to say the least. One of the girls was wearing a green leotard over her body, with what possibly were leg guards located just below her waist in the form of what looked like a large reptials foot. What caught his attention about her though was the fact she had lizard like hands and feet, seemed to have what was likely ears in reptial form and...... a long green tail? It was something weird to say the least, though her friend on his right was actually more weird looking then she was.
Having light red skin and red shoulder and leg guards, she looked a bit off for a woman. Such a thing was only made more clear by the fact she had lizard like hands and feet as well, though they were red instead of green like her friends were. Also unlike her friend, instead of a leotard the red skinned girl was wearing what seemed to be..... a bikini? To just top it all off, she even had a tail just like the other one, though her's was red just like her scaly hands and feet, but hers was..... on fire!? Rubbing his eyes, he looked at that tail again and saw the flame's on it were still there, which meant either he was seeing things or something was just wrong.
"Can't believe we ended up in one of those anti-mamono cities. This is the last time I let you lead us anywhere Flare, I mean of all the places, you had to lead us to one of the places that have people who actively hate our kind and would send an army just to kill the two of us!" Said the green wearing girl, a clear tone of anger in her voice as she glared at the red skinned woman, who's name was Flare it would seem. Rubbing the back of her head, she could only try and chuckle at what she'd gotten them into. "Well look on the bright side Emma, we might be able to find strong husbands here! Wouldn't it be great to go back home and show our parents we got strong, powerful husbands!!" She said in a passionate way, almost as if fire itself could be seen blazing in her eyes. Cocking a brow at what he was seeing, he gently eased himself over to the only person that hadn't either ran or hid inside a building with the doors locked.
"Say, just what is going on here? Who are those two girls and why do they..... look so weird?" Drake whispered over towards the man, having learned from his years that if you were to say anything that might sound rude to a woman, to do it in a low voice so they couldn't hear it. As the man's head shot up to see Drake, instead of answering him, he saw his earing with the cross and almost cried with joy, which both surprised and weirded him out. "A soldier! Oh thank the gods! Please, you most deal with those monsters, or they'll take us away and eat our flesh!" the man cried out, though from behind the counter he was hiding behind. Turning his gaze back at the two women, who thanks to the man speaking so loudly were staring in his direction, he felt a tad embarrassed. Having seen them both twice now, they did look weird if nothing else, but he wouldn't call them monsters.
"Umm, I'm sorry but could you two please leave? These people seem to be scared of you two, I don't know why, but they are. So could you two please leave?" He said, feeling embarrassed that he was having to ask two people he didn't even know to leave the city. As the two just kept looking at him, after a minute of awkward silence, the leotard wearing girl, who was called Emma, stepped forward. "That man called you a soldier right? Does that mean you're a warrior Sir" She asked him, with a bit of a hard look directed at him. While he wasn't a soldier or anything like that, he did study martial arts and kendo when he was in his world, so they could call him a warrior of sorts. Giving a nod, it was right after his head lifted up that he saw Emma pointing a sword at him with a smile on her face. "Then I challenge you to a duel!" She said, a fire of passion blazing in her eyes.
Seeing as he wasn't certain what to do, he would have declined her offer had he not thought of an idea that would work for everyone, both the people and the girls. "Ok then, but I have one condition for you. If I take you both on in a one on one fight and beat you, you have to leave the city, agreed?" He said, seeing as the condition wasn't really that bad, he hoped they would accept it. Raising a brow, Emma the lizardman was about to accept the deal when her passionate friend Flare jumped into the conversation as if it was nothing at all to do. "Deal!" Flare shouted from beside Emma, which made her ear ring from a few moments thanks to her friend. If she hadn't already decided to agree to the offer, she'd have hit the salamander over the head with her scaley hand, but since he did offer to fight both of them she figured the poor girl couldn't control herself. Emma couldn't very well blame Flare either, it had been a long time since anyone did accept their challenge and even put forth a condition if they won, which meant the man in front of the pair had confidence in his skills and that made both of them happy.
Once the condition was accepted, he was ready to fight them, however he did have a slight problem with that. Having been on his way to look at weapons he could buy before he heard the scream, he never got to see any weapon shops so he didn't have any weapons. Scanning the streets, he was hoping that maybe someone around there sold weapons, which wasn't looking like the case until he looked past the two girls. Just a few feet away from them was a weapons shop believe it or not, something Drake could count up as just dumb luck on his part possibly. Putting his hands up, he told them to give him a minute and ran past the two towards the weapon shop and started to bang on the front door.
When not a soul came to the door, he said he was the one who was fighting the two in the street and needed a weapon, at which point the door was flung open and he was all but jerked into the shop so hard his feet left the ground. Who greeted him wasn't a large built man or even a man at all, it was a middle aged woman who didn't look middle aged aside from the gray hairs she was growing. Telling him her husband, the person who ran the shop, was out of town at the moment, she told him that if he could get rid of those two outside she'd give him any weapon he wanted from the shop for free. Drake wasn't about to take advantage of the woman, but once he saw the prices of some of the weapons, he wasn't about to decline her offer. Looking around the shop, his eyes came across a longsword, nothing special at all about it and by any standard, it was a normal longsword plain and simple.
Taking the sword, he thanked the woman and left the shop, running past the two yet again and stopped after a few feet. Facing Emma, he put his sword in front of him with both hands and concentrated right at her. Telling her he was ready, that was all she needed to hear as she leapt forward with her sword raised up for an attack. With the girl only a foot away from him, she brought her sword down and Drake dodged it easily by stepping to the side, which gave Emma a thrill as that meant she had a good opponent at last. However the reason Drake dodged the attack wasn't because of skill at all, to him he thought she was just slow, having focused totally on her when she moved and swung to hit him it looked as if she was in slow motion sort of.
Curving her sword, she swung towards his side and yet again Drake dodged her by jumping, though the jump itself surprised her and Drake. Drake had meant to jump so he could dodge her attack and since he wasn't the best jumper, he used all his force on it. Instead of jumping a foot or two into the air, he managed to jump into the air high enough to face a second story window which surprised Emma but both surprised and freaked Drake out. Landing a few feet away from Emma, Drake was looking at his feet and moving them around against the ground, though they felt normal to him. Not sure what was going on, he looked up just in time to see Emma bringing her sword down from a horizontal angle and back stepped out of the way.
While he was out of her range, he was trying to figure out just how he was able to jump so high and once he thought about it, realized he'd jumped that high before when he saved the princess from falling. He ran a few idea's through his head, none making much sense but one and the only one that did just seemed unlikely, but given he was in a different world, unlikely didn't seem very unlikely to him. Drake thought that maybe, just maybe the world he was in had a different gravity which would have explained how he could jump so high, or how Emma looked like she was going in slow motion. The theory was sound given that many planets, depending on their size, had different gravity so it could have been that. Either way, since he realized he was likely faster than the two girls, he could use that to his advantage and win without having to hurt them hopefully.
Once he stopped moving, he saw Emma charging at him with a heavy swing but, instead of moving around to dodge it, he stayed in the same place and moved his head out of the way as it went past him. For the next minute he did that same thing, moving either his head, a limb or just turning his body. Either way he never moved from the spot he was standing at, or at least not fully. Since he could jump higher and move faster from what he could tell, he wanted to test himself to see just how far he could go with how things were. With attack after attack dodged by him, Emma was getting both a thrill from how strong he must have been to be able to dodge all of her attacks like he'd been doing and frustrated, since she hadn't had such a tough fight since she sparred with her parents.
Bringing her sword above her head, she swung it down as fast and hard as she possibly could, which made the sword to any normal person look like a blur at that moment. However to Drake, who had watched her almost in slow motion the whole time, the sword had only started to go fast enough that it looked some what normal in terms of speed at last. Instead of dodging that attack however, while she was bringing her sword down at him, he pushed forward and slipped past the attack, leaning forward towards her side. Feeling something poking her, she instantly stopped her attack before she could move an inch further, looking down where she felt the poking sensation and her eyes grew wide with awe. Right at the front of her neck was the tip of Drake's longsword, poking at her flesh but not having drawn blood thanks to her stopping when she had.
Turning her head to face him, she couldn't help but look at him with her mouth agap, staring at the man who had beaten her without ever being hit once. Pulling himself, and his sword, back from the lizardman, Drake gave a small smile at her. "Thank's for the match, you were a good opponent." He told her, which both aggrevated her to no end and made her face flush with a light shade of red. Straighting herself, she kept her eyes on him and just felt confused by him. She couldn't hit him once, he dodged all of her attacks and never tried to hit her, to make it worse he could have finished her at the end and probably at any time during the challenge. Even when she had match's with her parents she could still get in a few hits or make them have to attack, but the match with Drake was nothing short of being completely one-sided so badly it hurt.
Emma was aggrevated at him, but she also felt kind of happy as well since he said she was a good opponent, which meant that even if the match had been one-sided, he did see her skills and acknowledged those skills, along with her as a warrior. Her mother had always told her to find a strong man to become her husband and she knew, she just knew that she'd never find anyone as strong as Drake even if she tried for her whole life. Walking forward, she stopped when she was only a foot away from their bodies pressing against each other as she looked up at him, still a shade of red on her face. "You're very strong, the strongest person I've ever seen, so..... would you marry me?" She said, in a rather cute sounding voice that still had a hint of the passion she'd shown at the start of the match. Raising a brow at what he'd just heard, he wasn't sure if she was for real or not, but he wasn't looking to get married to somebody he didn't even know.
"No thanks. I'm not really looking to get married right now and I don't even know you, well aside from your name." He said, trying to sound as polite as he could given what he was dealing with. Looking down, the woman had been all but shot down, but she wasn't going to give up that easily. As she walked away from him and towards Flare, she was going to change his mind about marrying her even if it took years! Mean while as the salamander was getting ready for her match with Drake, she watched Emma walking back towards her and gave her a hard slap on the back, which made the lizardman jump in surprise and scowled at the smiling salamander. "Cheer up! Once I win my match, we can just drag him home and show him just why he should marry us both. Sound good to you?" Flare asked, showing a toothy grin at her declaration of victory.
While Emma would love to have just her and Drake, she was more than happy to share him between the two of them, not to mention the thought of them being pregnant at the same time did make her rather giddy. The grin never leaving her face, the hot blooded salamander walked up to Drake and got ready to fight, holding her sword in one hand while her tail started to burn hotly from thinking of how good a fight she would have. Flare had never once seen anyone beat Emma aside from her own parents and Flare herself a few times, but the guy they were fighting beat her without being touched once. Just the thought of a man that strong fighting her made her tail ignite into a blazing tower of fire, twice the normal size of her usual fire when starting a fight. Placing his sword in front of his body, such a passionate woman in front of him would have probably disliked him dodging her all the time so he wasn't going to dodge her.
Flare made the first move, rushing in to attack by bringing her sword above her head and ready to swing it down with all her might at him. Seeing as he wasn't going to dodge her, Drake instead went for an attack that without his new physical abilities he would likely have never done so quickly in a fight. Dashing forward, he held the longsword in both hands until he was close to Flare, her sword starting to be swung down at that point. Letting go of the sword with his right hand, he pushed it upwards while bending his wrist, aiming for Flare's own wrist. At that same moment, he was turning the sword horizontally and was bringing it up to her neck. Once his wrist hit hers, he forced the hand she held her sword in to bend upwards, causing her grip to loosen and with the power she'd put behind that swing, sent the sword flying from her hand into the ground at least a foot deep.
Looking down, Flare couldn't believe her eyes and if the look on Emma's face was any clearer, neither could she. In one move Drake had disarmed Flare and had her life in his hands, it was in that one move that she realized even if she had tried to fight back, as she was then, she hadn't a prayer of winning. Staring at him, as if in a daze, the salamander wasn't even sure if she could call him her most worthy simply from how one-sided the fight had been. The confusion however didn't stop her tail from burning hotly and never going down once in flames, instead only growing. "So, I take it this is my win?" Drake asked, smiling a bit at Flare. Her face flushing hotly, she simply gave a nod and went to get her sword back, that being the first time she'd had mixed feelings about anything aside from what kind of meat to eat first.
Once she'd gotten her sword, she went back over to Drake and just from seeing his face, her chest throbbed with lust as her whole body was burning up with a need. "I love you so please marry me!!" Shouted Flare, which in turn made Drake jump back a bit just from the sudden shouting. Realizing only seconds later what she had actually shouted, he was red in the face by it. Not only one, but two women asked him to marry them in less than an hour? Either the women in that world were very easy, or love at first sight was very common. In either case, he declined her, giving her the same speech he'd given to Emma only minutes earlier.
Pouting at the declined proposal, the saddened girl went back over to Emma, her tail lower than it was before. "We've got to get him! A guy that strong is rare, even our dads aren't that strong. Emma, we'll follow him till he agrees to marry us even if it means spending our lives trying!!" Flare declared proudly, though in a hushed voice since she didn't want anyone to overhear her for once. Giving a firm nod, Emma was more than in agreement with Flare. Turning her head, Emma looked back at Drake and had thoughts of what strong children they would have one day, but until then she would try her best to get him to change his mind about marriage. "As promised, we'll leave the city. But you haven't heard the last of us!" She told him, the two women starting off towards the southern exit of the city.
Having gotten rid of the two girls, at least for the moment, Drake had to wonder just what in the hell he'd gotten himself into. As those thoughts were going through his mind, the people were coming out of the buildings and cheering for him, a few running up to him and saying he was brave or what'd done was amazing. While he didn't think he'd done anything amazing, since his body seemed to be a lot stronger and faster if he'd been watching the fights from the side from before having gotten to the world, it probably would have looked amazing. Getting away from the small group of people around him, he went to the weapons shop to return the longsword but the woman told him to keep it, a sort of reward for driving those monsters away. That was the one thing he didn't get about the people, why they kept calling those two girls monsters.
While they both did look weird, he wouldn't go as far as to call them monsters, but they may have done something in the past to make people think of them as monsters. Either way, he couldn't do much about it so he left the thought alone for the time being and decided to look around the shop. Getting the longswords sheath, he decided to get another longsword since he liked the feel of them and was going to end with those two until a large sword caught his eye. Going over towards the far corner of the shop, he found what possibly was the largest sword he'd ever seen in his life. The blade itself was easily two feet wide and four feet tall, leaving the rough stone handle to add another foot onto it. The guard of the sword looked rather normal compared to the rest of the sword, with the ends pointed and going out from the sword about an inch.
Wondering what could be taking him, the shop owners wife looked around and saw Drake in one of the back corners of the shop, realizing where he was she walked sted fast to him. Seeing his hand going for the sword, she grabbed it when it was only a few inches away from the sword and told him to not touch the sword. Upon asking why, she told "That sword is cursed. It's last two owners met with horrible deaths and the creator of that sword was said to have made a deal with a devil to make that sword stronger than any other. It's a cursed sword, so for your own sake don't touch it." She'd told him, a look of fear present in her eyes. Having heard that, the story instead of scaring him off did the opposite, as he reached forward and took the swords handle with a firm grip. Lifting it up, he held the giant sword in his hand and looked at it, grinning. "How much do you want for this?" He asked, not even looking at her.
She was in shock, not because he'd picked the sword up, but after hearing the story he actually wanted to buy that thing! Not sure what to say, the woman just couldn't believe anyone would want that sword aside from a mad man. "How much? After hearing that story, you actually want that sword?! You can have it for free, just don't ever bring it here again." She told him, shaking a bit at the thought of that cursed thing finally being out of their shop. As the two walked to the front of the store, Drake had placed the longswords each on a hip and the giant sword was strapped on his back, the leather holding it there going across from his left shoulder to right hip. When he asked how much the other longsword would be, she told him to just take it, since he would need all his money for his funeral when the sword claimed it's next victim. Drake believed in a lot of things, though curses weren't among those things.
Walking to the south exit, he was going to finally start his journey to find a way back home and during that time, see the new world he was apart of. Leaving the city, he was walking down a path in the large forest when he heard a twig snap hear by, but thought it was only an animal. Thanks to his long time of having to look over his shoulder back home however, his body turned instinctively and would have seen nothing but the forest. However, from the side of one of the near by trees, he saw a green scaly tail on the ground and remembered what Emma had said before leaving, realizing what she'd met. Sighing, he shook his head at having probably earned himself two stalkers that day. "If you two are going to follow me, might as well come out of hiding." He said aloud, which caused another twig to snap.
Next came a pair of familiar women coming out from behind a tree, both a bit red in the face. "We really suck at stealth don't we?" Flare asked Emma, at which point the young lizardman could only nod. Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Drake waited till the two were close enough and wasn't very sure how to go about the situation he was placed in because of those people back in the city. "So, were you two going to try and follow me in secret for a while or what?" He asked the both of them. Raising her head up with a tent of red still on her face, Emma gave a firm nod "We were going to follow you until we could figure out a way to get you to change your mind about marriage. We'll keep asking till the end of time" She stated matter of factly, like it was nothing short of a fact of life.
Realizing he really DID have a pair of stalkers on his rear, he couldn't just tell them to leave since they clearly wouldn't do that and he couldn't have them arrested since they could just say they were going to the same place he was. To say he was in a pickel was an understatement, but since he couldn't do anything short of losing them or killing them, the latter something he wasn't about to do, he figured out an idea. "Ok then, since you two clearly aren't going to leave me alone anytime this century, you can travel with me since I'm going to be traveling the world." He told them, then turned back around and started walking down the path. Drake figured that after a while, those two would hopefully get bored of following him and leave him alone, hopefully being the major key word in that idea.
As the two girls caught up to him straight away with big smiles on their faces, the three would never guess in all their lifetime the path they were walking on would lead them through hell itself and cause them to be key factors in the worlds future.
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Well now, a lot of things happened in just the first chapter! Drake was brought to a new world, learned about monsters, a new religion, and magic. From saving a princess too fighting a pair of beautiful lizard women and gaining a cursed sword, interesting guy ain't he? But the future is bright for these three and their journy! Or is it? Who can tell with fate. Till chapter 2, farewell True Believers!
