On the same day, in another part of the world, the Eastern Continent to be exact, a similar mission is being carried out. The targets are Aaron and Chase Blackstone.

An unremarkable small wagon pulled by a single chestnut horse makes it way through the grasslands of Armitage in the afternoon. The travelling party consists of merely two people, one man and one woman.

"Since when did we turn into kidnappers, Kross?" Luciella, the No. #10 grumbles in protest. Garbed in a frilly dress, her image does not give the slightest hint of how skilled a combatant she is. Instead of a fighter, she resembles a rich lady or the daughter of a wealthy merchant.

"I don't like it either but orders are orders, Ella. You really should change your outfit, though... there's no way we can avoid attention with that dress" The No. #6 who is also the highest ranking Guild combatant in Armitage could only comment on his companion's lack of common sense.

The first to fourth spots are all taken by members in Hwalren. It makes sense that they are the most powerful due to their dangerous environment with the endless wave of monsters coming down from the Cursed Lands. What Kross could not tolerate though, is the fact that he is lower ranked than the no. #5 from Bosco. That would put the Eastern Continent as the weakest branch of the Adventurer's Guild.

Stefan did not seem all too bothered about it though. Many of the members do not like Stefan's way of doing things but keep silent about their personal opinions. The previous Head of the Eastern Adventurer's Guild, Godric, was a very well-liked figure. His tendency to go on the field for his own research commandeered plenty of respect from the subordinates.

"I'll change later, it's not like anyone would bother looking into this wagon out here in the middle of nowhere" Luciella replies to Kross's remark about her clothing.

"Well, I guess we got the better job compared to the No. #1. I heard he has to meet up with the Northern King and take away a harmless old geezer, must be boring, pfft!" She restrains herself from breaking into an uncontrollable bout of laughter. It is just hilarious that the Guild had to mobilise that crazy musician for such a drab task.

"Perhaps, but we aren't that better off either. I heard Aaron Blackstone is only as strong as an average Zenithian Knight at most. There wouldn't really be much of a fight unless he's on the level of the Grim Reaper or the Mirage Knight"

Kross and Luciella are the type of members that joined the Guild as true adventurers. Which means, they are the type of people who enjoys heated battles and training themselves to be stronger just for the sake of it. The numerous missions given out by the Guild gives them a sense of direction, to make their power climb more fulfilling as they pile up achievements along the way.

"We'll reach Ceylon's West Gate in a couple of hours at most, you really should change into something more inconspicuous" Kross turns his head back to address the No. #10 while his hands continue to hold onto the reins of the horse.

They are going to Ceylon under the pretense of searching for surviving family members. Under the current circumstances, the gate guards could be swayed by words and theatrics to allow them to pass through without having to identify themselves using the Glyph of Evaluation. It should be believable enough since there are plenty of others who genuinely do so. Worse comes to worst, they would just have some low ranking members distract the guards and slip in.

Kross pulls in the reins and stops the trotting horse.

"What's wrong?" Luciella asks as she pokes out her head out of the wagon to check on the situation. Her fiery red hair appears to burn under the unforgiving sunlight.

"Isn't it weird? There were a few other caravans keeping their distance from us a few minutes ago.. and they're gone now... gone as in gone and not moved away" The possibility of making their way from the capital to here without making any contact with other travellers are not zero but not at this time. They are quite close to Ceylon, a popular city on the western region of the continent. A city like that should have plenty of people going and leaving and even more so with the recent monster crisis.

'They were right there...' The problem is, there definitely were other parties around them but now Kross cannot even detect their presence.

*Zooom* *Crackle* *Crackle*

A golden pillar of light about twenty meters wide in diameter descends from the sky and bores a hole through the ground just a hundred feet or so in front of Kross's wagon. The surrounding grass are burned to ashes and scatters away as a light breeze passes by.

*Neigh!!!* *Thwap!*

The horse is alarmed and neighs in panic while kicking at the air in front of it. A blade of wind passes through and cuts off the restraints on the horse, freeing it. The horse did not waste a single moment and begins to gallop away leaving a dumbfounded Kross and Luciella behind.

"What in my mother's name was that?!" Luciella screams at the No. #6.

"How the fuck should I know?!" Kross withdraws his weapon and prepares for battle. That was undoubtedly an attack and they might have been the intended target. The fact that the horse was set free by a wind blade means the enemy has them in clear view.

Kross uses the overly used but versatile weapon, the sword. He adds in some variety by dual-wielding two swords, one with a hook at the end and one with two blades. The hooked blade is supposed to disarm or behead the opponent whereas the twin-bladed one is made to catch the enemy's weapon in-between its fangs.

"Tch!" Luciella takes out a steel parasol. The parasol could be opened up to act as a shield, it could be closed and be a mace or even have the hidden blade inside it extended to act as a lance or spear. She dislikes things that make her look ordinary, thus the unique weapon is an original custom creation made on her design.

"Come out!!" Kross calls out to no one in particular. He could not sense the enemy's whereabouts, which is a very rare occurrence.

As if answering to his summons, the air ten meters in front of him shimmers and warps, revealing a man wearing a suit made out of black dragon scales. The suit does not seem all that impressive despite its material, probably due to its simple design. It looks like a regular leather armour minus the shoulder pads and more black scales instead of brown leather.

The man himself, has black hair and one silver eye. The other eye, is closed with a thin scar about ten centimeters in length vertically running down it. He does not hold any weapon in hand, or at least there is nothing of the sort that Kross and Luciella could see.

"You... are you... Aaron Blackstone?!" Kross makes that assumption on the fly.

There are only three authentic Blackstones in existence, and Hwalren only knows of one. The Guild though, did not miss out on tracking the other two unknown members of the family. One is a man in his thirties or forties and the other a child, the only person that vaguely fits the identity of this mysterious man is the former.

However, Kross takes back his words once he recalls the information they received beforehand. Aaron Blackstone does not have Mana Manipulation hence does not possess the silver eyes, he is the only member of the family that does not have that ability. To top it off, he is an absolutely dreadful mage. Using that reason, Alcee Blackstone saved Aaron from the cruelty of being a dog of war by announcing him to be an illegitimate child.

Of course, it was a lie and an obvious one. However, the King played along since the young child is a defective product. Aaron is cast out of the family and freed from the constraints of the kingdom. It was a cruel act with a noble reasoning behind it, though Alcee never expected Aaron to understand the true reason for casting him out.

Due to the numerous Blackstones in the Northern Continent, no one could make the connection between Aaron and the authentic main family as he set out on a voyage. Any pursuers set by curious factions are shaken off as the Guild's members moved out to monopolize the information on Aaron Blackstone. As far as the higher ups in Hwalren knows, Aaron Blackstone died in a vicious sea storm and sunk into the ocean along with the ship. Even Alcee was not aware that his son survived. He wept and mourned his decision for days on end.

As a matter of fact, the ship Aaron had been on did encounter such a storm. However, instead of dying, Aaron hung onto a flotsam and is carried by the sea currents all the way to Armitage. Upon his arrival on the shores of the Eastern Continent, he is saved by a fisherman who is one of the Guild's hidden agents. Aaron then made a living as a soldier of Armitage. Later on, he got married and had a child which if the information is correct, possesses Mana Manipulation.

Then... who is this man before them?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"You don't really need to know my name but if you need something to call me with, go with Heretic #17811" The man refuses to name himself and presents them with a code name instead.

"Heretic...?" Kross had heard of that sort of code name before but he could not recall where. It has something to do with Bosco in some way.

"Go back and leave the Blackstones" Heretic #17811 orders the duo to abandon their mission and flee with their tails between their legs.

"And I assume you would stop us if we intend to proceed?" Kross hisses through gritted teeth. He tightly clenches the hilts of his swords.

'This... one-eyed wretch... how dare he looks down on me!!'

"Stop or kill, though I prefer to avoid the second choice. Decide quick" Heretic #17811 says impatiently. He did not mention it, but he has limited time to stay here.

"How about the third choice, die!!!" Luciella kicks off the ground and propels her body forward with her lance aimed at Heretic's chest.

Heretic grabs the blade of the parasol with his bare hand and lifts it up along with Luciella.

"Eh..? Eh..?!!" Luciella trashes about in the air, trying to pull her weapon away in vain. She had made sure to install plenty of functions but she never considered the possibility of her weapon being caught.

Seeing the opening, Kross moves in and swings the double bladed sword while stabbing with the hooked sword. If Heretic moves to the left, he would prioritise his horizontal swing and put more speed. If he falls back or tilts his head to dodge, Kross can pull the hook and behead Heretic.

*Clang!*

Instead of dodging, Heretic used his remaining hand to catch the sword coming from the front and diverts it away to block the one coming from his right.

In the meantime, Luciella had given on her parasol and took out a whip blade. She twists her body in mid-air and made use of the momentum to swing the extendable blade.

The segmented sword broke off into separate pieces connected by wires, they sliced through the air and shoots towards Heretic's unprotected head.

*Wham!*

Heretic lazily ducks and uses the parasol to whack Kross on his abdomen, sending him flying through the air and colliding with the airborne Luciella.

*Cough* *Cough* *Wheeze*

The duo softens the momentum of falling onto the hard ground by rolling a few times. They immediately stood up despite having the air knocked out of them. They are experts in team-based combat, their style focuses on overwhelming the opponent with a flowing set of moves. Sadly, their strategy would not work if they are disrupted before they could launch into their combo.

"Would telling you I'm the strongest in the world change your minds?" Heretic utters the lie with a straight face. He might be one of the strongest but he knows at least two people stronger than him and that is not counting the non-humans. Overall he should be somewhere around no. 5.

"Maybe I should just demonstrate instead" Heretic #17811 announced once he observed the stubborn looks in the eyes of Kross and Luciella. He unceremoniously dumps the confiscated weapons to the side.

. . . ....... ...... .... .. .. Call my name -- -- -- -- -Summon me

__ _ ____ _ _ _ ______ __Let me out!

--- -- -- - - I am the one you seek.. ... .. - - - ------- -- - . .. __ .. _.. Who am I? ____ ... __

... .. ... . ...-- --.. ---- - --- __ __ = = = ==== . . Let me feast!!!

-- --- - ___ ... .Allow me to serve --- -- -- __

A cacophony of voices echoes throughout Heretic's mind but not because he is crazy. Rather, the voices are real and only he is capable of hearing them.

'Geez, pick one of them already! This is giving me a headache... just hurry up and show off so they'd be scared damn it. You're not some shounen protagonist that is holding back their secret weapon for some stupid reason!!' A familiar voice different from the others speaks to him.

'I told you before, Rie.. I don't get your references! What is this shou.. thing?' Heretic responds to the freeloader in his body.

"Tundra!" At the same time, he chooses one of the elements in his arsenal and calls out its sub name. He had yet to reach the level of handling a complete manifestation, hence a direct name could not be called.

From the perfectly clear skies, fluffy white spheres start to drop down. Rather than a gentle snowfall, it rushes down like a snowstorm and envelops the surrounding area with a white blanket. In the middle of the snowstorm, a portion of the snow coalesces and forms a bluish white poleaxe in Heretic's outstretched right hand.

He simply swung.

A fifty meter high wave of frost rushes forth like a tidal wave and threatens to eternally bury Kross and Luciella in ice.

"Fire wall!!" Kross and Luciella invokes a hasty spell to ward off their approaching icy doom.

A ten feet high thick wall of fire erupts from the ground and melts some of the snow, it stands against the incoming gush of heat-draining energy. Their pitiful attempt at defense is similar to lighting a matchstick in order to ward off winter's cold.

*Crack* *Crack*

Instead of cancelling each other out, the fire wall is turned solid as a result of the clash and the freezing wave heads toward its target without a hitch.

"Shi---!!" Luciella could not even complete her curse as both she and Kross are completely frozen.

They are not dead but they would be if nothing is done soon. Their lips have already turned blue and their eyes could not even move. If they receive an impact now, they would undoubtedly shatter and die.

"A bit too cold? Solar!!" The bluish white poleaxe disintegrates into snow and a golden yellow longbow replaces it.

Instead of firing at the frozen duo, Heretic #17811 aims at the sky and pulls back the bowstring. The peculiar thing about the weapon is that there is no arrow but that is soon answered.

As the bowstring is released and twanged back into its original position, a wide golden pillar of light descends from the heavens and strike a spot nearby Kross and Luciella. The grass and earth disintegrates from the incredible heat of the concentrated sunlight.

It quickly gave them the warmth they desperately need, too much of it in fact. Their skins are dyed red like they are sunburnt from standing out too long under the sun.

"Whoops, my bad.. how about a gentle breeze? Zephyr!!" The bow representing the sun disperses into millions of light particle and reassembles to form a folding fan with a long-bodied dragon drawn on it.

Heretic gently flips the fan upwards.

A violent roar assaulted their eardrums as if a thousand tortured souls were screaming into the air. Kross and Luciella are helplessly thrown up into the clouds by a ridiculously strong updraft.

"Need Heeeelp up theeeere?!! Don't worryyyy, I'll let you downnnnn on the grouuuuuuuuund!! Terra!!" Heretic mockingly calls out to the No. #6 and #10 even though he knows they cannot hear him.

The fan splits into two and wraps itself around both of Heretic's hand. It folds itself into a pair of intricate knuckles representing the Earth.

Heretic brings his fist down onto the Earth and reversed the world. Instead of conjuring large earthen pillars, the whole area is sent up towards the sky and forms a temporarily floating large mass. Standing upside down on that airborne mass of soil is Heretic #17811 acting as if Kross and Luciella are the ones that are in the wrong position.

"WE GET IT!!! WE GIVE UP!!!" The duo desperately cries out. This is not a battle anymore. On the scale of impossibility, their chances of victory might be the same as them managing to uproot a mountain and tossing it into space.

"Well why didn't you say so earlier? Quotidian!" The knuckles rips into shreds and reforms into a brown parchment with the map of Armus on it.

'Oh shit, what now?!!' Kross and Luciella shut their eyes tight and pray to God for salvation.

'I'm sorry for all the apples I've stolen in life, please help me!!' Kross had a rough life as a street urchin when he was young. He had no other choice but to commit petty crimes in order to survive.

'Forgive me for dunking Stefan's toothbrush into the toilet~~~ he really deserves it!!' Actually, Luciella just did not like the current Head of the Eastern Adventurer's Guild and did it on a whim.

.

.

.

.

The seconds crawled by like worms but nothing happened, they did not fall down to a gory death nor burnt to a crisp or even chucked into a bottomless pit.

Kross plucks the last remains of his courage and shakily opens one eye.

"Eh?"

The whole scenery is just as he remembered it to be before they were attacked. The wagon is still there with the horse attached to it, the grass is untouched as if there was never a fierce display of raw natural calamity.

"Kross, are we in heaven or hell? I'm too scared to find out" Luciella is still keeping her eyes firmly sealed while trembling like a scared kitten.

"Give up on going after the Blackstones and I'll send you back to the living world, pffft!!" Heretic snorts derisively after seeing their reactions. Quotidian, another word for mundane or normal. Using it, he returned the world to the state it should have been without his intervention. However, the human soul and mind is not subject to its powers, hence Kross and Luciella still remembers.

"W-w-who.. are.. you..? and why.. a-re.." Kross mumbles softly through chattering teeth. Heretic #17811 is no longer holding anything but he knows he could be squashed in an instant. He is more powerless than an ant, perhaps even weaker than a speck of dust in front of this unknown person.

"I told you, call me Heretic #17811! As for what I'm doing.. would you believe me if I say the only miracles that exist are the ones you create yourself?" He cheerfully asks the completely unrelated question.

"Y-y-yes.." Kross did not dare to question or verbally argue against the human-faced horror anymore.

"There you have it, I'm creating miracles!" As to what miracle he is referring to, Kross had no idea. He did not dare to try and find out.

'Congratulations, you've just turned into a mentally challenged character' Rie drily comments.

'Oh come on.. so, did I succeed?'

'I guess, we'll have to find out later because the Watcher is coming in 10..9..' Rie starts to initiate a countdown for something.

'Woah!! Too fast!!' He starts to panic.

"Makesureyoudon'ttouchthem! Okay, bye! Point!" Heretic rapidly mouths off a string of words, making them almost incomprehensible and calls out a white butterfly.

The butterfly makes a complete circuit around him and disintegrates.

'1...0!'

Heretic glances towards the West in the direction of Ceylon. For a moment, Kross catches what seems to be deep longing in Heretic's silver eye.

As the countdown reaches zero, Heretic #17811 vanishes from the scene.

A fraction of a second before the man disappears, another mysterious figure comes into existence ten meters away from them.

It pointed its needle like arm at Heretic #17811 and did something. Whatever it did, it did not make it in time but the space where Heretic had been standing on is shattered like broken glass.

Kross could see the fragments of the space itself fall onto the grass beside him, leaving a gaping darkness behind. A rift in dimension, a portal to nothingness, that is what Kross beheld. It was not a sight to be seen by mortal men, should he be considered lucky or unfortunate?

Kross felt his throat dry up, it was just one crazy thing after another. He fearfully stares at the new figure and takes in the detail of what he could see.

The figure is draped in a grey cloak, only its hands could be seen, if it could be called hands. Instead of arms and fingers, the figure had two needles as its hands. One is slightly longer than the other. As for the feet, he could not see because the cloak extends down to the ground.

It points the slightly shorter needle this time and the fragments fly back into their rightful position. It turns to the side and vanishes from sight, defying all worldly sense.

After both abnormalities exit the area, Kross could once again sense the presence of other travelling parties at a considerable distance away from them.

"Luciella, you can open your eyes now" Kross croaks to his companion.

"Is it safe?" She timidly replies.

"Depends on your definition of 'safe' " He responds, unsure of it himself.

"S-should we go on with t-the mission now that he's g-gone?" She squeaks and cowers on the ground.

"No, Stefan can suck it up and do it himself if he wants to..." Kross does not know how to report this to their boss. How are they supposed to explain when all proof of there ever being a battle in this spot is nonexistent?

'What rankings, what Guild.. aha ha ha ha... hha haha.. haha. ... maybe I should shave my head bald and join a monastery somewhere' Kross is on the very verge of losing his sanity. Little did he know that one day he shall be aiding a saint in the final battle.

Whoever or whatever Heretic #17811 and the mysterious figure had been, Aaron Blackstone and Chase Blackstone are safe from the Adventurer's Guild's grasp.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And that ends this chapter.

I'll have to put in some references here since I stopped for too long... pretty sure most of you forgot the characters.

This chapter touches on the Blackstones:

Alcee Blackstone (first mentioned in chapter 17)

Aaron Blackstone (a little bit about how he got to Armitage in this chap)

Chase Blackstone (if you don't know him, you probably read the wrong fiction)

Heretic #17811(First mentioned here. His identity shall pretty much be revealed by the end of the second arc)

----------------

Godric Cloud:

First mentioned in Chapter 9

The uncle of Alice Cloud and owner of Chase's and Aaron's second house. Owns a secret basement containing the fruits of his lifelong research. More shall be explained in the future.

Rie:

A companion that resides within Heretic #17811

She seems to have knowledge of Earth (as in planet Earth)

Will have a chapter in the future to explain further.

The Watcher:

???

Something that shall make lots of appearance in the fourth arc.

Yeah, you might have realised it but I wrote this story with an idea that not everything can be classified as Black and White. In a world where the Demon King is a recurring enemy that would always face defeat, the denizens are capable of carrying out their own goals without much worry. As such, there are multiple factions fighting for different things, like Alcee Blackstone and the Adventurer's Guild. However, the 107th Demon King is still the main villain of the story.

A bad-ass grandpa(?) Armus Back to the protagonist and the present timeline

For The Curious Mind