Mike wasn’t anything special, in his past life. He worked hard to make his life better, died single at the age of 24 due to being allergic to high speed bullets, some thug wanted his wallet and left him with a parting gift. Either due to circumstances miracles or godlike intervention Mike was reborn in another world with memories intact, unfortunately magic wasn’t as easy as other fiction books presented them, a mage needed to be of at least 3rd circle in order to practice magic without the assist of a wand or staff or some other gadget meant to help focus magic itself, and a farmer boy like him would never afford one.

His new life was quite simple and fulfilling, the only thing society, his parents or anyone else expected of him was to work hard on the farm and fulfill the yearly quota of produce to the local lord. He still was curious by nature, so he read every book in the village and was quite respected as the village know it all, for good or bad.

By fate or someone’s anger when he was no older than 15 the village was raided by bandits, with no special abilities and no magic and most importantly no combat training, he was bound to lose. He saw the bandits kill, rape, and pillage their way through the village. With his last will of strength, or idiocy, he managed to kill one of the bandits with a rake earing him the ire of their leader, which ended with him beaten black and black.

At the end the survivors of the village were captured the wives raped, the men starved and beaten and the young girls preserved for a better price. Once they were done with all of them they were sold in to slavery, Mark included.

For better or worse he had quite a will, maybe it had to do with the fact that he was living his second life, or that he faced death and kind of lived to tell about it. This time around it was both a blessing and a curse.

When he started his life as a slave, he knew there was no way out. In this world there were slave collars, or used to. In time they were proven ineffective and a new method was devised. A rune mark was carved on to the forehead of the slave. Once activated tendrils of magic would coil around the limbs of the victim, his torso and head, leaving them with vine like patterns on their whole body.

When the rune was activated pain would be distributed to the victim, making it more useful than a whip, the rune would give off a mana signature which could be easily traced and with a simple array the movement of the slave could be limited, if he goes beyond the limit zap, pain, and the master would be notified. And best of all, it only took a 1st circle mage with a rune carving knife and 30 min to do it.

And Mike as a slave adapted quickly, he was made to work even harder than when he was a farmer, but he was used to it, the guards would shock him from time to time with their control gems for fun but he would ignore them and continue working, for better or worse neither his mother or father worked at the quarry he did.

Day after day, night after night he was worked to the bone, and in a world of magic tenacity pays off. Eventually he became stronger than he looked, faster, smarter, he was slowly becoming a warrior. And he was happy for it, it meant that he would be promoted from a quarry slave to a soldier, maybe even an escort to one of the shipments.

He was moving up in the world. But little did he know that his positive thinking and little luck he had would run out. A few days before he could truly become a level 1 warrior of the 1st circle, a friend of the quarry manager came. He was an old man a mage if judged by the robe and attitude, and he came looking for strong willed slaves for his experiments, and in the quarry most of the guards and slaves knew Mark, he was the quite guy who worked hard, he always worked more than needed so he got more to eat and more rest time when he was sick, he even helped quell some rebels who tried to destroy the little semblance of life he made.

And that came to bite him right in the balls. And as expected he and a few others were sold at a premium, enough to replace them all with slave 1st circle warriors. Poor Mark was still optimistic, he thought that the mage would experiment on them in such a way that maybe he would forcefully awaken their talents. Mark was confident in his will if nothing else.

Unfortunately, his world came crashing down once again. The mage was a soul mage training his mind magic, and the only way to do so effectively and quickly was to use against valid targets, namely the new slaves.

This led mark to change his view of the world, so far he tried to look at the best of everything but once the “training” sessions started all he wanted was to kill and punish those who ruined his life, the thief who ended his first life, the bandit who sold him in to slavery, the foreman and guards at the quarry and most of all he wanted to rip the mind and soul of the mage who tortured him for days on end.

Days went by and from the ten or so slaves who were bought together with him Mark was the only one left. He kept fed and watered by a weird druidic spell that made vines crawl in to your body and fed you. And every single day the mage would come and train on his best dummy.

Lately he was been saying how Mark was becoming stronger in mind and how he would awaken as a mind mage which was extremely rare, most would have to be at least a 1st circle mage and train their mind via magic and when they reach a certain level of mastery they can start to invade others minds for practice, starting from simple animals like rodents and slowly training against stronger opponents.

However, the mage didn’t know that Mark was holding back. Early on Mark started to notice a large improvement to his mental attributes, 3 months in he could hold his own against the mage if he wanted to, but he held back he was using the mage to train as much as he was using him.

On one specific evening the mage was preparing to kill off Mark, afraid of him rebelling. But mark was ready, he was always ready, when the session began the mage invaded marks mind trying to go where he had never gone before, and he wasn’t holding back. Mark wasn’t expecting him to be this vicious, in other words mark was caught with his pants down. The Mage went in to his mind, memories and where his self lied and started to kill and maim everything he could, doing his best to destroy Marks mind trying to turn him in to an empty shell.

But Mark held on tight to his everything and let the mage get deeper in his mind, in his territory and when the time was right he attacked from all sides leaving no chance of escape. Though Mark held an upper advantage in the beginning due to his trap, the battle took quite long due to the mages magic but in the end he won.

With his current master dead his slave seal was unbound so mark could properly remove it, though he didn’t know how, he tried the only way he could think off, he used a hot knife to deform the seal. This method was simple and effective but it also brought backlash from the seal itself. After another grueling battle fought with his mind and body he finally triumphs one again.

Due to all these years all that’s left of Mark the farmer was his love of crops and this Mark hated humanity for what they are, where is the good in suffering? Where is the hero to save him? Where are the saints who proclaim that using mind magic on another sentient being is evil?

And so Mark decided to leave the human lands, luckily for him the mage lived on the border between the Belur kingdom and the Eternal Forest. And so he started his journey in to the wilds.

The first few months were pretty bad, he didn’t know what was poisonous and how to properly survive, but he could hunt without a problem due to his mind magic. He was a 1st circle Mind flayer and a 1st circle Mage now so it wasn’t so bad. He could drink elemental water to satiate his thirst and kill and devour the mind and body of beasts.

Within a year he was closing in on his 2nd circle of both classes. And that’s when something invaded his mind once more. During the years he used his mind magic to not only devour the mind of his prey but also talk with some of the animals, so he was aware of the positive sides of his abilities, but he never forcefully entered another’s mind, to him who lived through the experiments of the mind mage he was disgustedly that prospect. Mind of the dead creatures is one but to forcefully invade the mind of a living was his bottom line at best he would use a limited telepathy to communicate.

And worst of all was the voice. It was the voice of an middle aged woman who simply said “Come to me my child”. It wasn’t some telepathic message no it was something that bore in to his mind, in to his conscious in to his very soul and attempted to imprint the image of an lady in her prime with a motherly aura around her. It wanted to twist his perception of her and made he look friendly and approachable, trustworthy even, and that he hated. Unfortunately for him the message was transmitted through the forest itself so he couldn’t pinpoint her presence.

So mark did what he always did, he sectioned off a part of his mind and let it be corrupted, with all of his might ready to purify it. And it did not disappoint, not only did it try to force a perspective of its own but also change his morals, make him think the forest was sacred and the greatest sin was to hurt one of its creatures and best of all it showed him where to go. It was a small glade with a big tree, it would take him about three weeks of travel to get there so he set out ASAP.

Once he got close to the glade and was sure the damn woman was there he slowly showed himself, she was surprised but delighted and started to talk some crap about him corrupting the forest with his mind and how she would show him the proper path. While she was somewhat caring in her words and demeanor she sort of forced mark to come here.

She could feel his displeasure so she withdrew the small changes to his mind. But he was sure he could Flay her mind if he wanted to and he was sick of people telling him what to do, and the moment he found peace in this forest this bitch shows up. So he did the only thing and angry slightly crazy mind mage would do he flayed all he thoughts in his mind and let a mind blast saturated with only one sentence “LEAVE ME ALONE!!!”.

As the shockwave hit her, along with the flaying of her thoughts she was pleasantly surprised to say the least, for her a druid of the forest to find someone so young with such power of the mind was astonishing, and when his will crashed in to hers all she could hear was the pain and suffering of his words. She knew what her forceful meddling had upset him, and children like him without proper guidance could become corrupt and devour the minds of everything gaining unimaginable power but losing their minds in the process. That’s why she was so invasive, after all it was the reason her husband died.

For better or worse, her granddaughter had decided to come today and when she saw the mind blast she took it as an attack and with accuracy of any elf could show she aimed at his eyes and fired, with intent to kill. Unfortunately for her a mind mage of his caliber could even effect the physical realm with his will, and as the arrow was about to kill him he managed to deflect it just enough to lose an ear instead of his life.

Due to the provocation and the knowledge she tried to kill him without hesitation he perceived the little elf as a threat, and threats to his life are to be eliminated. So used a simple mind flay skill on her, making her lose focus and almost black out and with his magic reinforcement he closed in behind her and put a knife to her throat.

And with a look at the middle aged elf he gave her the look of “Give me one reason not to kill her”. The elderly woman of course was aware of the circumstance so she begged for the life of her foolish granddaughter, even if she was in the wrong. And so Mike spared the girls life and left her with a parting gift, to relive his first week of memories from the time he was tortured by the mind mage. For a week. “This should give her some perspective about mind magic” he thought after all experience was the best teacher there is, and with that he left. With no interest in the druid or what she had to offer.

Mark believed that he was in the right and that the punishment he gave the elf was light considering she tried to take his life. But the girlie thought otherwise, for the duration of the week she screamed and beg the torture ad pain to end, she even tried to take her life, but even her grandmother couldn’t remove the nightmares. In the end of the week the girls mind was full of murderous thoughts of Mark.

Even though she was warned to leave the man alone and let them both cool down a bit and then her grandmother would go with her to try persuade the young man again, she agreed on the surface, showed all smiles and acceptance like kid who learned a lesson, but down below she was full of rage and hatred of him and wanted him dead for defiling her mind, so she secretly gathered her friends and went on a manhunt, it took them weeks to find him but when they did they strike without hesitation, after all the girl was telling them about the foul fiend they are hunting and how he corrupts the minds of the innocent.

Of course during that time Mark was prepared for some type of attack so he developed a new technique, he would kill the animal, devour its mind and place a fragment of his own, basically making flesh puppets. So when the brats arrived a battle ensured Mark fought fiercely overwhelming the enemy with numbers but they were elves and they were old compared to humans and so they had stronger abilities than him. In the end he lost managing to take half of them down with him and corrupting the mind of a fourth leaving only a fourth intact.

The girl and her friends won, but they were terrified, this human was barely 2nd order mage but he fought close to 15 3rd order ranger, warriors and mages, managing to kill half. Unfortunately for them it wasn’t over.

Mark was angry, all he wanted to do was live in peace and quiet, he spared her life and she came and murder him? He would kill them all, this time there would be no mercy, and no god would stop him from killing them all.

Unknown to him, Mark was reanimating as an undead due to his strong will and desire for vengeance and some magic. The elves were even more terrified, the foe they killed riddled with mortal wounds stood up and roared with a soul crushing cry. They knew death was upon them and couldn’t live so they ran, ran as fast as they could hoping to reach the elven city and warn the others of the menace that approaches.

But Mark hunted them down, and only the girl survived all her friends were dead or reanimated, chasing her down like the animal she is. But fate would have it otherwise a small detachment of guards sent to patrol the forest managed to save her killing all the undead, Mark wasn’t among them. He moved south to the human kingdom Belur. Due to his recent death he was in a haze so he still thought of himself as living human, and hoped to recruit some mercenaries to help him kill the bitch.

And as expected the humans tried to kill the unknown undead, to them he was a kill on sight kind of threat. And boy was Mark angry, so he did the only thing an undead mind flayer with a flair for magic with necromantic powers. He killed and raised all who opposed him, before the elves and humans could regard him as a serious threat it was already too late he had legion of undead marching from village to village, city to city and devouring the living. Of course Marks wasn’t Speedy Gonzalez so he was kind of slow in his march which gave the humans time to perform the legendary hero summoning, and the summoned was the thief who killed Mark in his first life.

Belur and the elves of the Eternal Forest, bought time for the hero to train and become stronger. The struggle lasted 2 years. From the start of the war Belur lost over 50 villages 15 towns and 4 cities and population in the thousands along with several acers of land in the Endless Forest and a few hundred elves. In the end it was time for the final confrontation. The united army fought against the undead legion stalling them for time and the Royal Arch Mage of Belur used a teleportation spell to the backlines of the legion in attempt to kill Mark and end to the horrors he brought once and for all.

Up to this day Mark had never met the hero, and once he did he was full of rage malice and the will to destroy, flaying the mind of his enemies and blasting them with the arcane arts he learned himself. His legion in their masters’ rage turned their back at the united army and charged at the heroes party forgoing any defense. At the end of the battle the losses were a lot lower than expected but the loss of talent far greater, from the heroes party only the hero himself and the girl survived and it was all due to the kind elf grandma’s timely intervention.

In the end all that Mark wanted was to be happy and left alone, and apparently death was the answer he always seeked. And know he didn’t want to die, he wasn’t happy, every time he found some semblance of life and happiness people took it away. So now he would go to a place where there are no people.

But fate was bitching at him again, on his broken corpse the priests and druids of the alliance used purification spell meant to destroy the spirit, preventing him from rising once again. And mark with all of his will tried to keep his spark of self lit in his soul, to prevent his consciousness from fading.

When the priest and druids job was done they thought Mark was gone, and called the end of the March of Death he brought upon them. Little do they know his mind has found shelter in a seed carried by the wind to fate unknown.