"Be careful, because I'm now going to tell you the story of Ligir, the Invincible".

Alexander took a deep breath, making his chest swell with pride.

…

The torches burned incessantly within the stone and wood building. Their light drew long shadows of two men, one standing and one sitting.

A shaky and insecure voice echoed across the room. "Would you ask the wind to blow in the direction you chose, or the fire not to burn your hand?"

The hero, with a powerful figure, looked from head to toe the young man in front of him. The young man, even standing, felt crushed by the force of the inquisitive gaze of the man and unconsciously shrugged, becoming smaller and smaller; he realized that he was stalling too long and immediately shook his head, afraid the hero would become impatient if he didn't react instantly.

Before he could get an answer out of his knotted throat, the other's voice, clear but terrifying like thunder, seemed to pierce his body.

“So what would my mother say if her son wanted to bleed for the whims of every single mortal? Do you think she would be proud of that? Even the best of swords is likely to be lost to the whims of he who wields it. And nobody will tell me when and how to go into battle, let alone your King, who often thinks he is superior to me and forgets that I am also a King. Also, if we were to challenge each other in battle on the day his words became too offensive, what do you think the outcome would be?"

Ligir had spoken.

The young messenger, Soulier, looked down and remained silent. He knew perfectly well what would happen if, one day, his King decided to face Ligir in battle: by the end of it, the latter would have been standing on the corpse of the former.

Ligir was the greatest warrior of all Immortal Clans. There was no one able to rival his prowess in battle and ... well, his bad temper. He was as brave as he was capricious, many said.

Pride and honour were above anything else for him.

Ligir was so arrogant that he established the value of a life in proportion to the interest he had in its owner. The more he valued a warrior, the more his desire to defeat him grew.

Those who knew his reputation as a destroyer of peoples called him a monster, those who had fought alongside him and enjoyed his exploits in battle called him a hero.

Ligir was handsome as a god, with long blond hair and the bearing of the greatest of deities.

The torches burned relentlessly, fiercely illuminating the slender figure of Ligir and his crimson red cloak, which seemed dyed with the blood of a dragon and captured a thousand and more reflections, giving the warrior a wild and majestic appearance.

But his real majesty came from the crown he wore on his head. The more finely gold. woven in a delicate thread, adorned its head and shone in the dark.

"Now go away, I've had enough of this chatter," sighed Ligir, shaking his hand to invite the young Soulier to leave his apartment.

The messenger hesitated for a few seconds, then left after receiving a stern look from his interlocutor.

He finally got rid of another nuisance.

Before she could even breathe a sigh of relief, crystalline laughter flooded the dining room.

"Par, what do you find so funny?" said Ligir, narrowing his eyes.

"Menòn asked for your help for the umpteenth time." A tall, tanned young man entered the room. He had brown curls and a sparse beard framing his face. Two light blue eyes contrasted with the dark skin of his face. “They are besieging the damned fortress that has kept us from capturing the entire universe for at least nine years. Once we enter there, we will have a stronghold that will allow us to extend our tentacles to the rest of the world. "

"After spending so much time with that worm, you're also thinking like a crawling creature," replied Ligir laconically.

"Animals with tentacles don't cra-"

"We were saying," interrupted Ligir, barely holding back a smile. He motioned for his friend to sit next to him on a soft mound of cushions.

Par approached him and sat down on the carpet. In his hands he had an old, worn lyre. He began playing as was his custom, plucking the strings of the instrument to obtain a nostalgic melody.

Those notes reminded Ligir of his childhood, spent practicing combat and listening to Par playing the lyre after a busy day of training.

“My dear Par, why are you always looking for me to disturb me lately? Once we met to eat together, talk about the most recent accomplishments and rejoice for the great heroes of the past and present. Now, what's in this stupid war that seems to make you restless and blood-loving even more than before?"

The young man in front of him stopped playing. He left the lyre and stretched his slender arms along Ligir's powerful thighs, put his elbows on the other's knees and fixed his clear eyes on those of his dearest friend.

Par was decidedly weaker than Ligir and had only recently entered the ranks of the Immortals. However, he was more powerful than any warrior just advanced to Immortality.

Ligir looked at his companion with a mixture of tenderness and concern. That was not a look he had often seen in Par's eyes.

Every time Ligir had seen that look, Par had got into trouble; and each time Ligir had saved him. The hero hoped he would never again have to see his closest friend suffer, but he knew that whatever happened, he would stay by his side to protect him.

"Your Majesty", Crater interrupted Alexander's story, "what does this have to do with us?"

…

The King smiled and encircled Crater's shoulder with one arm: “Listen, the adventures of my ancestor are so many and one night would not be enough to tell them, but I still want you to understand what his actions were in the greatest war that has ever rocked this universe since its creation."

…

After disembarked from his ship, Ligir had passed more than a few dozen Immortals on the edge of his weapons, among them mere warriors and commanders.

Only one was missing, while he ran at breakneck speed along the rocky coast.

The wind moved his long blond hair, stained with blood and sweat, with each long step. The muscular thighs would have allowed Ligir to rival the greatest of the racing stallions.

In that place, as in most of the battlefields for Immortals, the materials of the planet were more than incredible; in fact, it would have been practically impossible to destroy them, for a normal Immortal.

The scarlet cloak played with the wind, releasing a trail of reddish light where it had passed just before.

Since Ligir was the most powerful warrior in the universe, his speed was something beyond imagination. He could have run from one end of the universe to the other in a few hours even without using his Mana to teleport.

Among the Immortals, he was known as "the Fast One", but also as "the Invincible". Nobody had ever defeated him and nobody seemed able to hurt him.

Ligir had opened a road of blood to the top of the food chain and now lay there, like a dragon on the top of a mountain.

But, before he could reach his goal on the land dotted with Formations, positioned there to slow him down, a patrol of Immortals teleported and surrounded him.

They were all elite warriors, judging by their sparkling armour and their heroic faces. At the sight of Ligir their muscles tensed in fear, but none of those Immortals seemed willing to leave his post. They were ready to engage in battle at any moment.

Given the level of all of them, the clash could have lasted even a split second.

Ligir drew his sword with his left hand while holding the spear firmly in his right.

A drop of blood slipped on his cheek and then fell on the dusty ground.

Splat

It was enemy blood. Who knows which of his victims it belonged to? It was the blood that had soiled his glittering armour and that he, Ligir, did not bother to remove.

Many Immortals used the Mana to make blood evaporate, but Ligir thought that the war did not need a good-looking fighter, but one skilled enough to survive and kill as many enemies as possible.

If the war had looked like a human, it would have been Ligir, with blood on his face and hair and armour.

Ligir had lost many men immediately after their landing and would not have allowed their death to be forgotten.

One of the enemy soldiers wiped sweat from his forehead.

Being Immortal didn't mean being... literally Immortal. Fear of death was always present during a battle, but even more so if they were facing Ligir, a living legend.

The leader of the unit lowered his sword in the direction of the enemy and started the attack, while some of them glanced at each other.

They were all experienced and trained soldiers, one of the strongest weapons in the stronghold. They would not be frightened by the stories about that man. But in their hearts they were all curious to see what terrifying ways Ligir would have used to repel them.

Would he have been able to break the body of an Immortal in half with a breath, as the stories said, to drain his blood with a cough?

Ligir took up a fighting stance and relaxed his muscles, ready to hit.

Many of his enemies were disappointed. Ligir had assumed a simple attack position. It was not uncommon for many to think that there was a huge difference between a normal person's way of fighting and an Immortal's.

'I can read their disappointment in those little dark eyes,' thought Ligir, smiling half-heartedly. 'They believe that a move capable of destroying a planet is the most powerful thing in the world. They have a reverential fear of the stories of the monsters who destroyed entire planets ... but the sad truth is that the first thing they must learn to control, even before an ability that can bring so much destruction, is their body.'

The soldiers understood the meaning of those words, which had never been uttered, as soon as they saw Ligir sprint at such a hallucinating speed that they could not stop him. Ligir was too quick to be caught.

Before even launching any violent attack, a dazzling Mana explosion blinded two Immortals; these immediately tried to use their Divine Sense to make up for the lack of vision, as they were used to.

Such a trick would never have caught them off guard.

And yet...

Their weapons unleashed terrifying Skills, which wrapped two different figures in front of them, both identified by their Divine Sense as the enemy. But as soon as they noticed the different direction of the two Abilities, they also knew they had been wrong.

One of the soldiers opened his eyes just in time to see Ligir's sword heading towards his head; the blade passed its forehead from side to side. Another soldier dodged the attack.

No one in the entire universe would have faced a contingent of the fifty most powerful Immortals without being a fool. Even the most powerful of the Immortals would have been overwhelmed.

But not Ligir.

His spear pierced the foot of another soldier, making him stumble and obstructing the sight of one about to attack, thus avoiding Ligir the trouble of dodging.

In the meantime, he had materialised ropes of Mana from his hands, pulling another warrior towards him as if he were a beast. After killing him, Ligir sent an explosion of fire in front of another group, blinding their sight and their Divine Sense with his ability to handle Mana.

Another found a globe of energy under one foot.

Tripping an Immortal, capturing another like a rabbit. These were not techniques that suited an Immortal.

Ligir was not the terrifying monster that everyone had imagined. It was, yes, terrifying, but in a very different way than they had imagined.

Ligir was simply unstoppable.