《Just An Outlier》Chapter 0 - Prologue
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A frail-looking boy walked through an arched entrance into a school obscured by the sunlight. Wandering around, just as the boy found shade to make sense of his directions, he bumped into a person who was a size bigger than him.
This person immediately twisted his body to find the source of impact, to find the boy rubbing his shoulders in pain. In quick fashion, he grabbed the boy by the collar and started shouting in a gruff voice, spitting saliva all over the boy's face.
"Kid, don't you know who I am? Anyone who bumps into me will be mashed into a pulp!"
When the boy's eyes adjusted to the change in brightness, he was quite surprised by who was staring daggers at him. The gruff voice didn't belong to a thug, rather the face was quite scholarly, and handsome at that. The person who was picking him up by the collar had blonde hair that drooped to shoulder length, with square rimmed glasses that matched the contoured glossy white face.
With the snap of the blonde male’s fingers, people who took the typical appearance of bullies appeared from the shadows.
As the bullies formed a circle to surround the two, iwet became quite apparent that the boy didn’t attend the same school the others were in.
“Boss, it looks like this kid goes to Webington.”
“Webington huh. Always hated how filthy that school was. Garbage always stays garbage, through and through.”
The person who was also the boss of the bullies balled up his fist, tilting back his arm for extra momentum. The boy waited for the obvious to happen, and subconsciously closed his eyes as the fist came flying at him.
But the pain never came, rather he felt something touch his bottom. The boy opened his eyes and saw himself sitting on the ground, with the person who was just holding him up sprawled on the grass. Next to that person, was someone he recognized.
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“You came just in the nick of time Lucin.”
“You know what they say Roa, heroes always come right on time.”
“Always spouting such clichéd words, unbecoming of a delinquent.”
“Well this delinquent just saved your ass, so stop worrying about it.”
Although Roa was an average, albeit frail boy, Lucin was the opposite. His demeanor oozed out an aura that told of nothing but fights. Lucin, even for a guy, barely showed any skin, and at first glance just looked like a really tall person. His friends knew that under all that clothing, was a finely toned body that only countless skirmishes could bring. Lucin liked to tell Roa that his fights were in the name of justice, but the adults didn’t care about his so-called justice, and labeled him a delinquent.
The bullies that were in cohorts with the handsome blonde male took one look and fled, leaving behind a trail of words.
“You asshole! You’ll get expelled for this!”
Roa shot a worried look at Lucin, which Lucin waved off.
“They aren’t going to do anything. The guy who was picking on you is the son of the chairman of this school, but the chairman really doesn’t like it when he picks on people.”
Roa was still worried.
“Even so, why would the chairman believe someone who doesn’t even go to this school over his own son?”
“Good point… anyways, you came for the library right? Everytime you come here, it’s always the library. Am I just a library pass to you?”
“Actually, I come here to visit you, with an extra topping of library on the side.”
The light banter continued as the two made their way to the library. Walking in, one of the librarians at the front greeted them.
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“Ah, it’s Roa and Lucin again. I’ve got some book recommendations Roa, here’s the list.”
“Thanks Para, I’ll look into them.”
To many, the library at this school was closer to a dance hall filled with an endless amount of bookshelves. Aside from the area near the entrance, there was nothing but bookshelves, so many that there was barely any space between each shelves, with some of space impeded by books jutting out of their shelves.
“This isn’t called the best private school for nothing. I’m so glad your parents paid for your tuition so I could come here for free.”
“You’re SO funny Roa. Now that you’ve used me as your personal library card, I’m going back to my club.”
As Roa was wandering around to look for the books Para recommended, he noticed a peculiar book in the new bookshelf section. He took the book, and saw that the leather that bound it was extremely tattered, as if it would disintegrate at the slightest touch.
“Now how did you get into the new book section?”
The only words bound on the leather were the title of the book.
“The Legend of Tarbur…”
Roa carefully opened the book as to not break it, and began to read.
A kingdom named Tarbur was started by an adventurer who wished for all races to be treated equally. Legends say that the adventurer came from another world. After the kingdom was established, peace only lasted for a couple of centuries until a new human ruler became extremely corrupt and started to ostracize the demon race. A civil war broke out, and as a result the kingdom broke up into five. The Tarbur kingdom only had humans, the Einheart kingdom consisted mostly of elves, the Curl kingdom consisted mostly of dwarves, the Jianial kingdom kingdom consisted mostly of beastmen, and the Daruvan kingdom consisted mostly of demons. Wars continued between all of the kingdoms, but because of human ingenuity the Tarbur kingdom once again began to expand. However, in a recent event, the Curl kingdom brought out a secret weapon and decimated the human army, which signaled the Jianial and Daruvan kingdoms to team up with the Curl kingdom to wipe Tarbur off the map.
Roa flipped past the first page, only to be met by blank pages.
“Did someone stick their fanfiction diary in here or something?”
Slowly, the blank pages began to flip on their own, until it was the last page. On that was a circle of words unknown to Roa.
“Huh?! Wh-what’s going on?”
A glow began to expand around the book, until it filled Roa’s vision.
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