The Roamer

Chapter 28: Misery

“I… I… I’m not strong enough to enforce what I want.” Aeolus said, while sobbing to his heart's content. He couldn’t keep up with this, because no matter what type of mentality he had, he was just a child, a child who ended thousands, no, hundreds of thousands of lives in a single battle.

“I… this can’t all be for naught. I need to find his body and make him into a soldier!” Aeolus roared, while wiping away his tears furiously. The amount of tears he could shed were reaching the limit, and all those tears didn’t do anything.

“Even though I’m the one who survived, I’m the one who took the true loss.” Aeolus said, while soaring into the big black abyss. He continued to go deeper within, because if he didn’t even have the guts to do even that, then what could he do when he had to confront all those people that died within this battle when he himself died?

He finally reached the bottom after a few hours, surprised by how deep this planet went. He finally saw a bunch of rubble at the bottom of this abyss. He descended even more, and he was extremely shocked. He saw many, many buildings piled up on top of each other, as if this abyss was a dump.

Aeolus looked to his sides, and saw many, many more buildings stacked up on each other. Finally, he saw something that got him ridden with guilt. He saw so many bodies. Children, women, men, elders, and mystical creatures. All of these were victims of his battle. He honestly couldn’t hide it anymore, and began tearing up again.

Thinking that you killed many, many innocent victims and actually seeing the actual thing are way different. Clearly, the latter would be much harsher on a person. Aeolus did not know that this memory would change his mindset and psychology later on. For now, he was bawling his eyes out.

After crying for another ten minutes, he once again ran out of tears. He stopped thinking of all this, and saw the manor. Aeolus was beginning to get confused, because all these buildings aren't turned into rubble.

‘Did that final explosion just collapse the ground, and leave all the buildings and people fine?’ Aeolus thought to himself, while beginning to think of something even more horrible. If that was the case, then the people did not die immediately, and were falling for a long time in fear. He would’ve preferred it if they died right away, how miserable was their lives while they were falling for hours to reach the bottom?

‘M-most of them got knocked out by the G-force before hitting the ground, r-right?’ Aeolus thought to himself, not willing to torture himself any longer. He once again began to search for the body of his opponent, hoping to god that it wasn’t disintegrated. However, things would not turn out to be the way he wanted them to be.

After searching for hours on end, and even spreading out his two undead comrades, he could not find the body of the master in the area they were fighting in. Aeolus immediately flew out of the dark abyss, since there was nothing to be gained from it. If it made him feel uncomfortable, and he was gaining nothing from it, then what was the point of staying?

“I guess… I should go back to my uncle.” Aeolus said, while realizing something was off. He tried to sense the string he had left in the cave, but it wasn’t there, but really low.

“No… it can’t be!” Aeolus roared, while soaring as fast as he can.

Aeolus arrived at where the cave should be, and in its place, was an endless abyss that descended into nothingness. Aeolus, realizing what this meant, and sensing no living aura nearby, was beginning to vomit.

‘Why… why?!’ Aeolus screamed within his mind, not understanding why such a thing happened. In the end, he began to comprehend what led to this.

‘I bit off a stick that was too big, and wasn’t powerful enough to challenge!’ Aeolus roared within his mind, while continuously hurting himself. This continued on for at least five hours, or maybe more. Aeolus wouldn’t forgive himself, no matter what. Him overstepping his bounds caused all of this.

“The city where your wife, auntie, was is also destroyed…” Aeolus finally said, after a long time. He then sat down cross legged in mid-air, and closed his eyes which were leaking a lot.

‘If I don’t reminisce on this battle and re-experience it, it will be the cherry on top of this misery.’ Aeolus said, trying to salvage even the smallest thing out of this battle. However, it was completely useless, as a child like him wouldn’t find the use of reminiscing over something, so he was making almost no gains from this.

“This… this is true hell.” Aeolus muttered, and began standing while floating. He then tried to fly as far away as possible, for a simple reason.

He didn’t want to be involved with this anymore. He never wanted to return here, no matter what. For this place would be the greatest despair in his life that he had ever touched.

Just like that, the true journey had begun. He would eventually cross vast oceans, and extremely large land masses, but for now, he was just getting out of the area where it had all began.

--- sequence 2 ---

Seven months had passed, and Aeolus was aging along with the years. During these months, he had gotten used to the trauma within his head a lot, and kept getting stronger, along with his undead comrades. He had learnt the geography of the world, and understood it more deeply now.

The world was called Caluluxe, and there were twenty huge land masses located within it. He didn’t exactly remember the names of the land masses, but he understood the geography of most. Different empires and nations conquered each one, and he saw all of them as enemies.

He began to talk with people without emotion, and never really cared. The only time he would show any expression was when he was surprised, or when there were genuinely good people suffering. He had grown to only care about the good of the world, and conquer the rest.

He would always try to haggle these days, as he had grown to see the use of currency. Even if he didn’t want it for himself, he could give it to the people who needed it, like the people of the ghost town where the… massacre happened.

He had grown an army of exactly twenty-seven people, all of them as powerful as him. Each one had different weapons, except for three healers who all used either staffs or no weapons. However, his most experienced one would have to be his first soldier, who he now named Kline. He gave names to each comrade now, as all of them were worthy of respect.

His two layers had both grown and had both individually reached the power of an eleventh layer. One was fused with the affinity of death, while the other united with wind. Other then that, he had still not formed his third layer, and the affinity of poison was the weakest.

His bounty had also grown, as people seemed to have somehow put the dots together and found out that he was related to the explosion of a whole region, which he was indeed related to. He was one of the most wanted people out there, currently worth twenty million ven. Still, he had not reached the top one thousand for most wanted, so he was still in the good for now.

Aeolus had left the land mass where he was before, and was on a different one called Pangaea. It was one of the smallest ones there was, and didn’t amount to much. Currently, Aeolus was not planning on leaving this land mass until he overthrew the royalty of this land, considering how corrupt they were. Most towns were actually slave facilities, and almost nobody had freedom except for royalty and the army.

‘Despite it being such a small nation on a small land mass such as this, they still dare to act so arrogantly.’ Aeolus thought to himself, currently thinking of a way to overthrow them. Not only did he want to overthrow them because of the fact that they were above everybody, there was also a chance of him finding villagers as slaves, as it was called the land of discrimination for a reason.

He stood up from the log he was sitting on, and began to run. He didn’t fly much these days, as he had learned the benefits of running while infusing the affinity of wind into his legs. First, it would be harder to find him then if he was flying through the sky, and second, it was actually faster.

After running for ten seconds, he found a building in front of him. It had a sign saying smithy, and Aeolus realized that he needed to repair many of the weapons for the undead, or maybe buy some new ones. He reached into his mid-layer, and pulled out the weapons they were holding, stacking them onto his back.

After doing all that, he kicked the door open since his hands were occupied. Some crippled old man with a beard noticed him, and began to smile.

“It’s been so long since I’ve had a customer.” he said to Aeolus, while smiling like a toddler.

Aeolus smiled back, and unloaded all the weapons he had. Each and every single one of them had at least one crack in them, or were just broken in half, literally. He poured them onto a table, and began to speak to the old man.

“Excuse me sir, but can you please fix all these weapons?” Aeolus said, while feeling a little guilty, forcing an old man to do such a thing. The old man began to frown, and even stood up and patted Aeolus’ shoulder.

“So you’re just another slave for the army who is also being forced into repairing weapons?” the old man said, even going as far as shedding a tear for Aeolus. However, Aeolus didn’t blame him. This old man has lived on this land mass this whole time, and has been subject to seeing slaves every day. He wasn’t a slave himself, but only because he was a smith who was spared for his use.

“Yes, I’m just another slave who is used to send weapons here and back.” Aeolus said, not revealing his true identity. He had learned to be more secretive these days, as who knows what people would do once they learned of his identity, and linked it to his bounty.

“I’ll get to working on these weapons then, just to make the process a little less cruel for you.” the smith said, and began to take a weapon at a time into a different room.

After two hours, all the weapons had been fully repaired, and lying on the table in front of Aeolus.

“Just like the army requested, all these weapons are fixed and prepared.” the old man said, with a smile on his face which seemed to be outdated. Aeolus smiled at the old man, and left two hundred ven before leaving the smithy, as a tip.

“How does a slave like you have the money to leave me, a mere smithy, a tip?” the smith said, confusion apparent on his face.

“Don’t worry about me, just worry about yourself for now, old man.” Aeolus said, still grinning while walking out of the smithy. He then gave all the weapons back to his undead comrades, and ran off towards his next destination.

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ABOUT ME

Name: Abdul Kareem

Age: 13 (Almost 14)

Occupation: Middle school

Goal: Idk, I’m just making a novel for now

Location: Why would I say that?

Relations: I’m not married (duh)

Favorite food: da asian stuf!

Anyway, on a more serious tone, this is my first novel I’ve ever tried writing. Thanks for being with me on this first experience! If you could also somehow get others to read this novel too, I would be pretty grateful!