Relictus fought monster after monster. He felt nothing as he extinguished lives, an act that stung his heart before. He could swear he felt his chest become colder, as if his blood had frozen. For days he fought, his power increasing dramatically. He only felt colder. He wanted to scream, but he knew it would impede his situation. He could not feel emotion – especially not anger. The icy feeling extended from his chest outward. It stopped at his neck, as if it was fighting something to reach his head.

Relictus breathed heavily. He had not slept in days, just killed and killed. He didn’t even know what he was massacring anymore, his blade just swung instinctively. There was nothing left of the Relictus that wanted to save the world from ruin. He, himself, may have been that ruin.

It became hard to breathe. His chest was constricted, his arms aching, but not from overuse. He had to force himself to walk. His eyes glazed over. He felt nothing. He read his fury gauge. It had gone down ridiculously fast. It had gone far past -1000, Relictus was afraid he could never revert the hole he had dug himself into through the merciless slaughter. His eyes glazed over, he couldn’t move himself anymore. He didn’t go limp – it felt as if he had been petrified, paralyzed from the neck down. He still felt the pain.

Yet there was still no feeling.

~–•–~

He was in a bed. It was not the familiar run-down inn bed, or the despised bland too-soft hospital bed. This was a normal bed, in a normal room. He hadn’t been in one in many years.

“Awake?” Relictus heard a voice. It was a soft, sweet voice – one Relictus disliked. Beside the bed was a young lady, no older than him. Relictus immediately understood through her tone that she was tired. She was trying to hide that, and act happy.

“Tired?” He answered after a few moments.

“They say only a fool answers a question with a question.” She beamed back. Relictus immediately sat up. He didn’t want to spend any time more than necessary in a bed.

“You are?” He asked, tersely, again. The girl next to her had a look on her face. Her eyebrows were lowered, her eyes half closed, her mouth ever so slightly frowning.

“You never answered the question.” She responded. “…” Relictus still said nothing. “…I thought it was rhetorical.” He finally answered.

“Okay, okay, you got me there. I’m Inakara, daughter of the town’s chief.”

Relictus thought in the back of his mind, ‘wow. That’s not cliché at all.’ He stood up, and felt an unfamiliar feeling on his finger. On his right hand’s index finger was an unusual band with a silver color, but it had a slightly blue undertone. He almost saw snow swirling around beneath the surface of the ring. He gave Inakara a quizzical look.

“Oh yes, with that, you should be able to control your power. At the very least, it won’t escape your body faster than it is restored.”

This only left him more confused. Power escaping his body? Is that what was causing him to feel so cold? He really was just slowly dying? Questions flurried through his mind. He still felt nothing, but there wasn’t some insatiable coldness inside him that was worrying him. He could deal with this for now.

“Be careful if you do wish to take it off, though, as the energy that has left your body still remains around you. Taking the restriction of flow off will cause the greater energy to flow to the smaller one, and this won’t stop until the greater energy is completely depleted. This, I recommend greatly that you take care of that piece of equipment.”

Relictus, naturally, had no idea what this meant in the slightest. From what he could gather, taking off of the ring would cause a dangerous surge of power into or out of his body, depending on how long the ring was on him. Useful.

“Who are you, how do you know this much?” He asked, suspicious.

“All Spirits know this much about the flow of energy!” She spoke proudly. It looks as though Relictus unknowingly stroked her ego a bit.

“Spirits?” He returned.

She proceeded to explain what exactly a spirit was, after being incredulous for a small while with the fact that he had no idea what the dominant sentient race of this world was.

Before he could step out, he looked down. He had on him only his armor trousers. How on Earth did he sleep for so long in those uncomfortable things?

Well, it was a good time to evaluate himself. Through his journeys, he had improved his body’s toning a lot. His biceps were notably defined, and he had a 6-pack some would kill to have. Relictus didn’t care whatsoever. As he saw no new cuts or scars, he decided he was fine with these ‘Spirits’ for now.

~–•–~

At some point, Relictus ended up standing in front of the chief himself. The chief was easily very old, and Relictus had no idea what the lifespan of one of these was. His hair was pure white, not far from Relictus’s own. He had a long, straight beard extending down below his neck, and his face was wrinkled as if from stress, rather than from age. His deep green eyes conveyed warmth.

“Sit, we have much to discuss.” The spirit spoke tersely, “I believe I already know your name… Relictus is it? I am Tagadás. A pleasure.” Tagadás extended a hand, presumably to shake.

Relictus sat down, but didn’t return the gesture. The man in front of him was evidently not happy, but just assumed the human didn’t know the gestures of this world. “Where am I?” Relictus immediately asked. It was imprudent, but very relevant.

“Ah, yes, that was where I was going to start. You are the first human I have heard of who has wandered across the barrier.”

“Barrier?”

“Yes. The barrier between the dimension we are in now and the dimension you live in. In fact, due to what we are, we cannot harm the other creatures around us. It was a great service of you to have gone through most of the population of animals surrounding us, it makes the roads much safer to travel.”

“So you cannot hurt them, but they can hurt you? Why do you still exist, then?” Relictus was sincerely curious. He wondered how one could possibly survive against enemies that can hurt but not be hurt.

“A good question indeed!” He was smiling brightly, but that expression immediately dropped. “Sometimes I wonder myself…”

This exchange went on for a long time. Relictus gathered much information about this world, and in return, he was to guard their caravans for trading between villages. It was a great way to see the world.

“It’s a small village, but still, it’s home. Come with me. Allow me to introduce you to them.”

They walked at a rather slow pace down the road. The people opened their doors to greet the chief, and he introduced Relictus to them. There was Odrekuvanjeto, Vidmova, Verweigerung, Merzhum, Árnisi, Jujue, Uari, and there were several more that I won’t stall you by listing here.

“This is the human, Relictus.” They were talking to Vidmova.

“No, no, it’s impossible for a human to cross the barrier. Absolutely impossible!” Vidmova laughed back, as if it was not just preposterous, but hilarious to hear. They moved on after an exasperated sigh from Relictus, and the exchanges continued.

Jujue: “There’s no way he’s a human. He’d be dead by now.”

Merzhum: “Impossible.”

This continued on and on until Relictus was completely worn out from the interactions. He was still not used to talking to people. It was also rather frustrating to try and fail to prove his origins.

~–•–~

After just a few days of hanging around in the village, he was assigned a post as the sole guard of the convoy heading east to the next village over, to meet with Hasserea. She was notoriously hard to work with, but they still kept good relations in their trading. They only sent a single group of traders every year, since they had all the time in the world and it was hard to travel with all of the danger on the road, which nobody could do anything about. Relictus was brought in at a very convenient time, they were just about to send out the caravans.

Thus, the party of eight left.

Author's Note

Spoiler : It's here! He's in another world for whatever reason!

Thanks for reading. This one was a bit quicker than usual because I just had a ton of ideas, and there are yet more to implement, so I'll be uploading chapters quicker (one every 1-2 days) for this arc. Anyway, as I said, thanks for reading. Tell me what you think and what I screwed up and all that stuff. Should I start leaving random thoughts in the author's notes? Add a meta character sheet? Maybe start developing the background so that you guys know what the hell is going on? These questions and more tonight on a new episode of Chapter or New Chapter!