Far away from where Toora was held captive, although how far it was difficult to say, Edmund was staring at a soldier. The man was speaking to him, and had been speaking to him for several seconds, but he had no idea what was happening, or why he was even here. There were voices all around him, but they were the distant rumble of air pressure differentials to him, not clear words with a meaning to them.

He shook his head violently, and blinked.

The world slowly regained its former color. Gradually, the voices resolved themselves into something intelligible.

“Sir. Sir! I need you to come with us.”

“Uh?” Edmund looked around. The one soldier talking to him was shifting on his feet, hand on the pummel of his sword, and around him the other soldiers were at least as tense, if not more. Edmund thought about what to do, the thought of crumpling them in their own armor like he did at the gates floating through his mind for a moment, before being set aside in favor of more sensible thoughts. “Alright.” He said, and got up.

Torchback was a fortified city, clad in tall, thick walls of yellowing bricks that hid all but the tallest of towers from view. In a way, it was like a bigger version of the now surely destroyed Farcall. Being a big city, and being as backward as its looks made it out to be, it stank of shit, piss and decay. Dead bodies and animals were amassed out of view in rotting piles, and save for the main road, a small river of waste ran down the sides of every road. It all hit Edmund like a truck when he first stopped to actually take it all in, especially with how romanticized the Middle Ages were back in his time. Here, with magic and all, it was supposed to be better than that, and yet if it were for him he would raze it all to the ground. Of course, reality bending offered him a nice solution that tamed his destructive desires to almost nonexistence, making the stink and rancid air everyone else’s problem, but not his.

All around Torchback were the fields. Rectangles of various sizes and colors, separated by a thin line of trees, colonized every hill and plain; each one of them with its little manor or house built at the center. There was, however, one side of the city that didn’t have any roads, or fields on it. It was the reason why Torchback had even been built here in the first place: the sea of grass. It was a triangle extending from the city and outwards where the only form of plant life was grass. Everything else just stopped at its edge, plants and animals alike as if scared, and for a good reason. The grass was death. Razor sharp blades of the deepest of greens, nobody knew why they only grew where they did but one thing was sure: nobody below B rank would be powerful enough to walk through there and come out the other side alive.

Rumor was that someone did.

Montad was not one to believe unfounded rumors. He was pragmatic, focused.

He wasn’t always like this, of course. When he had appeared in this world he was but an infant, but with memories of a life he had lived before, and he spent years of his new life asking himself if those memories were real or just a dream. This world was so much different. And even among the people of this world, he was in turn different.

Better.

Not only because he had knowledge nobody else had. Forbidden knowledge retained from his past experience on Earth, coming from a place so much more advanced than the middle ages this world was stuck in, that he was guaranteed to always succeed if he put his mind to the task. But that wasn’t it for him. There was more. A system, unlike anyone else in this world. They had magic systems, he had a System.

It gave him quests, guided him towards a glorious path of adventuring, fame and riches. It presented him with unique opportunities and fortunate encounters, gave him challenges that he could overcome to become stronger, and bit by bit, prepared him for something. A goal in the distance. The final boss.

To rid this world of the unspeakable evil that was tainting it.

He didn’t know much. Bits and pieces he managed to put together from what the system told him, and from what he saw in the scrolls and texts of old. From an age of even more advanced magic, long lost, that would put modern Earth technology to shame.

There were monsters lurking. The very power he harnessed through the system was poison. And he would use it to bring those monsters down, in the ultimate sacrifice to save the world and return home a hero.

He recalled the last sacrifice he had to make for the sake of this world, now his world much more than Earth ever was. His old team, seven heroes who died so that he could live, the biggest sacrifice he had to make so far, but surely not the last. But he did it anyway, when the system told him to do it, and he lived to tell the tale and came out so much stronger. He would not forget them. He would not forget the pain.

Now alone, the quest had led him here, to Torchback, where he heard a rumor about a man crossing the infamous sea of grass with other people in tow. He got curious, and asked around, his rank and fame opening all doors for him. What he learned was disconcerting. A massacre. Mass manipulation of civilians. The disappearance of a whole team.

Then another quest popped up.

Friends or Rivals, it was titled. It asked him to deal with this Edmund, however he saw fit, as long as he did. And, after he saved the team Edmund was keeping hostage, they would feel indebted to him and offer their undying allegiance. The progress was marked 0/1. An easy quest, like many others he had completed. Find the missing people, save them, kill the evil guy in the process.

A woman he found right outside the adventurer’s guild claimed to know of this Edmund, and she happily told him where he could find him, almost smiling behind her square spectacles that looked so out of place here. They would fit right on the face of a secretary. And so he went, along with the guards.

Edmund was brought to a small edifice built into the side of the walls, from where it protruded outside like a stony tumor without much care for its aesthetics or looks. Montad had him sit in a bare room, devoid of all furniture, save a table carved out of a single stone block and a wooden chair. He stared at him from beyond the wall through a scrying spell of his own making, the system had quested him long ago to come up with a spell on his own, and saw that Edmund was studying the table, leaning on it from his chair.

Weird atomic structure. Montad heard the man’s inner monologue through another one of his spells. It looks fake. Fake but real. Magic? Magic. Maybe. 100 Humes per second just to see atoms, what the fuck. Hate this body. Praetor, once I have free time remind me to pull up the missions menu. Add some tasks related to improving this shit body.

Montad scratched his chin. What was this guy talking about? And who was that Praetor he was talking to? Somebody living in his head, like a spirit, or was he just insane? Montad squinted as if to see better, looking at the man. Edmund’s head slowly rose from the table, and his eyes drew a line as they slowly turned upwards along the wall until it was as if they were staring right at him.

He felt uncomfortable. But there was no way that Edmund could see him. Right? He kept looking. The man was smiling now.

Don’t you think it’s rude, to—

With a yelp, Montad jumped backwards, and the scrying spell dissipated like morning mist under the sun. Montad looked at his hands, taking deep breaths to calm himself down. What? He had imagined it. For sure. There was just no way. He hadn’t felt any magic coming from Edmund, nothing. Maybe it was just like last time, just his tired mind. When was the last time he had slept, after all? The system stated that the skill would let him function with just a hour of sleep a week but maybe, maybe it wasn’t as perfect as he thought. Maybe he just needed to sleep.

He coughed, straightened up and nodded to the guards. “Let him stew in there for another hour,” he said, puffing his chest under the armor. “Then I’ll make him talk.”

The door opened, sometime later, to the sound of chains. The keyhole, where Montad was slowly turning the oversized key, was rusted over and clanged. Another man clad in armor, unassuming like everyone else, entered the room with him, but he motioned for him to wait outside and close the door. Immediately he saw Edmund’s eyes go to the golden insignia on his chest.

Then they locked eyes. Montad found himself thinking that maybe he hadn’t imagined the scene earlier, maybe it had happened. He quashed the thought. Edmund was motionless, staring into his eyes, yes, but as if he was looking at a void with no particular interest. The edges of his mouth were slightly curved up, in a half smirk that made him look like an idiot, or like he was mocking Montad.

Edmund looked at him for another moment, then began looking all over the place, impatiently. A moment later his mouth was about to open to protest, when Montad slammed a fist on the table. The sound reverberated.

“Do you have,” he paused, studying the other man in his chair, “any idea what you have done? Do you ever even stop to think about the consequences of your actions? Or do you just act?” he yelled.

He knew these types. Bullies.

“To be fair, I was in a bad mood.” Edmund said.

Montad felt his blood boil. “A bad… mood?”

Edmund nodded, head bobbing up and down like a child after being asked if he wanted candy.

“This is serious! You killed innocent people!” he yelled.

Edmund shrugged. “They weren’t so innocent. They shot me first.”

“You,” Montad grabbed the man by the shirt. It was so easy to lift him up and slam him against the wall. “You think you can bully people because of your power, huh? Well, how does it feel to be bullied back?”

Edmund smacked his lips. “Well, not too good, to be honest. Kinda been a constant as of late, though.”

An image appeared from Montad’s wrist armor like a hologram. “And them?” he slammed Edmund against the wall again. “What about them?”

The image had the faces of the members of Shininstars.

“Them?”

“What did you do to them?” Montad spat.

“I… nothing?”

“Lies!”

“Fine,” a smirk appeared on Edmund’s lips. “Want to see them? I’ll take you to them.”

Montad let go. It was all to easy. “Alright, then. Lead the way.”

He pushed Edmund out of the room and towards the floatship parked outside the wall, right by the sea of grass. Very good, and the day was only getting started.