" And that was how I found you brat, like a dead rat on a wooden crate filled with coal. My best haul till this day." A middle aged man with brown said to a Boy sitting in front him.
His name was Ethan, Ethan Marthos but people will rather call him by his masked persona, The judge of silver.
Famous around many countries as the "one who judges everyone", he was wierd guy to say the least.
The boy was his adoptive son who Ethan would rather call his Apprentice instead. Argus Marthos was the name, a boy Ethan picked up from a bandit siege years ago.
In all honesty, Argus was like a complete opposite of Ethan, Always serious and cold to any person he didn't trust and maybe that was reason he haven't found any job in the city.
It was a everyday insult Ethan would throw at argus despite himself leaving off the loot he occasionally steals from the bandits.
Suddenly there was a knock on the door, followed by a coarse voice as the door knob turned.
" Found you jackass, Where is my debt and interest?" A burly man said as came inside while covered in golden rings and chains to the point it was a miracle he hasn't been robbed.
"Ah Lelin, Come come. I was about to visit you Tommorow but you came here yourself." Ethan chimed, Trying to butter up to his money lender who was getting annoyed of his antics.
The burly man was led by Ethan to the basement of the house while Argus like usual, left the house for the city.
Except argus himself, others may not know it but Argus was what one would call a world traveler, a victim of a spacial rift that dumped him in this world when he was a mere toddler.
After coming here, he has spent years trying to blend in with the society of this world but it is very much a jungle that he just can't get used to.
This was the world of Quara, a world that stood on the boundary between many worlds, a unstable space where rifts would occasionally form and create gateways across realms. It was also a weird world which had a awful lot of similarities with games Argus has played in his previous world before he was brought here.
Quara another thing was also quite interesting about it was its technology which was advanced enough to travel to other worlds but its outer region didn't even have railroads.
The planet could be best seen as a single massive civilization divided into smaller pieces where the farther one went from the main capital, the farther they went from advanced technology as the central regions of the civilization A.k.a the Star empire was advanced enough to reach portal technology while the outer regions of the civilization looked like backward medieval villages with knights and spearmen.
Also everyone had a statue menu in this world but unlike the games, it had no stat addition or exp stuff but rather worked on a class focused system where you can choose a class for yourself .The class a person could choose were dependent on the factors of the person choosing and Something called a Attribute which were basically just a walking tag of what you are.
Argus however refused to choose a class, not because he didn't want but because all he got were crappy classes as he was practically a outsider to the world and had received the Otherworlder attribute which made him unable to get classes beyond the most basic stuff.
[OtherWorlder - The possessor of this attribute will not be able to recieve classes other than those of similar class tree.]
He tried everything from learning from a articifier or mage to working under a knight or merchant but he never received any new class options or attributes except the original three he had .The three options were 'stowaway' which was worse than a peasant and gave him nothing as a boost except a energy cost reduction skill, 'Invader' which was like being labelled a global enemy in return for a 2x overall boost, and finally the worst of them all, The 'Burden' which was more of a curse then a class which lowered his overall stats in half for a basic learning skill that boosted his learning speed to threefold.
Just remembering his options always made Argus want to puke but he held it in and made way to the merchant again and spent the rest of the day as his assistant as he usually does. A repeatative schedule where he helps in accounting for the basic stock of the shop.
It wasn't much but it was all he could find for a income and his Cheap steak of a father refused to give him a penny outside of food expenses.
" I swear he ain't getting penny out of my salary the day i get a good job." Argus grumbled while walking his way home. He looks at the bunch of small notes in his pocket and his expression grew more haggard and tired as he felt his energy leaving his body.
Annoyed and pennyless, he soon reached his home but felt something unusual. The usual smell of alcohol and messy clothing were nowhere to be seen, the door was wide open and then he noticed it, broken glass and a missing item from the shelf.
"This!! OLD MAN" Argus yelled as he threw away his bag and dashed into the house to see everything messed up or broken and a strong smell of iron spread around the house.
Confused and panicked, he ran to the basement where he saw a person sitting on the chair. For a second he felt relieved seeing it was same old moneylender that came in morning and walked closer before his somewhat decent sixth sense perked up.
A thought came to his mind as Argus quickly closed in towards the moneylender but. He was dead, shot though the chest, blood flowing down his body down to the ground and fell straight to the ground after Argus's touch.
" This can't be. this wasn't supposed to happen! I have to do something and quick."
With questions popping up in his mind like bubbles in a stew, Argus spent no time moving to his room and grabbed a chest from beneath his bed, opening it and bringing out a bunch of equipment from within.
putting a type of leather armor, Argus begins wearing a pair of gloves and boots and also grabbed a small gun like weapon that seemed to be made from stone with strange symbols on it but he had no time to worry about anything as he feared the worst and couldn't waste a single second.
"Have to find him, I have to find him" he repeated , terror and fear flooding his mind as he quickly made his way to the living room and tried to figure out any clues to what happened.
From the corner of his eye, he saw a trail of blood going through the window alongside a few cuts and darts on the wall, leaping out of the window Argus was greeted with a trail of broken walls with people and guards doing a inspection with the witnesses and quickly hid behind the corner.
" It was some guy in a shark mask and a cloak followed by our neighbour Ethan."
"anything else Ms. Lily? like what they were carrying or anything?" The guard asked the witness.
The lady thought for sometime before saying "A longsword, Mr. Ethan was carrying a longsword and the cloaked guy had a small crossbow and something that looked like a barrel made of rocks."
" A gun and a crossbow? Was the guy a ranger or something?" Argus came to a quick conclusion and quickly left the street from the shadows, following the trial of destruction as his only means to finding Ethan.
*******
The trial was long, very long as by the time it begin narrowing Argus had already left the Town and entered the forest area which was flooding with beasts and monsters of hundreds of variety, so he had to watch his step, avoiding any threat that could delay him and quickly fastened as the chances of meeting any person lowered more and more.
Just when he was fearing the worst, A loud boom Reverberates throughout the forest as birds and animals woke from their slumber and look towards the cloud of dust and smoke rising from a cliff. Hearing the sound, Argus could no longer stay composed as he quickly climbed onto a tree and soon he saw it.
Far away in the distance, a silvery giant golem 2 story tall and covered fully in metal and standing on its shoulder was a average figure of Ethan, battered with a bleeding wound on his chest that looked to be made from a lance like weapon and in front of Ethan lay another guy, the shark masked assailant sprawled on the floor with the golem's arm crushing his back.
Watching Ethan emerging Victorious, Argus sighed in relief as he felt his tension and fear slowly fading away but the relief didn't last long as he watched the golem disperse in a stream of light as Ethan crashed right beside the Assailant.
Argus dashed, like a feral cat escaping from a predator as felt his own breath leaving him but yet he didn't stop and soon reached the cliff where he saw Ethan fall.
"I knew you will come *coughs* Brat."
Ethan's voice reached Argus who turned around and leapt through the bushes before reaching his adoptive father laying on the ground. Turning his eyes, Argus saw not only the wound on the chest but also the gapping hole passing through Ethan's guts and felt his insides turn in disgust and puked on the spot.
" Now that's not very nice, puking in front of someone dying is something not even i would do." the old man said while recoiling back from the injuries and saw tears falling down Argus's eyes and couldn't help but remember the toddler he once picked up from the train cart.
" Its fine, Your old man did make quite a butt load of enemies along his journey. *cough* I knew this day will come sooner or later."
" Don't give me that load of crap, we will get you to the doctor an-", before he could finish the words, Argus was silenced by the fading light in Ethan's eyes as he realised that there was no way for Ethan to survive and lowered his head.
"Oi brat. Before I move on. Let me tell you something."