"Cough! Cough! Cough! Damn it! What's going on?!" the dark-haired young man croaked.Feeling a slight tightness on his neck, he touched it and felt something strange on it.
After a second, he froze all of a sudden. "Noose…? I don't remember hanging myself at such a young age. I'm forty-seven, for God's sake…. Wait… MY VOICE! What's wrong with my voice?!" He sharply began to feel himself, touching his long black hair and delicate skin..."WHAT?! I BECAME A GIRL?! WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!" Sharply grabbing his groin, he froze and exhaled with relief. "Ohh…. I'm still a man; otherwise, I would really hang myself."
Removing the rope from his neck, he examined his black robe with interest. Under it was a classic grey suit with a green tie.And then he went to the mirror, where he saw a young guy with black shoulder-length greasy hair, a hooked nose, and black "cold" eyes that caused a nostalgic smile on his face."Not a bad look—somewhat reminiscent of mine before I killed the entire Magistrate. Oh… those looks full of hatred and despair… How wonderful it was!" A small grin appeared on his face, and his eyes became comparable to ice when he remembered that moment.
"I remembered…" he said as the smile became a little sad. "I died. How sad it is, you fucking old fart!"
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A lone man, wrapped in a black cloak, stood in the middle of a destroyed building. His long black hair ruffled by the autumn wind... Perhaps this picture would have been ordinary if the corpses of people dressed in similar dark cloaks had not been lying around him.
Some had no eyes, others had no limbs, and there were even those who were missing everything: eyes, nose, ears, tongue, skin... For any ordinary person, this picture would be a nightmare, a real living hell. But the man who stood in the center of the ruined building experienced only one thing—relief...He did not leave this place for many hours.
His black eyes looked at the sky... looking at the man who appeared in the sky. It was an old man in a gray cloak, but since the hood was down, one could easily see long gray hair, deep wrinkles on the face, and black eyes filled with disbelief and hatred.
"GRID! YOU BASTARD! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!" the old man shouted furiously, and darkness fell over the whole clearing. Black fog swirled around him, and the old man's eyes burned with a scarlet, ominous tint.
"Old man, you returned early," Grid greeted him with a slight smile. The young man's voice was calm, even… even slightly monotonous, but you could still hear notes of malice in it."I thought you'd be here tomorrow, so I had fun with your students and was going to prepare a trap for you… Kha…" He was about to finish his words when a wrinkled hand appeared on his neck, and then the twisted face of the old man appeared in front of him.
"GRID! I WILL NOT KILL YOU!" The old man's voice was so cold that it penetrated to the bones. "I will not let you die. You will go through all the torments that my students have experienced. You will feel everything that they have experienced, but hundreds of times worse!" The old man, seeing how Grid wanted to say something, slightly loosened his grip.
"Should I tell you the truth? I'm flattered. Tell me, old man, do you remember the city of Romalia?" For a moment, the old man froze and began to peer into the face of the man with surprise. With every second, his eyes became wider and wider.
"You… You are that child!?" exclaimed the old man in surprise."How did you survive?!"
"Remember what you said to me after you completely wiped out my house, killed all my family and friends, leaving only me to drag out my existence while depriving me of both arms and legs?" Grid's smile never left his face, which caused the old man to have an unpleasant feeling. "(I won't kill you. Live. I want to see how you will live and take revenge…) These words sank into my heart, and, as you can see, I survived and achieved the rank of Archmage in thirty-seven years—all this just to take revenge. And, as you see, I got… Kha…" The hand around Grid's neck clenched again.
"Genius! I was able to achieve this rank only after almost five hundred years, but you were in a hurry," the head of the Magistrate drawled with a grin."Perhaps a couple of hundred more years, and you would have become a Great Archmage. Then at least you would have had a chance to win. But you decided to take your revenge right now and try to kill the magician who had already reached his peak a long time ago."
"Had to do this, after all, you were going to try to advance to the "Creator" this month, and I realized that if I did not kill you now, then later I would not have a chance. Because if you achieved this, you could easily recognize me." Grid said.
"You're right, but it's too late…"
"And why do you think so?" Grid, grabbing the old man's hand, easily freed himself and looked into the old man's face."I deceived you. I managed to set a trap," a small dagger appeared in Grid's hand. "I only have a minute: this is how long this spell will last." There was a never-ending smile on his face all this time, but when he saw the fear in the old man's eyes, it became even wider.
Having cut his finger, Grid began to draw some words on the dagger, and his enemy peered into the hilt with real horror. "I see you know what I'm going to do."
"You're going to die, you know that, don't you?" The old man tried to scare Grid, thinking that Grid didn't know what he could do by using 'it'.
"What would be worse for you than death." In the next moment, he plunged it into the old man's chest. The runes on the hilt shone and soaked into his body, and the dagger disintegrated and disappeared. The dagger wound healed quickly, and the old man was able to move again.
"That's it," the gleam slowly began to fade from the young man's eyes, and two single tears rolled down his cheek. "Mom, Dad, brother, Dean, Rudy, Clea… and the rest, I did it… Just wait for me. I will come to you soon; there is still a little left." Black blood escaped from his mouth…
"WHAT DID YOU DO?!" the old man exclaimed in horror. "MY POWER! MY POWER! HOW COULD YOU?! BASTARD! I'LL KILL YOU!"
"You were late, but…" Grid, looking into his eyes filled with hatred and horror, could not help but gleefully smile—because those eyes were so similar to the ones from his days of pain. "You just lost your powers, that's all." Grid, swaying, went up to the old man and grabbed his hand. The old man, in turn, could not do anything; he simply did not have the strength to resist. "But you have too many advantages—as many as four. This must be corrected."
"NO!"
CRACK~The old man's hand hung like a whip, and tears flowed from his eyes. He experienced such pain only once, hundred years ago, when he was the most ordinary Magister. At that time his arm was broken for touching what he should not have.
CRACK~The old man lost his second hand, and his cry became even stronger. The next moment, he lost his right leg, and then the left one. He lay on the ground with only despair in his eyes.
"Would you be quieter, or something... You can often meet packs of wolves here. Have you forgotten, or what?" But the old man seemed not to have heard his words, because in an instant he had lost everything that he had achieved for several millennia—all this at the hands of a simple boy.
Grid sadly looked at his hands, which began to turn black and disintegrate right in front of his eyes. "Here it is, death… I hope that before I go to hell, I will see them all, at least for the last time…" A moment before his death, it seemed to him that he heard someone cry.
From behind the horizon, in place of the last battle between Archmage Grid Ileus and Grand Archmage Avalon, a bright green light was approaching. In it, one could hardly see a human silhouette…
*********************
"If I don't remember anything, then I'm unlikely to have met anyone. For the first time, I hear that after applying the seal of the "Cursed God", one has been reborn... How could I appear here?" Grid began to peer into the mirror again. "With such a face, it's unlikely that anyone will give me this offer… This body for free? But well, I don't give a damn." Sniffing the uniform and touching his hair, he automatically twisted his face. "The first thing I gotta do is clean myself and then wash all my things!" Closing his eyes, Grid tried to feel the magical power that flowed in his body.
"Is this…?!" There was magic, but it was slightly different, and the density was a hundred times less than in his world, which made it much harder to control.
[A/N: Think of controlling it as moving something—like you can move a denser thing more easily than water. Remember, we do not have a cup or anything to store that water, just our hands.]
"What's happening…?" Grid did not immediately panic, but first decided to look around.The room was magnificent; he had the feeling that he was in the bedroom of some nobleman.
First, what caught his eye was a large four-poster bed. It was wooden, with beautiful patterns—a magnificent handiwork. The bed had a soft mattress and a sheet made of silk, which could not but shock him because silk was a very expensive material. Even the highest nobles could not afford such.To the right of the bed was a bedside table. To the left in the right corner was a closet, and right in front of the closet there was another bedside table, but larger, with a large mirror above it.What surprised him was that it was all done by a true treowwyrhta.
[A/N: "Treowwyrhta"—name for carpenter in old times.]
'Who was the previous owner of the body?' Grid thought in surprise. In the next moment, he abruptly grabbed his head and fell to his knees. "DAMN! MY HEAD! WHAT THE HELL?! FUCK, IT IS HURTING!"
The Archmage clenched his teeth and, sitting on the floor, closed his eyes. He tried to calm himself down, allowing new memories to settle in his mind...Only twenty minutes later, the young man finally opened his eyes. After a superficial examination of the memories of the past owner of the body and blocking them, he felt better. Still, if such a huge amount of knowledge poured into his head in one second, anyone would go crazy, and Grid was no exception.
"Damn, my head is splitting… It's necessary to warn about such a thing…" Taking a deep breath, he looked up with a sad smile toward the rest of the rope on the crossbar. Closing his eyes, he shook his head. "…But still, the life of the boy was not easy. But... so be it. For the second life, I will help you a little. And after that, I will continue to live for both of us. I promise: your name will be remembered for a long time. But in a good or bad way, this will depend on how fate turns out..."
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If you want to read in advance you can do so on [email protected]/lucifer09