Well, getting out of the wall is something that I can live with, seeing that the so-called ‘Badlands’ is not so bad at all. Apparently years after the ‘danger’ the once-wasteland (I know it is a wasteland with abandoned cars and buildings all over the place) has begun to repair itself and now, it is a place with so many green stuffs growing everywhere. The government somehow knows about this and they make paved road and railroad tracks out of the major cities. I guess naming it Badlands won’t do it justice. Well, except for some beasts that looks menacing enough to roam the place.

          As soon as I go out of Orwallis’s perimeter, there is a dragon flying near the wall. We, especially the Mythars, know that dragons are peaceful creatures and very intelligent, enough for it to be able to talk. As intelligent as they are, they still cannot operate out of their bestial instinct, and they cannot make advanced machineries and ideal use of magic like us do, despite of successfully making a settlement somewhere in this world. That dragon might have been guarding Orwallis’s wall and made a nest somewhere near the wall, but I know the reason the wall is erected: safety.

          I might need to remind you that this world is populated with creatures and looks like Mythars and Anima. Many of them are big creatures with dangerous presence and obviously operate on instinct. Unlike your world, we have dragons, griffins, manticores, and even a fucking hydra (no, not HYDRA, and yes, I am well-aware of what it stands of)! Just imagine if we don’t have a wall. They will come to us, and we are forced to slay it. If we kill them, we will create an unbalance to this world, both the nature and the flow of magic. But still, between 1999 to this year, the Badlands is not a good place to settle for townspeople, yet living outside the wall is something else entirely.

          We reach a small town that looks kind of developed. There is a gas station that belongs to an eco-friendly company that is currently having a competition with crude oil companies. Yet, as developed as the place is, it is not a particularly clean place like the one inside the wall. It’s somehow a blacksmith town, seen from the sound of clanging metal and the overall heat the place has. I wonder how the gas station is not set ablaze by the sparks by now.

          We only eat something and set off afterward, without even trying to stop. That’s the point when we hear something exploding nearby. Segara becomes aware and make a stance to cast magic, but he is quickly stopped by the gas station attendant.

          “It’s that boy again,” said a nearby shopper with a sigh. “We keep telling him that experimenting with techs is dangerous.”

          “Is he disturbing you?”

          “No, he’s not. We feel sorry to him. You know that this is a blacksmith town, right? Well, that kid is also one.”

          I wonder what kind of a guy he is.

          “Why aren’t anyone helping him?”

          “We tried, but he is too shy to even talk to us. Ever since his mentor died, he becomes a recluse and keeps experimenting with scraps to be sold. We told him many times that he can talk to us for works in the workshop, but he declined every time, saying that he will be a burden to them. Apparently, he does not talk about his job since he is a genius in these kinds of things. It might be because of his secondary job as our gamekeeper.”

          “A smith and a hunter? Wow, that’s tough.”

          “Out of pity, the butcher always buy meat from him, but I’m afraid that, with the butcher getting a steady trade supply from Orwallis, that kid will not be able to live here anymore without becoming a nuisance. Oh, I need to feed my kids. Where are you driving, exactly, good Mythar?”

          “We are going on a journey across this continent. We just stop for gas.”

          “Oh, good luck, then. If you like, the next stop will be a good place to unwind a little.”

          After receiving the direction from the shopper, we want to go back to the car, but Liza urges us to go meet this interesting person, which Segara objecting with it. In the end, though, Liza wins the argument, partly because of the threat from her power.

          We decide to go meet with the person, partially because of Liza’s urging, but also because we want to stock up on any techs to help us along the journey. We reach the place where the townspeople told us to go, but what meets us is something entirely different from what we imagine.

          The place is not even a functional workshop. It is like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie. Junks are thrown all around a fairly big lawn. The only building standing in that lawn has long been blown inside out. Somehow that explosion was not the culprit since the house has been like this for some times. Blacksmith equipment are everywhere, not being put at the same place like how a proper workshop would look like. Then, in the middle of them all, is a human.

          The human is not a big and buff human that most blacksmiths are known about. He is slender, small human, maybe just as high as my chest. He has a short untidy brownish red hair. Right now, this guy is sitting among the pile of junk he made, looking depressed and almost cried. I feel sorry for this guy.

          We want to go in there to comfort him, but then the moment we walk into his compound, he suddenly sits up and looks at us. The scared expression and his panicked antics are apparent, but he quickly stops and said, “W-w-what do you want? T-this is a p-private…”

          “Hey, don’t worry, we are not going to do anything bad to you,” said Liza. “We just want to see the source of the explosion earlier.”

          “Oh…”

          He went silent and turn around silently, apparently embarrassed by the fact that the explosion was caused by him. That is a rude gesture, but this guy is too much of a pessimistic.

          “I shouldn’t have done that…. I’m really sorry.”

          “That’s okay. Are you hurt?”

          “I’m fine. B-but I’m…feeling like a failure.”

          Oh man, this guy is so depressed I can see a depressed aura from him. I wish he can look up and be a better guy, but somehow he does not want to live normally and lost his way of life.

          Liza is trying to comfort the man, who is somehow at around the same age as us. Segara and I just walk to the corner and look at the junk the young man had. We take a glance at Liza and the man, who is slowly becoming more and more open to us.

          “What do you know? My baby girl is getting mature every time I see her,” said Segara while eating a snack bar. “She likes to help people. That’s something that she always want to do.”

          “That’s the reason why she wanted to be a defense lawyer in the first place,” I said. “But still, I’m surprised that she wants to follow you, considering the risks.”

          Segara sighed. “Discord users awakened their abilities because of an impulse. We all have something that give way to our Discord ability. Hers might be something around the need to exact justice, strong enough to make her ability to be that way, as much as it is useful in combat.”

          Well, this purple Mythar somehow like to think about this Discord ability as a combat-based ability, but I can say not everything is combat-based. But then, I can’t blame Segara with that mindset. He is a former soldier fighting at the frontline. It is a natural thing to have that kind of mindset.

          “Still, I disagree with Liza’s decisions, but I can’t deny the will of her Discord,” said Segara. “We are—or at least I am—wanted by an enemy who I don’t know.”

          I am well aware of that, too. My life quickly turned upside down when Segara came to me that night, when I found out about the Discord ability I have yet to awaken. Segara’s explanation about the ways to activate my Discord ability is intriguing, yet something that I wish would be different. I hate to see what my ability is if it includes hidden desires.

          So far, we don’t see anyone approaching us, or even anything that is remotely out of place or defying the work of physics. Segara can’t find anything, either. I have seen a serial killer using fog as a weapon, so anything…anything…can be a weapon, including a nearby streetlight, or even the ground. Try to imagine a situation where you are being stalked, but you don’t know who or what is stalking you, then suddenly something unexpected jumped you. Yeah, that’s something that the both of us are currently experiencing. Liza and that human, on the other hand, does not feel threatened.

          15 minutes have passed. Nothing that looks threatening to us is approaching us. My breathing starts to go faster. I might not be apparent, but I am breathing at a faster tempo as my heart starts to beat faster in fear. I have never known this kind of situation before. It feels like a scenario in a horror movie. The streetlights have grown brighter as the day darkens…

          …wait. It’s still 5. The day is not supposed to be so dark at this time of the year. Something out of the blue suddenly struck my brain in a sudden realization of the horror we are going to experience moments after this realization.

          “Segara!” I exclaimed to him, something that make Liza and the human look to me. The purple dragon Mythar nods.

          “I can’t believe we fell into the trap the moment we step foot into this workshop,” said Segara while making a stance. “So that kid is the assassin?!”

          I doubt it; Liza is supposed to be the first person to realize that the human is lying, but at this moment we cannot let a stranger out of our blind side. Liza instinctively move in front of the human when she also realized that something is wrong.

          “W-what’s wrong, miss Ward?” said the human.

          “I smell someone that I don’t know,” said Liza when she is at ear-shot. Liza is someone who can identify smell perfectly like a canine Anima, but dragons can do that, too, though not every dragon can do that.

          Suddenly, as we move closer together, the nearby streetlight is suddenly turned off, followed by another lightbulb. Everything is slowly getting darker by the minute.

          Suddenly something comes out from nowhere and attacked us. By my feral instinct, I quickly conjure a shield and attempts to block the attack, but I can only deflect it by some degree, yet I can’t prevent it to scrape my right shoulder. I pierce through my scales and it starts to draw blood. As a dragon Mythar, this wound is not dangerous, but the acidic corrosive effect that happen after is.

          “Hal!” exclaimed Liza, surprised and horrified by the damage I sustain. All I can do is to grunt. I is not painful, but it is eating up the flesh. Segara quickly uses a healing magic to seal the wound.

          “Shit, that was not just a darkness-type magic,” said Segara. “This must be the work of an enemy’s Discord!”

          Ignoring the cheesy line, I try to keep calm and look at my surroundings. The darkness has practically cover our view for at least 10 meters around the workshop. Smart move, I thought. If the user ends up killing us, there will be no witness. The workshop is at the outskirt of the town and this kid does not have anyone that is related to him.

          “W-what is going on? Why is my home surrounded by a black veil?” said the young man behind us.

          “You can just drop the act, kiddo, before I make sure your childish face is bashed in!”

          “Dad! Are you nuts?!”

          “You can’t trust anyone in an instant, Liz, not if you want to survive even a goddamn second outside the wall! Now, spit it out, kid!”

          “Dad, stop it!” Liza moves in front of his dad, while ignoring the closing darkness veil around us. “He is innocent by heart. My ability helps me judge him before he says a word, so don’t go suspecting anyone in your own leisure!”

          She is right. Segara is acting too harshly for that scared young man. Even so, this argument won’t help us solve our dire situation. The darkness starts closing in and we are being ravaged by the same attack that scraped my shoulder earlier. Segara took precaution and erected a wall in front of us, but I doubt if this shield can hold the darkness.

          Segara then snaps out of his argument with Liza and quickly use a very powerful magic of blinding light that acts like a magic-based flashbang, obliterating the darkness around him. Yet it isn’t enough to completely destroy the ability. Yet, after the darkness is momentarily lifted, we can see the one who is using this ability.

          The figure is a dark blue scaled lizard Anima standing just beyond the perimeter of the workshop. He is watching us with his yellow slit eyes, waiting for us to make something that will prove fatal to us, occasionally feeling the air with his tongue. It is all we can see before everything around us grow dark again and we are within the veil of darkness.

          “Light snuffs out the dark,” said the young man to himself. “Okay, I need to go find a lantern for us to sustain the light. There is one inside my house!”

          But just as he starts to move, a thorn comes out of the veil and targets him. I reflectively jumps to save him. It is a great luck, if you can get out of that situation unscathed, which is something that happens to me. We land near the building, but we land near a wall without any door.

          “T-thanks, mister,” said the man (or a teen, since he looks like he is barely 19).

          “Don’t do harsh things if you don’t want to die. Keep close to me,” I said, feeling like a goddamn hero. That does not help our situation, though.

          The same thorn that almost impaled the both of us quickly retracted and changes direction to us. The young teen is clearly scared by it and cannot move. I am also scared, but my instinct told me that if I don’t move, I will die. I quickly conjure up a shield. Like before it does not stop the darkness, but it is enough for the both of us keep down. Then, I see something remarkable but horrifying at the same time.

          Unknowingly, the young man’s hand goes through the wall. I know it is not cut because I can clearly see there are blue faint light around the arm of the man. I quickly grab him with my whole wing and said, “Don’t mind if I do!” and forcefully push him into the wooden wall, moments before the thorn gets through the wall and make a clean circular cut through it. I can’t imagine what it will do to us if we are impaled by that.

          “By the holy Krista…,” said the human in disbelief. He is too shocked to go to the lantern, so I help myself and turn it on with my fire. He is hyperventilating, panicking over something that I can’t even help myself to understand and fear. That moment of sudden bravery I have is now empty within me. Simply put, I am as scared as he is.

          “Hey, we are going to be alright, human,” I said, trying to reassure both of us that we cannot lose hope or panicking. “Don’t worry, the lantern is bright enough.”

          “But we are sitting ducks! We cannot get out without risking ourselves like that again!”

          “I know that, human. You are braver than you look. If you haven’t been thinking of using an artificial light, we might not be alive by now.”

          Though I think this human is clearly panicked that he runs toward the house. He doesn’t know Segara’s magic compression ability means that he can use that light blast magic every time he wants. But then, he knows the limit of that magic, so I can say he is smart enough.

          The lantern burns for some minutes, but we know for certain that it cannot last forever. It is not arcane, so I can’t recharge it. I really want to find a way to get out of this mess, but apparently we are stuck. With the darkness all around us, I’m sure this small torch will not be able to sustain us if we want to go to Liza and Segara.

          “Hey, human…what’s your name,” I said, trying to at least calm ourselves down.

          He pauses a moment before he said, “Artyom.”

          Artyom? Well that name sounds Eastern to me, but I can’t say I am surprised. People from all around the world goes to this continent to start a new life or settle in as immigrants, including those coming from impoverished Eastern nations. But Artyom is an uncommon name for a human, just like Hal is uncommon to a Mythar.

          “Don’t worry, I’m sure Segara is going to sort this mess up,” I said, believing in Segara. “He may look like a scary dragon, but he is a good guy by heart.”

          “That Mythar looks like miss Ward’s father.”

          ‘Miss Ward’? Wow, I never thought hearing Liza’s name like that makes her looks older.

          “Yes, he is. Now stay calm, Artyom. Do you remember how to use that ability of yours?”

          “What ability? Oh…you mean the one we use to go through the wall? I’m not sure. I am so panicked that my hand quickly went through the wall and…do you think I am a ghost?”

          I really doubt that. Man, this guy has all sorts of weird thoughts right now.

          “That ability is called a Discord, Artyom. I don’t know how it works, but that ability is also the cause of the darkness around us. Don’t worry, we can always wait for Segara to sort things out.”

          Artyom nods, believing me for that. He might be feeling calm after seeing my body and my race. He’s just a human, so of course he is scared, knowing that he cannot do anything without techs.

          “Why are you living out here, Artyom?” I said, trying to strike a question to him.

          “This place…this workshop…is the only thing I have left in this world,” said Artyom. “I lost my mother when I was 12, and my father left me alone, still in despair. I can see that he blames himself for the death of my mom, because before then, he is a good person. I don’t have anything with my dad, but of course…I still feel like a neglected son.

          “I met this kind lizard Anima named Seether, and I learned blacksmithing skills from him. I mostly help with keeping animals and creatures away from our workshop. We live like family and I see Seether like my own dad.

          “One day…Seether died. I know he will die sooner or later because he is an old Lizard, and I can’t do anything about it. Since then…I lived my life selling meat to the butcher…but sooner or later he won’t be getting anything from me with no animals or creatures to hunt. I want to be useful for them, but every time I try nothing comes to fruition and I am out of ideas. Just…everything I do here is useless.”

          Wow, that’s one hell of a backstory there. I don’t really know why many action stories like this one always have a painful and tragic backstory. I don’t know if you like it or not, but then, I am going with the flow with this story, so don’t blame me!

          “Artyom…believe in yourself more, will you? It doesn’t feel right for a Mythar like me to see a human feeling down. I thought you belong to a proud race of people who does not have an advantage of being half-beast and practically no magical ability? Your race’s ability to adapt and develop is far better than Mythars, and I like to see how humans can do to the world if they keep helping themselves.”

          That is not a lie, though it sounds like it. But at least that calms Artyom down.

          “Now let’s get out of this shack and look for Segara, hmm?”

          I know this is not the best time to get out, seeing that our lantern is not going to last to go to Segara and Liza. But the minute I open the door in front of us, we are pleasantly surprised.

          Segara points towards a random place in the darkness and some kind of a light beam is slowly coming out of his finger (yeah, like the one that happens in the prologue). His draconic visage becomes more pronounced when he opens his wings like a proud dragon will do. I can see Liza is hurt from the same thorn attack that almost got us earlier. Seeing her like that almost make me lash out, but I know better than to be another bravado.

          The light beam discharged away from his hand and hit something behind the veil of darkness. There is a hiss before the darkness dissipates away. Both of us quickly run towards Segara and Liza, with me trying to grab Artyom’s hand but instead almost hurt him with my two remaining claws. I always forget that I am now a pure wyvern.

          From the position I am now, I can see the same dark blue lizard putting one of his hands to a place that is injured by Segara.

          “For a being of darkness, that beam is burning you,” said Segara while still putting one of his fingers up. “I don’t expect me to be able to pull this off, right?”

          “Never should have underestimated you, Segara of Dornthal,” said the anima struggling to stand. “You are as the boss said. I let my guard down, thinking that you can only use light magic sparingly. I guess I was wrong.”

          “Now tell me what your boss is planning for this world?”

          The lizard laughed and coughed. “Why should I know? I’m just an assassin for hire. He promised me nine million Trinc in total if I managed to kill you and your accomplices. I guess I was wrong…for the second time. But I can’t let myself fall in grace, right?!”

          The darkness that is around us quickly come into him and manifested into something that looks demonic. It tries to attack Segara, who by this point has been standing near the lizard. Yet, Segara’s reaction is faster; he shoots a light beam through the demonic dark manifest and pierce through the lizard’s neck. It quickly draws blood and he is bleeding like a leaking pipe. Segara hit him by the jugular vein.

          “Shit, I am not supposed to hit your vein,” said Segara. But when he is trying to heal the lizard, he stops him and said, “It’s no use. Your healing magic only makes it worse. Ever since I had The Darkness, it helped me with doing clean kills, but because of it, I cannot be healed by healing magic.”

          “So tell me what we are going to face throughout the journey, whoever your name is.”

          “How can I say? We work independently. I don’t even know if any assassins are out there waiting for you. Just be sure that you stay awake and don’t feel safe throughout the journey. The boss is not a simple person. Even I can’t understand him at all. In fact…I have never met him…”

          “Shit…this is a goddamn waste of time…”

          The anima loses too much blood to stay alive, and dies. Segara closes his eyes and put his body inside the workshop and burn it with an intense flare, cremating him, albeit without any meaningful ceremony.

          He tends to Liza while I help Artyom clean the compound. While we does that, the sun has set and we don’t really have any place to go, knowing that by this point they are in a great danger from an unknown enemy.

          “Hal…,” said Artyom.

          “Yes…?”

          “I have been thinking...about what you said back in the shack. I know humans cannot best Mythars and animas in term of animalistic prowess, and we don’t know magic like the magis, but I want to make sure…that what you said can be true to us in whole.”

          “I mean every word I said.”

          “That is why…I decided to move on. I don’t want to stay inside this workshop and rot like a beggar. I want to see the world full of creatures and things I do not understand. So…if you don’t mind…can I join you on your journey?”

          I want to say to him that it depends on Segara, but the purple dragon Mythar hears this and said, “Well, kiddo, you gotta have a good skill so you don’t end up as a burden to us. Do you have something like the guts to kill someone?”

          “Eh?”

          “Nah, I’m just kidding, kiddo,” said Segara with a toothy smile. “You don’t need to get involved in a fight. I know you are a good hunter, so we can have extra provisions when we are travelling. In fact, your ability…it is useful in many ways if you want to spend time to get creative with it.”

          I can see Artyom’s eyes gleams like an excited puppy. Everything around him that looks like a gloomy thing suddenly becomes bright, making me feeling weird around him. Segara, on the other hand, just cleared his throat, returning Artyom to reality.

          “First things first, do you know where we are going to stay for a night in this town? A motel is fine.”

          Well, and that is how we quickly abandon our jobs and go with Artyom towards a small motel run by someone he knows. Artyom shares a room with me, and boy how he is excited to set off the next morning to go see the world that is bigger than his own imagination. He tells me that he prefers to be called Art by people close to him, because Artyom sounds foreign. Art is not bad, at least, for a human.

          Thus our story for the day ends here, to be continued to the next chapter.