Chapter 286 Volume V - Chapter 4: A Simple Introductions
At first, a faint glow appeared in the clear blue sky. It covered the entire sky in an instant, purple in color, and even if slowly, it grew stronger and stronger, catching the eye quite easily.
The crowd in the square had suddenly stopped, the noise abruptly cut off by the realization of this difference in the sky. What Julian was trying to say was among them.
Now, there was confusion on everyone's faces. Including Lucia, Sue, Julian, and me.
"Huh?"
"Is the sky... purple?"
I squinted my eyes as many different voices spoke in whispers, trying to comprehend what was happening as I looked up at the sky. I thought it was going to be an ordinary day, but by this point, I had a bad feeling.
Just then, the countless holographic screens in the square suddenly flickered and all eyes turned from the purple light covering the entire sky to these screens. The screens distorted and tingled as if a virus had entered them.
"What the...?"
"This is getting scary..."
When the crowd started whispering again, I didn't like the ominous atmosphere and called out to my friends without turning around.
"Let's stay close to each other."
No one questioned me. Julian, Lucia, and Sue approached me at the same time.
For a brief moment, as if in answer to the crowd's myriad questions, each of the broken screens was suddenly fixed. A snow-white image appeared on the tingling screens, then slowly faded away to be replaced by another image.
Slowly, the face of an old man in a suit appeared on the screens. He was a man I had never seen before.
He had jet-black hair and golden eyes. His hair was gray in places and his face had a few wrinkles. But his golden eyes shone with such a sparkle, his expression was so stern, and his body so well built for an old man that he did not look old at all.
On the contrary, he looked dangerous. That was the feeling he gave me, even though he was only on the screen for a second. Even though he wasn't next to me, just an image on the screen... it made me tremble inside, if only for a moment.
I slowly focused on the other details on the screens, and then I realized that this man was not the only one on the screen.
There were others sitting at the same table with him. Together with him, there were eight of them in total. In a dimly lit room, all of them with their hands together on the table.
"Hello, everyone."
The old man's full, strong voice echoed around the world, as if it were not coming from the screens. It was as if the bruise in the sky, directly reality itself, had vibrated.
However, it was at this moment that I realized something else and the whole world seemed to freeze. My eyes widened, and all sound stopped. My mind literally stopped working.
It was the man sitting right next to the old man. He had a soulless look. Smoke-colored hair down to his shoulders. He didn't have a beard. He was also middle-aged. He had dark brown eyes, eyes without any emotion.
"My name is Xander, Xander Sol."
The old man on the screen kept talking, but... I didn't care.
Because the man next to him was 'him'. The man who appeared in my every nightmare, the man who took my childhood, and my family from me. He was sitting at that table, as if nothing had happened... expressionless.
"I am the third leader of the Saligia, which most of you don't even know exists."
When the old man said these words, a flicker appeared in his golden eyes. A purple hue appeared in his shimmering irises, then fully exploited the golden yellow color and dyed them purple. The man's already glowing eyes shimmered even more violently, this time with purple.
"I am a wiera, which can be considered a race."
I clenched my fist, confirming what I had suspected from the moment I saw that man at that table, confirming that he was the man in my mind.
I didn't care about the old man on the screen. All my focus was on the smoke-haired man next to him.
"What is a wiera, you may ask, of course. We are among you, all over the world... and we feed on chaos. We have purple eyes that represent chaos, a power of the same color. More... you will learn as time goes on."
The man's shimmering violet eyes squinted slightly. It was as if he was looking directly into my eyes, trying to shake my presence.
Just the pressure of looking through the screens was enough to make me involuntarily shift my eyes to him.
"But you don't need to fear us, yet. Because we are not the ones you should be afraid of... in your current situation."
The man tensed slightly. The glow in his eyes suddenly intensified, and the purple glow that filled the sky intensified with it.
"This is a simple introduction. It is also a milestone, marking the beginning of what we will experience from now on. Of course, in honor of this, we have a gift for everyone, be they human, elf, dwarf, hannya, or fae."
On the man's expressionless face, his lips curled up slightly for a moment.
"I imagine that in a few hours' time, it will be clear to you what our gift is. For now..."
After his words, there was silence for a short while. Suddenly, the bruising in the sky became more intense and spectacular than ever.
Suddenly, the crowd, unable to move, let alone speak, became noisy again. So many voices, simultaneously expressing fear, surprise, confusion, and much more. So many different voices that it was impossible to understand who was saying what.
But it didn't stop there... The ground suddenly trembled as if affected by the noise from the crowd. A moderate earthquake shook everyone.
As Julian tried to stay close to Lucia and Sue, I saw the incomprehension in their eyes. Like me, they had no idea what was going on, they were as bewildered and confused as the rest of the crowd.
But then what happened next made even me dizzy, and even for a moment I was taken off my feet.
For no reason, the intensity of the mana in the space suddenly increased. It just gathered around us as if something was pushing it, squeezing it, gathering it into a single point.
This change in mana was so sudden that most of the students in the area were stunned and dumbfounded. Some were holding their heads while others were trying hard not to vomit. Chaos had suddenly taken over the area again.
"I hope you like our gifts..."
The image of the man on the screens flickered, all the screens tingled again. The purple color in the sky began to recede slightly, giving way to the blue of the old sky. The earthquake also calmed down.
Everything seemed to go back to the way it was a few seconds ago.
However, the mana that continued to gather in the area did not stop. On the contrary, it began to intensify at a much faster rate. As if the mana in the atmosphere was not enough, it began to draw mana from the things around it... Plants, even the students standing in the field.
"Until next time, I suggest you remember the name Saligia. If you survive, of course..."
The screens were completely filled with tingling, and the whole image disappeared.
The sky was its old color again, the shaking had stopped. The abnormal flow of mana was quickly returning, it had done what it had to do.
With all this, the crowd that had descended into chaos calmed down again... but not because everything went back to the way it was.
Everyone was quiet, the noise had disappeared again... because everyone's eyes were in a different place, as if they could not look away. To the point where the mana was constantly compressed, intensified...
The ring on my finger, the artifact capable of forewarning me of danger, suddenly filled me with an intense, uneasy feeling.
"That... That thing..."
One of the students swallowed. His eyes widening with each passing second, he raised his trembling hands toward the sky, pointing to the place where the mana had been concentrated until a few seconds ago.
Although everything had calmed down... something had happened that no one had expected, something that left everyone frozen in place.
Above the large fountain in the center of the square, right in the middle of the tingling screens, there was a large dark blue thing with cracks all around it that seemed to reflect the sky.
Something unstable, whose dark blue color was slowly turning orange... It was decaying so fast that soon tons of creatures would pour out of it, right in the middle of the academy...
"A fucking dungeon!"
Not only that, but the amount of mana it emitted around it, the feeling it gave, and the way my ring was almost shouting at me to run away from where I was, it was definitely not a normal one...
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