Chapter 9

As soon as Darius was given the choice he unhesitantly agreed to soulbind the System Brand without wasting so much as a second to consider any negative effects such an action might bring. The very idea of someone stealing it from him while he was asleep or unaware had made him shiver deep down.

[Congratulations! The System Brand is now soulbound to you!]

Now that he had assessed all the cards granted to him to survive, Darius was ready to explore the world of Faust. He had a premonition that Vena, the Goddess who had spawned him here for sport, was only patient so far because today should be considered his grace period.

If he continued to sit around crafting detailed plans on how to most efficiently go about becoming a Supreme, she might just run out of patience with him and end his journey before it ever began. As such, Darius opened the main map and checked the nearest settlements around his location.

'Hm. There is a large homestead to the south, a town to the east, and one of the five cities to the far west. To the north is a patch of abandoned territory called the Plains of Death. Apparently, anyone who goes there never returns… interesting.'

Darius was naturally excited and intrigued by all of this. The urge to explore and develop upon new lands was hardwired into the genes of every human. In the 22nd century, many leading psychologists had agreed on the theory that one of the reasons why most people from Earth had been unhappy deep down was because the land had already been cut up and divided, with nothing left to be truly explored.

Coincidentally, that was also a big reason fantasy media and the like had remained popular for all those years, if Darius remembered correctly. Now, he got the opportunity to live out such wild fantasies in person, and he had to admit, there was a strange anticipation in doing so.

Darius stood up and casually gazed around the cottage. He took it that this was supposed to be his spawning area and could act as his main safehouse for the time being. According to its location on the map, Darius was certain that it was impossible to find.

As such, he had no worries when he left the cottage and the entire glade. The surrounding trees were packed tightly together and the overall forest was quite dark due to the closely-knit leaves leaving barely any space for the sunlight to poke through.

Barely enough to see where he was going, but not enough to make the journey smooth or calming. Darius wasn't exactly a coward, but very few could walk through a dark forest that was only marginally noisy in terms of wildlife without feeling some fear, unless they were familiar with it.

Luckily, the dark section of the forest turned out to be not that big. In merely 5 minutes, he had traversed the close-knit canopies and entered into a wider and more hospitable segment, with many trills, tweets, and oinks all around.

Darius looked behind him and felt his breath catch when he saw that there was no light whatsoever. There was only endless darkness between the nearest trees, but he was sure he had been able to see much more while he had been inside.

It took him a while to calm his beating heart down as he reasoned that this might be something created by Vena. Nevertheless, it felt less like he had left his home for a stroll and more like he had walked out of the depths of a horrid abyss and into the light.

Suddenly, Darius heard a loud snort and turned to see a boar glaring at him. The animal appeared angry at him for the cardinal sin of existing too close to itself.

Knowing exactly how violent wild animals can be when one enters their territory, Darius didn't plan to play around. Immediately, he used his Inspect skill on the boar to assess his fighting chances.

[Wild Boar - Level 1 Beast

HP: 5/5 MP: 0/0]

Darius was dumbfounded. If that was the case, then 5 casts of his Sparks spell should be able to kill the beast. It was either that Sparks - or magic in general - was more powerful than he had imagined or the various species in this world were much weaker than he had expected.

The Wild Boar began to grind its hooves on the earth, clearly getting ready to charge. Darius had no intentions of letting some animal get the initiative over him, so he stretched his hands out and mentally prompted the Spark spell to fire out.

He half expected it to fail, but was surprised when a stream of electrical sparks flowed out from his outstretched fingers and struck the boar which had been a few meters away.

The Wild Boar squealed and fell to its belly, body twitching slightly as it foamed at the mouth.

'That must be the stun effect of the lightning damage that Caesar had mentioned.'

However, the stun didn't last long as it was back on its feet by the next second. Alas, before the Wild Boar could start its charge, it was once again blasted with a stream of sparks that rendered it immobile for another second.

This scene repeated itself three more times, after which the Wild Boar could not stand anymore, as it had been killed. Darius stood where he had been during the entire… 'battle'… with a frown on his face.

He was sure that this was not how magic was supposed to work. If all mages could spam spells endlessly with no cooldown, they would have been the Gods of this world, with all other species and people bowing at their feet.

Nevertheless, while mages enjoyed a high status in the Andrato Kingdom, they were not at the top. In fact, according to the knowledge Darius had received from the Infoblock, the main reason mages were so respected was the difficulty of their achievements.

Just like how lawyers had been respected on Earth for the difficulty and complexity of their occupation, the same could be said about Faustian mages. The country still favored warriors and more physical combatants over them as their fighting force, though.

Darius thought about asking Caesar for clarification but quelled that thought. He could reason that since the Magus Class had been bestowed upon him by the Supreme Quality Class Initiator, the class was of the same quality.

The other choices of Broker, Pugilist, Spellblade, and Craftsman would have likely resulted in something as special, capable of overshadowing all other classes of the same type in the world of Faust.