1 Chapter 0: Exit Earth

In the dark and hollowed out concrete jungle that had was the abandoned bunker number ranging in the eight million series. A series of monitors stood blinking in and out as power sporadically moved across the wires. Not many understood much about electricity anymore, other than it powered the heating units that came on for about a quarter of the winter, mostly during the harshest parts of it. Across many of the walls were red, white, and blue banners speaking of a nation long past, that people cared little about when they were at the edge of survival every day.

A few people coughed in the darkness, but many were quiet. Not because of fear, but in hopes that the rats would come close so they could have a proper meal. It was said that in some parts of the States there were places with animals, where people could hunt. Sadly none were around these parts, desert every way one turned, this was a place barren before the war, only surviving because of a surplus of resources drove in every few months and it only got worse after.

Luckily for the survivors, the population was massively reduced, even here in the middle of nowhere. Leaving only about thirty people where there used to be thousands, most of the military members that had been stationed here were sent somewhere else in the beginning of the war, none of them returning. This left enough supplies that the inhabitants weren't exactly starving but meat was a commodity that was sought after by all. MREs could only do so much for a family, and they weren't meant to be eaten for years on end.

A few of the people still hoping for a better tomorrow still implanted the learning chips into the children's heads. It was a relatively safe process that was placed in all school facilities. The process wasn't even done by doctors anymore, instead usually by the teachers themselves.

Each subject had a time for it to be integrated into the mind, which made each grade a year long course. This eliminated much of the need of teachers, except to give tests every day so that the information was turned into practical knowledge instead of just statistics, numbers, and facts. Though the chip had a secondary AI function that could do the same, just not at the same level a human could. Plus people found that using the chip to do schooling ended up making the children very robotic as they needed human interaction.

New babies were practically forbidden in this environment, until they could come up with some permanent solution to the food issues so the youngest kid was sixteen this year. That was as far as they could tell, they were sixteen this year, no one really had the optimism to keep track any more.

One of the boys heard something, a mechanical beep in the silence as as many children are, he was curious. Moving from his mother's bosom and into one of the dark hallways, and ignoring the traps on the floor. He ducked down to peer into the abyss of the hallway. There was various scavenging parties that went through there, but he hadn't gone himself yet. The hallways were long, with flickering lights every few hundred feet, and it always seemed to go into a gradual decline. As he started to walk into the abyss, the beeping grew louder with each passing corridor.

Pressing against an old door that collapsed under his weight he was finally in the room that was making the noise. On one of the walls it was labeled 'Extraterrestrial Communications Room', even he could tell this place haven't received very much funding. The outdated equipment looked to be from the early 2000's and one server tower had boot prints on it and a small rubber mallet. This made the boy snicker as he had seen the same adults that told him not to hit the machines, beat them up with metal objects to make them work. Maybe there was a method that he was missing that those adults had, he doubted it since no such technique was listed in the computer manuals that the chip provided.

One of the still working monitors had a red light flashing beside it making a beeping sound, as the child pressed the red light the monitor came to life, the black screen filling with alien characters. They were being translated in real time with the help of something called 'Windows ME' for some odd reason this made him flinch. He found out that the chip AI actually scoffed in his head, before getting angry at the existence of such a flawed system.

"You think you could do better?" He mocked the chip not expecting much before text immediately filled his vision. He could sense the AI was actually offended and completed the translation in seconds just to prove itself. The emotions that the chips could have was because of the Frankenstein program that the adults did to try and fix the programming, some complained but he didn't mind.

The words were hard to make out for the boy but he slowly voiced them into the world, "I summon thee. Oh warrior of another world that is filled with potential. Heed my call, bless my land with your presence. Say your name to signify the first step!"

"My name.. is Luciel." Lucile's body turned into a ghostly radiating silhouette. Checking his surroundings he noticed he was putting off a powerful glow. Dust started to pick up around him as an invisible wind circled crazily before he was thrust into the ceiling, passing through metal and concrete as if air until he was flying through the clouds and then into space itself. He let out a scream that sounded like it came from a girl half his age.

There were thousands of lights in the sky at that moment, it might not be a mass summon since many of the lights were barreling towards other places but he could see many were following his lead. Each light around a boy or girl of similar age, or younger, and as they traveled they found their bodies shrinking, regressing in age to that of a toddler.

Luciel opened his eyes trying to take in the worlds as they flashed by him, before the long expanses of nothing. He wasn't sure if it was because he was moving too fast, or if time was stopped for them, but other than their trailing lights nothing else seemed to move. Many of the lights that he thought were with him were actually traveling minutely away from him, and over the course of what seemed like hours they had branched out of sight.

Looking again there were only three others that stayed by his side. Two females, and two boys if you included him. They took notice of each other before time seemed to fall back again and their bodies resumed that of babies. They cried out and reached for each other through the void and to their surprise they all ended up in each other's arms spiraling out into space as blackness took their consciousness.

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In a rundown mansion off the north of the Hellhound Parries a man stood with a staff in his hand, his face was filled with wrinkles and his eyes looked dejected. Papers were lining the walls, arcanic symbols crossed the walls, and floors in strange patterns that no one could make out, not even the writer, the man standing here. Windows creaked softly to the breeze, their wood long needing repair, but not having someone with the money or the love to care for them. He had found, and cast a forbidden magic from the ancient kingdoms that had long fallen, and it turned out the summoning spell no longer worked or never worked in the first place.

The ancient scrolls of the fallen kingdoms were always a risk, some of them were just research papers that had never been completed, and some didn't work without resources that didn't exist anymore. No one doubted the power of the fallen kingdoms, but everyone questioned the sanity of them as what they tried to do rivaled the tales of gods.

Lowering his arms, he took a long sigh, his mana was almost empty and would need to rest for at least a week before he could do anything above a mundane spell. A tired laugh came from him, he knew he was at this point a half baked wizard by any degree, and it was too late to try and carve the runes into his body to become a sorcerer and have magic freely call to his whim. The latter option was very interesting to him at first, until he learned that they mean literally carving runes into someone.

He just wanted to extend his legacy, he probably only had a few hundred years left to live as it was and the magic summoning required over fifty years of his life. If he could summon something, even if it was a dog he would have been able to say that his research had meaning. He had already wasted away three research grants given to him by the Wizard's Tower, this was his last chance.

Most of his life had been tucked away in one corner of the world or the other, studying into the arcane chasing his dreams of bringing back the magic of summoning. Most of the creatures that roam this world were once summoned from other worlds. The power of a dragon, or hellknight under your control could bring others to tremble before you. They brought respect, riches and resources that no other person had.

The wizard dropped his hat to the floor, walking to the door and into the night, letting the door groan to a slam behind him. The old house was the last, and final trove of his research over the years, thousands of diagrams put into this one project, hundreds of monster cores both unique and powerful. If he was doing any other research he was sure that it would have been able to last him at least a thousandfold more experiments.

Looking into the night sky, he balled up his fists, shouted to the heavens, a scream both of desperation and failure. It echoed through the night like a beast's final cry and his mansion exploded behind him in a glittering array of blue light.

That last part made the wizard pause, he didn't think his shout was powerful enough for that, he had heard of wizards practicing the dragon language to be able to hold the power of magic in their voice, but he had no practice in the matter. Turning his head to look back all he saw was fluttering pieces of wood falling to the ground in chunks.

"Eh?" His door still hung were it once was, but there was nothing behind it, instead the air was filled with pure mana. Had it been any other time he would sit down and meditate this moment to get back the spent mana since it was pure and easy to circulate into the body.

"This.. is the protection part of the summoning spell?" Blue sparks scattered around him, making the falling debris get flung away from him any time they got close. "It worked?"

With a cry, he threw open his door and paused reflecting on his actions as the door stood there defiantly. He shrugged it off before going back to the magic circle in a rush, and in the center was four babies clinging to one another with clothes far too large for them wrapped around their bodies. A blue mist was swirling around them being pulled into their bodies.

The wizard stared at them with amazement, if these children grew up they would have years on any other children when it came to mana manipulation. A mana infused body would give them advantages that only noble babies could afford. This advantage would help them throughout their lives.

"It's a miracle, I finally summoned something," he thought for a moment, "Does that mean I ripped children away from their mothers?" Picking up the child closest to him he slowly cupped it in his arms, before it puked all over them letting out a soft cry. "Why did it have to be human? I can't tell this to anyone or they will die."

He knew the experiments that would happen after he reported this, their bodies split apart to find out the advantages to their bodies. Their minds would be scoured by necromancers to find out their secrets and technology that they had knowledge of. These were just babies, the loss of life wouldn't be worth his morality, but that would mean he would have to take care of them.

"I am not ready to be a father yet." The wizard nodded his head, and looked around him. "Especially a homeless father of four, with no wife to speak of."

With a flick of his wrist he pulled out a stone, the stone had four figures on it all of them runes used to communicate with a few wizards he had became friends with. The fact that there was only four runes gave some hint into that fact that he wasn't well liked in the wizard community, but the four friends he had were basically like family. Flicking through the four runes they all activated at once allowing him to send messages to them all at once.

"Hello my friends, I have recently came into the care of four children this has to do with my experiments. If any of you think you'd be a better guardian than me, please send me a message back." Touching the center of the runes they blinked sending them the message.

When he pulled his finger back he already had responses, which made his eyes tear up, "They didn't even think about it…" He knew that all four were affernitives, and sent out teleportation coordinates to each of them, saying that each one can take one of the children to split responsibility.

With a sigh he looked around at his ruined home, and sat down, watching the babies absorb the mana that flowed freely around them. One of the children instead of crying like the others seemed to stare at him as if considering something, it reached out its hand at the stone.

The wizard, curious handed the stone over, watching the child with curious eyes. The tiny child pointed to one of the runes and spoke in a weird language, tilting his head a bit making the wizard startled.

"Don't ever speak that language again little one if you ever want to live in peace, wizards know hundreds of languages and yours is of ancient tongue." The wizard spoke in English, his hands trembling as he stroked his long nonexistent beard that had been burnt off long ago. He closed his eyes wanting to know more about their society, but he knew he would have to wipe most of his memory about this event.

"I might be too gentle to advance in this world, I am giving up fame, and money so that you kids can live." He sighed knowing that he couldn't tell anyone about these children's origins even though it would make him a fortune, so he sat down explaining to them in the ancient tongues that they understood. It seemed like they spoke three separate ancient languages, which made this a mental hurdle for the wizard to pull old words he had never used before from his head.

The wizard explained some about magic, and the world around them just the basics so they knew enough not to expose their unworldly intellect. Magic seemed to be a common thing here, almost everyone seemed to be able to do some form of it, though most never trained. Like how martial arts can be taught to anyone, but most never touched it, and even fewer specialized in it.

A few things were common place like spells that allowed one to wash their clothes with a few gestures, and work related spells but attack spells were usually things of the military. Though each kingdom had its own military there were still people like the old wizard's friends, that studied attacking spells and the like they were affectionately called suicidal, lunatics, and the most common name adventurers.

A wizard that didn't specialize was a weak wizard in the eyes of the community, since a jack of all trades only had enough time to maybe become a fierce warrior, but a master could wage wars by himself. So each of his friends were a specialist in their field, though some of the most 'unique' individuals.

Bullfrog, the smallest of the wizards had a Napoleon complex, and focused on body enhancement magic turning his body into a monstrosity of war. His punches are considered to be spells in themselves as they do as much damage as a fireball, and his body is tougher than a castle's walls.

Feldawn practiced necromancy since young, his body born with an incurable disease so he became a lich. He is a rather nice guy, who pays the families of those he resurrects, though anyone who attacks him is free game. He also has a fascination with cooking ever since he lost his sense of taste due to becoming undead.

Kiolyn was a mage that focused on the flow of wind, and could not only walk on the wind like it was ground, but could tear apart villages with a breath. It's rumored that he lives amongst dragons trying to inhale the skies, and breath tornadoes like they do.

The last was a hermit that all them affectionately called old man who was a white mage, a healer that was so old that some excavations would uncover objects belonging to him in his youth. It is said that as long as your body doesn't release its last breath he can turn an old man at death's door into a youth still suckling at his mother's milk.

Each of the children thought for a moment and the one that seemed to be the leader of the group spoke up, "I will be going with the old man, send Abdullah to Feldawn.." he pointed to the only other boy to make sure the wizard knew who he was talking about, "Lilly, wants to meet with Bullfrog, and Lilith wants to fly with Kiolyn." He pointed to the two girls.

"You all already have names?" The wizard looked a bit surprised, then pointed to the lead. "What's yours then?"

"My name is Luciel." Luciel tilted his head for a moment, then frowned before nodding, "Also, FILTH is here too."

"Filth?"

"The thing inside my head identifies him as such, Friend Inside Luciel's Thick Head." Luciel didn't seem too amused by the rattling in his head, "Says that calling him FILTH means I have a dirty mind now."

The wizard just stared at him a moment before shaking his head, there were some things he would never understand, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to understand this one. Rubbing his temple, he slowly sighed and continued with his short lessons. Just barely teaching them how to meditate before the first wizard showed up, a crack of blue lightning hit the ground before there was a man standing there.

The man had a large mane of hair that was bright red, that turned into a beard that touched his knees. He reminded the children of a dwarven warrior from fantasy movies they had seen, his wide shoulders and beer belly made the image stick and Abdullah let out a chuckle, looking for a flask of some sort.

The big man was eating an apple as he looked at the kids, "So which one's mine?" The man seemed to be looking for something before landing on Luciel who was staring right back at him with a hint of curiosity. The child was sitting, and had a look of someone that would cause him a thousand headaches.

"That one old man," Luciel raised an eyebrow at the man as the finger was pointed at him, which the man did the same at the curiously adult like expression on this baby. Luciel wondering in which way was this Dwarf an old man, he was expecting something like the father from Willy Wonka or something.

"Hmm.. hmm…" he picked up the baby by his foot holding him upside down, inspecting the body of the kid before nodding. "Meets the minimum requirements to be my disciple, as you grow up you shall refer to me as Pop-Pop young one."

Luciel rolled his eyes, an expression that didn't seem to translate since the two wizards didn't take mind of it. Mummering the word 'Dwarf Giant' under his breath he nodded to the other children with a serious look on his face. This would be the last time they would see each other for a while as far as he could tell.

'I wish you all well.' Luciel thought as he looked away from the group. He didn't know why he was so attached to this group as they had only known each other for around two hours now, but they were his connection to Earth, the last thing left.

The old man turned around, putting Luciel over his shoulder like a bag and walked back to where the lightning struck down, raising his hand as another bolt landed on his body. His image flashed away just as quick as he had appeared.

Thus began the separation of the four children being sent to far off lands by foreign wizards, in a world that was new and dangerous. More so than they could have ever thought during these beginning years.