1 A strange meeting

It was a moonless night.

On the lost island, no sound could be heard at this late hour. It seemed as though there was a tacit understanding between all the inhabitants to keep quiet for that particular night.

Davis Graylock had been stranded on this island for a week.

In the early days of his stay on the island, he felt that it was hopeless to hope for a miracle. There were no ships in sight even after he had prepared a huge bonfire as a signal. In the meantime, there was an abundance of fish and small animals he could hunt to avoid starving to death.

Born in a declining noble family, he enjoyed the extravagant life for his first eight years of life before his family was attacked and massacred by a rival noble family of the same city. Things like those were a common sight among nobles who had unresolved conflicts between each other.

Davis escaped death with the help of a servant who exchanged his life for Davis' by fighting multiple enemies to give him the chance to escape.

Too young to be alone in the world and penniless, Davis found himself kidnapped and sold to a noble family as a slave.

Davis didn't complain, thinking that it was the best thing that could happen to him since he was fed and looked after well despite the amount of work he had to put in all day long.

For years, he never forgot his dead family members. He would cry every night before going to sleep.

He never once thought about revenge, for his current status and strength were insufficient to allow him to do anything.

Now at eighteen years old, he had grown to be a six feet tall muscular giant due to his ten years of hard work.

Impressed by his impressive stature, the patriarch commanded him to help out in loading and charging the goods in the family ship.

And to reward his loyalty to the family, the patriarch opted to pay him a minimum wage thus lifting his status as a slave temporarily.

It had been four years that he had been saving up his money for a rainy day as no one knew when a noble family would cease to exist or decline. In these four years, the ship had made many trips between the two continents many times without a hitch. The business was booming and Davis had grown to like life at sea.

It was only on that fateful night that the ship was caught in a storm.

Davis surmised that he was the only lucky survivor out of the hundreds of sailors present on that ship.

After a week on this island, the only thing that scared him at the moment was the eerie silence that reigned.

Most of the days he only wandered on the outskirts of the forest because he feared the terrifying existences that he heard distant roars of coming from afar, presumably the very center of the island.

And most nights, he'd wake up after hearing an angry roar that caused him to be drenched in cold sweat from fear.

Davis was sleeping in a modest little shack that he had made himself and while contemplating the reason why everything was so quiet, he heard a man's voice coming from outside saying: "Come out! I want to talk to you."

The first thing that came to Davis's mind was that he was finally becoming insane and was hearing voices.

"Unless I am not the only human being on this island. I mean, I've only been here for a week and I've only been on the outskirts of the forest. Maybe there are humans deep inside." Davis thought.

"How long are you going to make me wait, young man!" the man's voice revealed some impatience.

Davis opened the curtain made of a giant leaf and then came out. He was greeted by the sight of a black-robed floating old man.

"I must be seeing things…is he really floating in the air? Since when could humans fly?" Davis thought shocked.

The old man was bald and had a white beard that reached all the way to his navel. And the most striking thing was that he had no eyebrows. His nails were silver and longer than a human's and looked as if they were made of some kind of metal. His eyes were blue and seemed normal but a little twinkle inside of them revealed that they were nothing normal.

Despite appearing like an old man, he seemed to be radiating with vigor and vitality equaling a young man in his twenties.

It seemed as though the old man was trying to disguise himself as a human but had done a sloppy job.

Davis' heart raced uncontrollably. He wished he was dreaming but the cold breeze proved to him that he wasn't.

The old man looked at Davis and then said: "Why are you so scared? I have yet to do anything to you…not that I plan on doing anything at all."

"Who…Who are you?" Davis managed to ask amidst his fear.

The old man found it amusing and said: "Where is that fearlessness that I saw in you for the last week? When you arrived on this island, you didn't panic or throw a tantrum…you simply started making a bonfire and then worked on your little shack. You didn't starve as you knew how to hunt and fish. I've watched you for a whole week and all I could see was a tenacious young man…So tell me…what scares you right now? "

Davis walked backward for two steps and then said: "Are…Are you a Devil from the legends?"

"Now I feel insulted…Why can't I be a God's Angel while you're at it?" The old man was furious.

"But you're flying." Davis said.

"Flying?... Is that what scared you? … Are you serious? What! You've never seen a mage before in your life? …Or even heard of one?" The old man said with eyes wide open. It seemed he couldn't believe what he was saying himself.

Davis then said: "What's a mage?"

"You've never heard of magic?" The old man had an incredulous look.

"Only in the legends." Davis said.

"In the legends…in the legends…no…impossible." The old man kept repeating himself. He then recovered from his stupor and then added: "You mean to say that in the One Million years that I've been imprisoned on this island, magic has completely disappeared from the Ladus planet. Does that mean that the Gods and Devils abandoned this planet, maybe even this solar system, after the War."

After calming down, the old man stopped floating above the ground and then stood on the beach. His right hand was stroking his beard unceasingly and he seemed to be lost in thought.

Davis kept his guard up and since he didn't have anywhere to hide, he decided to leave the rest to fate. He was already lost in the middle of the ocean and that was already the worst thing that could happen to him.

The old man then looked at him with a deep look saying: "Let me introduce myself… I am Aldric Draalsar. Before I was imprisoned in this place by the Overgod, I was the leader of the 2nd Devil legion. I'm not a Devil…It's just that I agree with their views and their beliefs…Now…The Overgod made this place independent from the outside world. It means that this place exists and at the same time doesn't exist on a map. In the more than one million years I've been imprisoned on this island, you're the first human to ever set foot on it…I don't know if the Spatial Seal is weakening or if there is something special about you, but I wouldn't count on either because while the Overgod couldn't manage to kill me, he understood the Spatial Laws perfectly and could seal me in a forgotten place and he chose this place to do so. I also don't know if the Devils lost or won the War, but it seems that the latter is unlikely or else I would not still be a prisoner on this lost Ladus planet." He paused for a moment and then added: "Now. Are you satisfied with my introduction?"

Davis' mind was calculating and thinking about what had been said. After waiting for a few seconds, he said: "I can imagine that the Overgod you're talking about is an all-powerful being since he could seal you in this place for a million years, so why couldn't he kill you? "

The old man, Aldric Draalsar, laughed and then said: "The reason he couldn't kill me was that, like a few other Devil generals, I had my means to stay immortal. You see, I am proud of my invention: The Undying Spell Matrix. It lets my Blue Dragon Bloodline become stronger exponentially by absorbing the natural energies of my location. The more potent the energy the stronger I become. When I participated in the War, my Blue Dragon Bloodline had already become immortal and it had taken me a few thousand years after inventing the Undying Spell Matrix to reach that level. At that level, there are no possible ways to extinguish my Bloodline, I could revive as long as I had hidden a drop of Blood somewhere in the Universe and it would only take me a few days to recover my full power. That's why I reappeared multiple times in the war and created havoc until the Overgod decided to seal me."

"Couldn't you just kill yourself and be resurrected outside of this place?" Davis said.

"Impossible. I must feel the location of the drop of blood to initiate the resurrection. In here, I can't feel what happens outside. If I really killed myself, I'd really be dead for good and that's what the Overgod counted on." Aldric Draalsar said.

"It's been a million years now, with the help of your Undying Spell Matrix didn't you become strong enough to leave?" Davis asked.

Aldric Draalsar shook his head: "The Natural Laws dictate how the world functions. Unless I gain some understanding of those laws, space laws to be accurate, no matter how strong I become physically, it won't change a thing."

Davis then realized something and then held his head with his two hands saying: "Does that mean that I am also imprisoned in this place for life? If I knew it would be like this, I wouldn't have swum to this island when I saw it…I don't even have a wife yet…and I wanted to leave the Dorian family once I had saved enough money to get married and have kids so the Graylock noble family name wouldn't end with me…"

"Yes…From the way things are going, you could spend your entire life on this little island waiting for help that will never come…so I came here to offer you a way out…whether you succeed or not is still to be determined." Aldric then said looking mysterious.

"What do you mean?" Davis stopped lamenting and said.

Aldric answered: "Do you want to become my disciple? I will teach you everything I know while trying to understand how a mere mortal, you, managed to enter the seal of an Overgod. With my training, you'll live for thousands of years and who knows, we might find a way out of this place."