Chapter 33 Escort

At the beginning of time, the world was created by The Goddess, She created mountains and volcanoes, rivers and oceans, the ground and the sky. After creating such a beautiful world she felt lonely. Being alone to revel in Her creation She wanted someone to accompany her so She created humans. She loved her creations with all her heart, all She wanted was happiness for everyone. But creating such a complex race she needed to sacrifice part of her being, forcing her into a deep slumber. As a final gift, she gave the world access to magic, the power to create. Humans started to happily live next to one another. They played with the magic, but the good times didn't last.

Without the supervision of The Goddess, an evil god that was hidden started to show his true colors. He created monsters and sin, humans started to fight the monsters and each other, using the gift of the Goddess. The strongest monster that the evil god created were dragons, with their might overpowering most humans they drove the humans underground. The beautiful creation of Her was forced into sad and deplorable circumstances, living underground, they could only pray. Luckily, enough time had passed for The Goddess to send a part of her back to the earth. Received as an angel, worshipped as a Goddess, named The Lady of Light, She started to help the humans to drive back the dragons and monsters.

The dragons fought back with all their power, but stood no chance against Her. Only a single dragon, the strongest of them all, The Dragon Lord Gransax, was capable of deeply injuring Her. The Dragon Lord was too powerful, even for Her, She sacrificed herself in the name of the Goddess to defeat the evil dragon. It ended in the victory for the human race, but they lost their Angel, bringing sadness to the entire human race. Without the protection of their Angel, the monsters returned, the dragons were wiped out, but the other monsters escaped with the help of the Evil God.

Now, many centuries later, The Goddess has sent us another angel, together with the new Lady of Light, we must fight back against the dark and evil that roam this land.

'What a load of bull, are they serious? If their god only had happiness in mind, why did she create dark magic? Why did the so-called evil god create sin when the goddess first felt loneliness, showing she already had negative emotions? If their god needs sleep it's clearly mortal. Who wrote this story, it's filled with holes!'

'Though we can't expect too much from a religious script written by some random priest. He could've at least fine-tuned the plot holes, I agree with you on that part'

These kinds of stories were found in one of the books in the library. They weren't all that exciting and were obviously not complete, they described an event in the past with romanticized words and with a flowery or naive depiction of the human race.

Even though it was quite boring to read, he had already read everything else that had useful information. Only these fairy tales and stories of the past remained, and while Lucas was quite critical of them, they had to contain some truth. 'It's still better than doing nothing besides training'

Whether it was because of the potions or just pure talent or a combination of the two, Lucas was capable of fighting against Liam on even grounds. During actual combat, Liam would win most of their little spars, but only because of technique. Lucas would use strengthening magic to close the gap in strength, but he was always lacking in techniques.

Since he was getting better and improving at a rapid speed, he started to enjoy the feeling and exhilaration of combat. Fighting with your life on the line made Lucas feel something he had never experienced before. His blood pumped during those matches, and the feeling that if he made a single mistake he could potentially die made him enjoy the thrill.

Figuring out how to land a hit, coming up with strategies and ploys was an extremely fun pastime for Lucas. Liam would always support him in everything he did, even trying to teach Lucas how to fight with certain techniques. Lucas was gifted in magic, but not as much when it came to sword techniques. He could remember some moves but lost interest when he needed to keep up a certain form or breath in at the right times. Part of Lucas thought it would be good to remember every step, while the other found it a waste of time since magic would always triumph over a sword.

His life started to become somewhat normal, time passed, but Lucas wasn't forced to do anything strange or humiliating. He was left alone, which gave Lucas time to think about what happened so far. He was thinking it wouldn't be so bad to live here if they didn't bother him, sadly, as long as the contract existed, he would be shackled.

Not long after he had come to terms with his new way of life he was called in again. It was time, time to risk his life again for someone he hates, for someone who forced him to go through experiments to help his son, someone who bound him down and would dispose of the moment he steps out of line.

Lucas could never get used to the contract that forced him to move a certain way. He couldn't go against the baron yet. He could only try to find or create loopholes for himself to make sure he had enough freedom to do what he wanted.

Inside the office he was greeted by Liam and Robert, after some small talk between the captain and the father-son duo, the baron got down to business.

"Today I want to send you all to the second biggest infested mine. I want every single one of those monsters killed, before you all return. I have sent someone to scout out what kind of monsters live there. Not surprisingly it's the same ones that have occupied most of the mines. Lucas, you are tasked with protecting Robert's life, if he ever befalls harm you'll have to face the consequences. Once you've killed all the monsters, I want you to return."

'Once this contract is destroyed then you'll face the consequences asshole, just you wait'

Lucas smiled friendly, but it clearly held contempt, "Of course, I'll protect him to the best of my abilities."

'You know that if you're that angry I can't always keep up a loyal face, you know? You're making my job harder by forcing your hatred on me.'

'I won't apologize, that dumbass deserves to die.'

'I know, but that's for later, we both know that.'

The group consisted of 30 soldiers, 1 knight, namely Liam, and 2 growing mages, Lucas and Robert. "May I ask why master isn't coming with us? He is a lot more powerful than all of us. Clearing the mine would take no effort at all."

"Good question son, he can't come with you all because we still need to protect our mansion. Now that a lot of our troops are leaving I need to have someone powerful to protect our home."

After Robert cleared most of his doubts they started to prepare themselves. Lucas passed by Liam because his doubts hadn't settled yet, "Liam, were these Steel Spiders always so active? Why were the mines only taken over now?". Liam was busy organizing the supplies and making sure that they would have enough food. But he could still save some attention for Lucas' question. "No, normally those monsters stay in caves in small quantities, but we think that since the Scarlet Moon they have gotten enough food to expand at an outstanding pace."

Lucas knew from those books in the library what he meant with the Scarlet Moon, but didn't have to read about it to understand. 'I guess those spiders also reached our village then, poor Triss got eaten by one of them.'

Thinking about that traumatic event he felt his heart experience a spike of pain. He really wanted to move on, he tried to leave his sadness behind but hadn't found what to replace it with.