ch 3 magic addiction is a serious problem .

I hate driving , especially cars . why am I mentioning that .

because right now I was driving a car that the guy sleeping next to me was supposed to drive .

as for who the guy next to me was , he was my head of security , though he did everything but protect me . in simple words he was a good for nothing , son of a bitch .

driving was still Fine but driving with a person foot on my head was pretty annoying .

the foot belonged to Anna who was currently sleeping behind .

Anna was a rich lady who was particularly fond of roaming about in limousines . and I happen to know exactly why . she loved to sleep while travelling and she really loved to stretch her legs while sleeping . she hated sleeping in a sitting position and naturally I was suffering due to it .

as for why all of us were going on a trip. it was more accurately , I was looking for the man in the picture . if it weren't for the two headaches beside me I would already be in rock city doing what I do best , finding out the villain and exposing the crime .

I already had a few ideas on finding the man's identity . those kind of injuries were something that attracted way too much attention .

if he took that photo , he must have passed through the city . so what I was going to do was to hack into rock cities camera feed and find him from their. it was a long shot but then beggars can't be losers . it might be tough to believe but I am a pretty able hacker .

I could do it from my office , but rock city's surveillance system was pretty old , so they had no linkage with the present network .

so I had to go locally and hack into it .

(by the way I wanted to warm you , there are multiple world's with thousands of kind of hacking . you would be surprised just how these kind of stuff changed in different worlds . there were many factors , such as change in natural laws , changes in society such as difference in laws and other such factor . )

I will stop their because anymore and you will end up in your bed and I really don't want my lives story to become a lullaby .

anyways , a flight would have been quicker ( there were none as I found out later ) but I made the mistake of letting Vikram ( my head of security ) hear about my need to go to rock city and one thing led to another and this two idiots ended up with me .

now that I remember about it .

me - Vikram , wake up (shaking him ).

Vikram ( in half sleep ) - what time is it , let me sleep for some more .

me - get up and drive ,

Vikram - you drive no , you are so good at it anyways .

me - you have to wake up miss Anna then , she blocking my view of the road or else we all will end up in a ditch

Vikram - do you want me to die, you wake her up . I too young to die so young .

( after a few more rounds of argument , which is not suitable for kids and too embarrassing for the adults . it was decided that Vikram would drive and I would wake miss Anna up .)

(naturally I got the short end of the stick . waking miss Anna was scary business . as I have told you miss Anna loved her sleep and she especially hated being woken up . waking her up had three ending .

she ignored or slapped you or bit you . all three were pretty sad outcomes . that girl had a sharp bite.

long story short , I woke her up with , with great risk to my arms and we went on our way to city . it wasn't really eventful after that . we reached the city by the night and checked into a hotel. I and Vikram got a room And miss Anna got her own room . after sleeping for a while I will do what I needed to do .

( after sleeping for a while , okay I slept the entire night , rather than a few hours ,but driving was a exhausting business . anyways hacking took time and focus . it was better to do it in the morning . it was definitely not because the two headaches next to me were going to roam about the city, leaving me to do my work for free . )

( the next day . )

( I finally cracked it , though I did not expect it to take so long . i am getting rusty . luckily for me both Vikram and Anna were fooling about outside . they had some very unique hobbies (okay maybe not weird , but weirdness was based on perspective , so don't judge .)).

one was a shopaholic and the other a bookworm . I will leave it to you to guess who is who . ( don't worry I will leave clues )

I found the guy in the picture pretty quickly and I was presently tracing his path through the town to see if I could find him somewhere .

presently he was still on the road driving a really old car(in the video) which i wasn't even sure of how it was still working .

once I get an address I was leaving this hotel . it was pretty cramped up here . Vikram had too many stuff

me - finally .

I finally got it .as, I had hoped that the man had stayed in the city , at a pretty run down motel that was near the outskirts of the city .

first I had to suit up .

thankfully , Vikram would not be here anytime soon ,maybe I could return before he even returns .

Vikram had a very special set of weapons . weapons which I was not allowed to touch . luckily though he brought those weapons , though I must say he was stupid enough to leave them in my room . he must have thought that I would not touch them. after all it's been years since I have last used them .

I could not use those weapons , due to the bloodlust mania .

as for what bloodlust mania is , it's a long long story (atleast for you , it will take me seconds to tell it to you all ).

I am sure most of you had forgotten about how Mana was addictive . I am sure you forgot all about it . Mana is really addictive , to a point where the legendary mages of past burst (literally) , due to absorption of excessive mana. these legendary mages were so powerful that entire planes and world's could be destroyed with a single word. that's how dangerous mana was .

it was equivalent to breathing in a drug (like opium , but then who knows I'm how many world's it does exist ) instead of oxygen , from the moment you are born and then suddenly being removed out of that environment and then being sent into normal atmosphere (you know seventy eight percent nitrogen , twenty two percent oxygen . but then again most world's won't have that composition ) . you can imagine just how scary the withdrawal was for it .

it was for me , because my undead form sustained itself on Mana , do the addiction was much higher for me.

it was fine when I was a kid, till I was seven . I was as normal as the next kid ( I think it had something to do with some residual magic power in my soul , but no way to look at my soul ). after seven , it started with insomnia . I could not sleep very easily . then I attributed it to my general inability to sleep .

but by the time I reached ten , I could not remember stuff. my memory became really weak and by the time I reached thirteen , the hallucinations began .

these hallucinations of the soul . physical hallucinations could identified very easily , but a hallucinations of the soul was not very easily identifiable . what I saw are my own personal matter , so I won't discuss them .

by fourteen , I couldn't differentiate between reality and illusion . I not even sure the number of times that I attacked those in my surroundings thinking they were illusions .

finally my father managed to meet up with Vikram's father . whose was a part of a ancient clan of warriors .

after making me train in the arts of the clan , I finally recovered only to have my father disappear.

as for where bloodlust mania came in to all this . that was how the clan managed to heal me .

the clan had this technique called as ' seven illusion blade ' ( the clan was named after this technique , bit since it sounds pretty weird in English and the Sanskrit name is too hard to memorise , I just call it the clan . )

anyways the grand technique was a self hypnosis technique . rather than calling it a technique , it is better to call it a way of life. basically every action I did was used to fool my soul into believing that my hunger that I had was not for mana , but for blood .

I won't get into the details on how it was done , but it involved a lot of hallucinogens and other such stuff .

anyways the end result was that I recovered , atleast until I held a chained blade (, two knives connected by a chain ).

but once I held it I felt a desire for blood , not like the wild desire for mana , but cold calculated and emotionless .

normally , I would try to stay as far away from these weapons . but if I was right about the man in the picture , then I would need every single ace that I held .

the burn marks that the man held , I remembered them or atleast something similar in mages . this was a burnout , the injuries which were caused by the flow of excess Mana in the body .

but that was very unlikely , after all this world held no magic. but seeing him I am getting a very bad feeling , as if I should stay away from this man as much as possible .

(after a while . )

I am never going to go of on my own . I think I never told you this but my sense of direction sucks .

armed with the address , I left in the car only to find that the car couldn't go over the mud paths , so I had to park it in a restaurant parking and leave on foot .

after that it was hours of walking and searching , along with calls from Vikram , who was pretty pissed off that I stole his weapons, followed by miss Anna who wanted my location .

naturally I didn't tell her that and by the time she found out , it would too late regardless of what happen .

if my suspicions of this man were correct then it was best that I dealt with him alone . the others who didn't know anything of magic would not be of any help .

as for where I was , I was outside the house rented by the man in the picture . as for the reason I haven't entered yet , I am very very scared . don't get me wrong , it wasn't the there is a ghost here so I am scared type of fear . it was more like my natural predator is here , now he will eat me type of fear .

I was starting to appreciate the fact that I brought my chained blades ( okay not mine , but who cares.)

now that I think about it , I should wield ( or maybe it's hold ) my blade right now . holding my weapon , I didn't really feel that different except maybe that I was calmer and the fear that assaulted me seemed a bit silly .

it was hard for anyone to believe it but right now I was emotionless , or more accurately speaking my emotions were more subdued .

that was the case until I met an enemy , then my hands would begin to itch for combat , my heart would beat like a drum and my mind would seem to have left my body as I calmly traded blow for blow .

man in the picture - little mage , you really shouldn't be so careless , you are in enemy territory after all .

the man spoke from behind me as I instinctively swung the chain behind me , only to hit empty air .

man in the picture - really kid , you have become that out of tune with magic , that you can't even recognise a ghost voice spell . I am inside the building kid , you want to challenge me then enter at your own risk .