Prologue Pt. II

After spending some time under the sun drying off the wet blood off my body to allow myself to actually stand up, I managed to get to what I presumed to be the now deceased body of the man who had created this new me, Faustus Asmoldo.

Flies already circled the minutes old corpse, and I couldn't blame them. Now being able to get a closer look at the man myself, I can see that personal hygiene for him was a lost, sacred spell technique beyond his life-long comprehension.

On his body is his dirty robe, the cane-like staff he carried, and a weird book that hung from his waist from a dingy rope.

I give the deceased closest thing I will ever have to being a father figure in this new world a short prayer as I loot him of his belongings. I do leave the robe on him however, but not because I'm trying to give him some kind of post-death dignity or whatever- but because I'd likely get negative stats just THINKING of wearing the putrid excuse of a towel rag on me; it's sticky too to boot.

So, I now have his cane-staff and book.

I open the book and find myself surprised to find that I have literally no clue what any of it says. All of it is in a foreign language that I can't make heads or tails of, but I do see that there are illustrations given of what I presume to be items and objects of the world within the book. I sift through its contents, seeing an array of drawings comprising of strange looking phials and bottles, to weapons of what looks like to be a large animal's bone.

I flip all the way to the end hoping for something useful, and luckily, I do. On the final page of the book is an illustrated map. Normally, this would be kind of useless because I don't know where I am located so I have no point of reference- but, on a certain empty swatch of space on the map is a small drawn 'x'.

My best bet is that is where I am, where I had been born into this world as a fully grown homunculus.

What I know of homunculuses- I mean homunculi, is that they're kind of like living, magic puppets; this being knowledge I've learned from my fair share of videogames. How they're created could be anyone's guess, but I'll lean on a good hunch that the dead burnt people surrounding the bloody circle just over there were related to my creation. Also, this scar that runs along my chest is probably where the other hallmark of a magic puppet is, it's magic core or something akin to that.

I gently lay my hand over the scar and feel a low hum emanate from the tingly ridged skin- it kind of unnerves me.

the map in the book shows four major landmarks other than a sea to the south and a forested mountainous region to the east. A large tree illustration is shown north of the where I'm located, to the west a double-bridge, east a black castle, and to the south another castle but in white. Relying on the little bit of color theory I had learned in my previous life, the likelihood that the black castle pertains to something evil and demonic in nature has a high likelihood of being true.

Question is now, where is east?

I look up at the sky and find a surprise that had escaped me at first- there are two suns. One is larger than the other, and the smaller one following just short behind; but both are yellow like the Earth's sun. I look at them closely (Not too closely, I'm not sure if a homunculi's eyes are indestructible to sun radiation) for movement, trying to decipher what arc they're taking over the sky for hints of a direction.

I see that they're slowly moving upwards at an angle that extends left of my shoulder (I had been standing still for the last maybe ten-ish minutes? waiting for the suns to rise high enough to cast a shadow on me) and if I'm using Earth logic, if they're rising from that direction and setting towards my shoulder- then east must be the way were they're coming from.

I look around my surroundings one last time before I depart to what is presumably East and my only lead to getting any real answers in this world, the Demon Kingdom and its Demon Queen.

But before I do I kick some loose dirt over dear old dad, hopefully this will do for a burial; rest in peace you beautiful bastard.

And onwards we go!

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