F#ck you god!
The day is beyond beautiful, the sun shining perfectly on the horizon, small clouds filling up the sky with their allures, and the wind softly blowing by, caressing the people of Moltino with a gentle rustle.
Truly, a beautiful day.
Which of course came as a surprise when one of the small huts, slash in slash "His house", suddenly combusted in orange glowing flames and began to fall apart from intense heat carbonizing its foundation.
Typical Tuesday everyone!
The people nearby acted without missing a beat. No one thought twice before simply walking away from the area, this wasn't the first time it happened, and like always they prayed that it would be the last.
Well, they can keep godamn dreaming.
Coming out of the burning house, coughing and wheezing the smoke out of his lungs was a young teenager with blond shoulder-length hair, hiding his pointy ears. Waving away the smoke that was burning in his eyes, a scowl found its way onto his face. He wore a large white lab coat, somehow intact from the flames, with a black shirt and dark pants.
"Failure again huh?"
It wasn't the first time it happened, as stated before. But he was so sure he would be able to do it this once, being able to use high amounts of magic without the need for a grimoire.
Well, his reserves apparently thought otherwise, any time he tried to reach into the well of mana within him, it would jump and splash right into his face.
The teenager, Jason, simply frowned as his house began to fall apart.
"How the hell does Gideon do it?" Fuck that guy honestly, even if they have been friends for a good three years, he still agonized over the fact that he could barely flicker flames out without exploding when Gideon could shape shadows to his whims so easily.
Falling to his backside Jason allowed his body to fall on the hard surface of the sidewalk, in the middle of the street. Simply looking upwards without aim, half-lidded gaze towards the clouds lazily floating in the sky.
"Already been almost seven years, right?"
Time passed fast, in all honesty, it can be considered a complete blur. After staying in the forest surviving by himself for a few months he was found by a group of Magic Knights, apparently, they were sent by the kingdom to analyze a strange burst of magic that occurred on the outskirts of a nearby village.
They found nothing but a child in the forest close by the signature.
Jason was beyond lucky, while everything he knew was simply his name, and had absolutely zero social skills, the couple of Magic Knights took pity on this abandoned child.
They brought him to their home, raised him as his own, fed him, protected him, and educated him for all they could. Which in all honesty was the current affairs of the kingdom, everything else the small child seemed to already know.
Jason will forever be grateful for their help and would live to his last days always cherishing the love they gave him. They were nobles of the kingdom, a side branch of a family called Silvania or something like that, the problem is that they have become poorer and poorer.
Not being able to pay the taxes of the empire, to keep their people satisfied with various standards of living, and because of the territory having a horrible agricultural ground, there weren't many plantations that bore fruit.
Jason did all he could to help, giving out new, more diverse methods of agriculture, of farming. A more efficient way to protect from disease, to avoid many hygienic problems. He did all he could, but that did not change from the fact that the village was falling under more and more pressure from the Kingdom.
His first step in repaying them? Getting money!
There were many ways to achieve that of course, he could easily become a merchant and travel through the Clover Kingdom while selling and buying exotic items. Maybe find an official job that dealt with Legislation, hell his knowledge might even allow him to enter a stage of Ph.D. that has never seen before!
But there were two things that fascinated him, first was magic. So mysterious, so powerful, so unpredictable.
A loud boom flew off as the rest of his house collapsed on itself.
…so very unpredictable
And the second was an adventure. While it would be safe to get a high-paying office job, there would be no action, there would be no fun, and there would be no significance.
There would be no noteworthy tale of Jason Selphis.
He craved adventure, so badly it almost hurt him. The thought of fighting monsters, the thought of fighting people, using magic to its limits, of finding friends he could trust his life on.
He craved that more than anything.
So of course, the easiest way to allow both paths to converge would be to become a Magic Knight. It was converging both adventure with what was arguably the highest-paying job in the Kingdom.
You don't risk your life on the line and receive nothing as a reward after all.
After affirming his new life goal, he began to religiously practice his magic, drawing coups of power little by little, and using them to better shape his body to sustain the mana which would flow through it after he received his grimoire.
…or at least that was the idea.
Lifting his head from the ground he gazed at the embers that were now his seventeenth house.
The only problem with that plan of action is that he had shit control.
For three years he had moved away from the village closer to the Capital of the kingdom to better prepare himself for the trials to come, trained his body for the best possible use of magic, and studied as much as he could about the kingdom.
Now if only his magic could get the memo and not explode whenever he wants to do something more complicated than a fireball.
Sighing in disappointment he let his head fall back on the ground.
Damn, why was stone so comfy anyway? He felt like he could drift off to sleep right there.
Which of course meant that something would happen, cause the universe conspired against him!
That conspiration came in the form of a kick.
"OOOF!" his body was sent rolling to the side.
Gasping for air, Jason sent a glare in the perpetrator's direction "What in the actual fu-"
"Shut up, I have been waiting for your dumbass at the entrance of the village for half an hour! Only came here when I saw the smoke." The voice in question came from a mildly annoyed teenager, with spiky reddish-brown hair, both eyes a splendid green. Wearing a black jacket over his red shirt, and staring down at him was his old friend, Gideon.
He was also a good two heads smaller than Jason, a fact that he would never allow the boy to live down.
Though to be fair, everyone was kind of small when next to him.
Looking at Jason one would have thought that he would be half-giant, not elf. At fifteen his height has already breached 6'2, and his growth didn't seem to be stopping any time soon.
Blinking when he finally realized the words, he got up sharply "Wait, but I thought the ceremony was in a few days?"
Gideon snorted in reply, his face deadpanned "If you got out of the house more, and socialize with people, your sense of time wouldn't be so busted."
Oh shit, that's what happens when you stay secluded to try and science your way through magic.
While he did make some leeway, it was microscopic compared to the massive breakthrough that would be owning a grimoire.
"Then why are we still here? C'mon or else you'll be late!" Gideon was barely able to react before Jason flashed past him, sprinting in desperate abandon toward the place where the ceremony would take place.
If he remembered correctly it was a large tower on the Northwest section of the forest close to the village.
"…" The red-haired boy in question felt his brow twitch in annoyance.
"Who the hell would be late?!" he sprinted after the running giant of a teenager.
Even after three years of living in the same village, and being the closest things friends could be, Jason just knew how to push his buttons like no one ever could.
And vice versa, of course, there would be revenge if he was late to the ceremony after all.
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In the end, they barely managed to make it, the doors closing in only a few minutes after they entered, breathing heavily, sweat perspiring over their skin.
Who the hell puts a ceremonial tower in the middle of nowhere?
Jason, of course, knows why it's in the middle of "nowhere", not only was the tower on top of a powerful enough leyline to be used as a conduit to awaken the grimoires for the children who have come of age. It was also perfectly situated in an area that is between the villages of the outer sector villages.
After catching his breath, Jason started to glance around, after all, it's never too early to measure the competition.
The first thing he noticed was the wide birth most were giving to him and Gideon. Not surprising, given that both of them are quite infamous among the youngsters of the nearby villages. For completely different yet similar reasons.
While some were looking at Gideon with anticipation and clear hope, others looked at him with exasperation and a small bit of fear.
After all, one of them was a genius with mana control and a unique type of magic, while the other regularly blows up his house, to the point he started to build them on his own.
Gideon of course didn't get bothered by the attention at all, simply tuning them out while looking around the tower with veiled curiosity and a slight smile on his face.
Heh, what a kid.
He pointedly ignored the fact that he was doing the same.
Though while looking around something came to my attention. It was a small kid, barely the same size as Gideon, though he was clearly younger, with pale skin and short gray hair.
Frowning at the kid, Jason looked through the coherent memories in his head, coming to a fast conclusion.
Never saw the kid in his life.
How weird, in these three years, even if he had indeed been more secluded than normal, he was still sociable enough to interact with the peers of his generation. At no point had he ever seen this one throughout his visits.
Well, it's probably nothing.*
The hall started to quiet down, as an older man stood in the middle of the gathering, right in the center of a large platform that gave him a view of everyone within the tower.
"You have all been waiting for this moment, from now forwards, you will have the burden of power on your grasp." The old man seemed to speak not towards them. It was a weird feeling, to be simply passed out as something lower than normal, however, probably one that they will be getting much more acquainted with.
"Now come, receive your Grimoires!" With his words the whole tower lit up in a mystical light, hundreds of grimoires that were simply sitting on the shelves flew from their spot toward their new wielders.
The old man kept on glancing around with disinterest, not one of them released enough power to even enter the lowest ranks of magic knights, until something stopped him and made him double back.
He gaped, no, the whole hall stared in absolute stunned disbelief.
Because floating right in front of Gideon? There was a four-leaf clover grimoire. It was black, with grey marking running up its cover, clearly one which reflected the type of Magic he had.
After all, Dark Magic is pretty rare.
The shadows around him seemed to twist, bend and move in ways that shadows are not supposed to, coupled with the large burst of mana that was emanating from him, everyone thought -
'A prodigy'
…fuck this guy, why is he always better than me?!*
Please whatever god is there, please at least give me a two-leaf grimoire, hell I'll even settle for a one-leaf!
Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity of fear that no Grimoire would step forward, which was probably only a few seconds, one flew from the corners of the tower and stood right in front of him.
It was orange in color, the type you would see in a desert's sand, with a large symbol of the fun right in the middle of it, Jason could feel the temperature spike up as he grasped the grimoire.
However, the definitive detail which shocked him wasn't any of that, it was the fact that there were no clovers in his grimoire at all!
…fuck you god!
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*1 - SPOILER ALERT: It was something alright
*2 - Our Magics were also randomly chosen, our DM placed every magic there is in the anime, and extra other magics out there and spun the wheel.
Thank you for reading, see ya!