Chapter 5: Chapter 5 – [Special Evaluation]

Hot sunlight blistered down from the cracks of the castle wall, as the black haired young man with piercing blue eyes and quite a skinny physique marveled at the fact that he was in fact not hallucinating, and that he’d somehow gotten transported from that chic coffee shop with his guide Clarice Roseline into what appeared to be a battleground, where the smell of horses and the glistening of lances accompanied what was left of a battle-worn cavalry battalion retreating into camp just a few feet away from him. 

“Hurry up!” said the gruff man who was roughly forty years old, knocking Zack on the helmet with a whack of his palm. 

The young man rose to his feet, the plated joints of his heavy armor groaning as he moved. As a studious highschool graduate of the modern era who spent the majority of his time on the computer like everyone else, an experience like this one was disconcerting at best. 

So this was the evaluation that Clarice Roseline had told him about? 

As if to answer his question, a blue screen with floating white runic text appeared in front of him. It was like staring at a computer screen, which was quite bewildering. He couldn’t recognize the runes which looked nothing earthly, neither English nor remotely close to the mandarin that his grandmother taught him. 

And yet as he squinted his eyes, the runes appeared to organize themselves in a way that he could understand and even read them. 

Very strange, and yet it felt quite natural. Now that the runes were translated, he could read them easily. He quickly noted that the contents within the screen were quite alarming. 

[Special evaluation has been enacted.]

[The once great Empire of the Kaldun fell nearly twenty thousand years ago. You have been brought back to the beginning of the end of the Kaldun Empire, twenty four thousand years ago, when marauding dragons and unspeakable monstrosities began to destroy the lands during the Great Calamity. You have been placed in the care of the elite Templar force of the Kaldun Empire during the first day of the Calamity. The Templar fought valiantly against the Great Calamity before they too vanished, their unique and powerful fighting style forever lost to the sands of time.] 

[Difficulty level: Impossible.]

[Do not attempt. Death in the evaluation will result in death of the climber.]

[Mission: Survive the marauding dragon’s onslaught.]

[Secondary objective: Slay the marauding dragon.] 

Uh oh. This was not good. 

From the bottom of his heart, Zack had hoped for a slightly more challenging evaluation ever since Clarice Roseline said that the difficulty of the evaluation was adjusted based on the climber’s personal abilities. Call it personal pride or ego, he wanted to feel above average, and he just felt like he could step up to the plate and deliver.

But he didn’t ask for something like this. He was expecting and even looking forward to a mini-boss of some sort, but marauding dragons that brought down a fallen empire? What the hell was this? Did they just throw the final boss at him in the very first stage?

Zack walked gingerly as the gruff man directed him to follow, his mind still swimming as he gawked at the surroundings of the battlefield. So far, the only thing he saw out of the ordinary were men wearing silky capes and comically large hats. They didn’t seem to fit the battlefield, until he saw what could only be a sorcerer’s staff with an affixed jewel at the top glowing with some sort of aura. So magic was real in this world.

Still, no sign of dragons. 

“Stop gawking and get a move on it,” the gruff man said loudly as Zack paused for a moment to stare at a person in white clerical robes casting what appeared to be a healing spell on a dying man laying with his back against the fountain of the town square. 

Zack nodded and continued to follow, digging at his pockets to find his passport, vividly remembering what that voice had told him to do once he left the prying eyes of Clarice Roseline. 

[You have accessed a dimensional pocket that contains your passport. Rest assured, your passport may not be destroyed by any means as it is a physical copy of your Tartaric Records. However, others may view its contents, so it is best to keep your information private unless absolutely necessary.] 

Hm. He still found it a bit strange how there was a whole world of living, breathing people surrounding him, and yet only he could see these strange runic screens. But given his background as a modern highschool graduate who dealt with smartphones on a daily basis, he quickly got used to it. It was just like walking back from school while looking at his phone… well, if the commute back was through a battlefield and his phone was a visual hallucination.

You got the point.

Zack kept up his pace as he quickly flipped through the pages of his passport while shielding the document from the prying eyes of civilians and soldiers on the battlefield who would wonder why he carried such a conspicuously modern booklet with him in a time where scrolls and scribes were more common. 

Page thirty two. Wait until she is gone. Never speak of this to anyone. 

He flipped to page thirty two, just as the voice had said, to be greeted by several passages handwritten in cursive nested in the middle of the page. 

I hope that this reaches you well, my dear younger self. You have already seen some of the horrors that this world has to offer with father’s murder and mother’s illness, but believe me, the worst is yet to come. For now, simply grow stronger and fill out your records, and when it is time for your next evaluation I will give you additional guidance. 

You are currently undergoing my final evaluation before my own life’s end. Although I, strong as I was, managed to defeat the dragon, it is impossible for you to do so in your current state. Fortunately, the prize for you is not the dragon. It is the Book, kept in the Holy Mausoleum. It will be destroyed by dragonfire in less than an hour. Make haste. 

Make sure that you obtain it, no matter what. Don’t let anyone get in your way. 

I hope that with my sacrifice, you will find yourself able to change what I could not change… what cannot be changed. 

P.S. Good job swallowing the orb. Even I wouldn’t have thought of that. Clarice can be quite pleasant if you get onto her good side, and that means two words. Paying up. 

P.P.S. Remember the boating incident with Hugo? That’s how you’ll survive. Bring a weapon–you’ll need it. Preferably a spear. 

Zack gulped after reading the entirety of page thirty two in one go. He’d trained himself to take in information astonishingly fast during his years as a library-hugging grub, and a letter to himself was no exception. 

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He had doubts about the authenticity of the letter until the very last message. The boating incident with Hugo… how could anyone else know about that? His mother would’ve gotten a heart attack if she found out what had really happened during the storm. That curved scrap of metal from an old ship that Hugo had found in the junkyard looked quite appealing as a pirate ship back when they were six years old. 

And it sailed like a beauty indeed, until the storm overturned the damned thing and sent them adrift. They barely survived that night, finding refuge in a cave out at sea before the waves calmed the next morning and they could swim back to shore. 

Zack had told his mom that he stayed at Hugo’s house, and Hugo told his mom the opposite. Neither of their parents found out, and they promised to keep their near death experience as a secret till the grave. 

Hugo had gotten him almost killed a bunch of times, but the worst time came from his own idea. After that, they called it even. 

Anyway, he needed to find this Holy Mausoleum and get out of dodge before dragonfire brought this whole camp down. 

“Sir, where is the Holy Mausoleum?” he asked as they stepped inside to a private training room filled with other soldiers. 

The gruff man groaned. “Newcomer, shut your damn mouth unless you want a spear in your back. I’ll tell you after you finish your sparring session.”

Zack looked around slightly in panic. “Uh, are you sure that we need to do the session right now?”

There was not much time until the hour was up, and he’d spent the first ten minutes simply walking with the man and reading the message in his passport while trying to shield its presence from wandering eyes. 

The gruff man spun around, pulling a long dagger from his cloak and quickly shoving it underneath the gap of Zack’s helmet. He felt the blade prick his throat. 

“If you run your mouth any more or even think of wandering away, I’ll slit your throat and send you back to the orphanage you came from in pieces. You should count your blessings for being able to enter the tutelage of the Templar.” 

Zack gulped, nodding. So here he was, with full knowledge that the item he needed the most in the entire world would be burned to a crisp with dragonfire in less than an hour, and now this instructor was going to force him to do a sparring session when he barely even knew how to fight? 

This evaluation was going from bad to worse in a matter of minutes. 

“Stand over there.” The gruff man pointed towards a line of new recruits. 

Zack groaned internally. There were four recruits in line before him, so he’d be trapped here for even longer as his future faded with every minute. He didn’t have time for this.

Desperate times called for desperate measures. He didn’t like to do this, but what choice did he have? 

“I’ll go first!” he shouted. 

A large, intimidating high-ranking templar adorned with ceremonial armor at the front of the room looked at the newcomer with new interest, as the gruff man who now stood behind him smacked Zack on the back of the helmet hard.

“Where do you get this insolence, boy?” the gruff man said angrily. “You are in the presence of a Grandmaster. Do not show such insolence!”

“It is fine,” the high-ranking templar said with a booming voice, gesturing for Zack to step forward. “How curious. I sense a great power within you, boy. Yet it is unrefined.” 

Without warning, the templar raised his sword. “Defend yourself!” 

Zack suddenly realized that he bit off a lot more than he could chew. Sword fighting was not part of the curriculum in highschool, although the old money clubs at Vermillion University might still have some events running… 

Nevertheless, he was not born into privilege and so he’d never attended a sword fighting class like some of his richer classmates had. 

Here goes nothing. 

He drew his sword and stood in an amateurish pose, facing down the templar in front of him. A shiver went down his spine as an immense pressure poured from the large figure, his aura alone causing Zack to gulp.

The templar’s sword began to glow with light, prompting oohs and aahs from recruits and instructors alike. 

“So that is sword aura!” 

“I heard that only Grandmasters can use it.”

Zack’s eyes narrowed, staring at the grandmaster templar’s technique. For some reason, it seemed oddly familiar. 

A golden record glowed white hot in a cosmic darkness far away… 

His eyes narrowed further, feeling energy coursing through his veins, calling to him to reclaim the power that he once had. 

Suddenly, despite his shoddy posture, his sword also burst into a brilliant golden white glow. 

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