Crusader King

[Captain Hilgo]

After a few hours Hilgo finally awoke, lying on top of a hospital bed, surrounded by doctors.

He had been the captain of the paladins for almost 38 years now, he had battled against countless monsters and yet this was the first time that he had been defeated like this.

He slowly tried standing up and went to a mirror standing on the opposite side of the room while the doctors were fervently trying to stop him.

What he saw in the mirror was terrifying.

He had been decimated.

His entire body was bleeding with an entire arm missing and his face being basically unrecognizable.

He was dressed in a white patient garment that the doctors had probably put onto him, it moved as his chest heaved heavily from the still persisting exhaustion.

Hilgo slowly moved outside, he had to see if those he had seen had survived the attack of that unknown demon.

It was frightening, the demon had easily destroying everything.

And the scariest part about it was that he had been smiling the entire time, Hilgo was sure that the demon himself had no idea that he had been smiling but nevertheless he had been doing so.

Neither would he probably have known about the fact that he was subconsciously using mana to enhance his fighting prowess, the first step towards "aura", a lords technique.

But Hilgo still started walking outside the hospital and towards the temple, hoping to figure out who had survived and where that indomitable demon had come from.

[Mangel Hader]

Mangel didn't know why Cades had attacked him.

Perhaps, he thought, Cades had been angered by something he had said, but Mangel didn't really care after what had happened.

He simply sat down in what remained of the temple, on the stairs and was sitting there staring at nothing but thin air.

Mangel slowly began moving with a stabbing pain in his chest and started walking towards where his office once stood, now nothing more than a wooden ruin.

He looked around seeing everything that he had built over the last few weeks.

It wasn't much, but it was still something, something that he had created.

Mangel digged out the remains of what was once his desk and his shelf and gathered the items that were still usable.

At that very moment he noticed something. His notebook was missing, the very notebook in which he had written a map of the whole entire world and some of the basics of this worlds language.

Mangel had marked a lot of things on that map, such as for example the location of various powerful monsters in this world.

This was not a big issue for Mangel as he had already made a copy of the map and didn't really need the notebook anymore anyways.

As Mangel finally turned around after putting all of the items into a sack that he had he saw his captain, Hilgo, standing right in front of him.

[Nelia]

Nelia had already been on arbor, her home planet, when the tragedy on ehetria occurred.

When she had heard about what had happened she had been incredibly distraught and worried.

She had actually sent out hired mercenaries to explore ehetria and save some of the ehetrians that could've possibly been there.

Sadly, the mercenaries didn't return.

Nelia didn't know wether they had just run off with the money or had actually died, but it didn't help with her distraught feeling.

It also wasn't made better by the fact that her father had died because of a workplace accident.

She was the only heir, so she had to take over the emporium of her father while still suffering and looking for her missing friends, because that's just who she is.

After inheriting it from her father Nelia was now the leader of a huge and profitable company called "Nariala", which made artifacts and shipped them out into the whole planetary system.

But now she finally had information on the current location of one of her friends, Mangel, who had seemingly been transported away from ehetria using a magic spell.

She was finally, finally going to see them again.

That's what she thought while entering the specially made warp gate, a circular empty stone doorway powered by the same principle as the warp trains, but much more complicated.

She was truly looking forward to finally meeting her friends again.

[???]

A being without form was walking through the arak forest on trumal.

The being looked as if it had been formed out of dripping clay without a true colour that would never be able to hold a form.

The beings name was Bila and she was looking for the one that would be able to help her.

Long ago it had been prophesized that there would be a warrior of revolution, a king that would lead all those that were enslaved or mistreated under the rule of the gods.

And Bila had been looking for that warrior.

When she had found out that he would start his journey on trumal she came here and waited in the safest region of the forest, casting an illusion that would show others what they most desired at that moment.

She had been certain that he, or she, would fall for it and come up to her, but instead she just had to fight a lot of monsters, most of which were only around the lower ranks.

They were absolutely no challenge for her.

She was a being at the peak of the lord rank.

The lord rank was not classified utilizing sequences but if someone had to classify it you could say that she was at the twentieth sequence.

However, all of that did not matter to her as she finally found the mana left behind by the one who would help her, it was brightly violet and exuded a smell that reminded one of burnt blood, a smell that she was more than familiar with.

As she saw the dead spider queen Bila had realized that he, or she, was growing incredibly fast.

And then, finally, the formless girl came up to the stone slab that had sent Cades into a far away dimension.

Bila analysed the slab and the mana left behind by the previous user and quickly realized that there had been a mistake in the usage of the slab.

She didn't know when, but in a few months she'd finally meet her future partner.

The destined "crusader king".