Marcus had stars in his eyes. People called it a mutation of magic and chance, but now those stars were shining bright. He looked around at the large room he was in, with beakers, dissection tables, weird and unknown contraptions laying around and two of the four walls filled with books, from times, untranslated grimoires to plain notebooks filled with some fads he had taken up in his days in the academy.

  His body was weighed down by the red and black robes that swept the floor but had never became dirty. The body hidden underneath could rival a Knight’s while his face could rival the most handsome of bards.

  He jumped from every place in his new layer, a smile on his face. “Is this all mine?” He asked the only other person who was here to see it. The headmaster of the Mage academy. A great fire and ice archmage who carried a large staff with a floating crystal above it. His lips had a playful smile as he watched his newly graduated apprentice look at him with disbelief.

  “Yes Marcus, it is all yours. Take it a gift from the order for all you have done for us during your stay at the academy.” He assured him with a small chuckle. Although his voice was distorted by the mana that peaked from him passively, the intentions were transferred to Marcus.

  Hearing this Marcus let out a small chuckle before he called upon his wand. It was made from straight magical bark, that had acted as a focus to his abilities when he was young and inexperienced, now he kept it for the nostalgia of those days.

  “I will leave you to your devices, and for you to get acclaimed with your lair.” The voice of his mentor rang out once more as the projection fizzled out into pure mana. Marcus didn’t delay and with a wave of his wand, the mana inside the lair was wrestled into only obeying him. This would prevent any other mage from using it.

  “ A warding rune here, a detection spell there and a chaotic door under here.” He whistled to himself as he worked to ward his lair from all things he could and for those he couldn’t like dragons he added a detection spell that would allow him to know exactly who or what had trespassed.

  A few hours later, he was in a different silk robe with the same color scheme as his official robes his feet kicked up on a wooden table and a cup of warm tea in his hands. His eyes were darting around the air as he watched the mana particles do their mindless dances.

  While he was just a rank two mage, and should probably be buried in either saturating his core, or studding the mystical nature’s of the world, for now Marcus felt that he deserved some relaxation.

  Although that didn’t last long. When he was watching a clump of fire mana slowly dance around some nature mana, assimilating and dissimulating, a rumble shook his lair. Panic flashed in his eyes before the wand materialized and with a wave he forced the stones that formed his lair to stabilized.

  His cup was placed down and slowly he walked towards the study, silently wishing that whatever that was didn’t damage his books. He hadn’t had a chance to even read them and now there was a chance they would be damaged or even worse destroyed. The wand glowed at the tip, with an already cast spell awaiting a chance to be let loose on the poor sod who intruded on his lair.

  However, when he reached his study he heard some curses being fling about and then a hush. He turned the door and found a group of three people, one woman and two men. Although one of the men seemed to be a boy but he had a rather sharp looking sword on his back.

  “Who are you?” The woman asked with a hint of hostility in her voice. Her hands were glowing and the chocking smell of devils filled the air. Marcus also noted that the woman was the one who was cursing.

  Looking towards the man, he saw a disproving light in his eyes but that was it. Now that shocked him, a paladin working together with a warlock. To make matters worse it was a paladin from the Order of Light.

  As he was about to answer he felt something different and turned sharply towards it. His eyes glowing. On the wall of his new lair was a void passage. A tear in the space leading to a random place in the void, where who knows what could pass through and do anything to him.

  “Who is responsible for that?” He asked them and he could see the annoyance on the woman’s face die to being ignored but it was swallowed when they saw the jagged opening in space. “Don’t look at it like that, protect your eyes.” He warned them when he saw that they were looking at the void with mortals eyes.

  At least the paladin was wise and had protected himself but for the others he could see their faces had grown haggard. When he saw that they were already channeling their mana into their eyes, he let out a sigh before turning towards them once more. “Who created it?”

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  He asked again but this time the paladin answered. He wore golden and white armor, with even his sword and shield having that same color scheme. His face had some wrinkles but Marcus attributed them to stress as divine power took it’s toll, especially when the amount in him being comparable to a hero.

  “We don’t know as the system sent us here for a trial.” His voice was calm but held a certain resolve. “I am sure that it will close it once we are done with our task and we can leave.” He continued before stepping back.

  “I assume that you are still in the initiation stage.” He spoke mostly to himself but caught as the boy nodded. This caught his attention as no normal person should be able to know what the initiation stage was without a higher being or one coming from a realm such as theirs telling him. “What is your trail?” He asked them.

  It wasn’t usual for people to find a realm undergoing an initiation as the system usually hid them pretty well. He could so much from seeing the way the system controlled mana. It was a known and proven price of knowledge that the height of mana control came from the system itself.

  He saw their caution and nearly let out a chuckle. He could see that they were at the precipice of rank two, with their chronicles not being good enough for the system to give them an option to skip this trail.

  “Don’t worry as I am not going to harm you.” He knew that words spoken from a position of power can never be trusted, but the very act of reassuring them works well for most and it did for the group as one stepped forward, the boy. He seemed to weirdly competent for someone who had been with the system for a decade at most.

  “We have a quest to acquire a demon core, rank two and above.” He spoke with some trepidation in his voice. His gaze wandered towards the wand in his hand and he hastily spoke once more before Marcus drifted into his thoughts. “As you are a mage, can you summon a demon for us?” His question confused the other two before they all looked towards the wand that had stopped glowing.

  He heard the woman mumble something about competence from the girl but didn’t mid it. It was a well known fact that all mages and magic classes found a focus an insult. “I could summon one, even weaken it a little bit for you, but what would I get from you little boy?”

  He saw him shudder a little from either rage or something else due to the name, but his composure returned in a moment. His hand reached into the air before disappearing. This caused some surprise to Marcus as although the system had an inventory function it wasn’t to the level of what the boy had displayed.

  Inventories were basic sub dimensions that could be cracked open with sufficient damage or a mediocre thief could steal from them. What the boy showed was something he had only seen being made by accomplished spacial mages.

  The boy’s hand damaged inside for a moment before something came out with it a few moments later. It was a spear with a wooden shaft and a black tipped blade.

  Name: Spear of the stars

  Rank: Two

  Tale: A spear that was made from a fallen shard of the heavens and wood from a revered tree. Inside it is a faint song of divinity but it is bound by the blood of the damned who forged it.

  He inspected it and slowly with a flex of his will, the mana carried the spear from the boy’s hand into his open palm. He inspected it and could see that while the spear had the making to be holy, it had a curse inside it. Like a virus it kept on changing randomly but he knew there was a method to this madness.

  “Did you get this from the system?” He asked the boy to which he nodded. Marcus looked at the faces of his partners and could see the confliction in the face of the paladin and he knew the answer to his sourness. The curse was low level and with the divine power in the man’s body, it could be broken just with a thought from him.

  “I will help you in summoning a demon and I will injure it for you, but you will be the ones to collect the materials for the summoning.” He saw the disapproving gaze of the boy at the words. “Don’t at so slighted as you broke into my home and I haven’t collected the necessary things to summon one.” This seemed to remind them that they had broken into my home.

  “What is it that you need?” The woman asked. Marcus looked at her and assumed that she was truly the only one who could understand the task ahead. “You need four things for this to work. A nightshade flower, a yellow daisy fruit and some moon shade water, which you can find around here just need to follow the drunken monkeys. What you also need to get is blood from them, make sure that it is from a rank two being as anything lesser and the chances reduce dramatically.” He explained to them before he turned to the woman who had a hand raised as if she were in class.

  “What is the need for the other things, I understand the demon beast blood but why the flowers?” She asked to which the other two turned towards him waiting an answer. He could the same variation of questions and accusations bubbling inside them and didn’t fault them.

  “Those three are some of the sweetest treats for monkey type beasts and together they create a fragrant that will pull a certain demon from it’s hole. Truthfully, the blood is the only unnecessary thing in this whole ritual as I have the demon’s blood at hand, however, you can never know if that bastard has advanced since we last met.” He answered with the same flair his teacher taught him to lie with.

  The greatest lesson of all magical classes has been to confuse all those around you. He could open a door to the abyss with ease and with the blood he could attack the demon while sleeping, but they shouldn’t know.

  He saw as all three of them looked before them and a realization came onto him. He was just a means to an end for the system. It had even given him the spear as a thanks. He knew that when he sent them away, the task they had just taken on would cascade into a journey of coincidences and undisguised manipulation by the system ending with them confronting a demon and completing their trail in a way that would carve this journey into their very souls. Creating a chronicle.

  He didn’t even wait for a confirmation from them as he waved his hand and the mana formed a spell circle underneath them, sending them to the forest.

  “I’m going to bed.” He said to himself as he placed the spear onto the table to await his prodding tomorrow.