Dawn broke over snow-laden nameless peak. The first light of the sun rose over the great walls. In the cradle of the Forsaken Range, the inhabitants of the Red Legion fortress resided in calm resilience.
A snowfall cloaked the landscape in a serene calmness. At the barracks, a layer of frozen mist covered the buildings. The lush grass fields of the training grounds were now covered in a vast expanse of snow.
Blight's favourite pond would have frozen over by now, every year prior he was there to witness it, but now he was oblivious.
He slept silently inside his dormitory room after a long night of studying sorcery.
On this what would have otherwise been considered peaceful morning, a loud thud was heard, startling Blight awake.
In his disorientation, he heard the fortress alarm bell. A loud echoing toll reverberated through the entire fortress, causing him to instantly become alert.
'Horrors!' Everybody knew the bell was a signal that something was wrong. They were under attack!
Blight immediately rushed out of his room and found that like him, many of the trainees were doing the same, scrambling down to the main hall below. The instructors were immediately on vigilance, directing everybody towards the grounds outside before the fall of the stairs.
Other instructors scurried up the stairs leading to the different dormitory areas, looking for any remaining trainees so that they would not be left behind.
In the courtyard outside, Blight found his group, including Marsuu and the others, and stood near them as their entire regiment waited outside the barracks for word, ready to evacuate at any moment.
Blight looked around him. Their expressions were tense. Most of them had apprehension and fear in their eyes
Blight felt overstimulated by the rush of their thoughts and emotions, looking down at the ground and cradling his face.
A few trembled due to a mixture of the shivering cold and the weight of their fears.
A heavy, unsettling stillness washed over them.
"This is crazy, man..."
Murmurs began to spread across the gathered regiment.
"I don't want to die."
And some whimpers and sobbing, too...
Strangely, while the other children were feeling fearful, Blight felt a sense of anticipation, almost expectantly looking forward to such developments.
He didn't know where these feelings stemmed from, but he didn't have time to contemplate.
Shouting was heard outside the barracks and on the streets, and soldiers were seen running towards the first wall. Their faces were pale and their movements stiff.
The first wall had held up for more than 300 years, keeping horrors out from the human zone of influence.
In addition to this, there were the attack corps who were responsible for killing the horrors nearing the wall.
When was the last time a Horror managed to reach the Great Wall?
Blight couldn't remember such a thing. 'It's never happened before,' at least not in his lifetime.
The rhythm between the tolls of the bell slowed, and soon it stopped altogether.
The danger was gone... supposedly.
A ray of sunshine peeked through the clouds, basking over them.
The first wall was too far away from where they stood, and their view was too obstructed to see any of what occurred over there.
The instructors made a statement to the regiment that everything was taken care of and that there would not be any immediate danger.
They were not privy to any additional details.
During breakfast, the instructors made another statement that training this morning would be cancelled because they would be busy in a meeting.
Bernault began. "What do you guys think that was?"
"How could a horror even reach the first wall? What is the attack regiment doing?" Avil added.
"Whatever it was," Shazbot sighed, " I just hope that we can survive."
Marsuu only chuckled at their worries and kept eating.
"What are you laughing about? This is serious! If a horror managed to reach the first walls, then doesn't that mean the attack corps failed?" Ezekiel chimed.
Marsuu replied, "Maybe, but what does that have to do with us? There are more than fifty active regiments remaining who are responsible for defending the wall. We are safe within these walls, at least for now..."
"Ahhh! Don't jinx it, man. I just hope that our regiment doesn't get assigned to the attack corps next year then!"
Marsuu shrugged, "What do you think, Blight?"
"I think it would be pretty fun and exciting if Horrors broke through the first wall."
...
"You're actually insane, aren't you?"
After a lengthy breakfast, Blight went on about his day
In today's survival tactics, the trainees had a lot more questions than they usually did.
"What happened for the bell to ring? Did a horror make it to the walls and attack us?"
"Where did the horrors even come from?"
This started a chain reaction.
"Why did the gods abandon us?"
"I heard the gods are dead. Is that true, sir?"
The instructor's face paled. When did he ever have such a daring cohort? Blasphemy!
"Who said that? Shut your mouth!" he snapped at them.
"Lady Minerva hasn't abandoned us. Were we not blessed with these powers to awaken?"
The one who spoke looked wronged but couldn't say anything more. These thoughts were on everyone's minds at this moment.
Before this event, they could go on with life every day unhindered most of the time despite the heaviness of the world hanging over them, it was only when their problems were immediately apparent that their human instinct for desperate survival was activated.
After completing swordsmanship and survival tactics, when he arrived at sorcery, he found that there was actually another trainee in the classroom.
She turned to him and asked, "Who are you?"
"Blight."
She only nodded her head a few times in understanding and went back to looking at her papers.
'It seems like she's even worse at talking to people than I am,' Blight thought, snickering.
After he had sat at his desk, the old man entered the room and smiled, "Oh good, I see my two students have met."
"…"
"Blight, meet Flone. Flone, this is Blight, who I was telling you about."
"…"
"You guys really aren't the social type, are you?"
Blight could feel his face heating up. Did this old geezer have to make things so awkward?
The instructor checked in with both of them on their progress and offered advice on issues that they were facing. He also explained that he would only be holding one class session per day as he had become busy with other things, refusing to elaborate.
This was very different from every other class, which had multiple sessions throughout the day.
The next day, after people noticed that Flonecia was learning sorcery, a few more students joined the class, and the number slowly increased over a few days.
The herd effect was very real. When everybody said that sorcery was useless, nobody paid it any further attention, but after they saw the perceived strongest legendary rank person among the trainees take sorcery seriously, they also came back to the class.
Two days later, another rumour spread across the barracks regarding what happened that morning.
Many of the trainees had contacts on the outside who were also highly ranked in the military, and it was only a matter of time before they learned and the loose lips of children spilled it.
Blight sat amongst his acquaintance group at the dinner table while Shazbot was leaning in and spilling the tea.
"Apparently, an enormous abyssal horror made it to the first wall and was attacking it... they said that the regular regiments who were stationed had to retreat, with a few dying before they could. The strongest in the clan, and even the clan elders had to mobilise to take this thing down."
When these children learned that the walls could be attacked, their courage was shaken.
All the trainees in the regiment became extremely serious, making the most of their time before they would have to join the military as real warriors.
Blight would wake up every day to eat, train, learn, eat, sleep, and repeat.
Like this, four weeks passed.
At this point, he successfully learned Astral Projection.
But when he tested Astral Projection with [Gaze of the Abyss], he found it to be an overwhelming failure. It knew that he wouldn't actually go through with casting it, so it didn't show him a future where he did.
No matter how he tried to trick the ability, putting on his best act to try and fool it, it was unconvinced.
This solidified his understanding of his boon ability. It definitely predicted using his current and future knowledge and thoughts, even if they included the ability itself. It only seemed to be incapable of predicting changes made to his thoughts and actions as a result of the future showed to him by ability.
This made a lot of sense to him. If his ability could predict all the changes that would come as a result of his access to the knowledge of the future, then what would it really be predicting? That would just be a continuous feedback loop, and it did not seem right to him.
When he used it, he found that he was able to view the world from around himself. His vision could also travel in a way, and it lasted up to ten seconds. It was also separate from the vision he gained from [Gaze into the Abyss].
Compared to [Gaze into the Abyss], this made things even more complicated. If he kept his lineage ability activated, then his senses were divided between his regular future vision and the projected vision from Astral Projection, which was not affected by the time dilation and only showed him the present.
In addition to this, Astral projection used up way too much ether. If he really had to use it to make use of it, he could understand why everyone thought that sorcery was useless.
It immediately depleted a third of the ether reserves in his core.
Who would ever use such a wasteful ability?
'While I can't forsee any use for it, who knows? Maybe one day it will show its use.'
'Until death, all failure is only imaginary.'