Chương 1: A Damn Human… Seriously?

Seriously?

A white-robed elf floated above a vast, emerald forest. His garments fluttered wildly in the wind, and his long, golden hair flowed like liquid sunlight. Behind him rose a tree so enormous its branches seemed to cradle the sky itself. Then, with a thunderous gust that almost tore the trees beneath, a dragon emerged, an ancient devastation cloaked in flesh and flame. His scales glowed like slabs of cooling lava, and his wings stretched so wide that daylight dimmed beneath them.

The air turned blistering hot as the elder dragon lowered his colossal head. Molten eyes narrowed with amusement as he studied the lone elf floating before him.

"Just give in, elf. Oh, wait, not even that, a half-blood if I remember correctly," the dragon rumbled, his voice grinding through the sky like a storm, vibrating deep into the elf's bones.

"Why are you doing this, Axelion? Why start this war?" the elf shouted, gripping his simple wooden staff until his knuckles whitened. Axelion's response came as a low, rumbling laugh filled with the confidence of one who had slaughtered civilizations for sport.

"Because I was told to break you," the dragon whispered.

"And orders such as these… are not questioned." He paused, enjoying the silence that followed. After a moment, he spoke again, "Alas, it's not something you will need to concern yourself with anyway. Goodbye, Aurelius!" Then, Axelion inhaled. It felt like the world was being drained of life itself, as mana gathered in a violent vortex, and the beast exhaled. A wave of white-hot flame surged forth, a heat so intense that the treetops below instantly ignited, and the sky rippled under the oppressive mana.

Aurelius raised his staff with a small, calm smile.

"Zephyr!" he said casually, a single word, and a storm of wind erupted around him in a spiraling tempest, cold and perfect, meeting Axelion's divine flame head‑on. For a breathless moment, the world became a battleground of the elements until Aurelius unleashed his limitless mana, and Zephyr carved a path through the inferno, blowing it apart like smoke. Axelion's grin widened, revealing rows of obsidian fangs dripping lava.

"Impressive… old monster." He spread his wings wide. With the casual flick of one colossal claw, the sky warped. A miniature sun ignited above his talons, dense enough to bend the space inward, casting a terrible new gravity across the sky. As the sun spun, it started to grow, doubling in size each second. Spears of plasma erupted around it. Dozens. Then hundreds. Each one gleaming with lethal purpose.

"Planetary magic?" Aurelius murmured, and for the first time in centuries, he sounded genuinely interested. Above them, the miniature sun expanded again. The forest below began to wither. Trees folded inward under the growing gravity. Rivers rose into the air in shimmering streams. Even the clouds distorted around the burning sphere. Then the spears began to fall. Plasma spears shrieked through the sky, forcing Aurelius to teleport from point to point, weaving through death while chanting with unshakable precision.

The dragon gasped as, suddenly, above him, a black hole tore into existence, devouring the ever-growing sun whole, its gravitational waves rolling through the air. As the sun crumbled, the spell detonated and the wild gravity struck Axelion like a collapsing mountain, crushing him from the sky and driving him deep into the earth. Ruptures spread for leagues as trees snapped and soil erupted. Aurelius hovered above the smoke-filled crater, eyes cold.

"You picked the wrong mage to test, old lizard." He didn't like wasting his energy on senseless battles, but once he committed, he fought to win. And if there was one constant truth about Aurelius, he never left those who threatened him alive for long.

"You know, I could use a beast like you as a pet. My days have been very boring for the last few centuries." Then he extended his hands, before Axelion could overreact.

"Eternal Chains!"

"Spatial Prison!"

"Origin Magic: Flame of Creation!" Chains woven of pure, shimmering temporal energy erupted from shifting portals, latching onto Axelion's limbs and pulling tight until centuries of decay wrapped around his flesh, swallowing his vitality. Space froze solid, locking the dragon in absolute stillness, and then the tiny ember, unimpressive and insignificant, drifted down, glowing like a firefly.

It touched Axelion's skull, and with a simple burst of blinding flames, the temporal chains ignited, and the dragon was gone, its body nothing but ashes, erased in an instant, a being of eternal flames, obliterated just like that and with fire at that. Silence followed, the heavy, hollow silence of a god slain. Aurelius allowed himself a single contained breath, "What an irony. Really." He allowed a faint chuckle, then sharpened his gaze.

"Oh, don't think we're done yet, lizard." The elf smirked coldly.

"Soul Magic: Bound Eternal!" A portal tore open before him, revealing the River of Souls in all its eternal, swirling sorrow. An ethereal hand thrust through, dragging a screaming, thrashing red dragon's soul back into the world.

"You monster!" Axelion shrieked.

"This is why THEY want you erased! How is a freak like you still a mortal!?" Aurelius's expression remained cold.

"Who are you talking about? Who wants me gone? I've harmed no one capable of moving you against me. All I've ever done is try to understand this damn world of ours."

"You touched things forbidden. Do you think they want someone like you loose in this realm? Hahaha, complacent fool!" the dragon's soul roared.

"I can always search through your memories, but that is painful, horribly so. I am giving you a way out, speak, and cut the insults. It doesn't suit you." Aurelius gazed into his shaking eyes. But before even the flames of the battle could die down and Aurelius could interrogate the dragon's soul, the world froze, not time, not space, but creation itself.

Everything froze in an instant: the air, the falling ash, even the particles of light, all held captive by a force that existed beyond the laws Aurelius had spent a lifetime understanding. Then a silhouette materialized from the stillness. Humanoid. Faceless. Its body was made entirely of living mana that hummed with authority. It moved almost instantly. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Aurelius teleported backwards as his barrier of layered space-time energy activated, keeping him conscious long enough to react. The faceless being seized Axelion's soul and reformed his body with a snap of its fingers.

"See, wasted effort, Aurelius. That should've been your nickname." The dragon bellowed in joy, then turned towards the godly figure, "Took you damn long, we were supposed to work together, you pale bastard!" The being sighed and instantly appeared before the dragon, tapping its forehead and freezing it mid-sentence before attacking Aurelius with a wave of cosmic energy. The ripple crumbled all of Aurelius's barriers.

Ribs and skin cracked, blood sprayed into frozen air, and Aurelius hit the ground like a falling star. He landed next to the enormous tree, body trembling, as he barely stood up, grabbing onto the thick bark, yet a grin split his bloodied face.

"Finally… I might learn something new!" He pushed himself to stay calm, pressing one hand deeper into the World Tree's bark, and spoke slowly, his voice reverberating through the very bones of the realm.

"Realm Magic: Nifelheim… Helheim… Muspelheim." Suddenly, the skies darkened, the world turned grey, and ice and mist descended, freezing everything in a torrent of frost and snow; even space and time. Then the souls of the dead marched through countless portals, an army vast enough to drown the world. And finally, an ancient elemental of fire emerged taller than the tree that held the skies. The spells struck simultaneously. Ice shackled the being in place, feeding on its mana.

The dead swarmed it next, tearing into its endless vitality, their wails echoing across the frozen world. Then the elemental's burning blade fell from the heavens, space shattering as it did. Aurelius staggered, drained.

"Let me see you survive that, faceless one…" he muttered, trying to heal himself. Though if he does, things will really get interesting. He stood amid the crushing silence that followed his overwhelming spell, his breath shallow and uneven as he tried to steady himself against the enormous trunk of the World Tree, hoping that the catastrophic convergence of frost, death, and primordial fire had finally erased the faceless intruder.

Suddenly, a piercing, stabbing agony tore through his chest, sharp and cold as winter steel, and he found himself staring down at a root the thickness of an arm protruding from his body, its bark pulsing faintly with mana. For a long moment, he stared in stunned silence as the root split into thinner tendrils that crawled and wriggled into his flesh like serpents, crushing bone and flesh, winding mercilessly around his magic circles. Then, as the truth settled over him, Aurelius laughed quietly.

"Really, Mother," he said, voice trembling, "so it was you… all along." The World Tree responded not with fury or cruelty, but with a serene, ancient melancholy, her voice both gentle and tired.

"Of all my children," she said, and her words carried the weight of ages long passed, "you were the brightest flower that ever bloomed upon my roots.

"You peered into the mysteries of creation with a mind sharper than any blade and a will determined enough to peel back the layers of existence itself.

"You learned how to shape mana when no spirit would speak to you, learned to write magic where others merely inherited it.

"You discovered worlds beyond this one, despite the laws that forbade such knowledge.

"But that brilliance of yours, my dear Aurelius, that impossible, relentless brilliance, became a light too dangerous to allow." As she spoke, the roots burrowed deeper, seeking out the glowing circles of condensed mana and crushing them one after another in brutal, efficient bursts, their shattering echoing like cracking glass.

With each collapse, he felt centuries of progress slipping away, collapsing into dust, until the power that once let him shatter planes and bend laws dwindled to the fragile ember of a mortal human's existence. His spells collapsed, and the beaten, much smaller, faceless being nodded at the tree and dipped through a portal. Aurelius chuckled again, though this time the sound was thinner, touched by pain, but unbroken.

"You never gave me anything, Mother," he said, his voice carrying a hint of defiance, as the roots constricted further.

"Others had spirits to guide them, whole legions of them whispering wisdom, weaving power into their hands, but me? I had only my mind, my stubbornness, and the unending silence of the spirits who refused to acknowledge a half-blood." He exhaled, finally speaking what he had carried for all those years.

"Everything I became… I forged myself. And now you claim my existence is a mistake?" The World Tree's branches shivered, not from wind, but from her own rising fury.

"I know what you attempt, Aurelius Sovitus of the Third Bloom," she thundered, and suddenly her voice lost its gentleness, turning sharp as snapping bark.

"Your resurrection magic will not save you, not without your circles." A single pulse of her power tore through him, shattering the final circle, and for a moment, there was only silence. Then Aurelius did something that startled even her. He smiled, a slow, weary, triumphant smile.

"Hah… you caught me there," he whispered, blood leaking from the corners of his lips.

"But let me ask you something, Mother, what do you think happens when you destroy ten circles, one by one, all in a short period of time? Don't you think an emergency mechanism should exist, in case of… well… situations exactly like this?"

"Well, I thought so too." He laughed, and mana in the whole region ignited into an enormous magic circle underneath them, sucking the tree's very own spirit and mana, gathered since the creation of the realm. Her shock rippled through the earth. And then, everything ignited. Mana exploded outward in a brilliant cascade that devoured the sky and the roots alike, activating the colossal spell etched invisibly into the land around the World Tree, a spell so vast its activation shook the realm like a dying star.

"Goodbye, Mother," he whispered, his voice fading but triumphant.

"May the fates be unkind to your wretched soul, and may I never see you again." Then the world erupted. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. The World Tree's roots shattered, her ancient form buckling under the force. The heavens split open, revealing a tapestry of stars and distant worlds, and the inhabitants of the realm felt shackles they had never known they wore suddenly fall away, their freedom bought by the last act of a man who had asked for nothing, expected nothing, and yet gave everything.

And amid the chaos, as his consciousness dissolved into spreading light, Aurelius felt only one thing. Relief.

Darkness folded over Aurelius like the closing pages of a story, soft and absolute, and for a fleeting moment, he felt as though he were drifting in the quiet space between heartbeats, suspended between existence and oblivion, the last pieces of himself dissolving like fireworks into the night sky. Then, as if summoned by the memory of his final defiant smile, light blossomed around him. Not gentle light.

Nor warm, nor peaceful, but an ancient radiance that felt older than worlds, and so impossibly immense that his mind trembled beneath it. He became aware of a room, if one could even call such a place a 'room,' for it was less a location and more a conceptual space, a blank, infinite whiteness where thought had shape and silence had weight. Before him rose a colossal scale carved from a material he could not name, something like marble and starlight fused.

Its presence, so heavy with authority that even Aurelius, who had defied gods and struck at creation itself, felt small before it. Upon one side of the scale lay a single, flickering flame. Tiny. Fragile. Trembling like the last breath of a dying world. Upon the other rested an entire sphere of memories, spinning slowly like a captured world.

Each one shimmering with the echoes of his life: the lonely years of study, the ecstatic triumphs of breakthrough, the wounds inflicted by prejudice, the wars he never wished to fight, the spells born from sleepless decades, the quiet joy of learning, and the terrible weight of power. Then came the bittersweet understanding of what it meant to be a halfling in a race that never wanted him.

But hardest of all were the memories of comrades, companions, and loves he'd lost through his life, the guilt weighing heavily still. For a moment, the flame surged upward, roaring with sudden violence, illuminating the room with a brilliance that threatened to overturn everything, but then Aurelius's memories blazed brighter still, expanding, burning with the raw truth of who he had been, what he had achieved, and the impossible burdens he had carried alone.

The flame quivered and was extinguished, while the memories sank, dragging the scale downward in his favor with a loud echoing thud. A voice materialized, echoing with the resonance of countless unseen judges.

"You have accomplished an act beyond measure, Aurelius Sovitus," the voice intoned, each syllable vibrating through the very fabric of the space, "for you have shattered chains older than your world, broken the dominion of those-who-shall-not-be-named, and freed a realm from a fate it never understood it suffered." The voice paused for a brief, suffocating moment.

"For this, and for the defiance you displayed even at the brink of your unmaking, this Council grants you a chance to live again. We will send you to a waking world, one with untapped potential. Become more than you were, Aurelius. Go, and let 'them' learn to fear your name." The voice faded as if carried away by a cosmic wind, and before Aurelius could speak, question, or demand clarity, the world erupted into pure light. And he fell.

Not through space, but through the idea of space itself, tumbling through layers of reality like a stone sinking through water, passing through memories, forgotten dreams, lost possibilities, and distant futures. Warmth enveloped him, wrapping around him like an embrace, soft and fragile compared to the power he once commanded. Then suddenly, everything felt smaller. He gasped. Cold mud pressed against his back. It took Aurelius a full second to realize he could 'feel' properly again.

Air filled the lungs that were not his. Light flooded eyes that he had never seen through before. The sky above him was painfully blue. Almost unbearably bright. As Aurelius staggered upright, realization hit him hard enough to steal his breath. This was not the body forged through centuries of magic and suffering. This body felt fragile. He stood and examined his new form, hands moving frantically across his body. His limbs were short. His frame was thin, clearly neglected.

His skin lacked the faint, ethereal glow of elven mana, and his ears, rounded, unmistakably human, made him freeze in horrified disbelief as he inspected his bloody face.

"A human?" he whispered, voice higher, younger, softer than he remembered.

"A damn human… seriously?" He looked down and froze again. His once white shirt was torn, and his stomach was slick with drying blood, the remnants of a wound that had only just sealed itself moments earlier. A deep scar carved across his wrist suggested a desperate struggle or a violent history he did not yet understand. His hair was tangled with dirt and matted with blood, clinging to his new face. Before he could fully process the situation, reality shivered.

A voice, cold and mechanical, echoed directly inside his mind: You have Awakened. Welcome to the Astrae System. Level set to 1. Class Unlocked: Druid Open Status for further information! Have a nice day!

"A nice day," he muttered, his voice cracking with a mix of exhaustion and dark amusement.

"Right."