Zepar: A Buried Secret, Chapter V

While the five friends were making a conversation about their future, a sudden voice of a child reached their eyes.

“Blothel Elevie!”

Erevos’s baby sister, Olris, run towards him giving him a hug. Erevos hugged her as well and picked her up with his arms and kissed her forehead. Then Lugous seeing that said.

“I can totally sense an incest romance between the two of them in the future.”

Everyone’s look turned to him. Without knowing how to respond.
“...”

“Dude! What the actual fuck?!”

“Lugous you are sick! Get help!”

Erevos very calmly let her sister down, walked towards Lugous and with a lightning fast punch in the head, he knocked him down.

“Oh I… I totally deserved that…” said a dizzy Lugous, while lying down touching the part of his head that got the hit.

Ana, Erevos’s mother, Aego and Oka, Erevos’s other siblings, came after this happened.

“Why did you hit him Erevos?” asked Ana, worried.

“Trust me, you don’t want to know, mom” Erevos answered.

“So, when will be your turn to go on stage?” asked Aego.

“In an hour…” answered coldly Erevos.

After a little while, after everyone had calmed down, they continued their conversation.

“How are you all feeling today? The Academy surely outdid themselves in this year’s graduation event!” said Ana. 
Everyone agreed.

” Indeed, everything is well-organized, not like two years before, when the quality of the stages crafting was so poor that collapsed in the first only student presentation…”

“Yeah, fortunately for us, they learn from their mistakes, even though it would have been funny to happen again” said Lugous with a wide smile on his face.

“Should I remind you that you were the first to present your skills, so if that would have happened again today it would be you the one who would get the experience of humiliation for someone’s else’s fault” Alex then said to him.

Diana seemed like she reminded something she wanted to say some hours ago.

“Oh! Mrs Ana, we want to ask you something”

“Sure, my dear. Please, how can I be of help?”

“We decided to form a guild all together and become adventurers and you are someone with a lot experience. Could you give us some advice on where and how to start?”

“Adventurers?!” said Ana with a questioned look on her face and turned at her son, Erevos.”Are you sure you want to follow this path?” then she turned to everyone else. “At your skill levels, you could easily join the Army, it is simpler than being an Adventurer. Not to mention that Adventurers are so few, many think that they no longer exist, you will have a very hard time to find jobs.”

“Thanks for the warning mom, but we made up our minds in this matter” answered Erevos.

“Well, as long as you are happy with your decision, I will do anything in my power to help you.”

“Thank you very much mom, for the understanding. For start we only need some advices on how to start. What should we do and what do we need in order to make an official Guild?”

“I was never an adventurer myself, so, I don’t know every detail, but your father may know. Why don’t you all come tomorrow afternoon in our house? We can discuss the details there.”

Everyone agreed and were very happy from the suggestion. No one could wait to start.

An hour had past and the time for the last part of the ceremony had come. The part where the best student would make his presentation. Erevos was the one with overall score of 100/100. Pure talent and very promising potential. All the teachers claimed that he was the best student they ever encountered! His presentation had to be the most outstanding and breathtaking! So, the Academy council decided to be a friendly actual battle; between the best assassin, archer, spear-user, sorcerer and shield-user versus only him. A five to one battle, where Erevos had to beat a whole team! From the other side, Lugous was the archer, Diana the assassin, a woman named Irvene with the spear, Gorgo the sorcerer and a man named Noda as the Shield-user in front of everybody. On the other side, there was Erevos standing alone with a cold look pointing at his opponents. He was confident of his abilities and was sure he could take them all out with just few combos.

“Maybe I can sneak between their formation, boosting my agility with the great acceleration skill, passing by Noda and with only my first move take down Diana because she will be a big problem if I don’t knock her first…

On the other hand, she may predict that and try to sneak into the shadow realm. I am not that fast to catch up with that, and I will be completely exposed in the middle of the remaining four… Not that I cannot handle them, but I will make my work much harder without a reason.

I could try and sneak behind them and take down Lugous first. His range abilities will be a pain to deal with, during the battle. Just as Gorgo’s spells. Hm… Quite a tricky decision. But surely, I must not leave Noda last to fight. His skill “Battle Duration Endurance” will make him stronger and boost his defense as the time will be passing by. He is a big dude, he will be also a challenging opponent… Fuck it, I will just go take them all one by one, charging right at them. That won’t make such an impression like the other strategies, but I really want to get over with it. Father hasn’t come to see me anyways… like he would surely do in a few years for my brother’s sake…”

Just as Erevos was thinking and end up with a decision, his opponents also seemed ready and prepared. Lugous gave a provocative shout at Erevos, across the stage.

“You won’t see it coming shortie!”

Erevos’s eyes lit up. This provocation was what it took for Erevos to get into fighting mood. He was not fine by calling him short; Lugous knew that. His intention succeeded. He didn’t want his best friend’s presentation to be a boring task for him. Both smiled, making a distant eye-contact.

The bell that mark the start of the fight, belled.

Erevos drew his sword that was at his back. Diana, as Erevos predicted, vanished in the shadow realm waiting for the best opportunity to attack. Noda activated his skill ‘Battle Duration Endurance” and moved his huge circled shield in front of him protecting the formation. Irvene went behind Noda just in case Erevos decides to attack Noda first, she would attack him. Lugous started launching with lighting speed his arrows with a spell called ’Reinforce Arrow’ that doubled the already launched arrows with copies of them!

The fight was in reality some kind of a simulation. The arrows, the swords are an illusion, so no one would get actually hurt. If an arrow manages to hit Erevos it would give him the pain of the hit, but it wouldn’t hurt him physically and the pain would go away some seconds later.

Something that of course didn’t happen, because Erevos, while running towards his opponents, was swinging his sword, deflecting the arrows one by one. In a very short period of time he was close enough and launched an attack to Noda who was in close range now. Noda protected himself, putting his shield between him and Erevos. A futile move… Erevos swing his sword so fast and full of power that ended up cutting the shield in half! He made a move that would have been a fatal one for Noda in a real fight, pointing his sword to Nodas neck. Irvene tried to get Erevos off guard while he was focusing on Noda. Erevos dodged the spear attack and caught it, unarming Irvene from it. Irvene was defenseless, signaling her surrender. Erevos managed to take down two out of his five opponents in 5 seconds time! He turned his deadly look towards Gorgo, who was his next target. He wanted to take him down as quickly as possible, before he could charge a spell. As he was running at him, Lugous tried to steal his attention away, giving time to Gorgo. An attention that ended up in vain, because Erevos easily countered every arrow. He reached Gorgo but before attacking him, chains appeared in both of his hands. Diana found an opening in Erevos’s movements and successfully binded him with her skill ‘Shadow Chains’. Erevos found himself trapped in the ground. With a smile on his face he whispered

“Hehe, you got me…”

Gorgo was ready to unleash his spell “Fireball” to his stunned opponent. Erevos continued to smile as he was seeing the fireball coming directly at him.

“You did well guys, but this is the encore…” he said and activated his wildcard move, “Absorption!”, a skill he mastered just recently and his friends had no idea he knew. This skill allows him to completely absorb the impact of a spell and use its power for himself. Doing that he ended up surrounded by the fireballs fire. He used the fire to melt the chains. Gorgo, Diana and Lugous stared at him with awe. As he freed himself, he took down Gorgo who was standing in front of him and turned his look towards Diana. She had already teleported into the shadow realm at the beginning of the fight, so she could not do it again. She was defenseless, just as Lugous, who had run out of arrows. Knowing they could do nothing against Erevos, especially now in his current form with his sword to be a sword lit in fire, they surrendered. The crowd applaud loudly the battle’s outcome! With that, the ceremony reached its end.
...

Meanwhile on the Bloodyleaf’s outskirts, Boros, Erevos’s father, reached his destination, a small house. He opened the unlocked door and stepped in. Just in front of him there was a circled table with four people already sitting in the seats around it.

   

Author: Charlie Harper