NOVEL NEXT Chapter extra 3: The princess of a war
Chapter extra 3: The princess of a war
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My name is Yuuki Nuwa.
Ever since I was born I was told that I was going to inherit the throne, even though no one asked me my opinion. Not that I was going to get angry at that or anything, as the princess, I was taught ever since I was a child the benefits and the wonderful lives style I led thanks to my social standing in the Nuwa Kingdom.
My father was a very good teacher, and so was my mother. Thus, it wasn't hard for me to understand that since I was the princess, I also had to give the people of my Kingdom a good life in return for my luxurious life.
I studied hard, practiced magic hard, visited several cities... Truly a life worthy of a princess...
However, that only lasted until that one day when the whole Kingdom of Nuwa fell into chaos and fear.
That day, from the skies, hundreds, if not thousands, of giant ant monsters appeared and invaded the Kingdom, annihilating any human that entered their sight, and decimating our armies with extreme ease.
It was only after the thousands of mages in the guild were dispatched, that we managed to fend off the swarms of giant ants invading our Kingdom. My mother was one of them, furthermore, she was one of the best mages in the entire Kingdom.
Her mana capacity was 7 times higher than a normal human, a potential higher than any other person in the whole Kingdom, something incredible considering that we humans barely have any mana compared to other races. (A/N: This is different from the x2 mana amplification that Aspen had in the beginning because this talent of x7 mana capacity that Yuuki's mother had only allowed her to reach a higher amount of mana without using the mana crystals, in this case being 140 points of mana, with her limit still being 200 points of mana like any other human. While Aspen x2 mana amplification gave him the potential of reaching 400 points of mana or higher, depending on what methods he used to amplify his mana capacity)
Unfortunately, be it because we were not prepared enough at that time, or because the Goddess of Order decided so... My mother died after almost successfully eradicating the ant army with her magical abilities, more specifically, sound magic, just like me. She was surrounded by the hundreds of Antlions, and although she decimated them with her magic, in the end, she got overwhelmed just like all the other mages and soldiers of our Kingdom...
... After that, when the battle was over, it took the whole Kingdom a while to understand what had happened. Only when we saw the level of destruction and desperation that these ants had caused on the Kingdom, did we really understand what kind of enemy were we facing.
Dozens of cities were decimated and invaded by these ants, millions of lives were lost, and even the legendary artifacts of the heroes from the past were lost on the attack from the ants... And all that in just one day.
The smell of blood and burned meat filled the skies of the capital, and there was no place in the entire city that was not filled with corpses of our soldiers.
Half of the capital was destroyed in the process, and everyone was terrified due to the enormous power of those monstrous ants that appeared from one day to another. Even though the zombies and slimes that plagued our country were incredibly strong, to the point that it required a specialized group of hunters to hunt just one of these monsters, these ants were on a completely new level of strength. It had required hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and the entire guild of mages to barely manage to fend off that small army of ants.
After that, the fear of having those ants invade again struck the entire Kingdom. Our armies were trained to the limit, and our researchers looked into any possible weakness that these ants may have for our soldiers to exploit... However, in the end we did not manage to find any weakness in their body, and panic struck the whole Kingdom fearing that once those ants attacked again, nothing would be left... They were given the name of "Antlions" due to their enormous mandibles that resemble slightly the mane of lions, and the enormous size of their body.
Many considered moving towards the sea, as the Antlions didn't seem to care about moving towards that place. However, before any of the people of Nuwa Kingdom could make a move, soon a new swarm of Antlions arrived and struck the capital once again.
By the moment that happened, I had already reached 12 years old, and whether it was because of the anger and frustration I was feeling towards those ants after they took my mother away from me, or maybe because I just couldn't bear to watch the people of the city get slaughtered easily by those monsters, I awoke a special talent in me... my learning speed and level of control over magic, which although had been pretty high but nor superhuman, suddenly increased severely and my control and understanding of a certain type of magic deepened to a superhuman degree... Sound magic, the same type of magic my mother used, had turned into my most fierce weapon... With that, I managed to hold the Antlion arm for enough time so that the army could react properly and fight against those monsters...
My mana capacity may have not been as high as my mother's, with it just being 6 times higher than a normal human. However, for some reason, my understanding and learning speed of Sound magic was beyond what any person could achieve... Magic spells which took several days for people to learn only took me a few minutes, and the control I had over it was practically perfect since very the start. With the talent my body held, it wasn't long before I devastated the armies of Antlions with ease, especially because this magic ignored defenses and damaged internally my enemies.
However, even when the mana costs of using Sound Magic were especially reduced due to my control over it, I was still not completely developed, thus, my mana capacity was still small compared to what it could be in the future. Making it difficult to fight for long.
Due to that, my father bestowed upon me the Resonance scepter, the weapon that belonged to one of the heroes that fought against the Demon Cthulhu in the period before the Great War, Elitia the great Sound sorceress, and the weapon that has been passed as an inheritance in my family for dozens of generations.
With it, my power and ability in controlling the soundwaves became topnotch, and I developed a new way of attacking which was by creating ripples in the space with the soundwaves produced by the resonance scepter... With that... I entered the war against the Antlions.
... Maybe it was because I was still a kid... Or simply because it was too much for anyone to bear... But I became extremely shocked and terrified of the slaughtering I saw when I entered the battlefield the first time... The smell of death and the destroyed corpses of the soldiers scattered all around the battlefield, coupled with the enormous rivers of blood going through the battlefield, was enough to make me throw up right away.
But as time passed, I learned to ignore it and concentrate solely on the fighting in front of me...
The constant battles and massacres against us soon started turning around as I used my talent to defeat the monsters, and the hopes of the Kingdom, which were plummeting on the bottom, soon started resurfacing once the people noticed that we were starting to recover some of our cities slowly but surely through constant battle.
And thus, the battles and recovery of our Kingdom continued for a long time... And after some time, I finally became 19 years old.
Thanks to our continuous effort, the Kingdom had become exactly as how it was before, or even better... In a certain way...
More soldiers and warriors were needed, so the Kingdom decided to teach kids about violence since their childhood, and portray the soldiers as heroes so that they would become our power once they grew up. Thus, many customs and events were held to achieve this matter... One of them being the [Clean-up]... Which was where met that man.
The Kingdom was not in a position of allowing crime to run rampant, so they decided to have the criminals fight against themselves on one special day in order to achieve freedom. That way, any person with vicious thoughts could think it more thoroughly before committing a crime. Unexpectedly, it was in this way that I and my father could find the most strange man that I have ever met.
At first glance, we all thought he was just another criminal waiting to fight for his life like all the others... and although he was a bit handsome, he was still another prisoner, so I didn't really pay much attention to him. However, he was much more peculiar than what we thought in the beginning, and contrary to everyone's expectation, he simply sat on the border of the coliseum and waited for the others to finish fighting... He seemed rather... Unaffected by the fact that he was going to get killed if he didn't fight...
However, it was only until all the other criminals grouped together to kill him, that we understood why he was acting so smugly.
He decimated all of them in just one moment, and incredibly gruesomely at that... His physical abilities surpassed by far what we thought was possible for a human, and the violence he showcased scared even the soldiers that were watching everything unfold, even when they already had some resistance to this kind of stuff...
Due to the danger he represented, he was sentenced to die under the mandibles of the Antlions... And while we expected him to put a spectacular fight against those beasts... We certainly didn't expect in the slightest that he could completely dominate and decimate the monsters that killed so many of our people with ease.
It was as if I was facing the peak of humanity centered into just one man...
After that, many things happened. The war that had been bothering our Kingdom for so many years ended thanks to the powerful weapon that our top scientist created, we fought for our survival against a gigantic monster of feminine appearance who had the power of controlling the sand, and I and my father almost got assassinated by the Duke... It was as if the arrival of this man to this Kingdom had marked a change in history, as coincidental as it may be.
Aspen was... a peculiarity... Not only was he strangely uncaring for everything that happened around him, but he was also didn't seem to have ambition at all, not even a dream, or a goal... It was as if he lived because he could... Yet, even with that mentality, there was something in him that pushed him to help our Kingdom when that giant monster threatened with eradicating us... It was pretty hard to understand him.
Thanks to everything I saw at war, and after that, I knew that he was not simply what he showed and that he probably had a dark past related to violence. He had a peculiar tendency of turning extremely violent when it came to fighting seriously, I saw it when he faced that giant monster, as there was not a moment when he didn't actually attack a vital spot or used anything in his surroundings to kill its opponent. There was also the massacre he created during the fight at the [Clean-Up], where he had no mercy or care on how brutally he dealt with the prisoners, nor the people watching him.
But all in all, thanks to the time I spent with him, I knew that he wasn't a bad person. Just a bit annoying though... He acted smug all the time when talking about how he surpassed my mana capacity...
*Sigh...*
It was when the time where he was leaving arrived, that I noticed something inside myself change.
I don't know if it was simple selfishness... Not wanting to deal with royal matters anymore, tired after several years of war... Or because something in him made me understand myself better... But I ended up entering the ship of the pirates he had defeated and hid in one of the rooms waiting for him to comeback.
Maybe it was his personality, not caring about anyone else but him, yet caring enough when the time needed it... But I wanted to escape from my current life and travel somewhere else...
Maybe wherever he came from is a good idea.
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