Rise of The Living Enchantment [LITRPG REGRESSION]

The skies above looked down with the graceful innocence of an adult who does not know the chaos in their own home. It was, in the shortest sense of the word, hypocritical.

Rometo stood under the night sky looking up at it. Once upon a time, as a child born to royalty, he had looked up at it often wishing for power. But power was a fickle thing, especially when you come of age and the greatest power granted to you was the class of [Time Walker].

He had been angry, wanting nothing to do with it. But what was a boy to do? At eighteen he was only a child. Stuck with the options of mundane classes such as [Baker] and [Farmer] and [Gambler], the world had only granted him [Time Walker] as a differentiator.

It had been hilarious. He had sat down at the center of his father's throne room crying. Weeping. His siblings had been powerful things. A [Battle Enchanter]. A [Mage]. A [Spearwoman].

He was a [Time Walker].

His father had found him in the throne room before the day was done. He had been there, seated on the floor. Alone.

He could still remember his father's words when he had told his father his options.

"The blood in my veins—your veins," his father had said with the same authoritative calm with which he said all things, "is the greatest of all bloodlines in existence. If my son becomes a [Baker], he will walk the world with his head held high. And everywhere he walks, the soles of his feet will turn stone to bread. And if the gods laugh at him, he will make bread from their feet and knead their very fates into dough."

Then he had tipped his jaw up, looked him in the eyes, and said, "Whatever you choose, my dear boy, you will be great, as long as you wish to be."

So, accepting his father's words and swallowing his sadness, he had taken the class of [Time Walker]… for the family.

Then he had grown, learned to walk the path of his class. He moved through time past, a guest, a visitor, an intruder. Sometimes it accepted him. Sometimes it rejected him. Sometimes, he was simply not strong enough to open the doors to the past in front of him.

Still, he had moved and fought. For his family.

His father came to mind now—how could he not?—and Rometo smiled sadly. Strong jawed and a smattering of beards that looked as if he just couldn't be bothered to shave, his father had been a handsome man. Piercing blue eyes that always looked upon the world and dared it to challenge him. A squared jaw that seemed to say he had exchanged blows with the world and was still standing. Calloused hands that told of struggles, even as a king.

Rometo looked down at his own hands, unable to help himself. Tonight, he was not wearing his gloves. He could not remember why. They were in his storage space, but his melancholy could not bring him to reach for them.

His hands stared back at him, calloused. They spoke of a man who had done what he had to do every single time. They spoke of a man broken and back again, of a man who would die only when death had struck the right bargain with him.

Rometo looked back up at the skies.

Have I become a fraction of the man you were, Father?

As is the nature of fate and the world, he received no answer. There was no voice, no words, not even any made up in his head to add to his seeming madness.

Rometo was alone.

His father was dead. His mother was dead. His siblings were dead. He had become a [Time Walker] for his family. But he could not change time. He could not walk it. The very nature of his class had made a charlatan of him.

He drew a deep breath, tried to muster a sad smile and failed.

Above all things, he had reached far and high. The power he had sought, one believed to be denied to him by the very sin of becoming a [Time Walker], a class known to very rarely cross the threshold of level fifty, was within his reach.

He had surpassed his siblings. He would surpass his father. Rometo would reach the pinnacle of what a [Time Walker] could reach, the pinnacle of what a man could reach.

Then he would enact his revenge.

Until then, he had work to do.

Running his hands through silver hair that gave his family bloodline a portion of their fame, he sat down quietly, legs crossed beneath him.

It was time to get to work.

He looked to his audience once more. Men and women, no less than thirty stood around him armed with spears and halberds and maces and bows with notched arrows. They were antsy, eager. He could see the terror in their faces. But the terror was not much.

Most of them held anticipation. He saw fire in the eyes of some. To them, death was an honor, an inevitability like the arrival of the darkness of night. They believed that it wasn't the end, merely a gateway to somewhere else. The beginning of another journey.

If only they knew how wrong they were. Death was not a beginning. Death was not a gateway. Death was the end. But he was not here to end them. That was why the other thirty bodies or so lying motionless on the ground around him, broken and battered, still had life in them.

Rometo took a breath and closed his eyes as men with skins reminiscent of the descendants of the Dark Warrior race, stood about him, surrounding him in a chaotic ring.

Regardless of what had happened and would happen, he was here to work, and work he would.

Just before he activated his skill, he heard a slight commotion. He turned his head, looked to it.

The commotion had no words. It was merely the sound of footsteps. People parting so that people could pass.

Rometo waited patiently.

It was not long before Oyedi, king of Mba-Chukwu, stood before him with a retinue of men and women around him. Two men stood with spears on his right and three women stood with bows on his left.

Oyedi had a slight frown on his face. He watched Rometo, took him in. His flowing cloak. The stark darkness that the stars in the sky forced to stand out. The simple black circle emblazoned on his left breast that stood out even against his black cloak.

Oyedi's frown tightened. His shoulders tensed. He was like a beast ready to die to defend its territory.

Did he also believe that death was not the end?

"Are you here for me?" the king asked, voice deep but not hard.

Rometo remained seated, not bothering to rise or bow. "Have you done anything deserving of it?"

Oyedi's jaw clenched. He held his arms out as if to gesture at the entire town. "People have died. I have taken what was not mine and made it mine."

Rometo was silent. The hubris of people to think that what they have taken has become theirs. Ownership did not come from the act of taking. If it was taken, it was simply taken, it did not make it yours.

"Wars," he answered finally. "It is in the nature of men to wage them."

"I massacred the innocent," Oyedi said, voice clear enough for all around to hear. "I have shed blood that did not need shedding."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"This is a strategic position," Rometo said, already tired of the conversation. "In the war you wage, the bloodshed here was a possibility, perhaps even a necessity."

Oyedi paused. His frown dimmed a little. The tick in his jaw vanished as if it had never been. But the tension in his shoulders did not leave. He had moved from an animal ready to die for its territory to an animal waiting for a greater predator to simply pass by.

"Then I am without sin," he said finally, somehow the words came out as a statement and a question.

"All beings are with sin," Rometo said. "Yours is simply not one of our interest. Yours is for your men and your gods to judge. We care nothing for it."

One of the king's retinues moved closer to him, whispered in a voice so low that only Oyedi would hear it.

Rometo heard it as clear as the wind in a gentle forest. As clear as the death of his father.

"He speaks to you sitting down," the man whispered. "Before your subjects he neither stands nor bows. He shames you."

Oyedi's reaction was casual yet instantaneous. He struck the man with the back of his hand. The blow cracked through the air like the whip of a slaver.

Rometo did not react to it. Nobody present did.

"If you do not mind me asking," Oyedi continued, as if he had not just slapped a man hard enough to knock one of his eyes out. "Why are you here, then? Why have you done this to my men?"

"Your men live because their deaths were neither sanctioned nor required," Rometo answered, drawing upon years of patience instilled within him by his parents. "They are in this state because they stood in my way. But understand that I am not averse to ending lives. Go on your way, Oyedi. Wage your war. Seek your goal. Stay out of mine."

The king frowned at the use of his name. Not even system-sanctioned, he held his title to his heart like the blood that pumped in his veins. As if it was his by right.

Rometo could not be bothered by the pride of kings.

"Then the Order knows of my plans," Oyedi said. "It knows of the war and its reasons."

Rometo pressed his lips into a thin line. It was not quite a frown, but it was close enough. His patience was wearing thin. But he had expected this. Such a task as the one he had been given required conversations, and kings were allowed to ask certain questions of members of the Order. Be they sanctioned by the system or not.

"The Order knows all, Oyedi," he said simply.

"Then tell me," Oyedi took a cautious step forward.

Rometo noted the undertone of desperation in it. Oyedi was a man who knew, even as he chased his ambitions, that they were beyond him. He walked into his death hoping to come out of it alive.

It was a certain kind of hubris. It was a certain kind of sad. But ultimately, it was the kind of drive that all good kings required.

Still, Rometo's gaze moved calmly to the man's feet, forcing him to stop in his tracks.

"Tell me, oh wise Order," he said, voice almost shaky, almost imploring. "Will I find success?"

There were myths and stories of [Time Walker]s who transcended the ability to look back in time and learned to leap forward. Rometo was not one of such people. The Order had no such people. The only person that possibly walked forward in the path of time was the [Master of the Order], and no one knew what he truly was. Not even Torat.

"The Order is not your oracle, Oyedi." Rometo turned away from him and closed his eyes back. "Do not try to make it one."

Knowing very well that he was dismissed, Oyedi asked no more questions. Rometo heard him turn away and begin his departure.

"And the men, my king?" someone in the group asked.

"Leave them," Oyedi answered. "Come back for them once he has given permission."

Rometo could feel the unasked questions in the air. It was the same everywhere. The men wanted to know if he was really from the Order—the Order they had heard only in their bedtime stories, words half-whispered in stories designed to keep them in line through the weapon of fear.

They feared him now where they had once been cautious.

Curious, he spied a few men from the corner of his eyes. It was there as it always tended to be. Their zeal and desire for death was gone. None wanted to begin the new journey they thought death brings anymore. Suddenly, in the presence of the Order, death felt like the end.

Rometo closed his eyes to it.

Over level two hundred, he had finally touched a fraction of the power he had always dreamed of having. But he was not there yet. Under the banner of the Order, he was now feared. He was one step closer.

Everyone is believed to have their destiny, ordained for them by the gods and the very world from the moment they are born. Ordained or not, Rometo had chosen his destiny.

Once he reached the power he sought, he would finally do what he had to do. He would cross back to the other side of Nastild and lay waste to all of it.

Until then, the Order's bidding was his to carry out.

A demon has come to this world in search of something… or someone. Find who it is.

That had been Torat's instruction.

The one who holds the attention of a demon, Rometo thought.

It seemed easy enough.

[You have used Class skill Belated Witness]

Ambient mana froze as his usurped it.

All the ambient mana in Dentis was now his to command.

So, he took the residue of mana in it back in time, turned it seconds back, minutes back, hours back. Days back.

Then he got up.

Rometo looked around once more, gazing at the terrified faces of the men and women who surrounded him.

He could not blame them. Behind the terrors, he saw touches of guilt, touches of satisfaction, touches of ecstasy like a person on drugs.

After all, it was a terrifying thing to stand in the ongoing and active gore of a bloodshed you wrought only a few days ago as men and women watched themselves take the lives of the undeserving innocent.

To them it was like standing in reality. To him, they were merely colors and images, mana given form.

"Now," he muttered to himself, casting his gaze about. "Who did you come for, demon?"

…

Aiden notched another arrow and released it. If he put all his strength into drawing the bowstring as far back as it could go, arrows as large as the one he had could tear limbs.

He could only imagine what they would do whenever he met the requirements of using the bow's enchantment.

His arrow blew one of the monster's arms off.

[You have dealt Doppelganger a Fatal Blow]

He had taken his time to use [Detect] on the creatures. The strongest was at level sixty. They were not emulating levels yet. He wondered if they chose not to or if these ones simply couldn't as Taeli cut down the one he'd shot with a well placed swipe of her short sword to its neck.

Dreg flashed into existence in a shimmer of blue and green mana. He appeared on the side of the wall, squatting casually at a very wrong angle. He notched an arrow in place and two more appeared next to it, translucent as mana arrows tended to be, and blue.

He let the arrows fly and they all found their marks.

The cave was wide now, far wider than its entrance had been. A small group of six men on each side could comfortably have a simple skirmish here.

Aiden ignored the thought, paying attention to the fight as it raged around him. The twins were doing their best to hold back the creatures behind them.

An uncomfortable frown touched Aiden's lips as he wondered how they had found themselves surrounded. He didn't fear losing the battle or anyone for that matter. He was simply finding flaws and making corrections.

Ted stood, swinging his sword casually as he clashed 'blades' with one of the creatures. It looked like him, a dull white object fashioned in the same design as Valdan's sword, striking at Ted.

Ted seemed bored as he parried and countered.

He's having too much fun, Aiden noted.

Then again, he was the one who'd told them not to kill the creatures.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught something flying through the air. His blackened arm shot up to grab it, only for the projectile to be intercepted by one of Dreg's arrows. When it hit the floor, it was broken in two, two parts of a white material that had once been a full arrow.

Dreg dropped beside Aiden. Bow string drawn back, he released two more volleys of arrows, changing directions to fire them.

"You don't look bothered," Dreg said, stepping a little too close to him as he released another arrow.

Aiden was not.

Valdan disarmed his opponent, grabbed it, and turned it into a shoulder throw. He slammed it into the ground on its head instead of its back. The creature dropped, the shape of the [Healer] and laid motionless on the ground.

It was quite brutal. But since it didn't kill the creatures, Aiden couldn't complain.

Taeli continued to blink in and out of the way, her speed possibly the fastest in the group as she cut down the creatures with precise blows. Still, for all her violence, she paled in comparison to Oncot, the corpulent silent man.

Oncot moved around, mouth open in feral laughter yet devoid of sound as his cleaver tore through monster after monster. The rate at which he was going, Aiden worried that he might end up leveling a little too fast, although he didn't worry too much.

Leveling up on Nastild was not as easy as he made it look.

"Your men are strong," Dreg said, as Jang Su severed the two legs of a creature with a single swing of his katana, unsheathing the sword, striking, and sheathing it back in a single draw.

"They are," Aiden answered absently, turning his head to the side. "Behind you, Ted."

One of the creatures leaped at Ted from the ceiling only to be intercepted by a summoned familiar that looked like a pink panther. The familiar snatched the creature out of the air and threw it to the ground.

"I'm not blind, brother," Ted said, rolling his eyes as he parried the creature in front of him and grabbed it by the neck.

He lifted it up and slammed it bodily into the ground.

The number of monsters was dwindling. What had once been a small horde was now a handful.

Suddenly the ground began to shake. It trembled under the weight of something coming. Whatever it was, it was a single entity. And it was massive.

Every one froze, even the creatures, as the new arrival made its entrance from the depths of the cave. True to form, it was large. A massive thing, it stood as tall as three men and as wide as four Oncots.

Dreg drew back an arrow and Aiden placed a hand on it, lowering the [Archer]'s aim.

Dreg noticed the reason a little belatedly. Oncot had a hand in the air, his back turned to them. His fingers moved in a short and simple sign.

Aiden couldn't help the amused smile that touched his lips. Oncot's tribe believed that the greatest honor any being could have was death in battle. He had fought alongside them once. He knew the chaos that they were.

Turning to Aiden, Dreg asked, "What did he say?"

Oncot leapt into the air, cleaver held in both hands.

He came down on the creature like a savage thing.

The answer to Dreg's question was easy. Oncot had signed a single word.

"Mine."