-Chapter Seventeen-

Key - Part Two

“What is the key to ending this war?”

Upon hearing Diana’s words, Jason’s ears perked up and a menacing smile began to turn up at the corner of his lips.

He eagerly sat forward, and waved his hand.

The other three watched with wide eyes as before them on the table, lights began to form and morph, coming together to form six different images.

Each was a portrait of someone they could recognise. Three of the pictures were men, and three were women. All young.

“Are these…!? The Perished!?” Andrew exclaimed, leaning forward and inspecting each of them.

Jason shook his head.

“These are not the Perished.”

The three looked at him with confusion.

“These six people- well, they’re not really people. But they are where everything began. Our entire world, our species, everything we see, and everything we cannot see. They are not necessarily our creators but… they are akin to God himself. Close.” Jason narrowed his eyes. “It was these six people who designed the Provenance Realm to archive all Universes. I do not know the purpose of them doing so, but while I was drifting through the Provenance Realm, I was able to briefly glimpse into… the truth,” Jason said lowly, looking at his three friends.

“Answer me this. What is the origin of Magic?” he asked.

No one was able to answer.

There was no one in the world who was able to answer.

“I would travel back to the past to find out, but the origin of Magic predates the archives of the Provenance Realm- the origin of Magic resides within the Primordial Realm, which all of our timelines branched off of. However, I was able to just see some fragments, piece them together… a bit of speculation,” Jason inhaled sharply while the others continued to listen in.

“Our Magic- not Mana itself, but the institutions and systems of which we, as Magicians, channel Magic, came from none other than… the Perished themselves.”

Shocked faces appeared around the table at the sudden revelation.

“Then… aren’t we fighting on their home turf? How do we even have a way of winning, using a power not our own, against the people we inherited it from?” Diana asked.

Jason only grinned back at her, instead of appearing dejected at her words.

“You’re right. We inherited all of our Magic from the Perished, and even then, we probably only inherited a small fragment of what they were truly capable of. But, you see, the Perished are no different to us. At least, the nature of their existence isn’t different to us. Because they were born as normal humans, just like us,” Jason pursed his lips together.

“Despite being no different to us,” he continued. “They, in the quarter of a lifetime, mastered infinitely more Magic than we are capable of even imagining.”

The three only grimaced at this point.

It was true.

What exactly did they have against the Perished?

Nothing, it seemed.

Taylor narrowed his eyes in suspicion and deep thought before he began to speak.

“How?” he simply asked. “If they are normal humans, how are they so much stronger than us?”

“I’m glad you asked,” Jason responded coyly. “They also inherited their powers!” He revealed.

Diana’s eyes widened as she realised what Jason was getting at.

“The Perished inherited their powers from these six people?” she asked, pointing at the pictures.

“That’s right,” Jason nodded with a grunt. “But… I don’t know exactly what transpired in the past.”

He waved his hand again, and five of the pictures disappeared, leaving only one picture of one of the young men.

With another wave, another window popped up, titled, ‘Cross-referencing facial and genetic features’.

It took a quick moment, before dozens upon dozens upon dozens of results popped up.

“As you can see, if we try to track down these people in the Woken World’s Government databases, each of them will yield multiple results.” Jason squinted at the details written beneath each lodged result.

“Always the same face. The same name. But born and dying at different times. Yet, there never exists two at once. Only after the death of one, is the next born. Does it look familiar?” Jason asked.

Taylor nodded.

“Are they reincarnating?” he asked.

“That’s right.” Jason waved his hand again, and the top result expanded for them all to see.

“This is the one of the current generation.”

The four eyed wearily the registered address of the young man.

“So… do we go ask him?” Andrew asked.

“If we make one wrong move, these guys can wipe out the entire world for us instead. Maybe we’re being pulled into the Perished’s trap at every moment. No one to know,” Jason shrugged.

“Can’t you tell the future?” Diana asked.

“I usually can. Not with this. It’s all roped off for some reason. The versions of myself who interact with this person- well, any of them- get cut-off from my cloud. I’ve lost contact every time with the different versions of myself.”

The three grimly looked back at the picture.

“We can go find him, but I also have another lead,” Jason waved his hand again. “I am more optimistic about this one. It was something I witnessed with my own eyes while in the Provenance Realm. A scene.”

Jason constructed it from his mental memory, and an image appeared of a room, with some sort of altar standing in the centre of it. Only, it was incredibly complex with cogs, gears, tanks with liquid and numerous rotating parts.

“What is that?” Diana asked, squinting her eyes at the strange altar.

“I don’t know,” Jason shrugged. “I know this lies at the centre of what took place. I just have no idea where this room is. I’m positive it’s somewhere on Earth, though.”

“That’s a fucking hassle to search for,” Andrew grunted.

“Hmm,” Taylor frowned. “You said all humans originated from these six people, right? So if this thing has something to do with it all, wouldn’t it be where these six people were at before they… began to continuously reincarnate? You know, the place where all the shit went down,” Taylor shrugged.

“You speak sense, but the core problem is, we know what to look for but we don’t know how. How, exactly, are we going to find the place where all the shit went down?” Jason asked.

“Actually!” Diana sprung to her feet, slamming her hands down on the table. “While I was looking into my Arch-Trinity’s research materials about the Provenance realm, I also briefly came across something that might be able to help us. I never looked into it though.”

Diana waved her hand and a single, shredded newspaper reconstructed in the air in front of them for all to see.

The font was small, but upon closer inspection, the other three saw the title read, “The Origin of Mankind! World’s most Historical Museum unearths shocking discovery!”

Andrew frowned.

“A piece of news from the Woken World?” he grunted.

“What sort of click-bait shit is this?” Taylor tilted his head.

Jason remained silent, reading the article from start to finish.

After a moment, his eyes lit up ecstatically at the printed words..

“This might be it!” he exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “At least, it’s a good first step. Well done, Diana. Let’s set out immediately.”

With a wave of his hand, a sunshine-yellow portal appeared in the corner of the room, and Jason went jumping through.

Diana, Andrew and Taylor briefly exclaimed glances, before Andrew also quickly jumped to his feet and dove through the opening.

Taylor and Diana followed immediately after, wordlessly, diving into the light and feeling their bodies get sucked up and morphed into the vortex, before they came shooting out the other side, into blinding light.

What awaited the four on the other side was, firstly they noticed, heat. Like a wave that washed over them, their entire bodies got enveloped by hot wind and heavy, humid air.

“Mother of god,” Diana groaned as she stepped out, fanning her hair with her hand.

“Heh,” Jason smugly snorted. “If you cast Magic to cool yourself down, you’re officially a bitch.”

“Come on,” Andrew groaned but Diana, with complete disregard for Jason’s taunt, proceeded to cast a skin-line ice field over her body.

“Actually, everyone I know has been calling me a bitch for years now,” Diana coyly answered and stepped past them, with a refreshing moan.

“Maybe that’s ‘cause you are one,” Jason cackled as he walked past her, out onto the busy street with cars and pedestrians passing by.

Overhead, the blue, cloudless vastness stretched out beyond the horizon, empty but one, single, blinding sun enveloping the whole land in light.

Jason whipped out his cellphone and started looking around him, getting his bearings.

The other three waitedly idley for a moment before Jason turned ninety-degrees to the right and began to make his way down the sidewalk, into the city of buildings.

The four made their way down the street until they came to a large modern, polished stone building.

Wordlessly, Jason joined the queue of dozens of other tourists, as he grumpily fanned his skin in the buzzing heat.

Moments later, the group of four made it into the building.

The complex interior of the tall building housed dozens of historical items, from the continent of Africa.

There were numerous people visiting that day, as well as dozens of security guards patrolling the areas.

“This way,” Diana pointed to a stairwell in the corner, with disregard to their surroundings.

The four followed the polished wooden steps up to an elevator.

After arriving at the sixth floor, they rounded a few large corners and finally came to a display built into the wall.

It was blocked off by glass, but the four’s eyes widened as they saw a foreboding, complex altar on the other side.

“J-Jason… that’s…” Taylor looked to Jason with wide eyes.

He simply stared at in awe before he caught his breath with a gasp.

“The amount of paracausal energy from that thing is insane,” he quickly looked away, reaching up and covering his eyes with his hand.

“Something this dangerous can’t just be left sitting here,” Taylor nodded to Andrew.

“Hold on. One more moment,” Jason coughed and cleared his throat, still looking away. Blindly, he pointed to a corner of the display.

Taylor followed the line to find a book set up on a stand in a separate cubicle.

“That’s…” he took a step to it when he heard someone approach beside him.

He turned to see it was a uniformed, young woman, smiling to him as she approached the cubicle.

“Are you interested about this display, sir?” she asked with fluent english, politely gesturing to it.

Taylor pursed his lips, unsure of what to say. Instead, he remained silent as he stepped up to the display to get a closer look at the large book.

“This book carbondated from the same era as the altar did. We cannot unravel the altar’s functions, but it was clearly complex machinery from ancient times. This book has writing on it no one in this world has been able to translate. It seems to be much more ancient than anything known by man. It’s a true mystery, one that hopefully humanity can solve someday,” the lady gave her presentation with a bow and a smile.

Taylor paid her little attention as he narrowed his eyes at the text.

They were script.

Atheneum Script.

Magic glyphs.

“Thank you,” Taylor turned to the woman with a smile, and returned to Andrew.

He stepped closer and told the other young man in a low voice,

“I’ve marked it. Keep them safe now, yeah?”

Andrew snorted.

“Of course. Whenever Jason is ready,” Andrew raised his voice and cast a look to Jason.

The other man turned to face the altar, standing up straight with a grunt and revealing his eyes.

“Get them both. Do it now,” he nodded with narrowed eyes.

“Ask and you shall receive,” Andrew clicked his finger.

Masterfully, a tiny black hole appeared at the foot of each item, instantaneously absorbing them into Andrew’s independent subrealm.

As soon as the items disappeared, the cubicles began to flash red, and alarms began to ring.

The four spun around as the building went into lockdown, and gates shut off all exits around them.

But they expected this level of security.

Ideally, they didn’t want to get any innocent people involved.

“Someone out of you masked the security cameras, I hope?” Jason grunted as he began to conjure a teleport spell at their feet.

“I did,” Diana chirped up, poking her tongue out.

“Good,” Jason turned to finish the circle when they saw several security guards and workers run toward them.

Leading them was the same girl who gave the presentation to Taylor earlier.

“Couldn’t we just have acted innocent?” Diana asked. “How could they accuse us when we literally are not carrying a huge-ass altar?”

“I’d rather get out of here before anyone sees us,” Jason responded. “And not even give it a chance to happen.”

He was about to activate the spell when suddenly a boulder fell down on top of him, followed by several dozen more.

The ceiling suddenly caved in from on top of them, landing in one large boom, sending dust everywhere.

Jason emerged in the corner, coughing and growling lowly with a hostile glare. The teleport circle has been destroyed.

Before they use their back-up escape plan, Jason wants to see what the hell just happened.

He flung the dust away from him, clearing up the entire area to reveal a large mound of boulders with bloodied corpses mixed in.

Jason’s eyes scanned the mound as he looked upward, until they landed on a black silhouette sitting at the top, carrying a black, shadow scythe.

Taylor appeared in the corner of Jason’s vision, pulling Diana with him, and Andrew appeared opposite the room.

“What the fuck was that?” he spat a ball of spit out.

“Oh, Magic?” A voice said from the top.

The figure jumped down, revealing a black haired young man covered in blood, with cold, glowing red eyes.

“This is the first time I’ve met Magicians,” he eyed them curiously. “Well, no matter. I have no grievance with you, so I advise you to leave now,” he smiled.

“Hmph,” Jason smirked. “Also my first time meeting a Contractor of Death,” he gestured to Andrew to join him and approached Taylor and Diana.

“Well, we won’t interfere with your business, as long as we’re not your targets. I didn’t expect you to come hunting prey in broad daylight here,” Jason snarkily remarked.

“Hoho, do you mean to call him brave? Or foolish?” A voice cut in and they all turned to see a young woman appear at the wall.

She had matching red eyes, long black hair, pale skin and black fingernails.

“That’s a…” Andrew squinted at the woman.

“Eri,” the young man called her name as he took a step toward her.

“You may not know, so I forgive you, but my dear can hunt whoever he wants, whenever he wants. I have granted him full authority of death!” she broke out in a villainess laughter.

Jason eyed his surroundings, noticing the entire atmosphere had been turned into a domain around the building.

“Ugh,” the black-haired man groaned.

“She’s a bit… eccentric for a Goddess,” Taylor raised an eyebrow.

“What the hell do you know?” The black-haired man coldly answered back to him. “All the Gods and Goddesses are eccentric like this. Their bullshit… infuriates me to this day!” a black aura erupted from around his body, embodying death and rage itself.

“He’s strong,” Diana remarked.

“I’ve been waiting for you. So you’ve finally come out,” the black-haired man called, raising his scythe at thin air.

Before the Magicians’ eyes, a figure appeared in the air.

Glowing blue dots formed a face, and eyes staring directly at the black-haired man.

“Ewww! What the fuck is that!?” Diana squealed. “It appeared out of thin-air! What the fuck would you guys do if one of those was right behind you!?” she spun a circle around her, swinging her arm trying to hit nothing.

“How did you find me?” the blue face asked him, paying no regard to Diana in the background.

“Save your useless questions. Someone on death’s door doesn’t need to know,” the emissary of death lowly spoke and then slashed his scythe.

A large wave of black erupted from his swing, sending the entire building collapsing on the far side.

“Today, I will leave no survivors.”

The blue figure tried to dash away and the black-haired man shot after him, crushing another side of the building’s wall.

“We should go,” Andrew grunted as he turned around.

“Yeah, I’ve finished the new circle. Let’s get outta here. Well, have fun, you two,” Jason shrugged to the Goddess of Death.

“Teehee,” she winked at them as light lit up and they returned to the home base.

A loud thud echoed across the dark room as a heavy wooden book was dropped onto the round table.

“There yah go,” Andrew said as he took his seat.

“Well done, you all, well done,” Jason nodded to them and quickly began to inspect the book.

The language can be deciphered.

“Okay, I’ve completed the analysis,” Jason said with the wave of his hand. A screen of Magic appeared before him, and the others sat forward to read it as well.

Jason’s eyes squinted as he took in the title, written sloppily, like that of a child’s.

His eyes ran past the title down to the bodies of the texts, before he began to quickly speed through the text.

Levi’s Journal and Diary

Masters = very powerful.

Must respect masters.

Masters taught me to read write.

…

Today was theory.

Jason skipped through bodies of nonscencial, sloppy text. Gradually, the handwriting got neater and neater until he found something interesting.

…

For months, Master only taught me theory.

I am eight years old now.

Now they have started to teach me Magic.

I have mastered the art of language that the Masters bestowed on us.

They say my talent in Magic is one of the best that they have ever seen.

But I still am nothing in terms of power to them.

…

The Masters are all very close. Each Master has one child, so there is six of us. We all are very close too.

…

Today, at the age of nine years old, I got to leave the Masters’ sacred palace for the first time, and went out onto the streets. Master told me I should be old enough now to comfortably go out into society.

…

It turns out Masters are not human. I always wondered why they never got older.

Turns out Masters are gods.

I have been frequenting the city for the past year, and saw that nobody else could use Magic. In the entire world, only Masters and us children can. They worshipped Masters as gods, and I learnt of our history.

…

Masters were in this world alone until they found primal man. Masters took pity on the men and took them in, despite their primitiveness. Overtime, they bestowed upon mankind knowledge, culture, wisdom, and now, even Magic.

…

Five years have passed. Master is very pleased with me. He says I have reached the border of mortality and immortality. He has a new task for me.

It is finally time to let magic flow into the mainstream population.

He instructed me to break down the magic into castable code, using the seraph glyph as a format. I agree, it was a good choice to go with the seraph glyph. Universally, it is the most applicable glyph potentially anyone can use.

…

Myself and the other five have been working hard on this project for almost a month now. The Masters are patient with us. A month seems nothing to them.

When I went in today, I had been away for three weeks. Master got confused, thinking I had just come over yesterday.

When I asked him if he could recall specifically the things he did in the last three weeks, he recited his activities… which was eating grapes on the couch.

For three whole weeks.

About the seraph glyph, we have divided it into seven subdivisions that we have named the Athenaeum.

Mastering one Athenaeum allows one to continue learning another of the Athenaeum, unlocking a second part of the glyph. If there ever comes a day someone learns all seven Athenaeum and pieces together all seven fragments of the seraph glyph in their Mana source, they will transcend the limit of humanity.

…

After we completed our task, Master informed me of another. He told me it’s okay to take my time with this one though. I can continue my other activities freely too. He said he just hopes… I can complete it before I grow too old. How foreboding.

…

Day by day, I assemble a little of what is required for Master’s new project. The other five were also busy doing stuff from their Master’s too.

Everytime I complete a part, I deliver it to Master, and he keeps it to inspect, and I head home to get started on the new one.

…

It’s been 3 years since we started this. And I have a bad feeling of what is happening. If it is what I think it is, we have no method of resisting. Masters are gods, we can not even touch their heels. I hope with my entire being they still have compassion in their hearts.