The boy, knowing that the approach of cavalry, no matter how far away, meant bad things were going to happen, hid away in a large ash pile. It didn’t take long for the galloping to come closer, being right above the boy. But the boy could not see the riders; his eyes were covered with ash. The boy heard the rumbling of the ground, each step making a slight vibration in the ground. ‘When did I start hearing steps in the ground?’

The boy waited for the horsemen to pass, but they never went away. They walked around for what must have been an hour, before the boy finally heard the vibrations stop, the ground now peaceful and quiet. Sighing happily within himself, the boy raised his body out of the ashes. And saw that he was in-fact surrounded by the horsemen, their swords pointing at him.

The boy smiled, before swiping the ash into as much faces as possible and tried to make a run for it. He did see several people reach with their hands to their faces, but others were unaffected, swinging their swords in the direction of the boy. The boy looked back, and his eyes did their thing again, slowing down time.

He saw six swords coming down at him from random directions. The boy most likely couldn’t dodge all of the swords, but he would still try. Two of the swords could be dodged by just slightly twisting by dodging his body. Two swords aimed for his arm and chest, the boy moving his arm out of the way, and elbowing the sword that was moving towards his chest to strike the ground instead.

Finally, there were two swords that aimed for the boy’s thigh and his leg. The boy knew that he couldn’t dodge one of the swords, but he would try to make the damage as minimal as possible. So, the boy twisted his leg so that one sword would not cut his leg, but the other would just leave a semi-deep gash in his thigh. The movements worked out as planned, and the boy turned around to run.

Only to be met with a very hard club to the face.

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The boy awoke and quickly found out that his head hurt like hell. The boy opened his eyes to find a woman in a full set of semi-revealing metallic armor, complete with bracers and knee-pads. The woman had a sword strapped to her side, and a helmet sitting on a table right beside her. She was staring menacingly at the boy.

As soon as she saw that he had awoken, she had called out for someone to come into tent he was stuck in. The boy looked around, trying to get a better idea of his environment. It was small, dull brown tent, with a table in it, a plain wooden chair that the boy was tied too, and another plain wooden chair that the blond woman sat on. Taking in the details of the other person in the camp, she had blond hair, blue eyes, and a near-perfect face.

She had put on her helmet, as the boy heard some movement from outside. She got up from her chair, and saluted just in time for someone to come in. The boy couldn’t see the figures face, as the girl was blocking it. She talked with the man, but the boy didn’t pay attention; he had noticed that the ropes holding him were a little too loose, so he got to slowly getting himself untied.

The girl saluted once more, and promptly went behind the figure ash she left. It was then that the boy stopped untying himself; the person he saw shouldn’t be in the tent with him. It was Samuel Sackorel.

The teenager was dressed in a leather suit of armor; from what the boy could see. The chest piece of the armor had his name written down on its front, like a football jersey. He also wore some strange looking gloves, which had some runes on them. The boy saw how Sackorel had also started to grow a beard, one which could smite all the girls if maintained properly.

The teenager had a look of determined anger on his face while looking at the boy. He didn’t say a word, just took of his gloves and pulls out a table out of nowhere. The boy stared at the space the table just appeared, his mouth gaping.

“How the fuck did you do that??”

Samuel didn’t respond, he just proceeded to pull up the chair that was there earlier and sit right in-front of the boy. The boy, unanswered and annoyed, stared back at Samuel, while proceeding to continue his untying process. Samuel stared into the eyes of the boy, much to the boy’s discomfort. He didn’t look away however, as he wanted the teenager to keep staring at him and not what his hands were doing.

“Well, I heard you were found among the ashes by my troops...why were hiding in the ashes of this freshly burnt town?”

The boy didn’t respond instantly, he waited to think out his answer; he really didn’t want to reveal anything to someone like Sackorel.

“Well sir, I was getting chased by a wolf, and had to hide somewhere, as I could not for the life of me, outrun it. I stumbled my away upon this corpse of a town and the wolf refused to enter, he turned his back. But then I heard a loud noise coming from someplace close and decided to hide.”

“Okay, but why were you in that forest in the first place and why are you naked?”

“I was...taking a walk and saw a brilliant river that I decided to bath in. But then the wolf attacked me just as I was getting out, forcing me to run away naked.”

“Yeah okay, that’s really inconvenient for you. But why did you have this amulet on you if you took everything off?” Samuel then brings out the Riteful Amulet from his somewhere inside his leather chest piece.

“We took this off your unconscious body and had one of our oracles tell us what this is. Tell, how did a random hiker like you get your hands on an item of incomprehensible rarity?”

“Well...I found it?”

Samuel stared at the boy for a second before placing the amulet down on the table, getting up and going out of the tent. The boy sighed, before finishing untying himself, grabbing the amulet, and leaving the tent out the back, where hopefully nobody would see him.

Before fully going under the tent, he poked his head out, and saw a bunch of other tents surrounding the one he was in. He sighed, knowing that this may be his only opportunity to get out, and crawled as quickly as he could out the back and running off towards the closest edge of the forest.

Unfortunately, he heard shouting about someone escaping; and he realized he had been seen.

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The boy, since he had started running five minutes ago, found out several things. First, he had learned that his speed had severally increased since the last time he ran, so much so that he tripped several times when he first started running. Second, if he put on the amulet while running, the world jumped to light speed; at least that was what it looked like.

The boy was still running away from around one-hundred or so knights on magically sped up horses, but he was slowly getting further and further away. But what really stopped him from running at full speed was the activation and deactivation of his Chronos's Eyes. The reason he had to do so was because of all the projectiles flying at him.

At almost every moment, the boy dodged several launched spells, several arrows that pierced tree’s like butter, and magical soccer balls that had the power of cannon balls. The boy was tired of dodging, so he tried to weave and bob through the trees, but after several of them exploded and left wood chunks in his backside, he went back to dodging.

The boy kept running and running seeing his new goal, the mountain range, come closer and closer into view with every step he took. Going to the mountain range would provide far more cover and would make it easier to lose his pursuers. The boy, as he ran, began to feel the ground start to get wavier, almost like an actual wave.

He fell over once, but rolled back up, just to get and arrow to go through his arm, leaving a slight hole and making the boy scream out in pain, holding his arm while running some more

The boy ran out from the tree line and saw that he was in a bad spot. He saw no entrance near where he was standing and the cavalry was a few seconds away. Panicked, the boy looked side to side, and started to run, but was stopped by a football going right in-front of his head. The football crashed into the mountain, creating a large dust cloud, and sending rocks and pebbles into the boy, some sticking in him.

The boy walked out of the dust cloud and was met with several mages with floating balls of energy, bowmen and women with their arrows trained on him, and several people with lances and swords ready to slice and stab him. The boy looked around, and saw that Samuel was riding out of the crowd on a black horse.

Promptly, Samuel got off his horse, and walked towards the boy, stopping several meters away from him, but still within the crowd of knights and mages.

“Okay boy, I will have to ask you to stop this fiasco right now, so please come with us. It will make things quite a fair bit easier for you and us.”

Instantaneously, the boy said: “No”

“Well, that’s a shame. Right guys, kill this one.” Samuel turned around to his cavalry, got on his horse, and raised his hands, in time for the archers of the group to fully knock their bows and train them onto the boy. The boy stared at Sackorel, slight confusion in his eyes. The boy saw how Samuel turned to face him and threw down his hand.

The boy’s vision went black. He couldn’t see anything around him, so tried to close and open his eyes, which seemed to bring his vision back. Looking down, the boy found himself kneeling, seeing at least seven arrows in his chest, and far more than he could count in the rest of his body. It was then that his vision went black again.

The boy looked for a few moments, and started laughing, making Sackorel and the rest of the cavalry look at the boy, worriedly and slightly frightened. The boy’s eyes then turned completely black, and he stood up, the arrows moving alongside his body. The boy, stood in still, almost like a zombie, before raising his arms and moving his head upwards, looking at Samuel and his cavalry, smiling.

At this point, Sackorel was thoroughly confused and scared, he ordered his archers to take aim and fire again, this time along with his mages. They all took aim, and just as they were going to fire, the boy started to float upwards, a slight black light coming from his body. The arrows flew at the boy, but were seemingly eaten by the black light, the arrows that were already in him melting away into a black sludge.

The boy’s smile never faltered as he floated higher and higher, until he finally reached the ten-meters up in the air. By this point, Samuel ordered his knights to get off their horses and for the mages to make trenches for them to hide in, from whatever the boy was bringing about. It took them an impressive half-a-minute for everyone to get in, and for the horses to run off.

By the time all the knights were behind cover, the glow of the boy started to sink into the earth and trees around him, turning them black as well. Then, without warning, the lowing stopped, and all the darkness that was once surrounding the boy retracted at a lighting fast speed back into him. Noticing that the trees and the earth had gone back to their regular color, some of the knights looked over.

Then, the world went dark. All the darkness that retracted back into the boy suddenly shot out, the distance it went enormous. After a few, long, seemingly unending seconds passed, the world went back to its original color, the darkness dissipating. The knights and mages that didn’t look over the trench looked to those that did. They found black statues of sand-like material, not their comrades.

The boy was nowhere to be seen too, seemingly disappearing with the darkness that he had created. After a few seconds, the remaining knights and mages tried to communicate to their comrades, but to no avail; they quickly discovered that they shouldn’t touch them, as they would just turn to a black dust and float away.

Then came the wailing and the sorrow. The knights realized that all those that looked were dead, frozen in time. Those that didn’t weep looked to see that the surrounding nature had also turned to the same material as their comrades, the statue like trees going as far as the eye could see.

It was at this point that Samuel Sackorel realized that he had fucked up, and that whoever that was, will be coming back. He definitely needs to get stronger, far stronger.