Ash. The Legends of the Nameless World. Progression Gamelit Story by Kirill Klevanski (ink book reader .txt) 📕

“Coin.” Arlun shrugged.

Droplets slid off the steel blade, falling steadily to the ground, beating to a rhythm that resembled a funeral march. The skies seemed to announce the death of one of the fighters.

“Ten thousand wasn’t enough?” Ash asked, genuinely surprised.

“Does it look like I have that much?” Arlun smiled sadly again. “You see, when you’re a former slave, you don’t dream of coin, but of a crust of bread that isn’t too moldy. I spent all my earning to buy my freedom.”

Ash had heard of it. Any slaveholder from the Eastern kingdoms dreamed of owning a Ternite.

“I’m so sorry.”

“And it’s going to get even worse!” Arlun snapped, as if angry with himself. “I don’t want to do this anymore! I don’t want to sit in the middle of nowhere, waiting for another bounty hunter to come looking for me! For the first time in twenty-five years, I have a whole world waiting for me! Two years! It took me two years of being a hermit to forget that I no longer needed to ask for permission to go and take a piss!”

Ash wanted to tell him that he could’ve always done what he wanted, but he couldn’t.

“So, why do you need the coin then?”

“Not for me,” Arlun replied and nodded toward the house. “Forty thousand gold will be more than enough for Elanor to live comfortably for the rest of her life.”

“And you’re willing to risk your life for that? For the sake of coin?”

Ash had never understood the obsession over the twinkling metal. Yes, he could accept the stories of lovers who committed sins in the name of love; of scientists who committed crimes to finance their research; of marauding musicians who suffered outrages to feed themselves until their next performances in the cheap and smelly inns; but he never understood the meaning of coin.

Arlun smiled sadly. His black hair was plastered to his pale forehead, and muddy streams of water ran down the leather armor he had worn before training.

“If I kill you… She’ll live in prosperity and someday forget about her runaway husband… And if I die… Well, at least she’ll remember me as a hero who went up against a monster.”

He stared at the heterochromatic eyes but found no trace of emotion in them. It was as if he was looking at a statue or a suddenly animated portrait. He couldn’t afford to stay in the forest any longer. He did what he had come here for.

The man named Ar Lan died after having lived for only twenty years. Arlun had come a long way from being a twelve-year-old slave to being a thirty-two-year-old man, all for the sake of being able to live his own life. And Elanor… Well, first love didn’t last forever, but he couldn’t leave her with nothing. What he was about to do was an act below the dignity of any knight, even if it was fashioned from lashes and a metal collar.

“Is it really that nice?”

“Where?”

“At home.”

“I have no idea.” Arlun shrugged. “I was taken as a child. But I’ll definitely find my home.”

“I hope you will,” Ash said with a nod. He stared at the man in front of him, feeling a mix of pity, envy, and anger. Even though his eyes remained empty, his heart trembled like an autumn wind torn by gusts of wind.

Distant, but vivid memories flashed before his eyes.

Chapter 40

27th day of the month of Tamir, 311 A.D., Kingdom of Arabist, somewhere in the forest

“T he Art of Mok-Pu: Resonance!”

At that moment, Ash felt the worst pain of his life. It was as if he was being torn from the inside, but it wasn’t his body that was aching, but something else. Every time scenes of war flashed through his mind, he screamed like a wounded animal, trying to tear open his chest with his fingers and remove his heart.

He saw a mother covering her child be impaled on a staff, he couldn’t help but gag as he watched her bloodied hands hold onto it in the last attempt of saving herself. He remembered the screams of the poor villagers being burned alive in locked and boarded-up houses, and tried to rip his ears off. Blood sullied the grass, but the pain didn’t go away.

He was sinking deeper and deeper into his memories, feeling for himself all the evil that he had brought upon others with his hands and actions. The screams were like boiling oil being poured into his ears, and the bodies of the slain were like spears that tore through flesh without mercy.

Bending over, Ash vomited and scraped at this chest, his fingernails long broken and stuck deep into his clothes and flesh. Something hot and salty flowed down his cheeks and his clouded mind began to realize the meaning of things like lust, passion, desire, dream, envy, anger, honor, nobility, death, and something else, so far only glimmering on the border of his bleeding soul.

For the first time since he had been born, Ash screamed in pain that he had never experienced before.

“What did you do to me?!” he shouted, cursing the calm monk. A clear drop, akin to rain, fell on the grass. The young mage wiped his cheek and stared at his fingers in disbelief. “What is this?! What’s going on?!” he asked but didn’t get an answer. Unable to stand the horrors that had befallen him, he blacked out.

The monk bent down and passed his hand over the young man’s chest. All the wounds healed and all the blood returned into Ash’s body as if by magic. The monk shouldered the unconscious young man and headed east, back to Mountain Mok-Pu and his home, where, perhaps with the