Far away from the Kingdom of Angra, a battle was raging all across the fifty isles of the Storm Islands. More than thirty thousand players were fighting on land, sea, and air.
The whole archipelago was once the stronghold and headquarters of the Dark Age Alliance. Since its fall, many raids from the smallest guilds to the largest ones had attempted to take hold of its land, but all of them failed.
But today was going to be different. The leader of the Red Crows was certain of that as he hovered over the battlefield on top of his legendary Flaming Crow.
His guild came with their best players and allied guilds to finally take those damn islands one by one.
This would be his last achievement before going to Worlds later that year—or maybe the last in his career—as Crown knew he was in the twilight years of his professional career. But that was not the time to rethink life.
His friends were fighting, bleeding, and dying down below.
Crown dropped into a sudden dive. The wind howled. His long white cloak fluttered and rustled, like the thousands of pages of the enormous grimoire in his left hand.
The legendary Flaming Crow pulled out of its dive, skimming across the easternmost islands of the archipelago while delivering a rain of fire with each flap of its elongated wings.
At a quick glance, Crown saw the bird's mana points plummet below 10%. That was the tenth fire bombardment in a row. It was time to descend, to lead his troops up close as part of the front assault.
He released the reins, relaxed his body, and recalled his mount. The flames enveloping the crow burst for a second, consuming it, making it disappear before Crown’s eyes, and leaving a trail of fire that soon faded away.
Crown’s body started to fall, gaining speed, and causing his clothes, hair, and grimoire to flutter violently. The ground below grew larger with each passing second.
The small fortress, tiny houses, and miniscule towers started to grow larger. The players below, once small as ants and indistinguishable from one another, began to be recognizable by their clothes, weapons, spells, and attack patterns.
Close to fifty meters from the ground, Crown held his grimoire tightly, opened it, and visualized the page he wanted. Like magic, the pages turned by themselves and then stopped on the desired page, one depicting an angel with a fabulous pair of wings.
The image on the page glowed blue, and the same hue began to emanate from the summoner’s body.
A pair of wings sprouted from the summoner’s upper back when he was a few meters from a tragic fall. It happened just in time for him to flap them enough to land like a true savior: Jesus posing with a confident smile and tired eyes.
The players around him cheered with his arrival, raising their weapons and shouting in celebration while arrows and spells rained down near them.
But the celebration had to be brief. So, Crown gave the order, “Make way!”
The players halted their run toward the gate. The summoner’s grimoire hovered in front of him, but an arrow shot by some rando on the walls dared to pierce its pages, it failed. The projectile crashed over a small, translucent barrier that soon faded after fulfilling its purpose.
Crown raised his gaze, took a deep breath, and flipped the book to its last non-blank page with his own hand. There rested a picture of a monster. It soon shimmered that bluish glow.
“Leave them to me. Sorry for the delay,” said someone to his right.
The moment Crown’s gaze met the speaker’s weapon and armor, he experienced déjà vu. A similar phrase echoed in his mind, this time spoken by Daniel, “Leave it to me, chief!” He used to say it when they were in the Dark Age and Cris was his captain.
But that was not Dante. Gust may don the same legendary armor set, wield Dante’s iconic, legendary Amethyst Hammer, but he still had to prove himself worthy of any of those items.
“All right. They’re all yours, kid,” Crown said.
The knight’s grey, shining helmet turned to face him, revealing part of Gust’s young and tender face through the T-shaped visor. He nodded, faced forward, and disappeared from Crown’s gaze by using the Heroic Leap skill.
The knight flew in a perfect arc, making his blue cape flap to the left the entire way. He landed in the middle of the twenty-eight enemy soldiers protecting the gate. Those were not common garrison soldiers, but high-level elite guards. And they used their gap-closing skills to shorten the distance between them and the bold knight.
The Amethyst Hammer rose over the mound of adversaries rushing to overwhelm its wielder. The first strike cracked the helmet of the first enemy who dared to approach. He staggered backward, recovered his balance, and went for a counterattack.
The opponent came screaming, accompanied by six other colleagues. But the Amethyst Hammer was swung in a series of lightning-fast strikes. The first hit met the chestplate of the screaming warrior, to shut him up and break his confidence and that of his colleagues.
The impact was so strong and the weapon so powerful that it produced a grayish magic explosion as violent as the blast from a hand grenade. Not to mention the loud bang that followed, assaulting everyone's ears.
Then Gust swung his hammer upward, smashing the chin of the swordsman who approached to his left. The strength of the attack was enough to lift the poor man in the air. It was instantly followed by Gust throwing his shield on the warrior coming from the other side, hitting him square in the legs to break his run. Only then did he finish the swordsman still midair with a hammer straight to the face using the Smash skill, granting additional damage to enemies while airborne.
But the poor man’s friends did not flinch at Gust’s display of power. After all, they were the best soldiers Dante could buy before his demise, so they came in full force to take down Red Crows’ new star.
From a safe distance, Crown analyzed the fight while stroking his cheek and tapping his long white summoner robe. Gust surely did swing that Amethyst Hammer faster than Dante. But his strikes still lacked the purpose and grace of its original master.
He was in no way a bad or average fighter. Gust was a rising star, a genius lone wolf that gathered the attention of the community with his explosive fast-paced combat style.
But for Crown, that playstyle did not fit the class he was playing. It could work on any of the current on-meta melee DPS classes like swordsman, fighter, assassin, or thief. The knight required a more methodical approach. The class features slower skills and longer cooldowns to compensate for its defensive prowess.
That’s why Crown shook his head when Gust started blasting his offensive skills. Because when he did that, it always ended the same way.
The Red Crow’s shining star was now with his shield raised and knees half-bent to absorb all the attacks of the fortress’s elite guard. He was overwhelmed, burning his defensive skills to stay alive until his jumps and dashes came off cooldown.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Crown tore a blank page of his grimoire and burned it by conjuring flames in that hand. While aflame, he tossed the half-burning page in the air. When the piece of paper reached its ascending apex, it was consumed by a sudden burst of red flames.
But the fire did not fade, it lingered, turning to a blue flame that expanded to double its size, and then burst. The fire turned into shimmering blue arcane energy that converged on the open palm of Crown’s right hand.
For a summoner, this was the Consume process. It was necessary to gather energy to summon the grimoire-exclusive spell. He raised that hand and turned the open palm towards the mound of guards piling over his colleague.
The energy shot towards the enemy knight right in the middle of the skirmish. The white beam pierced its target armor, killing him. Then it split into two smaller beams that sought the nearest prey. Two other warriors met the same fate as the knight, and those two beams split in two again.
A total of thirty-one soldiers were hit, but only the first seven of them died. After all, each subsequent beam was weaker than the previous one. However, that spell alone was enough to open an escape route for the distressed knight in shining armor.
The embarrassment falling over Gust was visible just by the janky way he ran toward his friend.
Thanks to Red Crow’s strict discipline, Crown did not have to give any orders. A barrage of spells and projectiles was fired at the enemy formation. It was enough to force them back into a defensive stance, preventing any attempt to chase the fleeing knight.
“I messed up. I know,” Gust said.
“You’re making the same mistakes. We’ve been working on this for over a month. No, actually, it’s since we hired you in what, seven or eight weeks?”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Gust, you can’t be this anxious when playing with us. This is not a solo competition. This game is about huge guilds and alliances, and the competitive scene revolves around highly skilled, tightly synced small teams. You have to get your shit together before we go to Worlds.”
“Of course.” That was all he had to say.
Crown was starting to think that all his scolding was having little to no effect on Gust’s efforts. The boy sure was hardworking and talented. However, that might be a problem that could not be solved, at least not as quickly as they wanted.
After the knight’s debacle, and after a quick tug on his majestic robe, Crown was now poised to finally take that damn fortress. The decision came after realizing that over an hour had passed since the start of the assault.
Only the easternmost islands were fully captured, and over twelve of them had to be taken for them to finally reach that huge, black-stoned castle towering on the top of a steep cliff looming on the horizon.
Crown wanted to avoid using one of his strongest spells right at the beginning, but lingering for any longer could be dangerous. He turned the grimoire to its last section, the one dedicated to storing the strongest spells.
The good news is that most of the previously torn pages had regenerated and were now impeccable back at their place. That was one of the few perks of being a summoner instead of a mage, no need to bring a ton of mana potions.
You just had to avoid tearing pages like a highly motivated inquisitor in a public library.
He tore the page depicting a monstrosity, then consumed it by invoking flames throughout his hand. The fire screeched in agony, spreading, consuming the air until it subsided and retracted, condensing in a fist-sized ball of greenish fire that suddenly shot downward, piercing New Avalon’s entrails.
The ground over that part of the island began to shake, but not quite like an earthquake. Even Red Crow’s experienced players and the elite forces of the late Dark Age stopped the fight. Their attention went to the pillar of moss-green flames erupting from a rip on the ground.
The pages of Crown’s grimoire turned at his will, stopping over the blank pages. In one move, he ripped out over twenty white pages and threw them over his head. Each piece of paper fluttered for a second, and then locked in place, hovering gracefully in a small arch over Red Crows’ Crown’s crown.
A rocky-shaped hand rose from the breached ground. It was as big as a small car, and was soon accompanied by its other rocky hand. They both groped the edges of the fissure. The fingers scratched the terrain, and its tips pierced the dirty surface. And all the hand’s veins popped, followed by prolonged loud crackling sounds.
For all the effort put in by whatever that thing was, it was enough to widen that once tiny fissure to over twenty meters wide. A burst of flaming lava shot up from the open maw, spraying over the nearest Red Crow players, but dealing no damage. It was then followed by two other bursts.
Until it finally revealed itself.
A rocky-humanoid figure climbed its way to the surface. Its stone pyramidal-shaped head was the first thing everyone saw coming out after its hands. Then its broad, spiked jagged shoulders rose, followed by its long, three-sectioned two pairs of arms.
The creature was a giant, towering over twenty meters tall, and had a massive health bar that would put many nightmare difficulty bosses to shame.
“One of the perks of enduring such a complex and demanding class,” Crown thought, then he opened the guildmaster window to voice an order to all his companions.
“Leave fortress A2 to me. Everyone, your objective now is to take the adjacent islands. So, obey your commanding officers. We’re not wasting time here.”
Around him, thousands of players started to gather with their squads to prepare for the next phase. At a quick glance over the adjacent, but distant islands, it was clear they were still held by the NPC soldiers.
“How is this possible?” Crown thought for a second, before turning his attention back to his boss-tier minion.
He took another page of his book, and consumed it to give the order, “Breach that gate, now!”
The rocky-giant wasted no time. It bolted towards the gate as soon as the last word came out of its master's mouth.
Crown tore two pages and consumed them to summon a flying carpet and conjure a magic barrier to envelop himself in. He then stepped over the carpet and, with a light stomp, ordered it to depart.
The cool morning wind brushed against his face during the voyage. Meanwhile, he cast over ten Arcane Bombs on the brave enemy warriors below facing his Molten Rock Titan.
BAAAM! BAAAM! BAAAM! The reinforced gates echoed at every punch delivered by the titan. But the warriors on the wall did not falter, they kept harassing the creature with their ranged attacks and spells.
Crown was preparing another barrage of spells when a light-brown gryphon flew in front of him, hovered for a moment and dove toward the walls of the fortress. Its rider jumped, landing over an archer and killing him with a combo of hammer strikes.
This time, Gust played his cards right while Crown observed him from atop his magic carpet. The knight dashed, struck and used most of the skills at the right time, soon clearing the way for the Molten Rock Titan to do its job in peace.
The gate fell after five minutes of nonstop titan-to-gate violence. In the meantime, Crown, Gust and some other players from the guild moved through the fortress, searching for survivors.
It didn’t take long for a notification to pop up.
The Eastern Crest Fortress has been seized by the Red Crows’ Alliance.
Back on his Flaming Crow mount, Crown met Gust high above the fortress main tower to congratulate him.
“Great job down there. That was impressive.”
“Wait, you were watching?”
“I—” Crown was cut short by a thunderous roar that echoed throughout the Storm Islands.
“It came from the west side, I think,” said Gust.
Their attention went toward that direction. Only then did Crown spotted the thousands of tiny black spots dotting the western sea. But then, that roar echoed once again, now almost a screech.
When Crown raised his head, it was almost too late. A trail of fire descended upon him, but only the warmth of it reached his avatar. The creature responsible for it had passed right above them at high speed, and was now turning back.
It was a black dragon clad in dark-plate armor. Its rider donned a heavy, gilded and also dark-plated armor, but with sharp, jagged layers. Over the long, blonde hair, the rider wore a golden tiara decorated with a pair of dragon wings on its edges. As a weapon, the rider brandished a long, black spear whose shaft was carved in a dragon-serpent aesthetic, and its long and deadly bladed-tip came off the carved dragon’s open mouth.
Crown knew who it was, so he allowed himself to relax for a bit, because later it would get ugly.
“Long time no see, Crown from the Red Crows. Sorry for crashing your party,” said the Dragon Rider.
“I was dying to meet you after your transformation, Anika from Starfall. You put up quite a show on Krono’s Show.”
“You watched me? Well, thanks for the view, I guess. Did you like it?”
“You knew how to build up hype and keep it going. I’m not gonna deny that.”
“So, shall we start killing each other?”
“Sure, I’ll let you get back to your lackeys first. The winner takes the Islands?”
“Sure, the winner takes the Islands.”
They flew close to each other, shook hands and returned to their armies before the largest battle of the year began.
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Life isn’t some kind of grand destiny.
It’s just a collection of decisions shaped by the moments that happen around us.
Of Moon and Magic follows a silver-haired girl. Her mana was weak, but that never dulled her hunger for magic.
We follow her steps. We weigh her choices. We sit with her loneliness. In a world where magic is everything, war is constant, and morality is little more than a neglected guideline.
Will she become just another cog in the machine?
Or will she be the one to end it all?
Only one way to find out.
Point of Interest:
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How would you rate the WRITING of this chapter compared to the previous ones?
