"There's a blade in my chest..."
Nathan timidly voiced his concern just to make sure that what he was seeing, was in fact, real. Piercing through his chest was a beautiful short sword of silver steel, the hilt was wrapped in leather that looked aged and had an onyx cross guard that contrasted the steel of it's blade.
In any usual circumstance, if a person found that they had been impaled they would start screaming in pain, but luckily for Nathan, there was no pain to elicit such a response.
Besides, he was certain that whatever predicament he was in was just a dream. A strange one... but a dream nonetheless. His rather tame reaction was justified.
'But this is still strange. In most of my dreams I usually experience the moments leading to my death and wake up just before finality.'
It wasn't every dream that Nathan experienced death but in the ones he did, such as, falling off a cliff, he'd at least experience something like being chased and then slipping to his inevitable death and waking up.
'Skipping to the conclusion just takes the fun out of it.'
Assuming that this scenario was a lucid dream, Nathan tore his attention away from the sword plunged in his chest and took in his surroundings.
He was kneeling in what seemed to be a town centre, or what was left of it. The buildings stood strong, although a few seemed to be crumbling, but they stood nonetheless. It was a bizarre architecture that he couldn't recognise as anything belonging to the modern, or any other period of history. Besides that, there was another defining feature that reigned over the landscape; a sickly sweet and metallic scent.
'Blood.'
After sniffing the air a couple of times to affirm his suspicion, his eyes landed on the visage of a person or what remained of them.
A woman with pallid skin lay amongst the gravel, her lifeless eyes made contact with Nathan's own, sending a shiver down his spine. A wound had marked her skin, leaving behind a cut deep enough that her entrails had left the confines of her stomach.
The grotesque brutality was something Nathan had never been exposed to before, even his own wound looked tame in comparison.
'Ugh! I'm gonna be sick!'
He involuntarily covered his mouth averting his eyes from the woman's corpse, only to be met with another corpse which had been impaled with a spear through the back. He turned his head once again and met a similar sight. Everywhere he looked, corpse after corpse lined the marketplace bathing the ground in dark red.
The stench of the deceased finally reached him forcing him to retch and cough up what remained in his stomach. He was already drenched in sweat when he first opened
his eyes but now he was soaked.
Wiping his mouth of the residue Nathan thought to himself, 'This is the first time I've ever thrown up in a dream…Who am I kidding?! This isn't a dream!'
Those bodies were simply too lifelike to pass off as mere products of his imagination.
After coming to that conclusion, he felt a sudden tingling feeling coming from his chest, exactly where the blade had pierced him. With this sensation, Nathan got a very bad premonition.
"-Shit!"
In no less than a second did that tingling sensation evolve into unfathomable pain. Originally, that general area on his chest was numb but now it seared with pain and heat.
He grit his teeth and clawed at the ground which he had now fallen back on, trying to at least suppress or alleviate the torture he had been subjected to. This pain couldn't belong to a mere dream. He screamed in agony and released a flurry of curse words.
Nathan had never broken an arm let alone been impaled, he had truly never experienced a greater pain than this.
Suddenly, a voice spoke out over his torment although it seemed to speak into his mind rather than over his own voice.
The voice whispered:
[You have slain an Awakened Terror, Plague Father.]
[Wake up, Yoru! Your nightmare is over.]
[Prepare for appraisal...]
______
Upon opening his eyes, Nathan noticed that the splitting pain belonging to his chest had ceased and his environment seemed to have changed.
He found himself standing in what seemed to be...space?
Thousands of white dots illuminated the vast void he found himself in, all interconnecting with each other, creating the most majestic web he had ever seen. It was a weaving of lights so vast and incomprehensible, yet he found his mind somewhat un-taxed staring upon it. It was a mural made of the intangible light and dark.
Nathan snapped out of his stupor, realising something.
'Those words that voice said...'
Nathan knew them all too well. He was very familiar with them, as Shadow Slave was the most cherished web novel that he had read.
However with that revelation, Nathan began to panic and hyperventilate. He clutched his head and stared down at the ground, his eyes bulging out of his head.
"No...no! This cant be happening. Not me. Why me? God Why me!?"
Nathan had been transmigrated to the world of Shadow Slave. In other words, sentenced to death. A world, where multiple worlds have been condemned to die. Even the Gods of this world fell. How could he ever hope to survive?
Interrupting Nathan's pessimistic train of thoughts, The Spell spoke again.
[You have received a memory: Marauders Love]
Oddly enough, the sound of the Spell's voice seemed to placate him slightly and fish him out of the whirlpool of panic and dread he found himself spiralling down.
A nervous grin etched its way onto his face.
"That's right, how could I forget? My Aspect, Memories…maybe even a Legacy Relic."
There was so much he could do to save himself, he just needed to get lucky.
'I can't think like a Deadman until I'm dead.'
The Spell spoke again:
[Aspirant! Your trial is over.]
[A young king walked the hollow remains of his beloved city. An abominable bug crept in shadows wearing the flesh of those it claimed. The parasite burrowed deep within the kings soul. Wielding only will and a sword, the king drove his blade through his heart-not to triumph but to escape. His very will slew the parasite along with his soul. However, another soul stirred in the vessel it claimed. The wound healed, the king rose and a miracle was born.]
[You have defeated a Dormant Beast: Plague Fathers Kin]
[You have defeated a Dormant Beast: Plague Fathers Kin]
[You have defeated a Dormant Beast: Plague Fathers Kin]
[You have defeated...]
The Spell continued to list the Dormant Beasts for a while and whilst doing so, Nathan began to do what he did best. Overthink.
'This isn't what I was expecting at all. Well...I didn't expect any of this but are things supposed to go this way?'
In Shadow Slave, the main character Sunny experienced his first nightmare, had harrowing ordeal after ordeal thrown his way and finally survived its tribulations. Nathan had basically skipped that step entirely.
He felt a bit guilty but was also relieved he didn't have to go through anything too horrific other than being impaled.
He was the type of man to prioritize life over honour any day.
But then there was another issue. The spell referred to him as Yoru indicating that when he was transmigrated he took someone else's body. Or perhaps whatever brought him here fabricated a new identity for him?
He couldn't be sure.
So Nathan assumed that the "King" in the Spell's description of the nightmare was the original or fake Yoru trying to conquer it.
'My Soul taking over the body must have healed it somehow, and that's how "the king rose." but it seems like Yoru's soul is still dead…like lord of the-"
Nathan blinked, coming to a realisation.
'That practically confirms Yoru was a real person since he had a soul. Unless whatever brought me here could create a soul but I highly doubt that since creating life was something only the gods could do. And they're dead. All but one at least…'
Nathan had a terrible thought but quickly discarded it and preoccupied himself by thinking of something else.
He felt...strange about taking over someone else's body, on one hand he felt disgusted at himself for breathing in someone else's skin like he took "their property", but simultaneously he was fine with it. He couldn't do anything to change his current situation, so why care? His emotions were very convoluted, but humans were very contradictory beings.
Then he thought of the next big question.
'How on earth did Yoru kill the Plauge Father! "His very will slew the parasite along with his soul?!"What does that even mean?'
Nathan was an avid fan of shadow slave so plot holes and power-scaling were things he would constantly think about. The author of Shadow Slave had once said that there are so many Aspects anything is possible. But an Aspect that allowed the original Yoru to perform such a feat as an Aspirant was insane. After all the Plauge Father was an Awakened Terror. The original Yoru would've died if he didn't do whatever he did.
Nathan's brain was wracked with these questions but he noticed that the Spell had stopped listing the original Yoru's kills.
[You have achieved the impossible!]
[Final appraisal: glorious. A king should know that their life does not belong to themselves. How selfish!]
'That's a peculiar appraisal…'
Nathan never saw taking your own life as selfish, its "your own" life after all. But he did understand that those you left behind would miss you. It wasn't fair to take your life away from them.
'To each their own, I guess.'
He also knew that he would receive a Divine Rank Aspect, considering that Sunny killed an Awakened Tyrant and one other Awakened being and was rewarded with one. So the fact Yoru had managed to kill an Awakened Terror, and technically come back from the dead, were all worthy feats deserving of a Divine Rank Aspect.
Although the Rank of his Aspect would only determine the potential of what he could do with it. It was up to him to utilize it properly.
[Dreamer Yoru, receive your boon!]
A/N: Thank you to eveyone that somehow managed to make it to the end of this first chapter. I want to say that this is my first ever try at writing something, so expect some mistakes and maybe even some inconsistencies, wether to do with how things work in the original novel or the storyline of this fanfic. Although I will try and keep that to a minimum.
Hope you all gain an understanding of what kind of character Nathan is and if not you'll come to learn in future chapters.
There will be some deviations from the main storyline as I don't want Nathan to just tag along with the cohort and go with the tide. But if I'm being honest you won't see any deviations in the Academy.
Anyways thanks for reading!😊