Stray Soul

To whomever is reading this, know that I’ve been a miserable person my whole life.

Even before the incident 12 years ago, even before this village, and everyone else who lived in it died and I left it as the sole survivor, I was a miserable person.

I was unambitious. I knew I had at least some sort of talent in magic, as I had managed to learn a few spells even in my childhood, but I never capitalized on it. Being more than content with being a lumberjack like my father, and his father before that for the rest of my life.

But after... everything that happened in the village, and I escaped as the sole survivor of it. I wanted to change.

With a newfound desire, fuelled by anger and lost, I joined the adventurer’s guild and completed every quest I could, saving all the money I could to spend on resources to increase my education, and learn new spells.

But after a few months, I realised something I hadn’t known before, something I doubted even my friends and family knew even when they were still alive.

I had an ability. I could see mana while other people could not.

I wasn’t simply magically talented; I was magical in nature!

Learning this, I was immediately overtaken by joy as I knew I could take my revenge if I worked hard enough, but also another problem emerged for me, staying hidden.

I had heard stories of people who had confirmed abilities being taken by the church and being forced to work for them as that was a known secret of the church.

Not many would talk back to them about it though, as inquisitors rarely listened to the pleas of people they claimed heretics, so the only thing you’d need to do to get a life in prison or execution was to annoy someone important for too long.

But I didn’t even have anyone that would attempt to look out for me, and I doubted that I could trust anyone who was not family with a secret as important as this, and hid it from others as best as I could—[the rest of the paragraph is un-intelligible]

So, a person with an ability as rare mine wouldn’t just be “killed off” just because they didn’t want to cooperate.

Sensing something weird going on, I accepted the man’s offer, and disappeared from the world.

No one no longer knew I was alive, and if they did, they were on our side, and I slowly started learning about a whole knew world I didn’t know of before, and my whole perception of reality shifted.

Now, I was no longer just another adventurer, but an esteemed researcher, trying to help make the world a better place day by day.

Though the research we did was not... for the weak hearted. But I persisted. Doing whatever I could to get better at my job, for everyone, and especially for the revenge I was promised.

And after a few years of conducting research in the facility, finally I was given the chance to take revenge from— [the rest of the paragraph is un-intelligible]

Though our initial goal was not to kill her, we were just trying to make a white elf that could cast spells without relying on the spirits. But it seems that dark elves will remain as the only elves that are free of their masters’ shackles. A pity.

Then we moved onto the other one, and he was going to be the main player for the most ambitious experiment we had ever conducted. He was going to become the first thinking undead! A lich if you will, and for this we had pooled personnel from all— [the rest of the paragraph is un-intelligible]

But it was a failure too. After a year of work, we only ended up with a skeleton that was alive, as alive as any undead is, that wouldn’t move on his own, and couldn’t be controlled by even the most experienced necromancers we had at hand.

Another failure. Though the sight of failure was anything but unexpected in here.

We then got quickly rid of the skeleton, and continued on our normal researches.

But something started feeling wrong for me. I had taken my revenge, and I was working for the betterment of the whole world but... there was just a weird emptiness in me.

At nights I’d have dreams of everyone I had experimented on. But it wasn’t a nightmare, they wouldn’t all jump at me and try to kill me.

No, they would all just... look at me from afar and stay there.

Whenever I tried to touch them, they would simply move away. When I tried to talk to them, they would simply ignore me.

Was this my punishment for the sins I had committed? Or was this my psyche just trying to say something to me? I didn’t know, but I didn’t have the luxury of time to worry about it too much anyways.

I am to start making my way to a new facility, where I’ll be staying for the next few years and helping them on our new “Magnum Opus” project.

But I suspect that like the other two I have been in in the past few years, this will flop over too.

But the surroundings of the new facility I am going to are at least somewhat interesting, so I probably won’t be that bored... for the first month or so that is.

Its up north, barely a few hundred kilometres south of the border of the blizzard, in a land of forest, mountains, livers and lakes.

And most interestingly, a young sprit tree next to one of the lakes.

I was initially expecting us to use it as resources for this new project, but apparently, we are not allowed to interact with it for some reason.

Perhaps its home to a higher spirit? If then I can somewhat understand why they wouldn’t want to bother it too much as if it alerts the greater spirits resting in the elven continent, things may get a bit... complicated to say the least.

The spirits are hardly kind to those who attack one of their own unprovoked. Though they do allow you to kill other spirits in self-defence, which is probably the only nice thing they’ve ever done in their whole existence.

But...yeah, I believe that’s everything I have to say.

If I ever get the chance to come back here, I’ll write another note and hide it under the altar of the church like these ones I’ve already left here.

Do I feel like I have emerged victorious over my demons? No, but writing has helped... a bit.

Now this is a goodbye from A—[the rest of the paragraph, other than a few numbers in the end, is un-intelligible]—327.