“Oh, Noel, don’t cry. It doesn’t matter how you were assessed. I’ll teach you to be the best Seeker the world has ever seen, Talker or not!”
I loved and respected my grandpa. I believed what he said. I knew I could trust him, and so I began training under him. The training was relentless and demanding. My ever-gentle grandpa disappeared during it, leaving only a fiercely strict instructor who was the Seeker leader feared by his brothers in arms, who called him Overdeath.
“On your feet, Noel! Beasts don’t rest! No matter how much it hurts, you need to get right back on your feet. Don’t just lie there, dummy!”
More than once, I wound up kicked into the middle of next week while I lay hurt and writhing on the ground. I trained harshly from morning to night. In the early days, I was often covered in puke from my exertions, and I bled from my rectum.
But no matter how hard it was, I trusted Grandpa. He was right, after all. I knew that this intense training regime came from a place of love. The beasts would sniff out my weaknesses, if I had any. I dared not neglect my training, or my career as a Talker would be nasty, brutal, and short. Grandpa was doing all he could to teach me to fight, and I did all I could do to learn. I could survive, even as a Talker, if I could just master Grandpa’s cruel lessons.
Four years into my training, I was stronger than I’d ever been. Even though I was going to be a Talker, I was developing skills to match any Seeker. Perhaps I’d even achieve EX Rank one day.
However, Seekers must be fifteen years old—legal adults—to be officially certified by the government. So I continued honing my skills under my grandpa for one more year.
It was near my birthday when it happened…
“You stay inside, Noel! You hear me?!”
My grandpa, usually so calm and collected, wore a ghastly expression as he led me and his hired hands down into an underground shelter.
That night, the town we lived in suddenly became an Abyss.
An Abyss forms when the concentration of mana in the local atmosphere reaches critical mass. In remote villages such as ours, the townspeople occasionally perform rituals to disperse the mana, but for some reason, the most recent ceremony had failed and the mana had continued to build up. Worse, when Grandpa measured this Abyss with a special instrument, its abyssal depth—which determined how dangerous it was—proved to be 12. On a scale of 1 to 13.
A deeper connection with the Void leads to a greater abyssal depth, and to the Abyss manifesting more powerful beasts. Overnight, our small town was swarming with the strongest of abyssal beasts. Though only a Seeker-in-training, even I could feel the power of the great beast within the core of the Abyss. It was mighty enough to compel even Seekers to bow to it and call it Lord.
My beloved town had been consumed by a black-flamed inferno. In the sky was a venomous red full moon. The strange new dimensions through which the Void sunk its tendrils into our world echoed with wild shrieks of bestial delight and the agonizing cries of human prey.
“Don’t worry,” my grandpa said to me. “I’ll protect you with my life.”
He wore a confident smile as he donned his armor. Shrugging off my attempts to stop him, he left the shelter, closing the door after him.
The Abyss had already spread as far as we could see. There was no way for Grandpa to cut his way through the horrors with me and the vineyard workers trailing after him. He also couldn’t hide with us, since there was no telling when reinforcements might arrive. Our best chance for survival lay in Grandpa taking on the Lord-level beast at the center of the Abyss.
Before long, we heard the death cries of beasts. There must have been hundreds of them. It was proof that my grandpa was still good with a battle-axe, but I was not reassured. How many beasts had this Abyss manifested? I was terrified of the power of the Lord that unified them.
Eventually, the death cries of the beasts faded. Instead, we heard the sounds of an otherworldly battle. The fight between Grandpa and the beast lord had begun.
The sounds continued for hours until, all at once, they stopped. The horrifying Abyss started to fade away.
Certain that Grandpa had won the battle, I ran out of the underground shelter. Outside, the dawn was breaking over scorched plains scattered with the corpses of both men and beasts.
I ran through the wasteland, frantically searching for my grandpa.
Then I found him.
He was covered in blood, and he had lost his right arm and both of his legs.
Grandpa grinned at me as I held him in my arms.
“I guess age is the one unconquerable foe… To think that Overdeath would end up like this…”
I couldn’t stop the tears streaming down my face. I cried so much I thought my body would wither and dry. Seeing this, Grandpa stroked my head gently, as he always did.
“You’re such a crybaby, Noel. Just like your grandfather,” he said, turning his face from me. “I’m but a shadow of the Seeker I once was… Choosing a life of combat means that the god of death is always by your side. Do you still want to be a Seeker, Noel? Will you travel the same path as this old man?”
I sniffed and wiped the tears from my cheeks. I forced myself to smile like Grandpa and nodded confidently.
The truth was that I had never been so scared in my life. All I wanted to do was hold my grandpa close and scream for him not to die and leave me all alone.
But more than that, I didn’t want to show him my weakness.
I wanted to tell him that his grandson was strong and reassure him.
I would never be able to repay him for everything he did for me.
“I see…” he said. “Then you must become the greatest Seeker of them all. Do not bring shame to the Stollen name. That is my last wish.”
My grandpa looked at me and reached out to stroke my head again with his one remaining arm. “Noel, make your grandpa this promise.”
“I promise, Grandpa… I’ll become the strongest Seeker ever.”
“That’s…my boy… Noel…I’m sorry…I couldn’t keep…my promise. I’ll…always love…you…”
And with that, my hero died in my arms.
✦ ✦ ✦
It had been two years since a great man passed. I’d lived my life in accordance with his dying wish.
I, Noel Stollen, Talker, was a Seeker living in the imperial capital.