1 The Devil Sets Out On a Journey Once Again.

Blood.

Everything in his sight was filled with blood. There was a literal river flowing with blood. He tried to rub his eyes with the mostly torn sleeve of his shirt in order to fix his blurry sight, which he immediately regretted. He was covered in blood too. Even the color of his shirt couldn't be recognized.

Right after, a strong headache hit him and the young man grabbed his head with both hands, even though this was futile in easing the pain he was suffering. When the pain subsided to the point he could think a little clearly, noticing something he seemed to think was extremely surprising, he lifted his hands and looked at them with his eyes, which were covered in a bit of blood from his earlier attempt to wipe them.

His stare was blank, as if he did not know what was happening. Following that, he tried to stand up, only to stagger and fall on his butt. He sat like that for a little while, seemingly in a daze. After a few minutes, he started to feel his body with his hand slowly while trying to recall what happened that led to his current circumstances.

His name was Ubel Achlys, a 14 years old boy. His last memory before waking up was going to sleep after doing his training for the day and thinking about how he was going to sign-up in the tournament which was held in the neighboring big city. After that, it was blank.

However, there were quite a few things that did not match his memory. For example, in his memories he fell asleep on his bed, not in the middle of some city which looked like hell.

Second, he certainly remembered he was 14 years old. It would be kind of idiotic to forget what age you were and surely even if you did forget it would have to by 1 or 2 years, right? Then how come his hands look way bigger than a teen's? Moreover, the rest of his body felt much bigger too.

Third, he felt way different mentally too. Things he had worried about before seemed very trivial and problems he had trouble solving appeared much simpler. He felt that if it was yesterday and thought about these solutions, he still would not try them because they had too many consequences that he wouldn't like, but now he didn't really understand why he thought that way. All in all, he had a very different mindset than what Ubel felt he had yesterday.

As he felt around his body, the supposedly young boy noticed something very wrong.

He had a hole in his stomach.

Then he truly began worrying, because of one reason - that was where his magic core was. But soon he relaxed and began feeling confused at the same time. The rest of his body is very different than what he remember, but only his magic core was the same as he remembered. The quantity and quality of his mana was exactly the same as he remembered too.

For now, he just began healing the hole in his stomach with the basic spell 'Soothing Light'. Even though slowly, it was healing.

Ubel sighed in relief and tried to stand up again. This time he didn't fall, but he noticed something as he was standing up.

In the sky was something written with something oddly seeming like blood. Ubel squinted his eyes as he tried to read what was written there.

Do your best to amuse me.

That was the message he managed to read and immediately after he read it, the red letters began collapsing into a liquid that Ubel was now sure was blood and fell onto the ground.

After that, it felt like something was injected into his brain. He felt a little sting, not comparable to the pain he felt earlier at all. He realized that what was injected into his head was information, which seemed to be about him.

He was 24 years old, not 14 like how he remembered. It seemed that the country he was in was the same as he remembered - the Gredia Empire.

That was it. Literally nothing else.

Ubel frowned, feeling very frustrated and quite annoyed at whoever left that message and information for him. However, immediately after, he fell in a trance and a new scenery appeared before him.

***

There was a wasteland. The sky was red, with clouds passing so fast that an ordinary person couldn't follow their movement with their eyes.

"Hahahahaha, is that all? Did you really plan for a whole 300 years and this was all you could think of?"

A handsome man with somewhat brushy black hair, who looked like he was in his early twenties was laughing and pointing a seemingly ordinary iron sword, which was stained in blood, towards the woman in front of him. He had black eyes which held a mixture of both disappointment and expectation. He wore a black tight-fitting shirt with black pants.

The person in front of him looked miserable, barely remaining standing. It was a beautiful woman, who looked like she was in her early-thirties, with dark brown hair and green eyes, she wore a long green dress, which looked very out of place in the occasion. She was missing one hand, which looked like it was the doing of the man who was pointing his bloodied sword towards her.

"Of course not. We thought you were dead. I should have known better. There is no way a demon like you will die just like that." The woman said bitterly.

"I didn't expect your clan to be so foolish. I didn't show myself for a few years and you had the gall to reappear in front of the world and even had the gall to create your own city. Is there a limit to your stupidity?" The young man replied mockingly.

The woman in front of him didn't say anything. She raised her remaining hand and began gathering mana.

Her enemy appeared a little surprised.

"You intend to detonate? Do you really think that will kill me?"

The woman chuckled.

"Of course not. But even if there is a slight chance of killing you, I will do it. This is for the better of the world. If a demon like you is left to roam around free, then it's just waiting for disaster to happen, just like you have proved many times already." She exclaimed, her tone filled with righteousness.

The man just sighed.

"You really are pitiful. There is a phrase like this: 'Ignorance is bliss'. However, that isn't very true in your case. I will help you escape out of your ignorance."

He slashed towards her.

Everything went black.

***

Ubel was once again in the blood covered city.

'What was that vision? Why did the person who did all this show it to me?'

'However, there is one thing that bothers me...'

He executed a simple spell to create water and he stared at his reflection.

'It's like that after all.'

The face reflected on the water was the same as the one in the vision.

'I thought that the man in the vision looked like an older version of myself, but to think it was true...'

Ubel stood in the same place for a few minutes thinking about the vision and the fact that the one shown in the vision was the current him.

Everything felt like a dream. Suddenly he was 10 years older than his memories, he wakes up in a city filled with blood, that weird message in the sky and now this vision.

He quickly got out of that stupor. He had to figure out what was his current situation first.

He looked around and saw he was in the center of the city he was in. There was a wide space around him with no buildings. Though you couldn't really say what was left of the constructions were buildings. One thing he thought was odd was despite the huge amount of blood filling the city, he couldn't spot even one corpse or at least something remaining of a body.

He tried walking around the city, but quickly realized that it was meaningless. He couldn't find out anything from these ruins, which were covered in blood everywhere. He felt as if a giant monster was drained of all of its blood and was dumped onto the city. Though he didn't know which was worse, a monster producing all of this blood, or humans.

He took whatever valuables he could find, though it was mostly silver and copper coins, and headed out of the city. Soon, he noticed a sign, which strangely stood out from the rest of crimson city because it was relatively clean and intact.

On it was the following - Praxidike City.

Ubel scowled. He didn't remember a city called like that.

As he passed by the sign, he was shocked because the earth began to tremble and after a few seconds the city began to sink.

As the young man watched in shock, the earth completely swallowed the city. Ubel tried heading back, but nothing happened, nor did he notice anything to suggest that a city had once been in that place.

He was extremely astonished. What in the world was happening today? He couldn't help but wonder.

He stared at the place the city was at for a little while, but then turned around and began walking slowly on the road towards where the wind led him.

For some reason, he felt very excited.