บท 7: Sword of Epoch

Spots of light shone within the darkness as the starry sky glittered like a sea inlaid with gems, appearing increasingly beautiful as one stared at it…

'The sky is really clear…'

As of the moment, one of those staring at it was none other than the young boy known as Arthur, Leo's current persona.

After returning back with Annie, the sky had already turned dark and the rest of his 'siblings' had already gone to sleep with Ria following soon after, the only one left awake was Leo.

Unlike the rest of the kids at the Orphanage, Arthur liked to sleep outside when it was summer. This way, not only would he leave one more free bed for his siblings, but he would also have a breeze of fresh air to help him with his sleep. He had a hammock-like sheet hanged between the two trees that gave shade to the Orphanage.

'This place does have its own charm.'

While this world was quite the deadly one, it had its advantages as a fantasy world. Not to mention the clear unpolluted sky, just the plant life was very exotic, the flowers that Annie had collected were truly gorgeous. To someone like Leo, living in such an environment was a completely new but attractive experience.

He had already managed to come to an understanding of his situation thanks to the hints given by the personal book. He was transported into this novel through his special ability which the book identified as the role of a Reader.

If he just had doubts about it at the beginning, it was practically confirmed as soon as he experienced the excitement he felt towards living in the novel. It was just too similar or even identical to the instinctive excitement he felt when reading.

However, he didn't completely understand the situation just yet, he still didn't understand what suddenly triggered this change within his ability.

Was there something special about the book he had read before fainting? Or was the cause something much deeper like the world-changing for some unknown reason? Whatever it was, it had managed to evolve his ability from just being able to obtain the experience of the book into allowing him to personally experience the book itself…

'Haaa…'

Closing his eyes for a few seconds, Leo let out a long sigh before opening it back again. Even though he tried not to think about it, he couldn't stop overthinking!

In order to stop it, he could only switch the topic in his mind into something more urgent like his scapegoat event that was about to happen soon.

With that thought in mind, Leo lowered his gaze slightly as he stared into the horizon, focusing on a tall structure that seemed to pierce the sky.

In his gaze, the tall structure was extremely slim, appearing like a tall stick, but that was just the case due to the spot that Leo observed the structure from.

'So that's the Sword of Epoch?'

It was just the edge of the gigantic longsword that was stabbed into the ground, even from his spot, Leo felt it was extremely imposing. This sword was basically the cornerstone plot point of this novel.

Just like most fantasy novels, fantasy abilities always had a mysterious source that they emerged from, and the mysterious source of this novel was none other than this sky-piercing sword.

'It isn't that original, but it was slightly fresh at the point it was written.'

Less than three decades ago, this gigantic longsword had fallen from the sky out of nowhere, causing the destruction of an entire city, and giving rise to an earthquake. The people of this world thought that the apocalypse was coming.

However, unlike what they were worried about, no other objects fell from the sky and the sword's victim list stopped at this, even the shattered ground that the sword stood on started to naturally recover.

As people felt that the sword no longer posed a threat, they became more daring. Which signaled the dispatch of the first expedition to explore the location that the sword was rooted on.

That was precisely the turning point, as the expedition members got closer to the sword, they could see faint sword shadows floating in the air, and its source was their expedition target, but that wasn't the greatest discovery of that expedition.

As they finally stood before the sword itself, the expedition team found a scroll of paper that covered the lower part of the sword, seemingly containing strange scribblings mixed with their own language.

Only when they removed it did they understand its greatness. The body of the sword was full of mysterious symbols, of which they could understand nothing, and that was where the scroll came to play!

A great scholar that accompanied the expedition team studied the scroll as the rest of the team members were busy getting amazed by the symbol, discovering that this scroll was more or less a hard dictionary for the symbols on the sword!

The symbols turned out to be practice texts that described sword movements that didn't make sense. Everything only came to light when one of the guards of the expedition couldn't resist trying them out, resulting in the faint sword shadows in the air rushing towards his body, announcing the start of the great sword era!

By using the movements within the practice text, people became capable of storing what came to be known as sword breath into their bodies, allowing them to display great prowess as long as they wielded a sword, and before anyone knew it the world had already changed…

Even the plants and animals that knew nothing about the events that took place changed to various degrees. Some strange beasts appeared, and even some metals changed in nature, the whole world was undergoing an overall evolution.

Nonetheless, the one that led this evolution was still humans, ushering into a new hierarchy reliant on sword prowess. Kingdoms were destroyed overnight, and others were declared, completely changing the original map. It was only a decade later that the turmoil in the world started to calm down once again.

It was then that one special person arrived in this world…

'Tsk, just as to be expected of a protagonist's lucky aura…'

As he finished recalling the main plotline that the author had info-dumped at the very start of the novel. Leo couldn't help but click his tongue in dissatisfaction.