Chapter 1

"Splash~", the sound of Seven-night Lin being picked up by someone out of the river.

“AHHHH~!” Lin gave out a hysterical shout as he regained his consciousness. He suddenly jumps into the air with his arms flapping, but quickly falls back to the ground. He tries to stand up but he suddenly felt extremely dizzy and fumbles back to the ground.

“My, my body!” looking down, he finds his body unharmed, shock, hysteria, and great joy with a hint of sullenness overwhelms him. Even after being a crow for hundreds of thousands of years, after endless life and death situations, after many great losses, and gain, he still could not control his emotions at this time.

At last Lin breathes deeply, and looks up, only to find a young man with a very peculiar looking face in front of him. His left face looks like a handsome young man but his right face looks as if it had been stretched and pulled back towards the rear of his head.

“Kekeke, it is I, the great Lector, who saved you by pulling you out of the river while you were unconscious. You should feel every need to be thankful keke.” The man laughs eerily, showing his remaining 3 teeth.

Lin ignores him, and looks up to the river, where the outlines of The Cave of Demons can be faintly seen. As he sees the familiar scenery, his eyes twitched and his stare changed, imbued with a bloodlust and hatred that contradicts with his appearance.

After some time passes, Lin takes another deep breath, reverting back into his normal self, and finally looks at Lector.
“The great Lector, is it? “
“Ahhh, I almost thought you couldn’t understand my words before since you stayed silent the whole time, but now that you are able to speak I can assume you are in a good condition then. Excellent.“

“Yes, you have my thanks, although currently I do not possess any material that may be offered to you as a reward. The name's Lin, by the way.”
“Ah, that’s alright, Lin, what I said before was a joke anyway, you don’t really have to be thankful since it’s a man’s duty to save another man’s life whenever possible. heh.”

“Hoh~.”

………

“By the way, the great Lector...”
“Ah, actually please don’t call me that. That was also meant as a joke. Just Lector is fine.”

“Uh, alright then, Lector, may I ask you a few questions? Just check to a few things.”

“Sure thing, ask away.”

“Do you know who the current Caster of Dominion of this world is?”

“Uh…I’m not sure what you mean by that.”
“Ah, my mistake, let me rephrase my question then. Do you know who currently inherits the ‘Fate of the World’?”

“Um, at this time I don’t believe anyone is holding it.”

“Is that right?” Lin’s expression grew a little tense as he heard Lector’s reply.
Perhaps I slept for over ten thousand years since then? If that is the case then the situation is definitely out of my hands now. Lin thought to himself

“What happened to Windwalker?”

“Um, according to legends, Windwalker disappeared around 3000 years ago, and no one knows where he had gone to.”

“What about the Dragon King of Cronia?” Lin asks again.

Lector shakes his head once more, showing a very confused expression. “No one knows either, the Dragon King also disappeared around 3000 years ago.”

After he heard this, Lin’s expression changed drastically. He stares at the outlines of the Cave of Demons once more. Memories flowed back towards him and he finally understood.

“Let’s leave here at once.” Without giving a care about whether Lector will follow or not, Lin immediately turns and walks off, with a clear goal in his mind. After being alive for so long, experiencing so much pain, misery, and sorrow, He now knows what he needs to do.

…….

Cronia, once founded and ruled by one of the greatest beings ever to walk the earth, the Dragon King Kyle Aster, still flourishes even without the glory of its former lord. When Kyle Aster was still alive he casted Dominion over the world and no one dared to question his authority. He was a nearly impervious existence, feared by even the greatest deities of the worlds above. And now, even with his absence, and often postulated, his death, Cronia still stands as a proud and majestic city as it ever was.

But now, a young weak looking child and a young man with a peculiar face appears outside of the city’s regal walls, both seemingly unbefitting of the city’s magnificent image. As Lin embraces the view of this great city, a symbol of a bond no longer remembered and understood by others, nostalgia fills his mind.  He takes out a piece of paper, with a symbol of a crow drawn on top of it, and pastes it on the wall.

“I will find you, Kyle, even if you are no longer in this world I swear on my life that I will bring your body back here, to your home, to the city that we built with our flesh and blood. I swear to you that I will kill every single one of those Lost Land Bastards to calm your never-resting soul!”

Lin whispers into the wind, as if he had never spoken at all.

“Hey Lector, let’s go.”
“Ah, um, not going into the city? Okay then…”

……

Moments after both Lin and Lector disappeared into the horizon, a veiled woman, accompanied by 2 men, appears at where Lin as standing. Though one cannot see through her veil, her unique presence of an overwhelming authority, contradicted by a hint of the waves of the gentle ocean, is, however, impossible to conceal by any method.

“Strange, Just now there was an overpowering presence, filled with anger and bloodlust, a presence rivaling my own, or perhaps even greater, right here at this spot. But now, there is no longer any traces of it left. That should not be possible.” The woman said with a puzzling face.

“My lord, perhaps you were mistaken? Surely there cannot be anyone remaining in this world who has a presence equal to yours?” said one of the servants.

“Are you really questioning the lord’s ability? “

“N-No, Of course not, Forgive me for my insolence!”

“Enough. I need to examine the surroundi….hmm? What’s this?” She looks at the piece of paper pasted on the wall. “This is…..! No way, this cannot be!”

“What’s the matter, my lord?”

”Find out who pasted this piece of paper here, immediately!”

“Y-Yes, my lord. Please just a moment……”said one of the servants, “According to the field report, a young boy, along with another young man with a very unordinary face, pasted this paper here an hour and 40 minutes ago.

“A young boy with a young man. What could this mean?” The woman speaks to herself. “Regardless we must chase after them, alert the knights to mobilize. Tell them to pay close attention to these two individuals and conduct a search operation. Meanwhile, I must search the ancestral archives for more information.”

“But, regarding our trip to spirit mountain…”
“Cancel it immediately.”

“Yes my lord.”

As her servants take their leave, she looks at the pasted paper one more time, “For this symbol to appear after all this time, what could this mean? \*sigh\* only if Grandpa Kyle told me the meaning of the symbol of the crow before he left.”

She looks into the horizon for a second, as if she was recalling her old memories, and then, in less than the blink of an eye, she vanished as if she was never there in the first place.

……

…