Desolate Mage: A Legend Reborn! 156 Selfishness and Desperation Can Make One...

To whoever reads this,

Congratulations!

You have slain Rogen the Shadow, secret Financial Controller and official number 2 of the Underworld!

And with my death, you also hold in your hand the guidance notes to finding the Underworld's secret treasure trove!

Right now you surely wonder why I am giving this information to my killer, but please, just bear with me and you will soon find out. Anyway, you'll need to read through every detail of this letter for the clues to the hidden treasure trove, so please hear out my story.

The tale starts not so long ago when I was a young man. Ahah, I'm just kidding. It's been a pretty long while since I considered myself young... I dither. I was not young then, merely what, 14 years ago at the time of writing?

My story is dull; merely the classical tragedy of a young and heroic wandering warrior who fell in love with the only noble daughter of a great family, nothing much!

I had just turned 40, still single and without my roots set down in any place. I came from the capital Danedaar but could never find my place and had ended up wandering from city to city - until I came to Gorun City and met HER.

As expected, a nobody like me who was not even at the Grandmaster stage then was not even worth a breath of their time - they persecuted both me and my beloved with insults, threats and even tied me up and threw me into the Gorun River! I escaped and survived, of course, with her defying her family to save me.

They were not impressed at all by the fact that I was righteous, seeking justice and not allowing any falsehood or lies in all I did - whether it was with her or with her family. At times, in order to stand for my principles of justice, I would clash with her - but very soon, I convinced her that living by one's own beliefs, by one's own conscience was the only way to live, even if it meant a life of conflict with those of darkness and dishonesty!

Suffice to say that the family was incensed to learn their only daughter and heiress-apparent renounced their blackmarket dealings and slave trade! She even confronted her father (with me by her side, of course) and implored him to cease all his rotten business!

That triggered them to hunt after me with the intention to kill.

Faced with their opposition, we ran away in secret and eloped. Romantic, isn't it...?

Pah! It was a tough life. But though we were poor, alone and living on the run... We were happy, more than happy! Ah, what good days those were!

We would hunt criminals and bandits when we could and flee from those we could not oppose. She and I made an excellent team, me with my close combat skills and her with her incredible talent for magic. The family had placed incredible hopes on her due to both the rarity of mages in the Kingdom of the Sands as well as her phenomenal talent for instant casting spells.

I digress. Please, bear with me just a little bit longer and you will have your answer; the secret keys to uncover the hidden treasure trove.

While on the road and on the run, we were blessed with the best news we could ever receive; she was to become a mother and I a father! She was pregnant!

However, by the 8th month of her term, we received bad news in turn, ill-omens that troubled our hearts and stained the joy we had of our child conceived in love.

Firstly, we heard that there was a big events transpiring in Gorun City, an occurrence with her family at the centre of it all. Secondly, her health was worsening month by month. By that time, when her health began flagging and there was nothing I could do to stop it or help her, no medicine, herb or healer I could find... We decided.

We had to return, both for her family and for her, for our child's well-being.

The journey was long and arduous, made all the more difficult by the unrest that rippled outwards from Gorun City to the surroundings towns and villages. Also by her ill-health, forcing us to rest multiple times. We eventually arrived in Gorun City perhaps just a week or two before it was time for her water to break, before the furore that is known as the Great Purge occurred...

Sadly, the family did not approve of our love - of me. But at least they did not mistreat her; they gave her the best treatment and she showed signs of recovering even while they lavished her with care. But I felt the unmasked hostility both towards the child she bore and towards me.

The family attempted to kill me. However, these attempts stopped very quickly right after they started, when the great family faced a crisis of existence.

Should I say thankfully? Or should I say it is a tragedy? That wretched and hellish day 14 years ago, the Charlemagne family was accused of making their bed with the demonic powers and wiped out in entirety.

I mourned.

I searched the ruins day after day, hoping for a miracle beyond a miracle, to find my beloved still alive... Or at least, to find her body to bury, to honour her and our unborn child with proper last respects... And though I knew that by now, the bodies would be burnt beyond recognition, I knew I had to search, to dig until my fingernails fell off and bled... I could only hope to find the necklace I had given her.

[The letter seems stained at this point, and the handwriting afterwards looks shaky, as if though the writer paused and came back much later]

During my search, the guards of the remaining Four Great Families chased me out with swords and spears. I returned nonetheless, continuing to search under the cover of night.

I came up with nothing.

That was something that stirred my heart. How could a person die without even a corpse left behind? Be it burnt, torn apart or in pieces... There had to be some traces of her presence somewhere!

Unless...

She escaped!

She must have somehow escaped the purge of the family! And by now, she would have already given birth to our child...

Our son.

I searched for years. Year after year after year. At first it was only in Gorun City, braving the sewers and underbelly of the city, offending many and trespassing into their turf. Many a time I barely survived - I cared not. I had to find my wife, my child.

When I came up with nothing, I widened the search to every surrounding town, village, outpost, settlement. Even farms and homesteads were not passed by.

Like a madman I roamed from place to place, often forgetting to eat, sometimes not sleeping for days on end. I searched all the way up north, sojourning into the frigid north of the Beastman tribes. I sailed across the East Sea, yet found no traces of her on the only seafaring routes. I traversed the south past the Wiarno Kingdom until the Ulysses peaks where no man can cross.

I searched the west into the central desert until I collapsed.

Days later I awoke, not knowing what had happened. But some kind nomads had saved me. I survived.

But I was dead inside.

8 years. 8 long years of searching nearly the entirely of the Leez continent and yet I had come up with nothing. The only respite I had was the fact that somehow, I had advanced to the World-class stage.

By then I was grasping at straws. I had no solution and no leads. I could only return back to Gorun City to try to find out what had happened all those years ago.

I tried entering the ranks of the nobles and royalty to sift through the official records. But there was nothing; not even a single document made mention of the purge that had happened less than a decade ago, as if though the ruling class had decided to erase it from all memories and wipe it out from the annals of history.

If before I had not hated them enough, I hated them even more from that moment on.

But that was not why I joined the Underworld.

I joined them because... I was selfish. Desperate, but more importantly, all I knew was my own selfishness.

I struck a deal - their resources to search for my child, to protect him or her and enrich her with all I have as an inheritance - in exchange for my lifetime in servitude.

As of today, I still have no news. But the search continues.

[This part of the note is marked with a stark red asterisk and an arrow drawn leading to the bottom of the note]

I have done many terrible, terrible things, both before and after joining the Underworld.

Perhaps if I had never been born, Milla would still be alive until today. Perhaps she would have been with a better man and escaped the tragedy of the Great Purge. Perhaps my child would not have to go through years and years orphaned and alone - assuming he still lives...

I ask not for your forgiveness. I only ask for your mercy in exchange for this treasure trove.

Yes, with this I give you the key to the treasure trove, but I have hidden something from the Laughing Man all these years. All this while, I have always hidden, embezzled more than half the wealth of the Gorun City Underworld branch and hoarded it away under the Gorun Stadium.

But to get it, one must have two keys.

The first, my blood or the blood of my descendants while we are alive! As I am now dead at your feet, please... Find my child.

The second, you will have to swear on your life and the lives of your entire family for 9 generations to protect my child, to never let my child come to harm for the rest of your life.

Find him, swear to do this, form the soul contract and the treasure is yours.

So, congratulations! In your hands is the grand wealth of the entire organised crime of the entire of Gorun City!

...All you have to do is save my child and keep my child safe.

[This part looks new, added freshly just days ago]

Finally in the last few months, the first lead was obtained after countless years of searching. There was one more survivor of the Charlemagne family picked up as an orphaned child from the streets of Danedaar and enrolled in the Arena of Valour. There was someone else apart from Charley who survived.

He must be the one, he must be! Even though the name is not the same as what Milla and I had agreed upon if the child... If he were a boy. But the news of a child with the necklace imprinted on his body... The mystical properties of the necklace could only have been used on him, my son! It is my son!

Reader, if this ends up in your hands, I must be dead by now - perhaps at your hands.

Your fate and whether you can possess the treasures is now up to you. Find my son, find the boy with a necklace birthmark on his chest and you will have the treasures.

Farewell.

[End of the note]

Chapter end