Chapter 22 - Devil's Deal

Tiberius made a sour face and pulled his head back a little. “What do you mean? You trust someone you met a few months ago and then kidnapped over the group you have been living with?”

“Of course not, I would kill you to save any of them in a heartbeat,” Rael replied with a confident smile, which scared Tiberius a bit. “But this is a different matter. Unlike them, I know what you would want.”

Tiberius did not quite understand what he meant. But he had accepted it; Rael was the type you could only pull the explanations from because he wouldn’t spill them out. So he did not mind it and had tried the same thing before, mana gathering. He found it easy to do, so it felt weird that people here need school to learn this. Of course, there could be advanced techniques, but they could learn everything gradually.

Indeed, Tiberius was right, but only for his case. He didn’t think about it at the moment, but he had realized it while checking some magic books. They were not just expensive but also a little complex for a newbie. That was the primary reason why people would prefer to pay a high price for education; unlike on Earth, where Tiberius had lived, he had access to the internet to learn anything and everything.

“So, I can use magic?” asked Tiberius, still looking at his hand, covered in mana.

“Yes, but not like others,” Rael replied. He looked up without moving his head, only with his eyes. “Actually you can, but you won’t survive it,” he added.

“I won’t survive it? What do you mean?” Tiberius asked, waving the mana away as soon as he heard Rael’s words.

“You didn’t think the crystal just gave you free mana, did you?” He giggled.

Tiberius examined the crystal, then picked it up with his other hand, inspecting it and the hand with which he held it, but finding nothing unusual, "Mind explaining?" He inquired.

"It's basically a mana converter. It eats one of your main essences and converts it to mana. Of course, the amount it eats can be compared to how much mana it provides you with. But none of your resources are infinite.”

“Can you be exact?” Tiberius raised his voice a little since he was getting impatient. “What does this steal from me?” He asked, holding the crystal next to Rael’s face.

Rael took a breath. “As I said, this is a myth and I have only read it, so I can tell you as much as I know.”

Tiberius nodded, because he would rather have a fairy tale explanation than none.

“A daha, or in your case human, is human because it has some essences. There are seven main things: life force, memory, soul, will, emotion, identity, and creativity. This crystal will draw whicheveris strongest in you until there is nothing left, as long as you live and then will start to draw the next one. Or maybe it will draw them equally; no one is sure about that. But anyone who has tried to use it has lost something, of course, in the long run.”

Hearing this, Tiberius threw the crystal back at Rael. “Thank you but I am happy without any mana.” Then he looked at his hands, tried to gather mana, but couldn’t, and realized that what Rael was saying was correct: the crystal was giving him mana, but he did not feel like he was losing anything. “Let’s go back if this was all you gotta say,” he added.

“Don’t you want to go back?”

“That’s what I said,” Tiberius replied annoyedly, then turned toward the way they came from. “Let’s go.”

“I guess you got it wrong.” Rael said, “I meant to your world. Don’t you want to go back?”

Hearing this, Tiberius suddenly stopped and turned back, “Is it possible? But you said I can’t!”

“I know what I said, but there is always a way, and only I may know it,” Rael said, then looked around, like searching for something. Then walked toward a tree with fast steps.

“Will you tell me?”

Tiberius started following him, but Rael turned toward him quickly. “Why are you following me? I’m gonna take a piss; give me a space.”

“Piss? You are gonna take a piss in the middle of a conversation?” He screamed, annoyed at the unseriousness of Rael, “Can you be more serious?”

Rael did not seem to listen; he walked toward a tree and looked at its fruits, then jumped to grab it. After a few jumps, he couldn’t grab any of them. But instead of giving up, he held the tree from the sides and started shaking it.

With the impact, the fruits began to fall. When two of them broke free from the tree and were about to fall, Rael quickly let go of the tree and caught them, saying, "Hold these," before throwing them at Tiberius.

He caught them but had no idea what Rael was doing or what he wanted with these fruits. His meaningless actions made him even angrier, to the point where he raised his voice, "Will you fucking grow up and talk like an adult instead of playing around like a child?"

Rael still did not react to him and turned away to take a piss in the bushes.

A few minutes later, he pulled his pants back and approached. "Squishe them over my hands slowly," he instructed.

Tiberius was angry, but when he saw Rael waiting with his hands together in front of him and slightly bent over, he did as he was told. He didn't expect anything to happen, but clean water poured out of the fruit. The longer and harder he squeezed, the more it came out, and Rael used it to wash his hands.

"The other one," he said, pointing to the other fruit he had thrown him. Tiberius repeated the process, and Rael finished washing his hands. Then he shook his hands violently and rubbed them against his pants.

"Are you finished?" Tiberius said, breathing heavily through his nose.

"How old are you?" Rael inquired, straightening his back and looking him in the eye.

“How is thi—”

"Your age, Tiberius," Rael interrupted him.

"I turned 24 this year," he replied angrily.

"24, you say, and expect me to act like an adult rather than a child?" Rael asked, “It is funny, you know. I am over 40, which is what I believe, since I do not count years. But even without that, I am 100% sure that I have been in this hell longer than you have been alive. And I know that being serious all the time will do no good to you. Yes, I do wanna save everyone; yes, I would like you to go back to your world; and yes, I wish I could skin all those gods alive…” He suddenly stopped, realizing he had started screaming and scared Tiberius a little, so he lowered his voice and took a deep breath. “...but if I had been focusing and not relaxing when I could, I would be dead in another pit for sure.”

“I’m sorry,” said Tiberius, feeling that he pushed a little too much, but hearing that he could go back to his world, where he is not chased by monsters or hunted by nations, was an escape route. “I just got excited.”

“Forget it,” Rael waved his hand. “It’s not the first time I’ve heard it and probably won’t be the last. Anyway, about your way back. Firstly, Harald told me you came here after a black mist surrounded you, right?”

“Yes, I was inside a black mist, and suddenly, a few seconds later, I was falling from the sky. Then…” Tiberius stopped for a moment. “...you know the rest.”

“Right,” Rael nodded. “That is dark magic, magic that requires huge sacrifice.”

“So I was summoned here with dark magic?”

“Basically. I don’t know who did it, or why, but I know one thing. Magic requires one’s will to cast it. Since you couldn’t cast it yourself, someone cast it instead of you, for you. Which is not good.” Rael squeezed his limbs.

“Because?” Tiberius looked at him with questioning eyes.

“Because it does not only require sacrifice, it requires a huge amount of sacrifice. Calling someone from another world, about which you have no information, and that is just a probability; they could have info, but it would require at least hundreds of lives to be slaughtered just to pull you here.”

“Hundreds?” Tiberius’s eyes widened and he did not even close his mouth with the shock of the number. “Who in the world would do something so cruel?”

“I know a lot of people who would do that in a heartbeat. The world is a cruel place. But I can’t find a reason for anyone to do it,” Rael said, then stopped and frowned, “unless they knew that you were an anomaly.”

“How could someone know? And even if they knew, there are billions of people in my world. None of us have magic. Why me?” he started to question.

“I don’t know; I have no explanation. Nothing.” Rael said.

“You think it’s gods’ work?”

“Call you here so they could kill you? Remember that I was not going to come to that festival. It was pure luck…” Rael stopped for a moment and looked at the crystal, “...or maybe fate. But that’s not our main point. The reason I told you that there is no way back is because it will require us to find the person who did it and do the same dark magic, with the same amount of sacrifices, maybe even more. Would you do that?”

“No,” he disagreed, “Of course not. I am no monster by any means. I couldn’t even kill the person I hate, let alone sacrifice hundreds.”

“Good to hear that,” Rael smiled. “This leaves us the second choice.”

“And that is…”

“This,” Rael showed the crystal, “there is more to the myth than just converting essence to mana.”

“How accurate is it, though?” Tiberius wondered.

“Not sure, but so far, it is correct, isn’t it?”

Tiberius nodded in agreement. “Should we head back?” Rael offered, “Don’t worry, I will explain it.”

“Okay,” he let out a slight giggle, knowing that Rael felt his question. Tiberius began to follow after Rael back to Jack so they could go back to camp. And indeed, Rael explained the myth.

“The myth is simple actually. This crystal is part of a larger one. There are seven of them. It is believed that when they are together, they can be used for wish granting. Any wish will be granted. The limits of it are unknown, since the last person who wished shattered it into pieces and asked them to be sent away in different parts of the world. She held the last piece and buried it, which I accidentally found.”

“So it is like Dragon Ball; when they are together, you can wish for anything.”

“Oh, your world had something like this? I thought you said you guys didn’t have any magic,” Rael asked in all seriousness.

“No, you get it wrong. Dragon Ball is a popular story. It also has balls and wishes,” he explained.

“Hmm, but this is the real world, so we need to be careful about this. We don’t know about limitations or side effects of wishes. There is also no information on other parts. Did someone found them or are they still buried somewhere? We don’t know. But there is one thing I know: even if you don’t use the power of the stone, it will still lead you to your dream and basically reshape your fate. That is why you need to know what you want with it.”

“So, if I have the crystal, will it lead me to others so I can wish to go back?”

“Probably, but as I said, this is a myth, and I have only limited information.”

Tiberius understood that if he wanted to go back, he needed to agree to some type of exchange, either using the stone and finding others or sacrificing others. Indeed, the first option sounded better, but there was still something bugging him.

“What is your gain from this?” He asked Rael, “You said that I will eventually do what you want to do. What is that?”

“Isn’t it obvious already? End this God nonsense and fix this rotten world.”

“Wow, hold up, you are asking me to help you to take down gods and basically turn the world upside down?”

“Yes, that is exactly what I am asking,” Rael said, stopped walking, and turned his face toward Tiberius. “Let’s have an agreement.” He extended his hand, waiting for Tiberius to shake it. “You help me in my cause, and I use everything I have to send you back.”

Tiberius frowned and waited for a moment. “What if your myth stays as a myth and I can’t wish to go back?”

“Then I will personally include myself in the list of hundreds of people to sacrifice in order to send you back. Of course, I will choose only criminals, no innocent civilians.”

Tiberius stood there for a while, in disbelief. He didn't expect Rael to come up with the most brutal agreement he'd heard.

“Now, what do you say? Are you in?” Rael said, pointing at his hand with his eyes.