Chapter 97 - Episode 96- The recordings

Luke quickly walked out. He knew whoever did this must have not left anyone in a normal state or alive.

He quickly made his way to the healers' house, hoping the healer had made a recording crystal.

Unknown to the village and the rest of the people, was the fact that the empire post a magi to every settlement under the empire.

These magis arrive in the village pretending to be a retired warrior, soldier, mercenary etc. They have few responsibilities and one of them includes teaching talented children magi.

Usually, the magis who undertake these jobs know that it's a lifelong job, with a chance to die if someone powerful attacked the village. But most low ranking magis take it due to how lucratively paid the job is along with getting the chance to build connections with future talented magis from the village.

Their most important job is to leave a secret recording behind in case any sort of mishap fell to the village.

The empire can then use these recordings device to determine what had happened to the village and take action accordingly.

The secret of the recordings is very closely guarded. Only those who have sworn an oath and above certain ranks will have the knowledge to these secrets, in order to stop the people who attacked the village to tamper with the device.

Luke knew that being one of the oldest and only magi, besides him, inside the village, the healer was the magi the empire had sent, to secretly train and safeguard the village.

As he arrived he saw the mangled body of what was once the healer. It seems he was in the middle of casting a spell as he was killed.

The person who had massacred and laid waste to the villagers and the healer has to be someone above rank 3 at least. The healer himself was a rank 1 magi.

But what kind of spell did they use? That was the question that was bugging him.

Suddenly Luke stopped at the entrance to the healers' house as he realised something. Damn, it's not a spell. There is no way a spell can do something like this in a short amount of time.

This is not the work of a magi, It's the work of an award! And that too a seemingly well-developed award. But what would an award user gain from laying waste to a village like this? And he was pretty sure this had never happened in his past life. He has only arrived in this lifeless than 5 hours and has done very minimal changes in the past, but that doesn't warrant such a huge change to the future.

So that means something is happening here that is outside of his sphere of influence.

Luke walked inside the healers' house and looked around where the device could be hidden. Every magi had their own secret hiding place for the recording device.

It didn't take him long with his experience to find where the device was. It was placed inside a secret compartment under a desk the healer had.

Due to the war in his previous life, he had often encountered settlements razed to the ground. It was only using the recording device left behind the magi in that settlement he could find the perpetrators often.

After taking the recording device out he started listening to it. He could hear the terrified screams in the background as the magi activated the recording device.

He saw the terrified face of the magi appear on the screen in front of him.

"August 2nd time of recording 1:25 pm.

Cause of event seems to be a very powerful magi.

High ranking Magi user seems extremely proficient in telekinetic.

The identity of the user is disturbing." The healer paused for a second, while Luke could see the terror in his eyes of the unknown.

"A villager died today; her name was Linda Storm. Her cause of death is the unique body condition magi drainage. There was no saving her." Luke's heart skipped a beat when he heard his sister's name. 'Why is he reporting about his sisters' death?'.

He only found out about his sisters' condition a few years after he left the village, in his past life. It was a condition only treatable by a rank 5 magi. But what surprised him is that the healer guessed her condition accurately.

Magi drainage, it was a rare condition where the bodies organs craved for magi particle and absorbed all magi particle inside their body.

Since Linda had no talent in magi accumulation her body only contained very little magi particles. However, her organs didn't care for this and simply devoured all the magi particle in her. But after a while her body will be left without any magi particle, so to combat this her organs start to devour the physical energy produced by the body, leaving her weak and frail.

The terrifying thing about this condition is that it the craving for the energy increases as the user grows old. Most people of this condition, like Linda, finally ends up dying due to the organs eating themselves to satiate their hunger.

So that meant the healer knew her condition and never told Luke about it. Luke guessed the healer probably didn't want to give him false hope. As hiring a rank 5 magi to treat this condition for someone like him was simply impossible.

He stopped his thoughts to carry on listening to the healer.

"Her brother Luke Storm was very shaken finding about her death, acting in very violent and aggressive behaviour toward me and his stepmother, as I went to heal him after the mother came for me. From his reaction, it seemed as if the stepmother cared very little for her very daughters' existence and only cared for him.

It seems my analysis was true about the stepmother being a paedophile, who was lusting after the beautiful young boy, thus marrying his father to get close to him. However, the birth of his sister protected him, along with him having to provide for them by hunting, after the death of his father, 1 year after she was born."

Luke started getting a bad feeling about this as the healer carried on describing his family situation.

"The boy proceeded to take the girls dead body with him and left the village at around 10 am while threatening to kill anyone who followed him; implying he was leaving the village forever.

At approximately 1:20pm the target entered the village. As the target entered calmly no one minded her.

Very quickly, one by one the villager soon realised the identity of the target. It was the dead girl, Linda."

Luke dropped the recording device while his heart leapt to his mouth. He was right, Linda was alive. The recording device carried on playing while Luke remained in a state of shock.

"It took everyone a while to identify her due to her hair being back along with it being a different colour, black. But the change that was the most astonishing was that she seemed to brim with vitality and energy, unlike her weak and skinny body.

She very quickly started killing, no I mean torturing people one by one. She used her telekinetic spell to twist what I assume to be people who were picking on her before she died.

The guards tried stopping her, but it was futile as she crushed them all, within seconds. People tried fleeing out of the village but found that there was a barrier stopping them from leaving.

Seeing her power, I know I don't stand a chance fighting her so I quickly decided to make a recording instead of helping others so that whoever finds this can avenge us.

She is currently gone inside her home. From the screams, I heard I presume she is torturing her mother. Few brave guards had run inside the home only for their agonising screams to join with that woman.

I don't know what changed in the few hours after she was taken outside the village by her brother.

The state of her brother who had carried her outside the village is unknown. I will end this recording by showing her identity."

The healer finally ended his report, with his shaky voice. He brought the recording device outside, pointing it to Luke's house. Luke could hear and recognise the loud animal-like shriek coming out of his house as his stepmother.

Finally, the house grew silent and the door of the house opened. The recording started to shake uncontrollably. He knew the healer was starting to get frightened.

Soon from the shaky recording, he could see a woman appearing from the doorway. Long black hair replaced her previous short brown hair before she turned bold. The perfect figure of a teenage beauty replaced her previous skinny and frail self. Her long loose skirt and blouse she previously wore perfectly fit her as it displayed her perfect figure. Her face was stoic as she walked through the bloody ground.

That was all Luke saw before the healer ran inside and ended the recording.

Luke was still in shock unable to believe what he just saw. A part of didn't want to believe it, while another part wanted to believe that she was alive.

'How did she change so much? Where did she awaken her award from? Who gave her a memorial stone?' All sorts of thoughts and question rummaged through his head.

'The most important of all how did she get so powerful? I know for a fact that the power she displayed wasn't simply Psychokinesis, there were aspects of Telepathy as well. The mad ramblings of Joshua and his wife, along with that woman were all proof of it. This confirmed one thing, she was at least a rank 4 or above award user. How could someone just jump ranks just after awakening? Not to mention who raised her from the dead?'

Luke suddenly remembered something. 'The apostle of the Fake has arrived.'.

'Who was Fake!?'