Inside the mist

Arthur smiled strangely when the man in front of him stared at him. The man, stared at him with blank eyes, full of contempt and laziness. A drop of sweat fell down from his head from the nervousness he felt.

They both went on a staring competition for a while before the man took a sip from his wine pouch.

"Put your hands on the ball kid..." Alfred told, as he slowly closed the lid of his pouch.

Arthur didn't disobey and laid his right palm on the crystal. As soon as his hand touched it, it glowed brightly, emitting dark rays of light beam.

Alfred slightly raised one of his eyebrows when he saw the intensity of the light.

'Interesting, Rank 1 mana affinity'. He thought in an amusing way.

Out of the tens of children that he evaluated, the highest mana affinity found was rank 3! This kid is a genius among geniuses!

Still, he didn't really know what to do in such situations so he just treated him like how he would have treated a rank 3 genius...like everyone.

"Go line up with everyone." Alfred waved his hand, shooing Arthur, the last one to be evaluated.

At last, his part of the job was done.

He was somewhat amazed that this year, there were quite more chosen orphans than before. Usually, they would arrive in hundreds but this time, he was able to count thousands!

'Time changes...' He thought. He really was getting old. He looked at the confused faces of the children lining up and a sudden memory flashed in his mind.

It was about tens years after he was sentenced inside the mist. Back then, the king created a new plan to reinforce the security and protection of the seal: Operation Dark Dragon. Knights of the mist would be sent outside the mist to recruit orphans in order to be trained and put to use.

Back then, only hundreds of them were found. That was quite the number back then because the darkness attribute is one of the rarest attributes in the world.

The faces of the children years ago were quite similar to the ones he saw in front of him. They still looked very weak though. Of course, that would change once they receive their training.

'I wonder how many of them would survive?' Alfred thought as he waited for the other examiners to also finish checking their orphans.

Once all the knights finished recording all of the orphan's mana affinity, they all gathered and started to sort out all of the results. The orphans numbered 2000 in total.

After a while, all 50 knights dispersed and made a straight line.

"Listen carefully children. I will now introduce one by one these old men. For every one of them, I shall call 40 of you. You shall line up in front of them."

An nice old man with a long white beard said slowly with one hand behind his back and the other holding a scroll.

"Sir Rust. The ones under his tutelage shall be: Balc, Starl,..."

"Next! Sir Daley: Yaji, Walt,..."

"Next ....."

"Lastly! Grandmaster Alfred: Fey, Hog, Quil, Arthur,..."

Arthur heard his name and went to line up with the others. He was under a certain 'Grandmaster Alfred'. Arthur wondered what was the difference between the 'sir' and 'grandmaster'. Is there a special meaning in these titles.

Once all 60 of Alfred's students were gathered, the long bearded old man smiled and did something that surprised all of the children.

He slowly stood on his tip toes and slowly levitated, with his hands still behind his back.

"You should be having many questions in your small brains. Where is this place? What is that mist? Why are you here?"

Despite being old, his voice was still full of power and energy. Not even one children couldn't hear him talk.

"First of all, be proud for the king himself has chosen to entrust you the FATE OF THE ENTIRE WORLD! The mist is a powerful concealing spell allowing only us Dark Dragons to freely enter and exit it."

All the kids looked around and examined the giant mist wall when the old man talked about it. The wall was so high and so long that they couldn't even see where it ended.

The old man floating in the sky removed one hand from his back and pointed in one direction.

"Listen carefully! That is what the mist is concealing and also what we going to protect: 'the Seal'"

He seriously said as he pointed at a giant red portal far away. It looked quite small from where they stood but in reality, it was very big.

"You should all know the story. The demons were all destroyed along the portal they came from during the heavenly war. Well, that is a blatant lie. The demons were never destroyed and neither the was portal. The truth is that the portal was just sealed by the Demi-god Alice. Of course, a mere human cannot completely seal the portal opened by the devil himself. Demons would still manage to sip out of occasionally! That is why WE are here! We are expected to protect this place from getting overrun by demons."

He looked back at the children and smiled widely.

"Whether you like it or not."

After his arrogant words, he snapped his finger and in front of him materialized a giant black dragon.

He waved his sleeves and the dragon got divided into many countless versions of itself before shooting towards the orphans.

When seeing the waves of black dragons, the children attempted to run but soon discovered that they couldn't even lift a finger! The floating old man was emitting a strange pressure that kept them from moving!

They couldn't do anything as the dragons entered the body of each one of them. Strangely, they didn't feel any pain at all when the dragon hit them. Instead, a black dragon head tattoo appeared on their hands.

Arthur looked at the tattoo on the back of his hand and remembered the words of the old man.

'Whether you like it or not.' It seemed like they would be the slaves of these people.

"With these, if you disobey, reveal any secrets or even betray the Black dragon, death shall await you!" The old man coldly stated and put his remaining arm on his back before flying away.

All the children stayed there with blank faces in their eyes. Things were happening too fast for them.

One day they suddenly gets kicked from their orphanage and the other day they get threatened to death.

Some girls couldn't take the pressure anymore and fell down on their knees and cried. The boys tried to act tough but their act still couldn't hide the tears in their eyes.

"Bring me back to the orphanage!"

"Where is nun Rachel?!"

No knew who started it but the orphans started complaining one by one. After a while, almost half of the field was full of the cries of the children.

Meanwhile, the knights were looking at them with emotionless faces, as if the state of events didn't even matter to them. Only, Grandmaster Alfred had an annoyed gaze while he was sipping wine.

"Won't you shut up!?" He berated his group as he raised his hand. The tattoo on it slowly lit.

As soon as the Alfred raised his hand, many shrieking noises could be heard. It was the orphans under him! They were rolling and pouncing on the ground, the dragon tattoo on their hands glowing brightly.

When the other orphans saw what happened when that one knight raised his hand, they immediately shut their mouths. They stared at the orphans under Alfred and silently shivered.

They were all twitching in pain on the ground! The pain they felt was not just fleshly pain but a pain even reaching their souls.

"If you pass out from this, your consciousness won't be able to protect both your mind and soul...in other words, umm...you would die from this if you faint."

Instead of lowering the pressure on the kids, Alfred clenched his fist, making them scream louder and louder. Only the pitiful screams of the children could be heard throughout the entire area.

He imagined that he would find some pleasure in 'amusing' his students for a while but he started frowning after a while.

'Annoying' He thought. He really wanted to continue this longer but their voices gave him a headache. So he lowered his hand and the tattoo's light faded.

Alfred examined what 'remained' of his future students. Exactly half of them had blank looks on their faces as if they didn't have a soul.

'Not bad...maybe I should have went on for a bit longer.' He thought. He really expected there to be only 5 or 6 left. That way, his job would be easier.

He then examined the alive ones and saw that 5 of them were 'broken'. Their minds couldn't bear the Dragon Shout that Alfred activated. The soul attack literally shattered their consciousness into smithereens.

"With that done, only fifteen of you left huh? Listen carefully, everyday you shall receive the same amount of shock. If you don't want to lose your poor little life, behave. Don't think that just because your darkness affinity is rare that I won't dare kill you."

"The darkness element itself is a reason to no spare any of our lives. Why else would we be sentenced to death here? It does not matter whether you die by my hands or by a demon's."

He snapped his finger and a dark fire lit on the 'handicapped' orphans and the dead ones too. The alive ones quickly backed away because the fire spread so fast that it didn't even take a minute before their corpses disappeared.

The sudden death of the orphans made the entire children shiver in fear. Some wanted to cry, to shout, scream with all their might but didn't dare to.

Only Arthur stood there with a strange thought inside his mind.

'Why wasn't I affected?' He wondered.

Although he too has been shaken by the sudden death of many children, he was also lost in thoughts of why that so called Dragon Shout didn't affect him.

'Wait...don't tell me it's tha-'

Before he could speculate on the cause of his immunity, Alfred already started walking without even bothering to give any directions to the orphans.

Then soon awoke from the shock of the earlier deaths and quickly stood up and followed Alfred.

Arthur too followed the lead of the children as he sighted.

'This is going to be a long day.' He thought.