Chapter Five - Confussion

"Is that all?" Einar asked himself.

The content of the fragment is short but at least it gives him a clue of what he needs to do next.

Einar chooses the 'Circle of Healing' as his next skill to achieve. With this, it will be a great help for the progress by healing their people and also to avoid getting lost in the game plot.

"This will be a great help to them ----acckk!" He cries out as blood drips down from the side of his mouth.

[The price for retrieving his memory from the fragment starts to consume the player's body.]

Einar holds back his screams because the sound might attract unnecessary attention. He is still wary if there is an enemy in the area.

All information that he has is unclear, without his real memories he is clueless.

"How did this guy become the last boss of this game? Argh! Why can't I remember it?!" Einar asked in frustration about his character now. "If I am the last boss, then at the end of this game I will die?"

He can't help himself but to overthink his situation. Why of all the characters, he became the last boss?

"System! What should I do?" Einar tries to question the system.

The system didn't respond to his question, instead it gave some gift in response.

System: The Character's Information has been unlocked, it automatically shows up on every character you face and see every character's basic information.

The system shows up again and shows Einar's information.

Character's Information

Name: Einar Lionhart

Race: Human

Class: Magician Swordsman

Rank: Commander

Level: 24

While analyzing his profile, something catches his attention. He hears some footsteps that came near to him. He looks back at his right shoulder and his breath hitches in his throat.

A girl with long, pink hair stands in the area as if she is looking for someone. It doesn't take long before she spots him and her eyes widen. She quickly runs towards him. "I got you again." she said and giggled after.

"Oh my-!! Are you okay? It is a lot worse from the last time you fought with the monsters in the east." the lady stated, a concern dripping from her voice.

Character's Information

Name: Shantal Nightingale

Race: Human

Class: Sorceress

Rank: Apprentice

Level: 21

"Shantal?" Einar blurted out her name and a memory with her flashes.

Shantel is his childhood friend and also Einar's first love, he courted her but he stopped when Shantel's brother died from conquering the land from the dark forces. Since that night, he promised to himself that instead of loving her, he changed it to protecting her as paying his debt to Shantel's brother's sacrifice.

Einar takes a deep breath, closing his eyes for a second. When he opens them again, he tries to smile but he fails because of the pain in his chest."Yes, I'm fine. What are you doing here?" he asks while covering his pain expression.

Shantal gives him a straight look. "Well...the battle isn't finished because they suddenly retreat. We don't know if they are going back or they are just hiding. As expected you treat your own wounds secretly. You usually do that to treat yourself because you don't want to show your weak moments." the girl answers while finding something in her magical bag. "Also...uhm.. are you okay?"

His face pales slightly and instinctively hides his vulnerable state.

"After drinking a health potion, I will be fine." Einar answered.

The girl nods in understanding, she then reaches into her bag and throws a bottle of potion over to him. "Here you go."

Einar catches it.

"Thank you." he replied as he drank it.

He saw that his HP points rapidly goes up upto fifty percent and thirty-five percent in mana. This will be enough for casting the Circle of Healing.

Now the question is how do you cast it? There is no button like in the game to easily cast the skill.

System: To cast your skill, say the skill's name and position your hand where you want to cast it.

Skill: Circle of Healing.

Skill Level: Level 1 (Ultimate)

Skill type: Light Magic

Mana cost: 10%

Cooldown: 20 minutes.

You must have enough percent of mana in order to cast the skill. If you have less than the required percentage of mana, your spell can never be cast.

Once you cast the Circle of Healing, your mana will instantly decrease from what it was, a circle will be formed with the caster's hand and will heal all the injured people in a wide range area.

"Let's go back to the gate?" Shantal asks while offering her hands to teleport.

Einar nods in agreement, he accepted Shantal's hand and teleports to the front of the gate. Once they appear back at the Shivergate, they got welcomed by Shivergate's knights.

"Greetings! Commander!" Einar ignored the greetings of the knights and went straight to the battlefield.

The land is still frozen hard and covered in soft snow from an almost constant source of precipitation. The sun shines brightly on the land, but they can feel no warmth in it.

The people there are busy on their own work, to heal everyone that they can heal and retrieve the bodies of the fallen knights. Many warriors died fighting against evil forces that had invaded the kingdom, and as in a religious land, they made sure that they made them buried with ceremony or respect.

Some of them had families waiting for them back at home, but all had one thing in common. They fought for glory and saved more people by sacrificing their lives.

"We have to go back. They have fought for us hard and..." Shantal words have been cut when she realizes Einar's expression.

He is smiling softly. He is amazed at how the Circle of Healing looks like.

That is good, he is not frowning like usual. Shantal commented in her mind.

The Commander continues on walking towards the battlefield, to heal more people until he reaches the crowd of people who are taking dead bodies to their stretches. A familiar hand with an armlet that lays there. The one he gave to Keiran.

"What's up with you?" Shantal whispered beside him when she noticed something different from Einar.

The memory from the battle is still fresh in his mind and the memory of cutting one's head is hunting him. He wants to run but he sees a familiar hand, he knows that is the body of his knight. He went there in a hurry to check on him.

As soon as he gets there the white cloth that covers the knight's body moves suddenly by waking up and it gives a surprise to the Commander.

""BOO!" Keiran shouted when he was sure that someone went to his side.

He laughed so hard because he felt satisfied with his prank. He removed the white cloth that covered his face to see who it was and the moment his eyes met Einar's gray eyes, he froze. He didn't expect that person to be Einar, he closed his eyes to prepare himself for Einar's stern remarks.

But Keiran starts to feel different because of the long silence. He slowly opened his eyes and didn't expect Einar's reaction. Einar's face showed some kind of emotions which were surprise, confusion, fear, anger and finally, relief.

Character's Information

Name: Keiran Ravenwood

Race: Demi-Human

Class: Commoner

Rank: Knight

Level: 23

Shantal hit Keiran's shoulder because of his mischievousness but he just laughed it off and take all Shantal's hits.

Keiran's face showed a big smile and his eyes were filled with mischief. He jumps out from his stretcher and moves to hug Einar tightly around his shoulders. He wanted to do something more naughty to tease Shantal but soon after, two other figures appeared behind the Commander. They are wearing their bright smiles. One of the figures was a woman with long black hair who was wearing a red cape and the other figure was a man dressed in black robes and a red scarf.

Character's Information

Name: Michael Nightingale

Race: Human

Class: Knight

Rank: Duke

Level: 30

Name: Diana Aragon

Race: Half Human, Half Elf

Class: Archer

Rank: Countess

Level: 28

Keiran immediately pushes away Einar, he bows deeply to the group of people and greets them.

"Hello Sir Michael and Lady Diana." The two both nodded as they accepted Keiran's greetings.

"Father!" Shantal called her father, Sir Michael and went straight to him to give a tight hug.

"Einar." Michael turned to the Commander to receive his report after releasing his daughter from his hug.

"I am grateful for all of the help that you've given during the battle. I would like to thank you for fighting along with us." Michael said while looking at Einar straight to his eyes.

"How about we talk inside? I am sure this will take a long time to discuss the matter." Einar replied.

"Okay." Sir Michael agrees and walks side by side with the Commander.

They start to walk inside the gate but stop midway. Diana speaks up first,"What's happening?"

They saw that their people were waiting for them from their small street roads and the others were at their window and rooftop. They throw pink rose petals on their way.

Michael looks at her and he says,"It seems that our land has started to gain popularity thanks to the efforts you've done throughout these past years. Many people have expressed their gratitude to us.''

Diana nods in response."It's a pleasure to hear those kinds of things. However," she turns to Einar. "The Shivergate will not exist today without the assistance of our Commander. My efforts will be nothing without him." she adds with a smug look on her face.

They reach Sir Michael's household and they go straight ahead to his office room.

After entering Sir Michael's study room, the four sat down and Sir Michael opened the scroll. On the scroll was written another order of their king. He squinted his eyes because of the content.

'King Ignis of the Kingdom of Asterin requests the Commander to return to the kingdom.'

Sir Michael sighed heavily after reading the context.

His face became dark with anger. The others remained silent, they already anticipated it. They know that the King of Asterin will use Einar again without rest. As soon as they heard that his mission was done, he immediately filed a request to come back and appoint him again into another place to defend or conquer a land.

Their king didn't care about Einar. He only thinks about the power within him while Einar does all the work. His heartlessness towards his son who was suffering so much for the wrong reasons. They can see that the man has lost control but no one can go against him.

"Do you want to go back? I can make an excuse to avoid him." Michael suggested.

He could imagine Einar's reply that he will follow their King's order but all of them were surprised when Einar accepted Sir Michael's suggestion.

"I-I *coughs --I think we should take a rest, we already had a long night." He stuttered in surprise. "Let's discuss these things later, when everyone has enough rest. We had a long night defending our land."

He excuses himself and calls his servant to guide them to their room.

"What makes him change?" Sir Michael wondered and proceeded to walk to his room.