by William Hill
The Last Apostle
Resurrection
Book 1
By William Hill
Chapter 1: World Bridge-Prologue
There was a single inhabitable planet called Argos, revolving around the humongous sun with dozens of gaseous planets filling the stellar system.
The planet flourished until the intelligent bipedal race which called themselves humans entered the big picture.
This intelligent race was able to socialize, gathered up to survive, and advance with the help of each other.
Over hundreds of years, humanity was able to generate energy to mechanize, automize machines, and prospered.
Humanities history was short compared to the history of the whole planet but they used up more limited natural resources than any other race ever did before.
Argos was humongous but the population of the human race broke through the three-digit billions as if it was nothing and humanity's living space reached its limits with its construction abilities after an additional hundred years.
They had to leave the solar system to find new planets to continue their growth and advancement but it was easier said than done as the speed of light and theories weren´t easy to achieve which was one essential requirement to leave the solar system to explore new solar systems.
Many humans even prayed to whoever god they wanted to, that something would change and they would make a breakthrough in space traveling.
Years passed and a sudden meteor shower shocked humanity to the bones as the furthest planet on the same stellar system was pierced by them, shattering into millions of pieces without any efforts.
The meteor shower's appearance and disappearance happened in an extremely short span of time but the most important known fact was, that the meteor shower came from outside the solar system without anyone noticing it.
One could say humanity's prayers were answered as scientists picked up a few remains of the meteorites which were made out of an unknown material never seen before.
The meteors radiated cold but tranquil energy, causing the tense surrounding to release their tension subconsciously.
This energy was much more powerful than any energy ever invented by humanity and it was even stronger than nature's laws as it made the meteorite float slightly in the air.
Researching the meteorite, many things were found out.
For example, the radiating energy from the meteorites could accelerate the growing speed of plants and animals around them.
The scientists researching the meteorite felt more vigorous, slowly grew stronger and it even looked like their aging speed decelerated which made the other humans envious.
One day, years after the first research about the meteorite began, cracks began to spread over the meteorite's surface without any warning signs, and an unmeasurable amount of the still unknown energy began to condense into a blue shining liquid-like ball that peeled its outer stone skin and ascended into the sky.
While most humans around the world were still working, nature felt a sudden fate-changing event and whole wildlife went silent.
Only humans at the other side of the planet far away from the laboratory where the meteorites assembled didn't feel anything.
The blue shining ball with the accumulated mysterious energy continued its ascension until it reached a certain height, where it floated peril, without moving a single inch.
All humans around the laboratory were anxious and horrified because of the unknown.
It caused them goosebumps and they imagined dreadful scenarios without being able to do anything at all.
Some humans with a weaker will started crying, while others hugged each other trying to find comfort and others could only stare into the sky with a blank mind, not being able to think straight.
The liquid-ball seemed to get stronger, as a suction force spread around it while it´s size decreased over time.
Distancing themselves from the suction force that seemed to get stronger over time, mankind could only look high into the sky.
The amount of compressed energy inside this tennis ball-sized blue shining ball was huge enough to devastate at least half of the continent if not the whole planet.
Time passed and the scientists suddenly noticed a surprising change within the blue shining ball, causing them to get even more nervous.
Luckily the energy was floating tranquil and stable until it reached the size of a ping pong ball.
The compressed energy was getting more and more unstable after reaching a certain threshold and it trembled violently, terrifying the surrounding humans.
At this moment even the humans on the other side of Argos noticed that something was wrong and the whole livelihood of the planet tensed up, not being able to move freely.
It was as if the planet itself was under a threat by the single little energy ball as nature was as quiet as never before in its history of billions of years.
Space seemed to twist suddenly and blood-red cobweb-like cracks formed below the energy ball leading the energy ball to a more stable constitution.
The more cracks appeared the less violently was the energy ball seemingly getting more stabler and some humans sighed in relief
Not only did these cracks appear close to the blue shining ball, rather these cracks appeared all around Argos, in the ocean, inside the jungle, underground, even high in the sky, almost everywhere one could think of.
Nobody knew exactly what to think about the sudden cracks they could see in the sky, but from the looks of it, there was no way it could have been something good.
On one side they felt relieved that the blue shining energy ball didn't explode while on the other side the red cracks didn't seem to be something one wanted to have on one's planet either.
The cracks all over the planet grew in size until they reached a certain magnitude. Some were bigger while others were small in size but all of them had one particular fact in common.
While its frame was blood-red space inside was pitch-black, without letting a single sunray lightening up the interior.
It looked like the way to the abyss and it frightened the living beings around the cracks.
Right at this moment one of the worst scenarios the scientists feared happened in front of them.
The seemingly stable energy continued to compress itself causing it to implode. Devastating amounts of mysterious energy were released causing the blood-red cracks to shake violently, twisting the space around additionally.
Surprisingly the enormous amount of energy didn´t devastate the landscape, rather than that it enveloped the whole planet with its blue shining color before invading every living being and the planet itself until it reached the core.
Not a single cell was spared and the whole planet jolted, creating earthquakes and tsunamis, volcano outbreaks, as it was invaded by the unknown energy.
Unknowingly to humanity, Argos´ shackles from billions of years ago were released and its core was resurrected.
The former pitch-black abyss like the inside of the blood-red cracks changed into hundreds of different colorful landscapes.
While many of these landscapes looked beautiful with majestic mountains, lively forest, and clean oceans, the sight of other cracks wasn't as joyful and beautiful as mankind thought a moment before.
Hideous-looking creatures with razor-sharp teeth, thick scales, massive tails, and bloodthirst in their eyes stepped through a certain crack while various other dreadful beings entered Argos through the various cracks
Bridges between different worlds appeared and Argos entered a new dark age of devastation and death.
Chapter 2: Dead Eyes
"Jason tell us about the chronicles right after the da
rk-age began!" a deep but somehow scholarly voice resounded inside the small classroom.
A young 13-year-old boy stood up from his chair with a straight back facing the front without looking anywhere in particular, as he began to narrate the events from 300 years ago.
"300 years ago the invasion of foreign races and wild beasts began because the mana outbreak that occurred during this time
The mana outbreak created rifts to other planes that linked them with Argos for some reason we don´t know.
In the beginning, humanity was unaware of the invasion of foreign races.
They were still shocked by the mysterious energy explosion and the creation of blood-red cracks with landscapes behind them.
Later on news about the appearance of tall, bulky and humanoid-like race with huge wings, ravenlike heads and medieval-looking weapons overshadowed the explosion of the overly compressed "mana" ball with the invasion of the unknown energy we now call [Mana] inside every living being to the essence including the planet.
Unfortunately, humanity wasn't prepared to fight back against an invasion of excessively terrifying existences and suffered huge losses.
The [Corvi] race wasn´t the only invading race and many intelligent races entered Argos, transforming the planet into a battlefield between them, leaving humanity as cannon fodder for each other.
Humanity tried to fight back but their weapons were completely useless against these foreign races, as they protected themselves with a membrane of mana.
This mana membrane deflected bullets and even bombing was useless against them.
Humanity suffered and had to withdraw to the smallest continent on Argos´ also called Canir with their surrounding Archipelago of around 40 small islands.
Canir, where most humans are living now has the smallest amount of permanent rifts and the permanent rift, fortunately, connected none of the intelligent bipedal race planes with Argos.
The only permanent rifts it had were worlds with beasts that invaded Argos quite often because of their wild instincts and desire to massacre humans.
Even if they had everything they needed on their own side, these powerful beasts continued their attack not caring about the losses of humanity and even they themselves had to suffer once in a while.
Meanwhile, the Archipelagos had a few more permanent rifts and a huge problem with the overpopulation of beasts.
They didn´t receive much support from the main continent, as nobody was able to fight these existences head-on.
Humanity lost more than 90% of its population that had not a single effective way to fight back except using fire against fire.
It took them a long time but after years of experimenting and a huge amount of luck, humanity was able to handle mana more easily.
But they weren´t able to control elements as they saw from the other races that also used mana as their main weapon.
Some could manipulate earth while others could control water as if it was the extensions of their arms.
But humans don't own an innate element they could use their mana with.
Rather than a bane, it was a blessing in disguise.
Maybe it was luck or destiny, as a young and courageous or more likely naive teenager saved the cub of an invading beast from getting killed.
After the cub was saved, the youth was also almost abducted and killed by other humans because it was seen as a threat.
This particular cub wanted to protect Its savior as it bit instinctively into the finger of the youth, subconsciously forming the so-called soulbond contract between each other with the appearance of bright shining light."
Jason stopped for a second and took a few deep breaths before he continued his narration
"The whole process about the first soulbond is described in a dozen-sided text but I will skip most of it."
"Unknowingly to everyone else, the youth felt a connection between himself and the beast cub slowly building up and even more importantly, he felt a connection to a certain element.
Using mana, he could feel the connection to the cub´s affinity and he was somehow even able to use it to a certain extent.
Furthermore, after forming the contract the youth found out that his constitution increased to a certain extent and it continues to grow with its bound.
Through the soulbond the contractor's constitution would receive an amplification which influenced everything around the contractor.
That was how mankind found out about the soul awakening and soulbond contracts.
With this important find, the exploration of rifts to other planes with weaker beasts began.
Many other things were additionally found out.
For example, not every beast was compatible with each human but even so, they were desperately trying to gain strength.
To find out if a human was compatible with other elements they created certain relics with the remains of artifacts from the battlefield of other races.
As such, mankind could awaken ones´ soul, which would show what type of beast one could form a contract with in addition to the compatible affinity.
Everyone wanted to form a contract with strong beasts but it was only obvious that these beasts wouldn't just look at their cubs getting kidnapped.
A war between beasts and humans started with the beasts on the winning side.
Even if humanity was losing out, some cubs were still caught and more and more humans got to use their bounds´ elements.
Humanity suffered many losses but they didn't retreat without any gains.
They grew stronger with each day passing, while the amplification of their soulbond´s increased the overall combat prowess of humanity by a large margin.
While only around one billion humans were left, they grew stronger and stronger each day they absorbed the natural mana, Argos began to generate since the mana outbreak.
Nature and mana worked together against humanity as plants, stimulated by mana began to grow more than ten times faster while the strength of animals increased, the more mana they absorb-
This increased the reproduction ability in addition to the strengthened constitutions they received from mana.
Evolving wasn´t a fantasy anymore and millions of new races emerged from wildlife and evolved plants were sometimes even able to achieve sentience while animals were able to acquire an element affinity.
Humanity was forced to gather together in order to build a few fortress-like cities close together in order to survive without getting overwhelmed by beast tides.
While the first rifts were the biggest problem at the beginning, the numbers of evolved wild beasts were getting more and more threatening, forcing humans to increase their military power more and more.
On Canir 12 permanent rifts exist while some of them are.."
*DING DANG DONG*
"That's enough for today, Jason, your reproduction was good."
The school bell rang and the teacher left the classroom
Jason was still standing there with his feeble build, patiently waiting for everyone to leave.
He had short black hair and pretty facial features. If his hair were longer, many would mistake him for a girl.
With his tender age of 13 years, he had still had some childish features but he wasn't chubby as he didn't eat much.
His eyes however were Jason's most special feature, as they looked like a dead fish without the slightest trace of life within.
A fortune-teller predicted that his eyes were the most important asset in addition to his beautiful soul when he was born, however, that was only a dream for the young Jason at the moment, something unattainable one wanted to happen sometime in the future.
Jason thought of it as a bad joke because he was born with malfunctioned optic nerves.
His mother was said to have special eyes but he had never seen her obviously.
She worked at a big and respected family, that was said to treat their workers as if they were part of their family.
However, one day
an evening years ago when his mother should have been already at home, a butler came over to their apartment with a tearful voice and something heavy in his hands, a briefcase
The butler told him that his mother died during a spar between their family's patriarch and another big clan's heir.
Apparently, there were some disputes during a party with multiple important personalities of large families involved, which resulted in the foreign heir getting disgraced and humiliated.
The foreign heir was aware of the intimate bond between the servants and the Cerus family.
As such he went on a rampage and it was said that more than ten servants died before he was finally stopped.
It was a disaster and the whole party was immediately disbanded and the Cerus family was dismayed, filled with anger because of the deceased employees.
Having money and the power to subdue small families like the Cerus-family, the opposite heir chose money to shut down the families who lost their loved ones.
Not even the media dared to release any news about the accident that happened.
The family-like employer knew about Jason's situation and they offered some help but Jason couldn´t comprehend what happened as he was still a child without any experience of death.
The butler gave Jason his condolence and laid down the briefcase next to Jason, where he would be able to reach it before he decided to leave the blind boy alone within the lonely apartment.
He didn't even know the name of his mother's killer, only the family name of his mother's employer was branded in his mind.
'Cerus'
He wasn´t even able to cry, as the wrath, frustration, agony, and sorrow were subdued deep within himself.
But how could Jason hate the Cerus family as they treated his mother so well before the accident happened.
His father was said to have been the chairman of a large company governed by the Federation, backed by his family and other authorities.
Apparently, he wasn't scared about anything at all, but that was a mistake.
A feud with a certain family he got involved with caused the annihilation of his family and his companies destruction. Only he and his wife were left.