The Ceterian Wall Chapter 1
Within the cities of j.a.pan, a single boy, no older than 17, was currently looking through some of the things that he owned. He was a simple guy really, messy black hair, golden irises, and he had a rather average build, not too fit, but not too bad either. He currently wore a pair of black jeans, some steel toe black boots, a snow white dress shirt, a black sports jacket, and finally a golden colored tie (Not actual gold, but the color). With a small sigh, he lifts up his only model of a Mecha, one that he had decided to call Kizutsuita, mainly because of the fact he was bored and wanted to name it something unique. He couldn’t help but shake his head after looking at the Mecha for a while, before setting it back down on the desk where his computer resided.
Rubbing his chin for a moment, he starts surfing the web for anything interesting, maybe a new mecha or a cute picture of a girl, anything that would catch his eye, but so far he couldn’t seem to find anything.
His room consisted of a single bed in the corner, the computer and desk at the foot of the bed, a bookshelf that held a lot of random mange he found, and a couple games that were of interest to him. Mainly the games he enjoyed consisted of Bethesda’s top t.i.tles or the Ma.s.s Effect series. As for the poster next to the bookshelf, it was a simple poster of the latest fashionable super soldier in the latest anime.
With a grunt, the man turns off the computer, stands up, slings his bag over his shoulder, and heads for the door with a soft sigh and a rather bored look. It was basically the same day in and day out, Wake up, go to school, eat lunch, hang out with friends, and head home for dinner. It’s not that he didn’t appreciate the life he had, not really, it’s just that he’d like to have more to do than just the usual. Maybe he should sign up for a gaming industry?
As he walked down the sidewalk of his home town, he couldn’t help but wonder what it’d be like if everything changed in an instant. It was something he pondered often, but never really had an answer… Probably freak the h.e.l.l out if anything.
Before long, he was suddenly greeted to a blinding flash of light, making him stop as he covered his eyes from the source. Once the light died down, he slowly lowered his weapons, only to go wide eyed and stumble back in pure horror as he was greeted to a horrific scene. A blood red sky with black clouds, corpses, both intact and mutilated, littering the ground, a complete and total warzone… There were dead trees blocking out any way of escape, while in the center of it all was a single blade, similar to ancient medieval times, with the blade split in color as one edge was a pitch black color, while the other edge was a deep golden, all the while the blade itself was glowing a red hue.
Thinking on how these horror movies and scenarios work out, the boy knew full well that the only way out of this was to head for the blade. But just to double check, he looks behind himself, only to see the way out was blocked by the dead trees. “Yeah, that figures.” He looks ahead. “Well, my name isn’t Pasufaindā Hakuen for nothing.” He walks forward, giving out disgusted noises with every bit of blood or ash he stepped on until he reached the large pool. Taking a deep breath, he begins walking through the pool of blood. “Oh… Good G.o.d…”
Upon making it to the blade, he stares at it for a moment, not entirely sure what he’s supposed to exactly do. Obviously he should grab hold of it, as that’s probably what this thing wants, but what the h.e.l.l would happen if he Did take it? The last thing he wants is to get eaten by some demonic spirit or something.
He swallows his fears as he reaches out for the hilt of the blade. However, upon almost grabbing hold of it, he’s suddenly greeted to a rather dark and feminine voice echoing through the area. “Not yet.”
Instantly everything rushes past him, before he slowly realizes upon opening his eyes that it was all a dream… Right? Immediately he sits up and starts checking his body for anything weird that might’ve happened, however nothing seemed to be out of place… Aside from now feeling a large scar over his left eye. Giving out a loud scream of terror, he began feeling the scar frantically as he yelled out. “NO! NOT MY FACE! IT WAS THE ONLY GOOD THING I HAD!”
After a while of panicking, and giving up with a groan of defeat, he looks around to see what else had changed. It was obvious he wasn’t home, he he currently rested in the center of a large gra.s.sy plains, some mountains to the west, what looked like an unending wall of a city to the north, as in far, Far, FAR north, so far it was only barely visible beyond the horizon of low mountains. To the east was what looked like an old town, almost medieval style in a sense, while over to the south was nothing but forests. Within the current area he was in, there was a simple sack next to him, large enough to be able to fit himself in, and it was currently tied up.
Deciding to panic like crazy later, he opens up the sack, only to be greeted to the inside being so dark there was nothing visible, not even the walls of the sack. Deciding to see what’s in there, he digs his hand in, seeing what he could feel. However the further he put his arm in, the more he realized it wasn’t reaching the end of the sack. Taking this as his que, he pulls his arm out and wonders to himself. ‘What if I tried putting something long and big in there?’
Glancing around, he finds a large branch broken off of the tree that had collapsed to the ground next to him. With a loud groan, he lifts the large branch, and sticks the end into the sack, before pushing the rest in. Soon enough the entire branch went inside, and the sack had absolutely no change in shape or size. Blinking in disbelief, he stuffs his arm back in to try and find the branch, before soon he felt the branch and grasped it, tugged in out with a great amount of strain.
“The heck is with this thing?” He asks no one as he looks inside again. After putting in anything he could find around him, and then pulling it all out after discovering nothing changed, he stood up with a finger pointed to the sky as he states to himself. “I got it! This must be my inventory! Talk about video games coming in handy.” With a nod he lifts the sack over his shoulder, and ties the rope from the opening around his torso so to turn it into a makeshift backpack.
With this done and out of the way, he looks around for a few moments, trying to get a sense of which way would be best to go, before stopping as his gaze made it back to that town. With a nod, he starts walking there, intent on starting off a new life there rather than in the open. So far he’s managed to keep it together this far, but deep down he had a screaming urge to run around in a panic, like a chicken without the head. In fact he was thinking that very scenario as he had some sweat beads down his face. ‘Just a while longer, I should have a place to myself before going mad…’
Soon enough he makes it to the town, but is stopped by a couple suits of unknown armor, carrying railguns as they bore an odd emblem on their chest. The emblem seemed to be a single sword piercing through a couple rings, a pair of wings spread out at the hilt, and a jagged bolt above the wings
.
The boy takes note of their large and imposing stature as he clears his throat. “Hi, I was wondering if I could enter the town?”
The one to the left speaks, obviously male, but he sounded like he didn’t show a single drop of emotion in either his tone or his body language. “Let us see your credentials.”
Blinking at this, Pasufaindā looks in his pocket to see if he had his wallet. Once he pulled it out, he pulled out his Drivers License and ID card, and show them the two cards. The one on the right speaks at this. “So, you’re a Realm Jumper then?”
“A what now?” Pasufaindā asks with a raised eyebrow.
“A Realm Jumper, people not native to this ‘planet’.”
“So… It’s not an actual planet then?”
“Ask the people in the library, we simply keep an eye out for possible criminals.”
Pasu slowly nods, and pa.s.ses by them as he puts the cards back in his wallet. He couldn’t help but sigh in relief that he made it in with barely any scene. It would have been a pain to be heading to jail on the first day here. Wait… Where was the library?
Pasu groans as he facepalms. ‘I forgot to ask them where the library is… Ugh…’ He then takes note of a guy to the side, someone with short, dark blue hair, a pair of wolf ears, and a long wolf tail as he seemed to be looking over some merchandise. Pasu jogs over to the wolf man and clears his throat, causing the man to turn to him. “Hi, my name is Hakuen, Pasufaindā Hakuen.”
The wolf man nods and offers a hand. “Wolik.”
“Wol… ik?”
“Wolik, W-Oh-Lick.”
“Oh, Wolik… Would you mind helping me out for a moment.”
“Sure, give me a moment.” He turns to the merchant, and pulls out 50 Platinum Coins.
Pasu stares with wide eyes and a slack jaw as Wolik pays the merchant for a couple apples, then turns to Pasu, offering one. “Hungry?”
Pasu blinks a moment. “How expensive are those apples?!”
Wolik chuckles. “A Realm Jumper, huh?” He puts the apple in his pack. “Platinum is the very low end of the economy system here. Think of it as a single american penny costing the same as a Platinum Coin.”
Pasu counts with his fingers for a moment. “So 50 Platinum would cost about 56 yen… Weird…” He looks at Wolik. “Mind explaining the currency?”
Wolik nods, and motions Pasu to follow as he starts walking. “For starters, a Platinum Coin costs the same as a penny, while single golden platinum coin, which is more common than it sounds, would cost about 25 Platinum Coins. When you get a 100 Platinum Coins, you recieve a single Bronze Glowstone.”
“Glowstone?”
“It’s a kind of stone that glows the same color as say bronze, silver, gold, diamond, etc. They’re about as important as an American dollar bill. Anyways. 10 Bronze Glowstones will add up to a single Holy Bronze Glowstone, then there’s Silver Glowstones, Holy Silver, Golden Glowstones, Holy Golden, Diamond, Golden Diamond, and finally Holy Gold Diamond. So that would make a Holy Gold Diamond worth about 100 Trillion Yen.”
Pasu becomes as pale as a ghost as he’s stuttering now. “H-H-H-H-Hundred T-T-T-T-Trillion Yen…”
Wolik nods as they walk. “Eeyup, with a single Holy Gold Diamond, you could buy a pa.s.s into the most prestige college of Void-Tech within Cetera.”
Pasu stops at the two names. “Cetera? Void-Tech?”
Wolik gives a small chuckle. “Right, new here and all. Cetera is the capital city of this place, you probably saw the main palace on the other side of the hills to the north, the d.a.m.n place is so big, it’d take about 25 Jupiters to fully inhabit that building, while the city around it is about 50 times that size.”
Pasu almost falls over as he coughs a bit. “WHAT?! The place is THAT big?!”
“Eeyup, they move around with what they call street portals and hovering vehicles.” He moves a hand to the side. “As for Void-Tech, the name says it all, they use technology to build, manufacture, and even tamper with the black void itself. That’s what makes them so special. See, Void-Tech uses the ancient knowledge of the First Emperor to do their work, and even with the First Emperor being gone for trillions upon trillions of millennials, they still manage to produce so much in such a short amount of time. People come through here with stories about how they can manufacture an entire flagship with a large enough device, and they say it only takes about 5 minutes to complete the work. Talk about impressive.”
Pasu’s head was spinning at this point as he falls over from sheer shock of all he heard.
“Oh for the love of…”
…
Pasu groans as he sits up, rubbing his head in pain as he looks around, before stopping as he realized he was sitting in a bed in the middle of an inn room. He quickly gets out of bed and heads out after making sure he was dressed, before rushing downstairs, and instantly runs head first into a barmaid’s platter, falling over with a groan as the barmaid expertly caught all the drinks and put them back on the platter before offering him a hand. “C’mon.”
Pasu blinks a couple times as he realized he was talking to a dragoness, human face, hair, and torso with draconic legs, arms, horns, and large wings. She blinks at his wide eyes before saying bluntly. “Stop with the staring or else you’re gonna get a fist-full of obsidean gauntlets.”
Pasu quickly stands up with his hands in the air. “N-No need! I’m good, just a Realm Jumper here, ha ha ha…”
She puffs out a small cloud of smoke. “Yeah, sure, just keep from staring, I’m getting tired of teaching each perverted guy a lesson.”
“Gotcha!” Pasu runs past her, and sees Wolik at the bar, drinking a large tankard of what looked like alcohol.
Wilok raises his tankard when Pasu sits next to him. “Welcome back to the living, Hakuen! Want a mug?”
“What is it?”
“Red Hail Vodka, imported from the south.”
“No, I’m good. I’m still a minor.”
“How old are you?”
“17.”
“Hah! At least you aren’t on the outskirts! Out there you’d be an adult by the age of 14!” He downs his Tankard. “Now, what else did you need to know?”
Pasu rubs his head with a slight mumble. “Lots, I don’t know nearly enough to be ready to go out there yet.”
“Fair enough, my friend.” He sets the tankard down. “What first?”
...To Be Continued...