¹
"Wha???" Edward woke up in panic.
A bombardment of a huge number of blurred memories struck through his mind in an instant, forcing him to jolt up in panic. His head ached a bit.
"It that what happened to me?" He asked himself, keeping his hand on his forehead, sweating heavily.
As he stood up from his bed, he noticed that it was already morning. His head was still heavy as he felt that he hasn't received a proper rest in a while.
"I wasn't able to sleep properly after the summoning." He chuckled.
Actually... No one can sleep after such a drastic event happening, an event which is only possible in novels and manga.
He reached out for the window of the small dark room, where he was in, opening it for fresh air. The sun had just risen, making the sky look light orange. Cold breeze few.
Outside, peaceful green fields all around could be seen. There was some work going on nearby as he could see some tents and various people moving. He was at the first floor of this building which seemed to have a few more floors over it.
It has already been 2 days since he was summoned here. He was not even sure if he was dead in his world or not. He just remebered falling into the water amidst of a storm. All of the memory was too cloudy and blur to understand.
Just after he was summoned, he lost consciousness, they say which is due to extreme stress on the body.
When he woke up, he was directly taken to an old woman without explanation, she looked like some village elder.
By age one would assume her to be like 50 or 60. He noticed that the technology here is far behind the technology used in his world.
The room was a small one, with white walls and only contained a small bed, and a wooden table and chair, which had an old style lamp on it.
In all this time, he only got to know about one guy, Robert whom he met in the summoning room. He became a good friend of Edward and helped him in a lot of things.
Edward felt as if his questions were being avoided.
"Sigh... It's just so confusing…"
He went near a mirror in his room. The body he had, looked like of a 16 or 17 year old boy.
"Have I been summoned in the body of a teenager?"
"It is a lot better than being born an infant, who can barely even move his body properly." He sighed in a bit of relief.
This body, had blond scattered hair, with black sharp eyes and a short chin, and a fair complexion. He had a good height. He had a slender body but had some muscles, not much.
"I kinda look cool, he must have been popular among girls." He spoke to myself as he saw myself in the mirror.
This world is similar to what is shown in novels and manga. It follows a magic-like system, it is here refered as energy or mana.
One can awaken an affinity of some element to use abilities related to it. It has been a record that most of the people only unlock one element and very rarely two elements, no more than that.
This was the basic understanding that Edward recieved in two days.
As he was mixed up in his own thoughts, he heard a knock on the front door of the room.
"Hey bro, Wanna go to town again today?"
From the voice, he understood the one standing outside was Robert.
He was waiting outside. By looks he had really short brown hair, with dark black eyes. Most of the time, he had sleepy looking eyes.
"Would you mind explaining me about how energy works here?… I couldn't understand much yesterday." Edward asked, unable to contain his curiosity.
"Sure" He happily accepted. "Let's go the ground behind this building."
Upon reaching, he immediately withdrew a sword from his back.
"As you know this energy is avaliable in atmostphere but we can't use it. We need to first store it in our body, which takes time." he began.
"So, storing this energy is a process that happens on it's own and we don't have to do it ourselves, right?" Edward asked, also giving his theory.
"Yes, it is true, but only until there is energy avaliable in atmosphere… Now, there are two types of abilities one can use. One is formation, and the other is summoning. There is no binding but normal people prefer to master only one of them."
He then tightened his grip on the sword and continued, "Now look carefully, I am about to use an ability."
He fixed his gaze and he lifted his sword with his hands in the sky. "Slash!" He sliced down his sword from above! Releasing a powerful wind strike which dissipated after travelling a short distance. The strike was clearly visible.
"Amazing..." Edward was surprised looking at a thing which he always thought weren't real.
He then explained, "I have demonstrated a weaker form of this attack to you, so now listen. As I am a wind element user, I can use formation style to form attacks from my hands or by weapons and then release them to strike. They are quite benificial in close combats."
"So for summoning, I can summon attacks from far away and use them as projectiles?" Edward asked, making another assumption.
"Ding dong, you got it right. Now look." He told him as he held the sword in his right hand straight in front and at the level, slightly above his head.
"..." he muttered something, which Edward couldn't hear, just probably the name of the attack, as he lightly bought his sword at the level of his waist. His expression was calm and had the same dead sleepish eyes.
At a distance, a pointy slash of wind came from the sky hitting the ground to make a really small hole on the place where it hit.
"That's cool..." He replied amazed from the abilities.
They noticed an old man who was coming at our direction and probably waving towards us, "What's going on Robert boy."
"Hey, gramps." He replied. It looked like they knew each other.
"And you..." The old man pointed towards Edward and said, "Aren't you both too old to play with your abilities?"
Edward almost laughed at his statement and "I think you got... "
Robert immediately interrupted and said "Actually, he wanted to teach some kids about fighting and he had no idea about teaching, so... I was just helping."
"That's quite great! Sorry if I interrupted. I was just walking by." Then he went away.
"Let's take a round through the town." Robert said.
As we walked to the town he noticed a few things. First, the living style was not much different from his world, it all just looked a bit behind in terms technology.
The house designs gave a feeling of a place of 1700s or even older, while walking through a street. It was all bright and lively.
One thing that Edward caught interest in was that a lot of people were taking interest in him, like once in the way, a group of small children, barely ten year old, surrounded him.
With a lot of difficulty, Robert somehow shooed them away, even after their tantrum.
As they started walking through the street again, he muttered, "Hey Robert, Would you tell me about whose body am I in? Is this guy someone special? What happened to him?"
Listening to which, he eyed him, indicating to shut up.
"This isn't the right place, meet me in the evening at some quiet area." He replied.
As so…, they ventured through the town the whole day, not much happened. And so, the sun started to set and they started returning.
They were quietly walking, not talking to each other for a while, when Robert turned around, seemingly remembering something which he had forgotten earlier and said,
"I need to complete some work first, would you wait for me outside your building?" Then he hurried in the opposite direction.
²
When he reached his building, the sun had almost setted and it was dark. Not wanting to go in, he just quietly sat under a tall tree behind the building. Thoughts about multiple things surfaced through his mind. After all nobody could remain stable after these crazy events.
"So there you are." He noticed Robert coming in his direction. Without saying much, he sat beside him and relaxed himself.
"It would take a good amount of time in telling..." He said, going into deep thought as he gazed up at the sky, with a faint painful. smile.
"I will listen even if it takes two days!" Edward said with determination.
He then immediately focused his gaze towards him and added, "I think... You deserve knowing the full truth."
"Thank you for understanding…"
"At first, let me make it clear. Nobody has the intention of hiding things from you. They are waiting for a better time to tell. Currently the informations can not be revealed in public." Robert informed.
"We can't reveal the information of the summoning and his death. He was an important figure for the world. Information about it may lead to a conflict which… we can not afford, not atleast now." he added.
"So that's the reason, you chose his body for the summoning. He was dead right? I was able to connect the dots with the information avaliable." Edward commented.
"You will understand…"