Fate/ I Am Humanity Last Hope!?

Inside a dark room, the only source of light was a candle above a table full of papers. In the bathroom, Ryusei looked at his reflection in the mirror through his lifeless eyes.

He looked like a child of four or five years old. Supernaturally beautiful features, skin as white as snow, and bright blue eyes that seemed to reflect the blue sky; his white hair was spread out and seemed to be kissed by the moon, due to the shine it contained. He was wearing a kimono that had been given to him by the "old man" over the past few weeks.

The only difference from his childlike appearance in his previous life was the color of his hair. There would be no difference if it hadn't turned white due to the experiments he went through.

Experiments.

"What did I do to deserve this?" This question arose from the depths of his mind like a broken record.

Memories of what he learned about this world flowed through his mind.

He learned the worst ways in which this world was different from his old one, not just in chronological terms, but in various other aspects.

This cruel world had a name; it was called the Moonlit World by the wizards, those capable of performing the [Magecraft] known as magical science; the ability to accomplish what is possible through science by supernatural means.

The "old man" was called Fraldeus Lugh, a first-generation wizard from an unknown family. Someone who had been alive for over five hundred years due to his unique Magecraft of transferring his consciousness to other bodies, a sort of endless reincarnation. His ambition was to attain true immortality so he could research and learn everything in this world without worrying about death. He was selected from a trash can to be the body that would be possessed by him in the future. This was what he learned by hearing the old man boast about his greatness in recent days.

Fraldeus liked to talk about himself and his goals; he was so twisted that he spoke to himself and ignored everything around him.

Just thinking that there was an entire organization of these monsters in human skin gave him chills.

A few days ago, he would have thought everything he experienced was just a mere crazy and disgusting fantasy.

He witnessed so many fantastical events, which he never thought he would have the opportunity to experience, as they were summed up in fictional stories. He was sure it was another world or hell itself.

Wizards, he never thought he would become one, but he felt disgusted at the thought of being one of those monsters capable of using Magecraft.

As for that...

The [Magecraft] revolved around the "Mystery," which is nothing more than a fragment of power of many different types that comes from the [Root], and the source of all supernatural phenomena in this world.

The Root, or Origin, Akasha, is a metaphysical location within the universe or beyond; its existence is like the "force" that overrides all theories related to dimensions. Inside it are the Akashic Records, also known as the Swirl of the Root, and it is considered the source of all events and phenomena in the universe. Its existence is timeless, yet it stores information about all possible events of the past, present, and future. It is also the place where all souls originate and to which they return after death.

Akasha is the main goal of the wizards; many focus their experiments to find a way to reach it. The wizards wanted to uncover the truth of the universe that it contains. To reach the Root, see it, touch it, and then understand it would completely erase the concept of the impossible; they would become "God."

Little is known about the Root and what happens when someone actually reaches it; all he learned is that touching – not necessarily in the literal sense – the Root is equivalent to ceasing to exist because by doing so, the wizard returns to the origin of existence. It is supposed that this is equivalent to becoming "God," someone who exists beyond rationality and who no longer sees reasons to interact with existence as they preside beyond it.

To cease to exist...

Magecraft, if considering modern magic, the [Magecraft] is, in its essence, the "Mystery," and it is precisely because of this that modern thaumaturgy is much inferior to that of eons ago; a time that today is known as the Age of the Gods.

When humans were not many, and the Holy Spirits were active and more common, this period is called the Age of the Gods. It is marked by the proliferation of Phantasmal Species, like the True Ancestors and Gorgons, and a greater interaction between gods and mortals. This was the era of heroes and mythology when the rules of the world and humanity were different, but this period ended approximately two thousand years ago.

During this time, even magical art itself is described as being closer to magic – far superior to what it is today, which is merely a replica of what someone could achieve through science by supernatural means.

If one were to explain why this is, it is simple: since the beginning of the Common Era, human history has been in the process of regularly expelling Mysteries. To the same degree that the light of science expands, the darkness of the essence of "Mystery" recedes.

No matter how much wizards resist this fact, this law remains inflexible.

The Mysteries of the Age of the Gods have become so distant that even perceiving them temporarily in the modern world is almost impossible. This is because humanity has reached a point where everything is explainable with human wisdom, from the workings of nature to the operation of the cosmos, which was once the domain of the heavens, anything that was once beyond the reach of man.

This greatly affects the [Magecraft]; simply something that has had its nature revealed cannot become a "Mystery" that was practically the crystallization of the unknown. No matter what supernatural method is used, it becomes just another mundane method.

Magecraft utilizes a predetermined power from the Root. However, since this amount of power is fixed, the more people draw from it at the same time, the more mundane the capabilities of Magecraft become. In short, the larger the collective number of Wizards, the weaker their individual power will be.

The main goal of the Wizard's Thaumaturgical System is to make the impossible possible. If something cannot be achieved with modern Magecraft, the Wizards research and develop their arts just to change that.

This explains why the moonlit world is hidden from normal society.

What qualifies someone to become one of those wizards are the Magic Circuits, a pseudo-nervous system that spreads throughout the body, which function to convert their Vital Energy; Od into Magical Energy to perform their [Magecraft]. Obviously, what is found in the body is merely an expression; they are in the soul of an individual and determine the amount of magical energy, mana, or prana they possess; they are limited and determined at birth.

But there were some ways to increase quality and quantity; objectively, he had firsthand experience with some experiments for that in the past few weeks he spent in this place.

Being violated by those worms was one of those ways...

All this knowledge he had was learned through the "ritual" of being violated...

White flashes crossed his mind in a matter of seconds; a few memories of the recent event were revived, leaving his body a bit trembling.

He looked at the bench he was sitting on to see his reflection in the bathroom mirror and glanced at the sink that was within his reach, grabbing the razor blade he had stealthily taken from Fraldeus's lab...

It would be so easy to end his suffering. He just needed to slit his throat with that blade...

A sudden wave of nausea surged in his stomach just thinking about it. He struggled to withstand the invisible force that seemed to pull him down to the ground.

He gripped the handle tightly, trying not to show clearly the trembling that suddenly overtook him from head to toe.

He had even been deprived of the right to end his own life. Believe me, he tried several times in these weeks, but it never worked. He only found out the reason recently.

The reason was the [Magic Crest] that had been implanted in him during those days he spent undergoing experiments.

At some point in life, a wizard would forge through their own Magic Circuits, storing many, if not all, the spells they learned in life and then pass them on to their successor. As the process is repeated with each new generation, the older a lineage is, the larger the number of Magic Circuits that form the Magic Crest, and the greater the amount of knowledge stored within it...

Beneficially speaking, it was because of it that he had learned a lot about [Magecraft] with a specialization in medicine over the past few weeks; the knowledge flowed in his mind, along with the experience of using it magically.

The cruel part was that the [Magic Crest] took away his ability to commit suicide due to a severe magical mental restriction contained within it. It served as an unbreakable curse, as the ancestors did not want their descendants, who inherited their Magecraft, to die in such a pathetic way as taking their own lives.

That man, Fraldeus, even took away his right to end his life... The hatred he felt for him could not be measured in words. Putting the razor blade back, he took a brief look in the mirror.

His lifeless eyes greeted his vision.

"I will kill him, no matter what..." That hoarse murmur escaped from his lips; he still found it difficult to speak in this new body, but he was slowly getting the hang of it.

His sanity had long since disappeared. Fraldeus did not kill him as he had hoped when he attacked him several times; his desire to die was greater than any logic, and if it weren't for his hands, it would be at the hands of someone else, but it was a pity that he was still useful to the man. So, his focus shifted from dying to seeking revenge; it was all he had left...

So, regardless of the cost, he would kill him; fortunately, the Magic Crest that had been implanted in him was useful for that. It belonged to an ancient Mage family, something that fell into Fraldeus's hands by chance after the Zepter family was wiped out by the Mage Association.

The Mage Association had three official branches: the Clock Tower, the Atlas Academy, and the Wandering Sea.

He also learned of the Holy Church, which is an international religious organization apparently styled after the true Roman Catholic Church, and a group of individuals known as the Ancestors of the Dead Apostles.

Although there are exceptions, many are evil entities that have obtained some form of immortality, making it difficult for both the Mage Association and the Holy Church to deal with them. They are associated with many clandestine organizations, with most of their members classified as Vampires, Ghouls, Necromancers, and other problematic existences...

The Zepter family was an excellent example of what happens when one goes against these organizations. The heir of that family showed signs of reckless behavior for several generations, stumbling from resurrection to the creation of monsters; he really drew attention when he used an entire city in northern Germany for his experiments a few decades ago.

One of those experiments was photographed in Bavaria. The Mage Association could not remain silent after discovering it and attempted to erase him from history, but he managed to escape alive.

He found his way to America to use its land and people to research the content of his heart. He settled in a small village with a population of two thousand inhabitants, Present Mountain, and continued his work there.

He transformed into a monster starting in 1978, leaving a video to tell hunters from the Association about himself. His whereabouts remained unknown until twenty years after his departure from Europe when one of his creations appeared in the village, where the police quickly killed it. Upon analyzing the corpse, it was confirmed by a mage that he had been in that village.

When they discovered this, the Mage Association hired Natalia Kaminski to kill him, which ultimately culminated in success. His [Magic Crest] fell into the hands of Fraldeus, who found it on one of his trips at an underground auction and decided to transplant it into him a few days ago.

The Zepter family was immersed in obtaining the miracle of resurrecting the dead, initially focusing on reviving flawless bodies, then uniting body parts, and finally attempting to create living beings by combining different body parts and giving the creature bodily functions.

Although they managed to restore the body to a perfect semblance of life, even allowing bodies with missing parts to accept foreign organs with ease, they could never achieve the perfect recovery of the Soul. In their experiments for this, they wandered far from their original intention, moving from resurrection to "creation of monsters."

Implanting a [Magic Crest] had a huge chance of failure that would result in his death; the transplant of a 'Magic Crest' is still very much like that of an internal organ and therefore can only be done in someone compatible. It takes several weeks to function fully, so it took time to learn all the Magecraft contained within it.

The issue is that even among close relatives, the chances of rejection are high.

Fraldeus did not care about him, so he had no fear of failure. He would just find a new object for his experiments; although he thought it a pity that someone with potential would die, that was all. He had no empathy or any good feelings in their relationship.

Ryusei got off the bench and took it before carrying it to the room and placing it in front of the table. Fraldeus had given him the freedom to move around the building, but leaving it was impossible due to the restricted field of the area, a kind of "magical field" filled with traps.

He walked over to his bed and lay down, feeling the inactive worms inside his body; he had come out of that basement a few hours ago.

He had even thought of using his [Magecraft] inherited from the Zepter family to either incorporate the worms inside his body or expel them, but there were many factors leading him not to pursue that idea, at least for now. If he expelled them, the old man would notice something strange; if he incorporated them, he would have to participate in something worse than the worm crest ritual.

Ryusei used his mental trigger to activate his magical circuits, a dark blue aura flowed through his body, and in an instant, his entire body was covered by pale blue runes. He felt the worms awakening and forcing his body to produce more magical energy, an extremely painful process, but compared to other times, the pain was slightly less...

He had been doing this for the past few weeks to get used to the pain because he wanted to use [Magecraft] at the highest level, and for that, he had to acclimate to how unnatural it was to use it. To activate his Magical Circuits for the purpose of using Magecraft, it was necessary to create a 'trigger,' usually a powerful mental image that could resonate directly with his self-preservation instincts; his took the exact moment of the accident that took his family: the high-speed impact of the car into a fallen tree that gave him a near-death experience.

This made his activation of magical circuits quite fast.

There was a reason why mages who had gone through hardships and trauma are often the most powerful: because instead of forming a simple 'image,' they had a very real 'experience' with life-and-death scenarios.

Silently enduring the pain, his bright blue eyes took on a supernatural hue, then he skillfully controlled every gram of magical energy flowing in his body. It was one of the abilities of his Mystic Eyes, which are a form of concentrated supernatural power in the eyes, granting the power to interfere with the outside world merely through sight.

The acquisition of Mystic Eyes happens when there is some kind of natural mutation in the Magical Circuits located around the eyes; he was born with them, but they were not that powerful. They merely provided vast perception and immense brain processing power, allowing him to manipulate his magical energy with precision to perfect levels.

He could also see through objects and could transform a moment in reality into over a minute in his brain. This worked well in conjunction with enhanced vision, allowing him to analyze and calculate the positions of everything in his view instantly.

He called these eyes [Rikugan] since they resembled those of one of his favorite characters from the manga he read in his past life.

With his magical energy under his control, he circulated it through his body.

On average, a normal Mage would have about 25-40 Od, depending on their proficiency and how seriously they took their training during their formative years. Geniuses, due to their lineage and education, were able to host several times that amount in their bodies; he could be classified as such because he possessed hundreds or even thousands of times the amount of an average person, making his reserves insane.

With the improvement of the worms violating his body, it became even greater.

He thought about starting the practice of Thaumaturgy but opted not to do so; it was still too early. This decision made anxiety consume him entirely, but he tried his best to control himself.

Although Magecraft and Thaumaturgy were fundamentally the same thing, the latter was considered the "foundational" practice. It was used to describe the various different schools into which Magecraft subsequently evolved, including Astrology, Kabbalah, Alchemy, and various other Divergent Schools.

At the most basic level, however, all Thaumaturgical processes deal with the conversion of Magical Energy within the body, shaping it in a way that allows the user to produce the phenomenon of [Magecraft] in the external world.

There were several rules that strictly governed what "should" be possible within each school, and it was the research that made "bends" in these rules that generally determined how proficient someone was with [Magecraft]; however, it had to take into account the Origin and the Element.

Simply put, Origin refers to the starting point of someone's existence, typically encapsulated in a single word or phrase that describes the direction someone may take throughout their life. It is linked to the "Root."

Thus, an Origin can be thought of this way: if a person were deconstructed into the concepts that define them as a person, their Root is a driving force that has been present since the beginning of existence. As such, every human behaves according to their own Origin, and each one has different effects on a Mage's Magecraft, making it extremely important for defining someone's talent.

There are several ways in which mages are classified, often based on their alignment with a specific affinity, which is why so many mages specialize in specific fields.

In the absence of a specified affinity, following the origin can yield great results and bypass barriers that would otherwise hinder a mage.

They were able to discover this through a simple ritual that had existed since the time of the Gods. And upon discovering, the person instinctively begins to naturally follow their origin; these actions are like an inherent compulsion, and the mages followed it as if it were a kind of absolute order.

But this did not seem to apply to him.

His Origin is strange because he instinctively knew how to advance in the Magecrafts he imagined in his mind; its name was [Maanim]. And although he had sought its translation, he did not find its meaning. On the other hand, he discovered that his elemental affinity was a Medium: Bearer of the Five Great Elements; [Fire], [Earth], [Water], [Wind], and [Ether], which became the reason he was so valued by that disgusting old man.

The core was that he did not feel different in his actions because of his Origin. And even if he did, he did not care to follow any order in exchange for power to kill that disgusting old man.

Ryusei let out a long sigh, deactivating his magical circuits and feeling the tension in his body and mind. He continued to stare at the ceiling with empty eyes.

Flashes of rapid memories broke free from the locks he had created in his head, bringing him some peaks of previous recollections from the experiments he had undergone.

Unable to control his emotions, he let the accumulated tears flow onto the sheets of the bed he lay on.

He wanted to die, to stop existing because this was too painful, but that option was denied to him...

He wanted to kill the one who took that option away from him, but he didn't have enough power to do so. He wanted revenge on the torments and tortures he had suffered. But he couldn't even fight against it...

He turned over and curled up in bed while hugging his legs, praying that this suffering was just a nightmare that would soon come to an end. He closed his eyes, hoping that when he opened them, he would be back with his family, playing with his little brother and hearing his mother's nonsense while his father read the newspaper...

He feared that upon opening his eyes, this would not happen, so he kept them tightly shut.

Unbeknownst to him, he eventually fell asleep.