Metamorphosis: Seven Sins II - Horrible History

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Chapter 2 - Horrible History

The Frontier had been the last of the regions to stop warring with the monsters. This was mostly because of the kill-or-be-killed attitude ingrained within the locals, the result of generations of struggling for survival in a war-torn world. But finally, the monster-hunting stopped and the merciless retaliations ceased soon after.

Now, peace could at last reign supreme. And this made the restless master of the Frontier’s Hunter’s Guild feel uneasy.

He was an elderly Wyverian, a race that had allied itself with those like the humans and Troverians many millennia ago. They could either be short and goblin-like, or tall and almost human in appearance. The Guildmaster was on the lower end of the scale, but for what he lacked in stature he made up for in wisdom. He had maintained his position for generations, and was a trusted, well-respected leader.

For many a night he had gone without sleep. Mostly, these long and torturous nights had been due to monster attacks or a fear of impending monster attacks. As the largest city and center of trade in the Frontier, Mezeporta and its neighboring military base had seen its share of invasions by the strongest of monsters. Most of them were elder dragons, intelligent and vastly powerful creatures probably hoping to put a huge dent in the Frontier’s human population by laying waste to its main trade center.

That was why Mezeporta was home to a Hunter’s Guild. This one boasted the most courageous and elite hunters out of all the Guilds, trained to fight back against the hordes of extremely vicious monsters that the Frontier was so infamous for. Thanks to the Guild, and by extension the Guildmaster himself, Mezeporta had been saved from destruction more times than anyone could count. Not to say that the amount of loss always seemed to be tragic… but the losses would be undeniably worse without the efforts of the hunters.

All of this, though, was now in the past. The ‘Age of Hunters’ had been declared over, and a new ‘Age of Knowledge’ had begun. While there had always been scientists and explorers that dedicated their lives to studying monsters, the Human-Monster War was over, and the explosion of opportunities for monster study was absolutely tremendous. The risk of being killed on sight had gone with the end of the war, so now researchers could observe monsters to their heart’s content, and learn so much more about them.

The Age of Knowledge owed its success to one individual. This individual was known only as the Hero – an otherwise ordinary hunter that had been born about forty years ago, in a small village deep within the Central World. The Central World was a very mysterious place at the very heart of the Great Continent, crawling with deadly new species of monsters. Hunter’s Guilds all over the known world had received reports from their field workers about serpents that shone with the power of the sun… a wyvern that roamed the land and stained its horn with the blood of innocents…

Anyway, this Hero grew up in the Central World and was trained to hunt monsters, but he ended up befriending one instead. He and his new companion, a Rathalos, convinced the people of the Central World that the Human-Monster War should be stopped – and gradually, the entire continent followed, putting down their weapons and hailing the Hero as… well, a hero. Yes, the Age of Knowledge was a glorious time.

That didn’t help soothe the Guildmaster’s uneasiness one iota.

With a half-strangled gasp, he awoke from his nightmare and immediately sat up. His brow was slick with fear-induced sweat, and his breathing was heavy and labored. His heart was beating at a rate that was probably rather unhealthy for a being of his advanced age.

“Just… just a dream,” the Guildmaster assured himself. “It was a manifestation of my imagination, that’s all. It wasn’t real…”

But the words from his nightmare were still in his head, taunting him, singing the same verse over and over again. They chanted a song that went like…

“We’re just useless spellcasters that aren’t whole.

But the Eye will restore our glory.

You’ll be dead, we’ll be rulers so promptly.

We’ll kill all of you,

That’s very true,

Who is it that just got free?”

The chant from the Guildmaster’s nightmare chilled him to the bone whenever he thought of them. At first, the old Wyverian had been dreaming of things that had nothing to do with him – he saw the Hero and the end of the Human-Monster War, the first researchers embarking on their expeditions, the hustle and bustle of a city no longer plagued by monster attacks… and then the dream had turned dark, and the Guildmaster had found himself surrounded by shadowy figures that sang ominously in his ears.

Inadvertently, the song slipped to the front of his mind again – “Who is it that just got free?”

“Tea,” he grunted, crawling out of bed. “A nice, warm drink is what I need.”

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