Martial Arts Worlds - Chapter 789
Chapter 789: Old War
Seventh Volume – Long Years.
…
Splash! Splash! Splash!
The waves of the sea crashed against the shore of small island that had less than five hundred inhabitants.
Yet, despite the modest living conditions, the people of the island were happily moving about.
They lived humbly, but they were very satisfied with their lives, as the world had changed for the better.
About ten years ago, the Age of the Pirates ended, and as their region was controlled by ruthless Pirate Emperor Jack Butcher, they were never truly safe.
Sometimes the pirates would just randomly come to the island, snatch the prettiest women and strongest men, and head back to the Pirate Kingdom.
They never knew who would be taken next.
When the news reached the village that the pirates were no more, they had a party that lasted an entire month.
A new golden age had begun!
“…Don’t go too far, children!”
At the current moment, a mother shouted.
“Yes! Yes!”
A boy shouted and waved his hand at his mother. He was with another boy and girl, who were his childhood friends.
“…I am not kidding around! The rocks at the shores are slippery, and if you aren’t careful, you might slip and hit your head!”
The mother kept shouting.
However, the three children were already running away, too excited to listen.
“Huff… Haah… Wait for me!”
The girl shouted as she struggled to keep up with them. She was the youngest and always had trouble keeping up with her two friends.
“…Haha, you are a slowpoke!”
“Try to keep up with us!”
With smiles on the boys’ faces, they ran up the hill and saw the sea stretching in every direction around them.
A majestic sight.
The girl finally caught up to them, wheezing in exhaustion, and they walked the rest of the way to the place where they usually played.
Within the depths of the island, tucked between forest and hills, there was a ruined castle.
It was all but forgotten, except for the three friends who had stumbled upon it one day while exploring.
They treated the ruined castle as a place to parkour and play around.
“…Hey, who is that?”
At that moment, the girl asked.
They slowly approached the castle and saw someone inside the ruined castle.
It was a man, just sleeping on top of a stone coffin, surrounded by overgrown vines and crumbling walls.
The man had white hair.
“Yeah, who is that?”
“I have never seen him before.”
“Why is he here sleeping?”
The children thought about going to ask the man themselves, but as soon as they blinked, the man was gone!
“…What are you two children doing here?”
In that moment, two of the boys felt a hand touch their shoulders, and they turned around with frightened looks.
The white-haired man was now standing behind them with a smile on his face.
“AHHHHHHHHH!”
They screamed and ran away while shouting the names of their moms and dads.
“Haha…”
Julian laughed.
He was no longer a child. The rest of the baby fat on his cheeks had been shed off, and he was now full blown man.
Nearing his thirties, Julian looked mature with a strong jawline and broad shoulders. He hadn’t been slacking off in the slightest.
“…What’s the time?”
Julian pulled out his phone, pressed a button, and the screen lit up with the time displayed in bold numbers.
For a moment, he ignored the time and looked at the picture that he had as his wallpaper—it was of him and Kiernan.
“…”
Julian stayed silent, checked the time, and pocketed the phone.
“Ten more hours~”
He re-entered the castle, lay down on the coffin, and crossed his legs as he just waited for the time to pass.
About ten minutes later, he heard voices outside the ruined castle and saw from one of the windows that the village people had come with pitchforks.
The children must’ve alarmed them of his presence.
“…Haah.”
Julian chuckled, and he suddenly turned invisible.
The parents entered the castle, looked for the mysterious man, but couldn’t see him anywhere, and decided to leave.
They thought that perhaps the children were just imagining things, as they had wild imaginations.
After they left, Julian appeared back on top of the coffin, and he let out a long yawn.
He was indeed not a child anymore.
Julian had kept training all these years, and he was currently a High Stage Martial Emperor with invisibility as a Martial Ability.
When Martial Order disappeared into the depths of the Dead World, Julian started training like crazy and disappeared from the face of the planet.
He kept training… all by himself… at Pankratios’ island.
For eight years, he was all alone.
The hours flew by, and ten hours later, the sun was long gone from the sky, and the moonlight spread across the castle ground.
“…”
Julian looked at the moonlight, dodged it, and watched it touch the coffin.
In that moment, the coffin started shaking, and the lid slowly began to open.
An arm of a skeleton reached out from inside, and slowly, a skeleton sat up and cracked with a loud noise.
“…What a nasty sleep!”
The skeleton shockingly spoke.
“Are you the Soldier of the Old War?”
In that moment, Julian approached him.
The skeleton flinched in surprise, as he didn’t expect anyone to be here, and he looked at Julian in surprise.
“Who da fack are you?”
“Julian. I have traveled a distance to come to speak to you about a matter of great importance.”
He said.
While staying on Pankratios’ island, he happened to read all of his books, and he had easily ten thousand of them.
In one of the books, it talked about the curse of the Old War, and apparently every corpse of that cursed war comes back to life on the 299th night of the year.
That is tonight.
The Old War happened in Paradise World…
“…This is the only night of the year that we come to live. You must be crazy to think that I am going to spend that with you.
“I am going to find the nearest bar and get shitfaced!”
The skeleton stood up, but one of his legs was missing, so he fell down.
“You will just frighten the village people. They will think you are a monster. On the other hand, I might have something that you’d like.”
Julian pulled out a bottle of expensive liquor from his backpack and showed it to the skeleton.
“…What did you want to talk about? I’ll answer while I am drinking.”
The skeleton snatched the bottle from him and started gulping it down.
The liquid just went inside his empty stomach and seeped out from his ribcage, pooling on the floor in a puddle of wasted booze.