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The World's Strongest Wizard Becomes Manaless Page 2
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Page 2
Two windows popped up. One of them was the usual alert when his stat increases, which in this case, is his strength, but the other window had something new written on it.
“Level Up! 3 stat points added.”
“Stat points?”, Zephyr thought of his status window which popped up. All of his stats had an individual (+) written beside the numbers.
“Do I press this?” He wondered as he put his finger out to touch the (+) beside strength. As he touched it, his strength value increased by 1. With a smile on his face, he pressed the (+) beside strength two more times, and then the (+) button disappeared.
“Killing monsters gives me rewards huh?”, Zephyr thought to himself. The people in Osbard will not grow stronger no matter how hard they train, or how many monsters they kill. He thought that as long as he kept killing monsters, he would grow stronger and stronger without a limit.
Zephyr scanned the area, looking for the sword, but as soon as he thought of it, he felt the sword return in the scabbard, which was tied to his belt.
“That’s very handy,” he said while unsheathing the sword. The sword felt a bit lighter, but his strength was still not enough to be able to swing the sword comfortably.
“Jeez… how heavy is this thing?”, he complained to himself.
“I guess I have to train a bit before I could use this properly,'' he said as he put the sword back in the scabbard. “For now, I guess I have to go home.”, he checked his clothes. The cloak was still intact, but it was covered in dust. The clothes underneath his cloak were normal clothes, so they had a few tears.
“I have clothes in the magic bag but…”, Zephyr sighed in disappointment. Having no more mana sucks, but being able to become stronger made him feel that it might be worth it.
“Time to go home so I could start training!” He happily told himself as he started running back towards his home.
Chapter Two
“Agility increased.”
The windows kept popping up one after the other as Zephyr kept running. He felt that he was going faster and faster the more he ran. After an hour of running, he finally started feeling fatigue, but he still continued running.
As he reached the point where he was about to throw up from the fatigue, a window popped up.
“Stamina increased.”
Only one increase after running for an hour…
“Stamina seems like the hardest to train...” Zephyr thought to himself. He stopped running a bit in order to catch his breath. As soon as he felt he had a bit of energy, he started running again.
After a while, he would feel his fatigue catch up to him. He would then rest and continue running again. Every time he felt fatigued, a window pops up, telling him that his stamina has increased. He repeated this pattern for another hour.
“Finally… I’m here.”, Zephyr was happy he made it, but he was completely out of breath.
His house was a small, one-story, wooden, home. Other than the fact that it was in the middle of a forest filled with monsters, it looked like a normal house that a commoner would have.
Zephyr was completely tired. He slowly limped towards the door, and as soon as he opened it, he immediately fell down onto the floor. The last thing he heard was, panicked screaming. “Master! What’s wrong?!”
As he was about to pass out from fatigue, he managed to utter some words.
“Isabelle… I’m home,” he said as he fell asleep on the floor.
...
“Master, wake up!” Isabelle tells Zephyr while shaking him to wake him up.
“Urgh, what is it?”, Zephyr groaned. He was still tired from what happened yesterday and wanted to continue sleeping.
“You have to wake up! You haven’t eaten anything since yesterday!”, Isabelle insisted.
Being reminded of food woke Zephyr up. His stomach started gurgling loudly. He immediately got up and walked towards the dining area.
Isabelle gave a sigh of relief, happy that her master seemed okay.
As she entered the dining area, she saw her master stuffing himself with food. Around the table, random things were scattered on the floor.
“Master, aren’t these your artifacts? Why aren’t you storing them in your bag?”, Isabelle asked while picking up the artifacts on the floor.
“Also, what happened yesterday? How come you ended up in that state?”, she added.
“About that, there’s something I have to tell you. Sit down, it’s a long story," Zephyr said while stuffing himself with food.
Isabelle sat down on the chair in front of Zephyr and started eating as well.
“So… I lost all my mana.” Zephyr’s sudden comment made Isabelle spit out what she ate.
“Yuck! Why’d you do that?!”, Zephyr retorted..
“That can’t be true! You’re the strongest magician alive! How could you lose all your mana?! You should’ve regenerated it after sleeping for that long!” Isabelle exclaimed.
“I literally lost all of my mana. Like, I have zero maximum mana. I can’t regenerate what I don’t have.” Zephyr said as he continued eating.
“What the hell happened?!”, Isabelle stopped eating and focused on their conversation. Zephyr explained the entire thing. He told her about the sword, about how he lost his magic, the weird windows, and the fact that he could become stronger just by training.
“T-that’s impossible!”, Isabelle still couldn’t believe it after hearing everything.
“I also thought it was impossible, but the world is vast. Many things are unknown. You never know what will happen next.” Zephyr continued eating, as if he didn’t care about anything that was happening at all.
“But now that you’re powerless, the Kingdoms…”, Isabelle spoke in a worried tone.
“Don’t worry, I told you, I could become stronger. They won’t come after us.” Zephyr tried to reassure Isabelle, but it didn’t work.
“You know that they’re coming for us… If you don’t have the power to stop them, you’re gonna die!”, Isabelle said, teary eyed.
The kingdom near the forest, the Kingdom of Stalta, was where Zephyr roamed around and lived as a child; he was born an orphan. While living on the streets, he was kidnapped and was forced to be a slave. When he heard of people acquiring mana, he tried practicing, wishing he had an affinity with magic.
After many attempts, he finally found his affinity with magic. With his newfound power, he attempted to escape from his owner. That was when he met another child slave in his household; Isabelle.
They were able to escape due to Zephyr’s overwhelming magic, but their previous owner was a person of high rank. They had nowhere to run inside the kingdom, so they ran away. That was Zephyr’s first time using magic, so he went all out, destroying the area around him.
They arrived in the next kingdom after walking for two weeks. Since Zephyr was able to use magic, he hunted food, while Isabelle cooked. Even though Zephyr could have arrived to the next kingdom faster without her, he still brought her along.
When they arrived in the next kingdom, which was Lochwood, he showed people his magic and there it was discovered that he had an S-grade in spirit.
Isabelle owed her life to Zephyr, and so she pledged subservience him.
After receiving the title of Grand Wizard and collecting artifacts, he went back to Stalta to ask for forgiveness for all the damage he caused, but the noble, who was their owner, had rose in rank and became a Duke. When they came back, they were welcomed, but for every night they stayed in the kingdom, assassins were sent to get rid of them.
Zephyr got tired of it eventually, so he decided to live in seclusion inside the unexplored forest. With the Mask of Fear, monsters would not approach Zephyr. Even the Duke knew that sending people to the forest was basically sending people to their deaths because of the amount of monsters that would be waiting, so his pursuits came to an end.
“They’re going to kill you if they find out…” Isabelle told Zephyr.
“Don’t worry, it’ll b
e okay.” Zephyr said while patting Isabelle’s head. He was still stuffing his face with food.
“I just have to keep training. So until I become the strongest again, you just have to take care of me! You’re stronger than the monsters around here after all!” He laughed as he told Isabelle.
Isabelle was appraised as a double B-grade adventurer. She had two B-grade stats: dexterity and agility. The rest were C-grade.
While living in the forest, she was able to fend for herself, since her master was gone most of the time. Monsters would come by sometimes to cause trouble, but she’s strong enough to deal with them as long as she has her bow and her dagger.
Isabelle sighed and just continued eating.
After they ate, Zephyr opened his status window to check his stats after he went running yesterday.
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Zephyr looked at his stats and was quite amazed at the growth, but he still didn’t know if he was average or not, so he asked Isabelle for a favor. “Since I have to test my current level, I have to set a standard.” He told Isabelle.
“So…?” Isabelle asked curiously.
“I’ll have to compare your stats with mine, since my stats are numbers. I have to know how weak I am now," Zephyr said.
Isabelle agreed. “What do you want me to do?"
“Since your agility is B-grade, go wear the Mask of Fear. We’re going to do a race!”, Zephyr cheerfully said.
Isabelle sighed.
“You were always relying on your magic to travel long distances… I’m sure you’re pretty slow.”, Isabelle taunted him.
It worked.
“Why you…” Zephyr ‘refuted’ . They went outside and started to get ready to race.
“Don’t stop until you feel tired okay? I also have to test my stamina.” He told Isabelle. Isabelle nodded.
“Okay then, in three…” Zephyr said as he started to assume a running pose. He looked over and saw that Isabelle was still tying her hair. He then thought of a plan to win.
“Two, one, go!”, Zephyr said as fast as he could and started running immediately. Isabelle was unprepared, and started running a little later.
“You cheating bastard!” Isabelle angrily exclaimed.
Isabelle was only behind for a short amount of time. She was quickly able to overcome the gap between her and Zephyr. “I guess my agility isn’t even close to B-class yet huh.” He muttered while he kept running. After an hour, Isabelle stopped.
Zephyr was a bit far behind her, but he kept running, and soon caught up with her. During the run, he earned two agility points.
“I can’t run anymore master… That was my limit.”, Isabelle told Zephyr while catching her breath.
“I see…”, Zephyr said. His agility was far behind B-grade. Even though his stamina was higher than Isabelle’s, which was C-grade, he still felt that it wasn’t close to B-grade yet.
“I guess I still have a long way to go!”, Zephyr was a bit disappointed, but he was somewhat glad that his journey to becoming the strongest is still far away. “Let’s go back!”, Zephyr smiled.
Isabelle saw the determination in his eyes. She had never seen him like this before. She couldn’t help but smile as she followed her master back home.
As soon as they got home, Isabelle started to prepare a meal, since she knew that Zephyr would be hungry. As she was about to cut the ingredients, Zephyr suddenly came up to her and said. “That requires dexterity right? Let me do it!”, he cheerfully said as he took the knife off Isabelle’s hand and started chopping the ingredients.
Isabelle let out a small chuckle, and started preparing the other ingredients.
‘Both of us preparing a meal… we look like a family...’ , she thought to herself. Her smile got wider and her face turned red.
“What’s wrong? Are you sick?”, Zephyr asked her.
“No… I’m okay”, she happily replied.
After they prepared the meal, they ate together and planned the training that Zephyr was going to do everyday. “So for strength, I’ll keep swinging my sword until I can use it with one hand with ease… For agility… hmm…”, Zephyr mumbled while deep in thought, thinking of what to do for training.
“You can just keep running, I don’t think there’s anything faster than that.”, Isabelle suggested.
“You’re right…”, Zephyr nodded while writing down his training routine.
“For dexterity, you’ll help me with cooking and I’ll teach you how to use the bow.”, Isabelle added.
“Right! That’s good, that’s good…”, Zephyr agreed while writing down Isabelle’s ideas.
“For stamina… It’ll take too long if I keep running until I get tired…”, Zephyr wondered what he could do to increase his stamina.
Isabelle let out a wicked smile.
Zephyr felt a chill run down his spine.
“W-what is it?” He asked her.
“Well, you did mention that your stamina increased a lot when the golem hit you right?”, Isabelle asked with a wicked grin on her face.
“Right…”, Zephyr meekly responded.
“So if you get hit by things, your stamina increases right?”, Isabelle asked, the grin growing even bigger. At this point, she was holding back her laughter. Zephyr saw what was coming next. “Yes…”, he already surrendered.
“Wear the cloak, I’ll keep shooting you with my arrows!”, Isabelle said. Unable to continue suppressing it, she let out an evil laugh. Zephyr just nodded and let out a sigh. It was indeed the fastest way to train stamina. He wrote everything down on a list.
“Seems like everyday will be busy starting tomorrow…”, Zephyr sighed. He looked forward to training his stats, but thinking of his stamina training scared him. He looked at Isabelle. She was looking at him with an evil look while wearing a sinister smile.
“Well then master! Let’s go to sleep! I’m looking forward to tomorrow!”, her face switched from an evil one to an innocent one.
Zephyr shuddered.
“A-alright! Good night!” He said as he rushed to his room and closed the door. Isabelle’s quick change of personality scared him.
As he laid down his bed, he couldn’t help but smile as he thought to himself. “How strong can I become? Can I be strong enough to enforce peace?” He kept thinking of how far he could go. “Can I be strong enough to defend her?” He asked himself. As he kept thinking, he eventually fell asleep.
The next few months, everyday was the same.
Zephyr would wake up early in the morning to start running. When he got back, he would swing his sword repeatedly with both of his hands and do some body weight exercises. He would then help prepare their meals and eat to replenish his energy. After eating, Isabelle would teach Zephyr archery, then she would proceed to hit him with her magic arrows. After all of this, Zephyr would go out to hunt some monsters.
Despite every single day being the same, Zephyr had fun. He felt the satisfaction of training and getting results. After three months, his agility had already surpassed Isabelle’s, but he still kept on training.
Whenever Zephyr would face a hurdle, they would increase the difficulty of the training. When Zephyr’s body weight exercises no longer gave him levels, he added more and more weight to his usual training. When his dexterity no longer leveled up when practicing the bow, he started running on his top speed and catching random projectiles that Isabelle would throw. When Isabelle’s arrows were no longer hurting Zephyr, he started jumping off high places and intentionally luring monsters to hit him to train his stamina.
Winter, spring, summer, and autumn kept passing by, but Zephyr did not miss a single day of training.
* * *
Five years later…
Zephyr had drastically changed in terms of appearance. He
became taller. He hasn’t cut his hair since they started training, and he ties it up in a ponytail. Before, his physique was scrawny, just like most magicians. Now, his physique looks great.
His muscles aren’t small, but they aren’t too big either. When he wears thick clothing, his physique isn’t noticeable. The biggest thing that has changed, however, was his stats.
He was now able to wield the Ruler’s Blade with just one hand while being able to swing with speed and precision. When he runs at his maximum speed, Isabelle could barely follow his speed with her eyes. His stamina has increased so much that monsters don’t even hurt him anymore when he wears his cloak. Even Isabelle’s arrows couldn’t hurt him.
After the daily training, Isabelle and Zephyr would always prepare a meal and eat together.
“How strong do you think you are right now?”, Isabelle asked Zephyr. Zephyr hadn’t thought of that in a while. How strong was he compared to the others…?
He brought out his stat window—
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His strength grew the fastest over time, since the sword was heavy. It took him almost two years to be able to swing the sword with one hand. His agility had been increasing at a steady rate, together with his dexterity. Since every part of his training required endurance, his stamina was higher than both his agility and his dexterity as a result.
“I think that my strength is S-grade, while the rest is A-grade…” Zephyr made an educated guess.
“But I’m still not too sure about it since we have nothing to compare it to.” He continued.
“Then you should visit Lochwood and meet your old friends.”, Isabelle suggested.
Zephyr looked at her.
“Are you okay with that?” He asked her.
“I’d have to pass by Stalta if I want to go to Lochwood.” He added.
Reasons of Evil