The first thing Sylas noticed when he opened his eyes was the sky.
It wasn't the familiar light blue one he was familiar with, nor the one he used to stare out at during boring classes or long bus rides.
No, this sky's color was a deep, almost purple color. Wisps of silver clouds drifted slowly across it, as if time here had nowhere else to be.
'Am I dreaming?'
His head was throbbing so fast that it couldn't be normal. Pushing himself up from the ground, his fingers sank into the cold dirt that he was laying on.
The air felt strange too. It was cold, not the freezing temperature type of cold, it was more like the very land he was on was tainted with some evil prescence.
Grrrrrrrrr…
Sylas froze at the sound. Turning his head, he soon saw a sprawling horde of twisted dark colored shaped creatures, crawling over the cracked pieces of earth layed around him.
Only one word came to mind when he saw those creatures, 'Monsters.'
They were monsters, creatures that existed in fictional stories. There were at least a dozen of them.
Their eyes glowed with a sickly red color, every pair pointed directly toward him.
His throat tightened.
'I shouldn't be here. I should be in my room enjoying my summer break, not encountering monsters in a foreign land.'
As he began to panic, a warmth quickly spread out from his chest down to his limbs, buzzing beneath his skin. Over time, his breathing began to steady on its own.
And suddenly the fear felt… distant to him.
He could feel his heart now beating like a war drum. His muscles felt weightless. Instincts he never had before, whispered to him ways to attack.
As this sensation spread throughout his entire body, a small white note fell out of one of his pockets.
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"Dear Sylus, Sorry for accidentally exploding your TV and destroying your body, as compensation, I reconstructed your body as a Viltrumite's and sent you to one of the anime worlds that you watched in the past.
You are now a one hundred percent pure Viltrumite, possessing boundless physical potential, along with a vast lifespan.
By the time you are reading this, your family will have already perished due to the time differences across dimensions. But fear not, they lived healthy and fulfilling lives until the very end. With this in mind please enjoy your new life in this fantasy world.
Sincerely, God."
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The words weren't spoken aloud, but it rang through him as if another person was speaking directly in his mind.
"My body…"
He clenched his fists, feeling a newfound strength coursing through him. He felt as though he could now move at superspeed and lift things he could never even imagine back on earth.
But the monsters didn't wait for him to get used to his new body. They began to charge straight at him.
Their claws tore across the earth, snarling and howling, as they did.
Every logical part of Sylas screamed at him to run but…
Another part of him, a deeper part, one that he never felt before, rose above it all, it spoke to him. Telling him to fight.
The first demon leapt at him.
Sylas didn't think. His body's instincts moved before a thought even formed. A blur of motion, a crack of air splitting open—
His fist connected head on with the monster's head, he only expected the demon to stumble back, or better yet fall unconscious.
Instead, when his fist connected with the demon's head, it penetrated straight through its skull, destroying its brain.
Sylas staggered back, staring at his own hand. It didn't hurt, not even a little.
Another monster lunged. Sylas turned and every detail sharpened in his vision. The creature's claws slicing through the air, the ripple of its muscles, all the way down to the flecks of spit flying from its maw.
Sylas observed the creatures, they moved as if they were in slow motion for him now.
Throwing another punch, another demon was vanquished.
But with every attack, an emotion pulled at him. It wasn't excitement, nor was it the thrill of battle. It was…Loneliness.
He was only eighteen. He had never asked for this. Yeah, he might have dreamed of power like this but… Now, in a world he didn't recognize, surrounded by monsters, he felt the weight of everything he'd lost, crushed down on him.
His family. His friends. His old life. It was gone… forever… He could never go back… never see them again.
These fists, this strength, they didn't feel like blessings. They felt like chains pulling him toward a path he had never wanted.
More demons came, making him pause his thoughts.
The ground shook from the battle. Sylas stood alone, the strange new power still humming through him.
"But…why…why me…"
But the only answer he received were the demons howls.
He closed his eyes, inhaled, and let a long exhale, accepting the new reality in front of him.
"I'll live for thousands of years, according to Nolan's information."
He took one long look at his hands, then turned to look at the remaining demons that were drooling while looking at him.
He spoke in a low voice, laced with frustration, "Let's get this over with."
Sylas lowered his stance without thinking. His feet dug into the ground, making it fissure outward.
The monsters shrieked and lunged all together but they never reached him.
The first demon was split in half, the second had its spine shattered under a single backhand. The third, he grabbed it by the jaw and slammed it into the dirt so hard the ground cratered beneath them, dust exploding outward in a violent ring.
By the time he realized it, the battlefield had gone quiet. The last demon twitched at his feet, its chest caved inward, blood leaking from its mouth. Sylas stared at it for a few seconds before looking outward.
The world around him stretched in all directions, black stone mountains, rivers of ash, skies the color of dying twilight. Not a familiar place in sight.
"Tch."
His heartbeat echoed in the emptiness. The creatures that he killed were now…evaporating, turning into dark mist, the blood scattered around the ground was also beginning to evaporate along with the creatures bodies.
"This scene is familiar."
When the creature's bodies finally disappeared, all that remained was a dark floating orb hovering where the bodies once were.
Taking a closer look, he finally remembered where he saw this before, "This is Chaos."
'If Chaos exists, then this world that I am in, is the world of, Record of Grancrest War.'
What type of world is this you ask, well it's a world where chaos, a chaotic, unstable energy from another dimension, causes monsters and natural disasters to appear. It is the source of all magic but also the cause of the world's problems.
Sylas stepped toward one of the dark floating orbs that were around him. He noticed that it pulsed like a heartbeat, each throb sent tiny ripples across the air.
In the show, it looked eerie. In person, even more so.
The closer he got, the stronger the pressure grew.
"So this is this world's special power," he muttered. "This strange substance…"
If left alone, the chaos would disappear, returning to its origin only to summon more monsters and disasters in the future.
He reached out. His fingers hovered inches from the swirling darkness. Wisps of black fog curled outward like curious snakes, brushing against his skin.
Wasting no time, he stuck his hand into the orb. As he did, the chaos began to shrink. It tried to corrupt him but failed miserably, he now possessed Viltrumite cells, this level of corruption wouldn't work on him.
As he began to absorb the ore, it began to shrink until it completely disappeared, leaving nothing behind in its place.
He continued doing this until he finally felt something change within him, he now felt a new power coursing through him.
He tried to concentrate this new power on his left hand and as he did, a blood red icon appeared in the air.
It was a crest, his very own crest that he formed from the chaos of these creatures. Although, it was of the lowest rank, Esquire.
He remembered that Crests are magical seals that give their holders, typically known as Lords, the power to suppress Chaos.
Lords use them to protect their territories, but in the present time, many of them now fight to steal other Crests and gain more power along with land.
"This is how crests were described in the series if I remember correctly."
He looked down at the icon now hovering above his left hand.
"I guess, I can consider myself a Lord now."
It should've felt empowering. No, it did feel empowering but that only made the ache in his chest sharper.
Power without purpose is just a reminder of everything he no longer had.
He curled his fingers, and the crest dissolved into his skin, leaving only a lingering warmth on the back of his left hand.
"Right," he muttered. "Lords… territories… Chaos suppression… monsters… politics… war…"
Putting a hand on his face he muttered to himself, "I don't even know where the hell I am right now, this sucks."
A soft breeze swept across the wasteland, carrying ash and the faint smell of ozone.
Sylas looked up at the sky, the twilight-purple ocean overhead swirling with silver wisps and for a moment, he just stood there taking it all in.