Bound and Broken: An Isekai Adventure Dark Fantasy (Melas Book 1) V.A. Lewis (feel good books to read .TXT) 📖

be glad Zombies don’t do that. It’ll drain me quickly if that was the case. Of course, if I were a truly powerful necromancer, I’d be able to raise an army quickly that way. But alas, I am not one, and neither do Zombies do that. But it is a fascinating idea you proposed. Where did you hear about such a concept?"

"Uhhhhh… I don’t know," I laughed nervously, "probably an old-wives’ tale or something from back in my village. You know how villagers like to gossip, am I right?"

Anyways, Gerritt was telling the truth when he said he was not a powerful Necromancer. He explained to me how he was not even a Dark Acolyte like Victor was.

To be given the title of Dark Acolyte meant you were part of the Infernalis; it carried with it a status that placed you above even the leaders of the individual cells of the Dark Crusaders spread throughout the continent— that was why Victor could order Gerritt around despite the latter being a Commander. And to become a Dark Acolyte required meeting certain criteria.

"What is that criteria?" I asked Victor a day ago. "Why are you a Dark Acolyte but Gerritt is not?"

The blue haired man flicked his hair back dramatically, and grinned. "Talent," he said. "Gerritt may be more experienced than me in magic, but that’s because he has decades of experience with spellcasting. But he does not have talent. I do, and that’s why I was given the title."

And it was indeed quite a prestigious title.

During the time of the Demon Lord— even before the Holy Xan Empire existed— anyone who could cast magic was called a dark acolyte. It was not so much a title, but more of a label; a word with even worse implications than being a heretic.

It was an appropriate term, considering the darkness that came over Hell— the lands the Demons came from— caused by the blackness of the soil and the earth from casting too much magic over thousands of years. And more than that— beyond the superficial origins of the title— they were called dark acolytes to paint them as enemies of the Goddess. Because what was more diametrically opposed to the Goddess of Light than a follower of darkness?

So anyone who did magic were called dark acolytes by the Church. But back then, they were mostly Demons. And Demons, with both their long life spans— the longest of any sapient species in this world, even before their discovery of magic— were masters of spellcasting.

By the time of the Final Holy War, there were very few Demons left. Yet, a single Demon could change the course of a battle entirely— even with the Holy Xan Empire’s newly discovered mana weapons.

The Demon Lord himself was so powerful, it was said he once crushed five armies sent against him in a single day. Even when the Great Hero Xander confronted him, he could not defeat the Demon Lord alone.

It took the combined efforts of all the greatest fighters in the world to defeat the Demon Lord, such as: the First Saintess, Xanthe; the Elf Princess, Qabul; and the Demon Lord’s very own daughter, Elara. Oh and they were all in his imperial harem too, but that’s only tangentially related to this.

Point was: Demons were incredibly powerful, and most of the dark acolytes back then were Demons. So there came a connotation with the title for anyone who did magic— that those who were dark acolytes were truly powerful. And it was not like the Demons ever rejected their association with darkness; in fact, they embraced it as their own, and argued that the Goddess was not a deity of light, but a deity of darkness. Which… kind of started the whole Holy Wars thing.

So the Dark Crusaders appropriated the term from history into their own organization, accepting anyone gifted in magic into the Infernalis as a Dark Acolyte. And Victor was truly a genius. He might have been a new Dark Acolyte, but that did not discount his talent.

Meanwhile, most people— like the Goblins in our camp— were average in regards to using magic; they could cast basic spells and some may even use stronger ones like Victor’s Fireball. But that was a rarity, and would take an average spellcaster months to even years to learn similar spells of that level.

This was especially relevant when considering the short lifespan of Goblins: they had far less time than Humans, let alone the likes of Elves or Demons, to learn magic, thus making it almost counterintuitive for them to learn spells, since they could always use a mana tool to achieve the same results.Like that simple Magic Bolt spell I knew; it was probably as effective as— or possibly even less effective than— a gun.

And that spell— that basic spell which I learned in the moment back in Bys— the one I could probably cast 70% of the time before I even had any practice— it took the average spellcaster a month to learn.

It was like learning how to work mana crystals in that it took a lot of time and effort into getting used to doing it. Victor himself— with all the studying he did beforehand he started spellcasting— took a week to learn how to cast the bolt of magic. And it took another week of practicing before he could cast it consistently!

Learning magic was supposed to be hard. Take Magic Missile, the upgraded version of Magic Bolt which exploded upon contact, for example: it was not even something I had mastered yet. My first attempt at casting it was a success, but subsequent tries did not always go well. Apparently I was lucky that the failures did not blow up in my face— like what was a hazard for those learning how to use mana crystals for the first time.

Overall, I would say my success