Mars looked at the Orb of Elentir, which was present in the center of the ritual chamber. The artifact had been an emblematic symbol of the Order of Elentir when it still existed, and it radiated sets of symbols charged with magical energies in absolutely crazy amounts.

Its power was so strong that just being next to it hurt. Rumors from taverns told of a fragment of the power of the Gods being sealed inside, and that he could fulfill all wishes. But the rumors were obviously false and exaggerated, or the power of the Gods was simply useless. Well, it was supposed to be the kind of thing you could put in the hands of a child, and come back 5 minutes later to find that he had destroyed the house and the whole neighborhood with it. Any child would have wanted one. Well, maybe.

"I would have liked to have one it when I was a kid."

Thinking back to his childhood, he missed those faraway, peaceful days.

When he was a child, he had so enjoyed the many stories of adventure and horror told to him by his grandfather before he fell asleep, lulled into imaginary worlds by the sound of his deep and powerful voice. Those rainy evenings by the fire to explore in his imagination a thousand stories of horror and adventures where the hero ended up triumphing at the price of terrible sacrifices, often death, had strangely always remained in his heart.

Ironically, the stories he had loved so much as a child had become real when his life itself became a tale of horror and terror, filled with nightmares and abominations that went far beyond any story that grandfather had told him, or even anything he had ever imagined himself.

As a teenager, he had many times hoped that his favorite games could become a reality and that he can live in this kind of fantasy world with apocalyptic parameters. Of course he had never really thought about the implications of such a situation, after all it was impossible that something like this could happen to him. But the truth is that the day it happened and he was summoned here, all the hardcore horror games he had played had been nothing more than entertainment that he had enjoyed sitting comfortably in his chair.

Living in a setting similar to one of those games he liked so much, was in fact something absolutely horrible and cruel.

Mars chanted a spell, focusing on the image of the magic seal of one of the Servant Spirits with whom he had made a pact. Immediately, the servant manifested himself in the material world, appearing before him, tapping into his reserves of magical energy as space itself seemed to be distorting.

The spirit that had materialized resembled a strange inflated leather bag, he may not have been the most powerful, the most impressive or the most beautiful of them all, but his powers to contain and carry within him an almost infinite amount of objects were certainly practical.

Mars communicated what he wanted to the servant, and the magic bag opened wide and made the objects demanded to appear in the material world by spitting them out. Once his task was accomplished, Mars whispered a few words in the sacred language, caressing some of the stitches in the bag, which made the bag whirr with contentment, before suddenly disappearing by distorting the space around it.

The booty of one of his last expeditions was some shoddy alcohol and cheap home-made cigarettes made from tobacco leaves from Jorias, one of the most prosperous trading nations south of the continent of Enoa, or so it was before the war started. In the first few years after their arrival, the call of many of Earth's inhabitants to this world made the tobacco trade flourish as never before, and the merchant guilds, already indecently rich, had become even richer.

Tobacco, which had become a rare and precious commodity after the fall of the kingdom of Joras, had become a real treasure when all the nations and merchant kingdoms responsible for its production were ravaged by monstrous armies. When he found it, he decided to ration it and use it only for special occasions.

"Hell, the end of the world seems to rank at least in the top 5 of my list of special occasions."

Taking the bottle in his right hand, he brought it to his mouth and bit the cork to rip it off, opening the bottle with a sharp gesture with his head. He could have opened it with his powerful telekinetic powers, but the feeling would have been different. Respect for tradition was one of the few things he had left at the moment. He took five large sips of this brandy, each one warming his throat more than the previous one, before spitting the sixth, then levitated the cigarette to his mouth and set the tobacco on fire with a single thought before taking a large puff.

The alcohol had a bitter taste and the tobacco was so dry and strong that it seemed centuries old. Disgusting, but enough to satisfy his old habits for one last time.

Spitting the smoke out and manipulating it with his magic, he made the shape of an angel of luscious proportions appear, and he sighed "Seriously, why haven't I been summoned to one of those worlds described in cheap and stupid stories instead of this apocalyptic world??"

On the day he was invoked, he had jubilated. He had thought that it was finally his lucky day, that he would be able to get away from the boring and meaningless life he had led until then, and that he could become a hero! The magicians had even said something like, "You're going to become supermen and half-magicians", well, maybe it wasn't exactly what they said, but it was what he understood from their explanations. He had expected that the blessing of the gods would give him the power to immediately launch trucks and run faster than a rifle bullet.

But the truth is that reality has not been as sweet as his fantasies, when he entered the Tower of Dreams to begin his military training to learn how to fight and survive all kinds of hellish situations, the only thing waiting for him was hell. He had been called here to serve as a front-line soldier in a war against an invasion of nightmarish creatures.

When he realized his situation, he knew right away that he was going to shit his breakfast in his pants.

He was just an anonymous and unimportant face lost among the legions of soldiers, used as mere cannon fodder and condemned to fight on the front lines of this impossible war far beyond what reason should have allowed, constrained by the influence of mind-control spells as much as by the call of the curse that weighed down on him.

"At least I was a beautiful anonymous face."

Since the barrier that protected the material world from outside influences had weakened, certain dark forces had awakened from their long sleep and had seized the opportunity to come out of the abyss. Fallen or forgotten gods had returned to dominate a world that had forsaken them, while giant servants or degenerate troops of those gods marched again upon this world. In some parts of the world, death itself was no longer a source of deliverance but a scourge, as the dead began to awaken from their eternal sleep to attack the living.

And in the midst of all these events, as if the situation was not bad enough, the Kingdom of Nightmares, the place where the immemorial fears, dreads and terrors of mortals lived, had begun to mix with the material world itself. Overnight, the nightmares that haunted the imagination of mortals had infiltrated the material realm, distorting the texture of reality.

Their nightmares had become real.

"Tsk. This world was seriously fucked up, even a small child would have been able to understand that! So what was the point of calling us?"

But after coming out of the Tower of Dreams, his mind had been indoctrinated and manipulated, they had filled his mind with stories of legendary rescues, heroic fighters, glory, and medals. Well.. even though in his case they didn't have to make a lot of effort for that, because he was pretty stupid and it was the kind of thing he had always wanted to do.

In any case, the war had never seemed so generous and full of promise. They, the Earthlings, were here, and they were going to save this world from destruction!

After all, weren't they born exactly for this kind of destiny? Who could protect the world better than them? And they might even become one of its many lords in thanksgiving for saving it! They were the Chosen Ones! So what did he have to fear? With his stronger physique, telepathic and telekinetic powers, it was going to be a walk in the park.

For the glory of mankind, he was going to be a fucking hero!

But fighting monstrosities wasn't exactly a distinguished career like he had been told. The casualty rate on the first day of battle was catastrophic. There was nothing glorious about seeing men, and more often than not boys, being torn to pieces and dismembered and devoured by horrible monsters, their cries being muffled only by the blood that gushed from their mouths to fill the helmets of their armor.

They were nothing more than mere animals thrown alive into a vicious giant meat grinder, who took pleasure in killing their prey in the worst possible way.

The promises of glory that had long been described to him had consisted mainly in crawling on the ground made muddy by blood and piss and then swimming in the entrails of the broken bodies, trying to remain as silent as possible, hiding under the bodies of unknown soldiers and desperately praying to the Gods that no monster would notice his presence.

He had discovered the painful truth: his goal was not as great as saving the world, but it was to survive at all cost.