“Leo, my friend! I heard you have some good news for me! Finally! I have been itching for a good, exciting fight for so long!” He said in his characteristically loud, grating voice that always seemed to sound rude even when that was not his intention—although, to be honest, that was usually his intention.

He was huge. He stood at a height of about 2.5 meters; which, when coupled with a body bulging with muscles—including his arms that were larger than the waists of many slim women, he had always had people in crowded places stepping aside and making way for him out of the fear of them been crushed if they stood in his way too long.

The great double-headed battle ax that he always lugged around with him didn’t help with his approachability. The battle was huge! The shaft of the ax was almost two meters long. At the shaft’s end of which was attached a double-bladed ax head—with one ax blade being much larger in size than the other.  Both the ax head and the shaft were forged with steel that had been processed and greatly strengthened with magic and alchemy, with some adamantium and mithril mixed in to enhance the weapon’s power, durability, and magical conductivity. Magic runes could be seen engraved along the shaft, starting from the base, and twisting around the shaft, up until the ax head which had its own set of runes.

The legendary battle ax was Gundahar’s most cherished possession. He always carried it with him—often slung across his back—wherever he went. The ax was forged using all the forging skills of legendary dwarf blacksmith, the extraordinary magic rune inscription skills of his best friend, Archmage Leonard Magnolia, and the complete consumption of Gundahar’s accumulated funds and magic materials—his entire life’s savings at the time. It cost Gundahar a fortune—even with Leonard helping to lower the cost with his influence—to employ the services of that dwarf blacksmith. The greedy little bastard!

Still, Gundahar had no regrets. He obtained a weapon of such might that the ax reached a high level among the rank of the extremely rare and powerful magic weapons.

Gundahar’s battle ax was a high-level legendary weapon, and so, he had finally successfully become one of the rare few people—even among the legendary classholders—who owned such a powerful legendary weapon. It was even a high-level legendary weapon which was so rare, that only the leaders of some major organizations could ever hope to obtain one.

With his large strides, Gundahar reached Leonard in a few steps.

Gundahar sat down on the record desk. “Leo, your servant just told me that you have some good news for me.” Gundahar glanced at the blinking light on the map. “He said you needed my help on some urgent business or something.”

Gundahar massaged his head with one hand. “Can’t you turn off that annoying alarm? It’s giving me a headache.”

Leonard turned off the alarm siren with a wave of his hand. “I want you to accompany me to investigate this turbulence that suddenly appeared in my territory. You have been complaining about you having nothing fun to do lately, so, this should be right up your alley.”

Leonard beckoned to Gundahar for him to come to the map table which Gundahar and stood beside him. Leonard pointed at the blinking dot on the map and said, “A spatial turbulence has suddenly appeared at this location. That is the reason for the blaring alarm. As you already know this is usually a sign of nothing good. I want to go and check it out. Do you want to come?”

Leonard looked up from the map he was showing Gundahar to see a happy and excited smile already on his friend’s face. He facepalmed and muttered, “Why did I even ask? Of course, you’d be willing to accompany me.”

Gundahar burst out laughing, “Ha-ha! You know me well, Leo. A mysterious space fluctuation of this scale usually means an enemy attack of some kind. Of course, I’m excited to find out who or what this enemy is that we might encounter. I hope that they aren’t too weak; I haven’t had a single good fight with a worthy opponent lately. All those so-called strong adventurers are acting like scared babies and have been rejecting my sparring requests.”

Leonard shook his head tiredly. “Gun, they are just being respectful, and you are too powerful for them anyways. Right, didn’t you challenge the guild master of the adventure guild to combat only three days ago because he didn’t post missions in the adventurer guild which was challenging enough for your tastes?”

Gundahar scoffed and said, “That slippery bastard didn’t accept my challenge. After I knocked out the five so-called S-rank adventurers who came to his defense after I issued the challenge, he used the excuse that I was your esteemed guest to weasel his way out of fighting me.”

Standing up, Gundahar pulled out the huge ax that he was carrying in his back weapon harness and said, “I can’t wait anymore. We should go already.”

“Already working on it.” Leonard waved his hand and a glowing illusory archway formed in front of them. At the center of the arch, space seemed to be swirling and twisting chaotically. The space quickly settled down to reveal a blurry wilderness-looking place on the other side of the archway.

Leonard had silently been casting the ‘Teleport gate’ spell even while he was explaining the situation to Gundahar.

“I set the destination point of my teleportation spell some distance away from the area with the spatial turbulence in order to avoid it from interfering with my spell.” He walked up to the teleport gate and waved to Gundahar to follow after him saying, “Let’s go.” He then stepped into the teleport gate.

Leonard stepped out of the teleport gate into the destination location. He immediately noticed that something was wrong with the place. The area had none of the usual signs of human habitation. This was normal for such places like this one located in the wild regions on the borders of the mage nation with the Great Forest. There were only trees, bushes, and other wild plant growth all around him. The strangeness he had noticed was the heat. Leonard felt like he was standing in the middle of a hot, dry desert under the sweltering midday sun.

Of course, the heat was not much of a bother for a powerful legendary mage like Leonard; he solved that with a simple fire resistance spell. The issue was that the whole of the mage nation was still in the middle of Autumn. And with how this place was located this far up north, here should be cold, not hot.

Besides, as if the heat was not enough of a sign to show the wrongness in this place, the sky had a dark-red color, with dark-red clouds that seem to be made of smoldering ash clouds. The soil had a burnt look to it, like a raging wildfire rampaged through the area.

“Whoa! Look at this place! Hey Leo! I didn’t know that you had such a fun-looking place like this in your territory!” Gundahar exclaimed with great excitement.

***

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