I Am The Player, The Road to Eternity

Life as Magnus Fjall was, to say the least as terrible as he expected it to be. No man would not enjoy the fact that he was the most powerful Earthling around, but it came with a few consequences.

Sometimes he was reduced to a propaganda figure. Humans with their imagination and mastery of chemistry and various sciences created modern paper and many things that were impossible.

With it came the responsibility of posing for an hour to create the most authentic Magnus scenes.

Diplomacy didn help either as many prominent people got stronger and stronger.

There were a lot of scientists who he thought would be stuck in the past who created various branches of the sciences.

Some mad psychologists even began studying the psyche, even though it was largely unknown.

If these people could pioneer the most obvious paths, he would consider taking them under his wing. For that very reason he couldn just offend every powerful person for no reason whatsoever.

And as a future leader of humanity he wouldn be able to just do evil as he wished, would he?

It would be fine as long as he retained his number one position, but that could all change when the 1 year period ends and he has to fight.

His cute porters, however, helped him ease his burdens. Most of them weren older than 15 and thus were much more open-minded than others.

Heck! They even grasped various grinding catchphrases and slogans that he said only a few times. To top it off, they didn argue once, and sometimes they didn even need to talk as if they understood each other.

Seeing this level of compatibility made Magnus remember WGO.

This isn the time to daydream! He slapped his cheeks as he looked at the bunch of brats he would make sure to nurture as much as he could.

Before him stood in line 2 boys and 3 girls. Each of them had their own path to the future. He wanted to make sure to magnify their strengths as much as he could.

Starting with the boys was Oliver. He was an aristocrat, who because of his upbringing could never truly fit in, for he was meant to lead.

That was what he was taught at least.

Hmm weird… His presence demanding to be in the spotlight is nowhere to be found. Magnus thought to himself as he looked at the chubby blond haired boy.

The second boy had tapped on his shoulder and soon, Oliver excluded his presence.

His light green eyes flickered for a second as he introduced himself.

”Greetings ma- sir Magnus I am Oliver Swift hailing from the Swift marquis family of the Roman Empire. ” He said and lightly bowed as a sign of minimal respect before standing upright again.

Huh, maybe it was just my imagination… Magnus shook his head before he looked at the taller boy Han.

As a young boy of 13, he was much taller than the older one and much more disciplined.

”Master! Han is an orphan adopted by the Shaolin temple. Ready to accept any of your teachings! ”

Han gave a 90 degree bow as he returned to his position.

Next was a half-Hispanic girl named Sophia. She was the oldest of all of them as she was 20 years old.

”Hi, I am Sophia Tlaloc from the Nahua confederation. I was raised by my mother as my father died when I was young. I have a goal to someday surpass and beat you. ”

She was the boldest and although he didn remember her as such, however he didn care as it was many years into the future when he would meet her.

And as for beating him?

”Hahaha very well, challenge accepted little girl. ” He said as he laughed so hard that his stomach almost fell out.

Sophia pouted before quickly hiding it and unleashing a sharp presence. It was an outstanding achievement that few would be able to match.

Very few and yet she unleashed it before the one considered the strongest.

Magnus stopped laughing as he unleashed his presence. The world came to a standstill as the air around them began to tremble and soft cracking sounds could be heard.

Every child unleashed their mana to form the most powerful presence they could and yet they weren even able to force the other side to a standstill.

”Kid, once you are able to withstand this pressure alone, you will be able to gain your name back. This is meant for all of you. Want to command my respect and want to beat me? First try to stand tall! ” As Magnus said that he retracted his presence and they all fell to the ground.

In the midst of their struggle, they were engulfed in a green aura that boosted their mana back to pristine condition quickly.

They stood up and Magnus pointed at the second youngest girl. She was of Asian descent, wearing huge glasses that obscured her face.

She, still recovering from the shock, hesitantly stood out and introduced herself.

”I-I a-m Aki! ” She said as she covered her red face with her long, raven, cascading hair and quickly took a step back.

Did I scare her a bit too much? Magnus thought as he called up the youngest girl.

She, unlike Aki seemed to be unbothered and confidently stepped out.

”I am Caroline Stonefeller, a natural born businesswoman and someone who will ultimately be at the peak! ” She said with a natural air of dominance before stepping back.

Magnus felt a tick on his head for a second. However, he realised that teaching these five brats would be much more difficult than when he took them in one by one.

He never even taught them properly and instead used in-action situations to force them to grow.

Will people think that its unethical if I force them all into a forest with a goal to survive and each death would make their future bootcamp harder? Maybe if I don mention the bootcamp at all. But then they won try as hard… Magnus thought to himself about how he could torment them the most.

Without making any one of them quit.

He remembered how Aki was the least stable and most prone to panic. Though having her as his porter when he was exploring spider-infested Australia wasn the most ideal timing.

Han and surprisingly Caroline were the two most stubborn people he met. Their iron will would probably make their willpower jump by hundreds if they ever took the warrior class that he did.

First he decided to assess their powers.

”Alright brats come at m-. ” Before he could finish they lunged at him in unison. Dozens of mana-soldiers dressed in Ancient Roman armour held their gladious as Oliver granted them blessings like some God of War.

Caroline on the other hand created a bunch of needles in the air as she applied any kind of debuff she could afford. She fired her projectiles first, but Magnus ignored them as they touched his body before falling to the ground.

She summoned a bunch of rocket-like mana constructs that engulfed him in ash and smoke. Seeing that she shot her target she sat down to recover as much mana as she could.

Using the smoke a domain of various blunt and sharp weapons that were floating around Sophia swiftly vanished into the smoke and attacked Magnus from all possible angles.

Aki softly chanted ”Kiss of the undead ” as an undead spirit manifested herself and sent a kiss towards Magnus.

Seeing that it landed Han sealed the deal as he launched himself into the air and encased his punch with mana that increased his weight to a ton.

Like a comet he crashed into the still smoke shrouded Magnus at Mach 1.

”Yall kids can cooperate quite well huh? ” Magnus said as Hans fist forced the smoke away to show a fully intact Magnus.

Is the power of imagination at the beginning so strong? These kids could already beat the strongest wimp I fought. He fought multiple leaders of the top 5 recognised organisations, however none of them would be able to beat these kids.

Their control over mana was spectacular to say the least and even their fighting styles already began to resemble the ones they used in their past lives.

Although they couldn even ruffle his clothes, they didn get discouraged. Aki began to chant random gibberish that made Magnus skin crawl.

Sophia used half of her weapons to annoy him and the other half to slow him down.

Han simply stood before Aki as he drove his instincts to the peak. Caroline created a bunch of illusions and gravitational pulls. And Oliver summoned a hundred archers as they sent out rains of arrows against Magnus.

Oliver knew that it was futile, so he spent the rest of his mana boosting Akis powers.

Magnus accepted the challenge and began walking. His calm steps somehow evaded each and every arrow as he danced across.

Once he closed the distance by half, he summoned 50 archers.

His words were like a rune, forcing his archers to shoot in a peculiar way, so that somehow 50 archers negated the prowess of 100 despite investing the same mana.

As the two sides kept each other busy, Magnus kept going forward at a leisurely pace.

Han kept up his stoic visage even though his arms began to tremble a bit as he confronted Magnus. He created a mana palm the size of a human and hurdled it at Magnus.

In response Magnus threw out his own palm, which was half as thick as his.

The clash resulted in Magnus loss, but the palm that retained most of its energy completely missed the target.

Magnus then threw out a couple of quick punches that appeared near Hans body as they attacked all of his blind spots at the same time.

”Stop thinking with only your body as the limit. ” He said as he passed by the near unconscious boy.

Now what was left were gravitational pulls and slight space distortions. Half of these were bypassed by Magnus with just a snap as their weak balance broke and they collapsed on themselves.

Another was counter attacked by these same types of pulls while he walked past near perfect equilibrium points.

His steps sounded as Caroline was too exhausted to fight and Olivers attempts to slow him down with his soldiers were met with few punches.

The formations weren even close to being refined as Oliver had to control the mana soldiers who possessed almost no real sentience.

Magnus then created ping pong balls with wet red paint on them.

Each time he flickered, Olivers body would have a red stain.

”Control over your soldiers is what you have to work on, but you yourself should always have the power of 1000 men. ” Magnus said as he appeared next to Oliver and karate chopped him.

The only one remaining was Aki as her ritual neared its end and her surroundings began to distort. Soon it turned into a spatial whirpool as someone appeared within it.

The person was none other than Magnus himself. Magnus couldn sense any kind of mana from his clone and yet each time he launched an attack he received the exact same one back.

He first tried to shoot it with a mana beam, but it responded at the exact same time he made his move.

Even when he attacked through spatial means he would have to stop his actions and dodge or redirect some of his strength to block it.

When he blocked, the other blocked too, and when he dodged, the other dodged too.

It took him a couple of tries before he realised what was going on. The clone was not made purely from Akis mana, but was connected to the mana capacity of the other 4 as well.

”Ah curses are too scary. ” Magnus said as he realised he had a small hole in his mental defences.

Aki was not creating a powerful curse that would directly hurt him, but one that would silently creep through his defences and read his surface thoughts.

Then with the help of others she made a clone that would use his surface thoughts in order to predict his future attacks.

These kids are too creative… He shook his head as he decided to invest more in his mental defences.

He snapped his fingers and dissolved the clone in an instant. The backlash knocked out everyone, even those pretending to be defeated.

Han would never go so easily down, but when did he become so cunning? Magnus thought to himself as he lifted the kids up and teleported them to his created space.

I wonder how interesting this bootcamp will be…