Echoes of the Abyssal Blade: Path to Free Will - Chapter 24: Lesson - I

My name is Joo In-gong. The name that my parents gave me meant ‘protagonist’ of the world. Really?

In my former life, I dedicated most of my adult life to achieving my goal of exploring the stars. Unfortunately, due to circumstances outside my control, my life abruptly ended leaving my dream unfulfilled. Thanks to the intervention of the Big Guy Upstairs, I was given a chance to achieve my dream though the one who reincarnated me screwed me over. Unlike the futuristic type of world I wanted to start in, I ended up being born in a medieval, magical world as the third son of a regional baron. All I can do now is Dungeon Crawl for ancient technology in the hopes that I find a ship or technology to get me off this damn world!

Mana finally arrived in our world after being delayed for unknown reasons, causing the evolution of everything that had life.

Humans, plants, and monsters all evolved, ushering the planet into a new era in which old laws no longer applied and the only law in the world was the rule of the jungle, where the strong preyed on the weak.

It was a question of whether we, the 'rulers' of the land, would be able to maintain our position and adapt to whatever came after our planet's awakening, and if we did, was that the end?

Introvert!? Me!? The hell am I an introvert? I stay indoors all day because I am afraid of getting my butt kicked.Until I contract my beast, I won’t be walking freely. This is a promise I made to myself.My name is Ryder, and I am black-marked. The planet where I live is dominated by summoners. If you guessed it, then you are right—we contract beasts from the Astral Shadow Plain and summon them at will after successfully forming a contract.A mark appears on the left shoulder of every human after a period of maturity, a mark given by the beast that chooses you. There are five different types of marks—the brown, the orange, the red, the black, and lastly, the white.Of all the markings, I was marked black. I was chosen by a supreme demon monarch of the Astral Shadow Plain—the Dracogon.There was only a 0.5 percent chance for me to survive the contraction process. However, with a slight twist in the original outcome, contracting a creature from the black-marked plain was nothing compared to the catastrophe I caused shortly after—I opened a link between the beasts of the Astral Shadow Plain and the planet of humans, Terra.Everyone on my planet has been endangered because of me. The fact that no one knows when the link will trigger and cause a breach that pours mindless creatures into my world makes it all the more unsettling.Now, with no other choice, I have to find a way to resolve the mistake I made—alone, just like I caused it.