Men’s Bad Day Comes
Beyond the land, in a faraway kingdom, there once lived a king who wished to rule all thirty-two kingdoms of the world. He gathered a gargantuan army and declared war upon them. At that time, the kingdoms were divided, each occupied with its own internal squabbles and petty conflicts. One by one they fell, until fifteen had been swallowed by the tide of conquest.
The conqueror was King Jerafoth, the King of Fire and Blood. He was a man possessed by two terrifying entities: the Dragon of Blood and War, and the Dragon of Insanity. The Dragon of Insanity granted him the ability to think beyond the limits of his own imagination, flooding his mind with forbidden knowledge that pushed him to the brink of madness. He commanded over three billion soldiers and one thousand Royal Knights, each mounted upon an obsidian griffin—the rarest and most fearsome of their kind. He seemed unstoppable.
Finally, the remaining seventeen kingdoms united. They gathered roughly 1.9 billion soldiers, led by thirty-four princes. Each prince carried the blood of a different royal dragon flowing through their veins—the dragons of Light, Storms, Earth, Fire, Frost, Wind, Oceans, Dark, Nature, Thunder, Wisdom, Shadow, Gravity, Annihilation, Destruction, Foresight, and Spirits. Each prince also commanded two hundred Holy Knights gifted by the Church.
The war raged for over a hundred years. Children grew up knowing nothing but the scent of blood and the ring of steel. Countless millions died, and through dark arts, countless more were risen again to fight. Finally, a prince named Leonardos, whose power was thought to be that of the Dragon of Light but was later understood to be the Dragon of Truth, Valor, and Hope, rose above the rest. His aura was an anomaly—brighter than the sun and stronger than even the princes of Annihilation or Destruction. It was said his light was the truth, and the hope of the world. In a final, desperate clash, all thirty-four dragon-bloods attacked Jerafoth, but only Leonardos stood firm. He drove a sword through the heart of the Dark Lord, bringing a peace that had seemed impossible to achieve.
---
“Miss Emelia, wake up!”
The sharp voice of Professor Sera cut through the lecture hall of the Academy of Haultin for the Gifted. She turned from the board, where she had been writing this significant history, to glare at a student who was clearly asleep.
The sleeping student, Emelia Dimfulsen, daughter of Count Franklin, slowly stirred. Rubbing her eyes, she mumbled, “Hey… why are you all in my bedroom?”
The students could practically see the veins popping on Professor Sera’s skin. “Miss Emelia, would you rather stay awake for the remainder of this session, stand outside this lecture hall, or have me call your family regarding this behavior?”
Emelia’s eyes shot open. She looked around and realized she was not in her bedchamber but in the grand lecture hall. Seeing the professor’s anger, she quickly apologized. “I’m so sorry! I was having trouble concentrating because I was up all night doing my homework.”
Professor Sera, a young woman of noble bearing herself with striking red hair and golden eyes, approached Emelia’s desk in the corner by the window. “Is that so? Then would you mind showing me this ‘homework’?”
Emelia gave a sheepish giggle. “Well, I would if I could! You see, I gave it to my servant, Josh. He must have forgotten to give it back to me.”
Professor Sera was unamused. “I thought you said you did your homework by yourself all night. How could your servant have it—”
Just then, the door opened. A boy of fit stature, neat in his servant’s livery bearing the Dimfulsen crest, entered. He had groomed brown hair and calm blue eyes.
“Miss Emelia, I forgot to give you your homework back,” he said, handing her the books he had secretly finished for her. He then turned politely. “My apologies for entering unannounced, Professor Sera. May I have your permission to leave?”
She studied both of them for a moment. “Permission granted.”
“Thank you, Professor,” said Josh, and he left, closing the door softly.
Thinking the crisis was over, Emelia moved to sit down.
“Who told you that you may sit down?” Professor Sera’s voice was like a whip crack.
Emelia immediately straightened up.
“Well, Emelia, it seems you did complete your work,” the professor said, her tone icy. “But sleeping during a lesson, especially on a topic of such importance, is very un-ladylike and unbefitting of a noble family. You are excused this time, but let it not happen again. Do you understand?”
“Yes!” Emelia replied eagerly.
The lecture resumed. The surrounding students reacted with a calm familiarity; Lady Emelia Dimfulsen was known for her unusual antics. Some laughed quietly, some whispered, and some, like the youngest prince of Ramura, Agusten, watched with intrigue. Prince Agusten, the sixth son of the king with golden hair and unusual purple pupils, found Emelia’s fire-like nature both essential and attractive—too intense to be near for long, yet something vital to protect.
Outside, Josh, who had found and completed Emelia’s neglected homework, waited to escort her home. He was mostly annoyed but glad she had avoided serious trouble.
His mind drifted to the past. Josh was the son of a farmer. His village was raided by mountain bandits who killed the men and took the women, children, and supplies captive. The bandit leader summoned Josh and two young girls to his chambers nightly. The captives were chained, broken. Weeks passed, and Josh witnessed a mentally shattered young boy being forced to club his own mother to death. Josh was ordered to clean the aftermath.
His inner rage was the only thing that kept him sane. One night, when the leader called for him again, Josh struck with a rock he had been secretly sharpening. He killed the leader, set the camp ablaze, and fled. He saw the other captives choose to die free in the fire rather than live as husks, and he turned away from the bandits’ pleas for mercy.
He eventually reached the kingdom of Ramura, where he learned to survive in damp alleys, to live off rats, and to endure the hollow sympathy in strangers’ eyes. “By death comes life,” he told himself.
Everything changed when a little girl found him. “Hello there. Are you hungry?” she asked. Josh didn’t look up, assuming it was another empty gesture. She persisted. “Here, do you want some chicken?” The smell of fried chicken hit him. He looked up and saw a girl holding out a whole, golden-brown chicken. What stunned him were her eyes—golden and utterly innocent, a sight he hadn’t seen in years.
A sudden force yanked him from the memory. It was Emelia.
“Oooh, thank you so much, Josh! If not for you, I might have gotten detention!” She had hugged him with such force that he stumbled back, hit his head on a rock protruding from the garden path, and fell to the ground, foaming at the mouth.
“JOSH!” Emelia screamed.
Prince Agusten, sipping tea by a window, was so startled by the scream he nearly tumbled, saving himself but not his cup. He knew that voice. He ran to the source and found a panicked Emelia kneeling over her unconscious servant. He put two and two together—or rather, rock and sudden force—and saw the cause was written all over Emelia’s distraught face.
By dusk, all was calm again. Josh woke, his head bandaged, and insisted on escorting Emelia home. She apologized profusely, and she thanked Prince Agusten, who had stayed to help. The prince simply sighed and told her to “be careful.” Watching them leave, he smiled to himself. Well, that was entertaining. What else do you have in store, Emelia?
At the Dimfulsen estate, after “helping” to patch Josh up (and thoroughly believing she had), Emelia beamed with self-satisfaction. Josh smiled softly. “Without you holding that fried chicken for me that day, I wouldn’t even be here, Emelia,” he said, looking at her standing four feet away. He felt a strange comfort, remembering her words from years ago.
Young Emelia: “Is this not what you want?”
Young Josh: “No! And why are you acting like this is a normal thing?!”
Emelia, hugging him without hesitation: “Then I can give you a hug. Don’t worry, everything will be fine. Come with me, and I can give you a home instead.”
---
Two days after the incident, Emelia and Josh were reading under a large, ancient tree on the estate grounds.
“This tree,” Emelia said, “was planted by my great-grandfather. It’s where he proposed to my great-grandmother. Then my grandfather proposed here, and my father to my mother. It’s our family’s sacred tree.”
Lying under the dappled golden light filtering through the leaves, Josh noticed something. “Hey, look at that rock. It’s shielding that little flower from the wind and everything else.”
Emelia followed his gaze. “Oh, I see it. It’s like the fairy tales in those books—the knight protecting his princess from the forces of evil.”
“Well,” Josh said, a playful note in his voice, “I could be the rock, and you could be the flower.”
Emelia punched his shoulder playfully. “Do you think I’m that weak, to need protecting?”
“Well, you seem too weak to react—” he teased, then snatched one of her books and took off running.
A joyous chase ensued. As evening approached, both fell asleep under the tree, shoulder to shoulder, surrounded by scattered books. The gentle evening wind and the orange sunset light woke Josh. He gently woke Emelia, and they gathered their things to return home.
As they turned to leave, Josh looked back. “Why don’t we call this the Promise Tree?”
“It sounds wonderful,” Emelia agreed.
Unknown to them, the stone protecting the flower had developed a fine crack. A new leaf sprouted on the tree, and the solitary flower grew a second bloom to keep it company.
---
After Josh’s talent for weaponry was discovered, he enlisted in the army. His training was hellish. On this massive planet, he rose before dawn to run one hundred kilometers with magically weighted sandbags—ten times his own mass—strapped to his limbs and torso. He was trained to weaponize anything, learned Dwarven smithing basics, and mastered Aura.
Aura was the energy every warrior possessed, achieved when body, weapon, and spirit fought as one, amplifying strength thirty-fold. With greater personal strength, one’s Aura could grow even more powerful.
After years, each trainee was tasked with obtaining a griffin. The choices were: tame a full-grown Silver Griffin and slay twenty-seven wyverns (each with the strength of eighteen men) to become a Royal Knight; or raise a griffin chick from birth, proving one’s virtuous nature, to become a Holy Knight.
Josh chose a third path. He fought and tamed a Golden Griffin, one of the rarest breeds, and slew fifty wyverns. He earned the unprecedented title of Paladin Holy Royal Knight, a guardian of the crown and the nation.
While Josh was away, Emelia and Prince Agusten grew closer. They shared classes, walks to their dorms, books, lunches, and hobbies. Her enthusiastic energy complemented his calm, collected demeanor beautifully. Theirs was a quiet, growing affection without grand gestures, yet it was thrilling. Emelia confessed to Agusten that she missed Josh, whom she saw as “the brother I never had.”
Prince Agusten, the youngest son, had a weak connection to the Storm Dragon. It was said all dragons descended from the True Dragon, a pet of the Goddess. Dragons offered humans power in exchange for permission to enter the Dream World—the source of all ideas and innovation, the Goddess’s gift.
Growing up in the treacherous royal court, where siblings could be killers, Agusten’s environment was harsh. His weak dragon connection mirrored his insecurity, and his volatile emotions often caused him to lash out. Yet Emelia stayed. She stayed when maids quit, stayed even when his rage came a spider’s thread from harming her. Slowly, with her, he gained control and found more within himself than just the fear he hid.
During a field trip, a demi-earth worm—a monster bloated on earth crystals, with draconic features—burst from the ground. As panic froze the students, a voice pierced through.
“Everyone, stand guard! All students with Thunder affinity, channel your power together at the base of its skull! Celestial students with Gravity affinity, surround it and lock it in place! Everyone else, form a magical barrier!”
It was Emelia. She had magically enhanced her voice and was giving clear, tactical orders. The students, shocked into action, obeyed. The Gravity users trapped the beast, and the Thunder users struck. But the creature broke free, shattering the barrier and sending students flying.
Emelia turned to Prince Agusten. “My Prince, will you do the honor and slay this beast?!”
Looking into her determined eyes, he channeled his Storm Dragon blood. With the power of an unstoppable tempest, he struck the exposed point on its skull, severing its head.
The students were in awe—both of the creature’s presence and of Emelia’s swift command. Even Agusten was shocked, but when he looked for her, she had already fainted from the adrenaline crash.
---
After earning his title, Josh was taken by the Church. His role was to be a secret; a decoy would wear his armor in public. He then underwent a forbidden enhancement.
He was “dead” for ten hours. The clergy and royal magicians used an Aether Core to graft the traits of legendary beasts into his very being:
· The eyes of the Roc, king of birds, so none could escape his sight.
· The heart of the Iron-Tooth Lion-Tiger, so no shadow could darken his spirit.
· The bones of the Fearless Wolverine, so they could not be broken.
· The regenerative healing of the Immortal Axolotl, so no wound could stop him.
· The speed of the Thunder-Cat Cheetah, so nothing could outrun him.
· The strength of the Mountain Earth Bear, granting him the might of a thousand legions (a legion being five thousand men).
· The thickness of the Honey Badger’s hide, so no blade could slice his skin.
· The neck and vision of the Queen of the Dark Sky Owl, so no darkness could blind him.
· The kidney of the Mighty Camel, for unparalleled endurance.
· The immunities of the Lake King Crocodile and the Ocean King Shark, making him a threat on land, sea, and sky.
He awoke reborn, his strength rivaling armies. To prove his might, he rode his Golden Griffin to challenge the Behemoth, a king among monsters. Using his Aura, he slew it and gave its carcass to the Dwarves. In return, they forged him armor from its hide, granting near-total immunity to physical attacks and minor resistance to mental control.
When the kingdom went to war with El Zi Bond, the self-proclaimed King of the Nine Seas, Josh faced the pirate king himself. Bond was no ordinary foe. A former traveler who lost everything, he had found the treasure and crystal of a past Pirate King. The crystal granted him the combined experience and cunning of eighty predecessors. He later tricked the legendary Leviathan into becoming his personal weapon. This act planted in him a seed of ambition that led him to challenge the kingdoms.
The battle between Josh and Bond was titanic. It ended in a draw: Josh was blinded in his right eye, and Bond bore a long, deep scar across his chest. The war concluded with an uneasy stalemate, and Bond remained the free king of the bustling, trade-rich Nine Seas.
---
Years later, a grand celebration was held. It was the wedding of Prince Agusten and Lady Emelia Dimfulsen.
The noble knights lined the path, saluting the bride and groom with raised swords and bowed heads, forbidden from looking upon the royal couple directly. As Emelia walked past on the gold-and-red silk runner, she felt a strange pull from the middle of the knightly line—a sense of something intimately familiar, now distant. The ceremony proceeded, and she dismissed it as an illusion.
Under one helmet, a single tear fell from a remaining blue eye. The knight whispered, “I have the sword to protect you, but not the heart to be with you.” Decades later, he would add, “Even the tiniest flower can crack a mountain of a rock.”
---
More decades passed. Then, the Gate between the mortal world and the Demon World burst open. The united races of the world—Centaurs, Elves (High, Dark, Half, and Frost), Dwarves (of the North, East, West, and South), Humans, Mermaids, Gorgonians, Bird-men, Beast-men, Tree-people, and Rock Giants—marched to war. The world became a slaughterhouse.
After countless battles, Josh, now a legend known only as a nameless knight, stood broken and bleeding before Baheyal, the Monarch of Fifty-Four Legions of Hell. With his last shred of will, he prepared a final, suicidal attack.
Time stopped.
The Goddess appeared before him. “Who are you?”
“I am Josh.”
“What is your duty?”
“To protect.”
“Do you know the price?”
“I know.”
The Goddess, whose pet was the True Dragon from which all dragons came, smiled. Time resumed.
Josh began to glow with a light brighter than any star in the cosmos. A colossal suit of armor, forged from his very being and will, encased him. With one world-sundering strike—“SAMAEL”—he slammed the Gate shut forever.
When the dust settled, the soldiers who found him saw only the body of a common soldier. Back in the kingdom, Emelia, now a queen, felt a sudden, hollow loss, as if something fundamental had been ripped from the fabric of her soul.
The war’s final toll was 2.1 billion dead. A memorial was built: a vast forest of weapons taken from the fallen, thrust into the earth. Among them, one simple sword glowed with a light so faint no eye could see it—except for Emelia’s. For a fleeting second, she saw it, and then it vanished.
The price was paid in full. Josh was erased—from the past, the present, and the future. His name, his deeds, his love, his sacrifice were all removed from history and memory. No one remembered the farmer’s son, the secret knight, the man who loved in silence.
Only the legend of the “Hero” lived on.
