Chương 543: Chapter Five Hundred and Twenty-Eight - Let the Record Show

I was never someone who was super interested in like... rigorous study. I mean, at school, I'd do what I could to pass, but I was usually working just hard enough to get the grades I needed to keep my teachers happy. For the easier subjects, I got good grades, for the harder ones I'd need to study a heap more and I had usually passed without too much trouble. The truth was, though, that when it came to studying... it was kind of boring?

Books should be exciting tales of friendship and adventure, not multiplication tables or dry records of dead people. All that to say that I was kind of impressed with how absorbed I became in the book Ophelia found for me. With storybook prose, Mister Celiga opened The Lost History of the Black Avatars by explaining his personal curiosity concerning these strange legends. Throughout my extensive explorations of ancient and premodern history, I have frequently encountered myths, legends, and folklore.

As historians, it is crucial to recognize that such narratives evolve over time, often influenced by cultural shifts. However, certain stories exhibit remarkable continuity across centuries. One such tale captured my attention, and any discerning reader who has noted the title of this volume will already be aware of the subject to which I refer. Celiga went on for a few pages, but the start of the volume as a whole really just felt like... a friendly but open letter.

Not one addressed to one person in particular, but rather one meant to be read by a lot of people. Or maybe it was like a lecture? But no, it was too... personal for that. I didn't know what to make of it, but it was very interesting reading, even if Celiga was a bit academic in the way he wrote. The myths surrounding the Black Avatars initially struck me as highly localized.

While they do feature a diverse array of characters spanning multiple species, this characteristic is not uncommon among other mythological traditions. What proved most surprising, however, was that as I began compiling accounts of these figures, I encountered remarkably similar narratives transcending national and cultural boundaries. While such widespread dissemination is not entirely unprecedented, it often suggests that the myth in question possesses more than a mere kernel of truth.

Yet, as a rigorous scholar, I found that the more I uncovered about the legendary Black Avatars, the more my skepticism grew rather than diminished. Thus, after a period of relative academic respite, I enlisted several promising young scholars from the University of Deepmarsh and dispatched them on expeditions across the continent.

Their journeys took them to Sylphfree, the Trenten Flats, the distant Crying Mountains, the neighboring Harpy Mountains, and westward to Mattergrove and the network of independent city-states scattered across the western lowlands. These students were entrusted with a range of scholarly tasks, but most pertinent to this volume was their charge to collect, transcribe, and analyze any myths, records, or relevant mention of the Black Avatars. I might have had to reread a few bits.

This was interesting, sure, but it wasn't as easy to parse as some of the stories I was used to. Maybe that was because he was a serious historian, or maybe it was just because this was fact, not fiction. Carrying a few books, Calamity joined me at the table I'd picked out in the corner, and soon Desiree joined the both of us, though she only had two books herself. Calamity was rather smug about that. I decided to continue reading before I looked into what they found.

If nothing else, it felt like Celiga's book would at least give me something to work off of when it came to the myths of the Black Avatars. I set about compiling and organizing the reports sent back by the scholars. As I sifted through the countless permutations of fairy tales and moral fables that form the canon of the Black Avatars, any deviations from this pattern began to stand out. Some sources portrayed the Black Avatars in a less polished, less idealized fashion.

Descriptions of their clothing are more naturalistic, lacking fantastic embellishment (although they universally agree that black was certainly a prominent color). These sources, though few in number, all shared a curious characteristic - they tended to be older. And the older they were, the farther and farther they strayed from the concept of a fairy tale. More and more, they read like they could perhaps be historical accounts.

There are many old writings that might contain reference to the Black Avatars, but separating the wheat from the chaff is difficult. In these older writings, the modern term "Black Avatar" had yet to be coined, so determining if some particular group of black-dressed individuals is meant to be the Black Avatars is often impossible. However, one source stood out to me in the Sylphfree Royal Library, dating back nearly three centuries.

This document describes the arrival of a small group of highly skilled individuals who secured an audience with the reigning queen of Sylphfree. The specifics of their meeting have either been lost to history or remain concealed within the queen's personal diary. Notably, this group referred to themselves simply as the Avatars, though contemporary accounts explicitly mention their distinctive all-black attire.

The next record which I can conclusively determine is a reference to the Avatars appears approximately three years later, in a city guard logbook from the far western region, along the outskirts of Mattergrove. The account originates from what is now known as Port Hazel, though at the time, it bore the name the Royal Port of Hazelfield. This record details a conflict between the city guard—composed exclusively of humans—and a group of black-clad travelers.

This band consisted of a single human, two sylphs, a grenoil, and a "tall human of unusual proportions who was not of the Ostri." If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Once again, the group identified themselves as Avatars, though whether they were dressed in black is not explicitly stated in the text. What is emphasized, however, is their martial prowess.

They reportedly fought the city guard to a standstill before engaging the royal guard, whose ranks included several third-tier combatants. The encounter resulted in significant destruction, though the record does not indicate any loss of life. I blinked as I read that. So... two hundred years ago, the Black Avatars might've been real people. Possibly. It looked fairly likely, if I could trust this author. That was long before airships and such, so they would have had to travel on foot or by ship.

Sylphfree and Mattergrove weren't close to each other at all. It would take... months, maybe a year, to get from one to the other on foot. Unless they had skills that let them move faster, or teleport... right, that would complicate things. I wasn't great at Geography, and the units of measurement here were way different from back home, but I had the impression that the continent I was on was about the size of Europe back home... more or less? I'd never seen a full globe of Dirt.

I wasn't even sure if one existed yet. Had anyone circumnavigated the world yet? Maybe a dragon could do it, but if so, they didn't spread world maps around. Anyway, the Black Avatars dated back some ways. Celiga had little annotations in his text that pointed to pages further in with transcripts of the original documents. I turned over to those, but most were very hard to read, even with my translation magic, they were in a very archaic font? Is it still a font if it's handwriting?

There were a few more appearances of groups that may or may not have been the Black Avatar that Celiga and his associates found. He prefaced that a few of those were very suspicious, and that he was skeptical about them. Others seemed more reliable and detailed, but they were few and far between. If the mentions of the Avatars ended here, this volume would amount to little more than a pamphlet.

However, the early accounts of this group—while admittedly speculative on my part—suggest the presence of a band of mixed-species travelers journeying across the continent for reasons unknown. Their only apparent commonalities were their black attire and the fact that most, if not all, appeared to be of at least second-tier strength or higher.

While individuals of such power were not unheard of—especially in the more tumultuous periods of history when martial prowess was more frequently cultivated—their repeated appearances remain intriguing. Following a brief absence from recorded history, the Black Avatars reemerge, and it is at this point that their legend truly begins to take shape. The first legend of the Black Avatars. I was able to trace several accounts of the Black Avatars back to the northern reaches of the continent.

These stories stand out as particularly noteworthy, as this region had little in the way of scholars at the time, so the events must've been significant to be worth so much ink. I sat up. That was super interesting. The first legend that survived to this day. The rest before that were just little footnotes and historical bits of data, but they weren't really stories. This myth finds its origins in a pass known as the Walker's Path—a valley nestled between two of the smaller peaks within the Harpy Mountain range.

Today, this region is home to the thriving city of Walker's Rest, but at the time of these events, it was little more than a small village, one that, according to the accounts, was beset by a subtle yet insidious adversary. It is the nature of this foe that elevates the tale from mere myth to a possible historical anecdote. If this were simply a story of a band of benevolent, powerful travelers vanquishing a cruel beast, it might be dismissed as little more than a local legend.

However, the entity in question is often depicted not as a conventional monster, but as a figure—either a harpy or a human—capable of beguiling others into servitude. What makes this figure particularly intriguing is its recurring association with a greater, more nebulous entity. Many versions of the tale suggest that this foe was merely an extension or fragment of something far more monstrous, an entity frequently described as originating from an untended or otherwise unknown dungeon.

I contend that it is the mystical nature of this adversary—rather than it simply being an exceptionally powerful native creature—that elevated the stories of the Black Avatars into legend. This figure is consistently described as not only strong and intelligent but also possessing a mastery of insidious and formidable magical abilities.

It is this aspect, rather than mere physical prowess, that imbues the account with an almost supernatural quality, transforming it from a historical curiosity into a legend that endures across generations. A foe that lived in a dungeon?

"Hey, guys, have you found anything about the enemy that the Black Avatars were fighting?" I asked.

"Because... I think I have a feeling, and it's not a good one."