Proving Ground 1 (Patreon)

Proving Ground
Chapter 1

-VB-

Two travelers looked towards the mountain and the city in the distance.

“So this is it, huh?” the taller of the two muttered, though his words sounded

Jayan looked up at his father’s awed face before he too looked out into the distance and stared at the city.

The City of Cer.

It was unlike anything else he’s seen in his life.

Its walls were thicker than most West Coast highways and surrounded the entire base of the mountain, and a statute of a mythical or legendary figure stood at each of the four gates that led in and out of the city. The north was guarded by the Jormungandr, a serpent supposedly capable of wrapping around the entire planet. It head formed the roof of the entryway, and its body seamlessly molded into the wall. The east was guarded by the thousand-armed and thousand-eyed Bodhisattva Guanyin, and the statue actually possessed thousand arms and thousand eyes. The south was guarded by some sort of a bird that seemed to spew out lightning. And the west was guarded by Saint George, armored and dressed in the canonical appearance of a knight and crushing a dragon underneath his heels.

Jayan still couldn’t believe that the wall had been raised in a single day.

And if the walls impressed him, then the city within awed him.

In an age where men and women built skyscrapers out of steel and glass, the City of Cer had a towering tower built out of stone and earth that rose at least fifty floors into the sky. Built right on top of the mountain of Cer, the slightly fatter base of the tower and the slightly narrower top of the tower showed the world that it still had much to learn.

“Let’s go, Jayan. We must reach the city before noon,” he said before taking off.

“O-Okay!”

And then the two of them took off on a run.

-VB-

The Battle of Cer was a victory for the Serbians during World War I, but not in a way that they expected it to be.

The Serbian generals and soldiers outmaneuvered and outmatched their Austrian counterparts who had come to invade their land.

Everywhere except the Mountain of Cer. When the soldiers entered the sudden deluge of mist that held the mountain in a near suffocatingly firm grip, they never left.

Austrians and Serbians both poured men into the mountain, thinking that their enemies took control of the strategically vital landscape.

This did not turn out to be the case.

The mountain was the home of an enlightened young monk meditating on the flow and works of nature, and he took the invading army and the defending army both to be a nuisance and took the field, so to speak, to harshly scold them both.

For a full week, the Austrians and the Serbaisn fought the Battle of Cer with the namesake mountain at the center of it all.

And when the week came to an end, the mist around the mountain finally fell away to reveal the young monk handing each side their men back, brutally battered and weakened. Both sides took an exception to this rude - if powerful - young man and demanded that he surrender.

In response, the young man raised a wall around the entire base of the mountain and declared it to be his, and that everyone who wanted to wage a meaningless war will leave him, the area, and his newfound kingdom lest he turn their ire - and this literally earthshaking power - upon them.

And that’s how he broke the back of the Balkan Theater in a single move.

With access to Serbia stymied and the threat of the war growing ever larger, the Austrians - after losing some one hundred thousand men in a single battle - quickly negotiated a ceasefire with the Serbians to deal with the supernatural monk who interrupted the war.

The Serbians, who just lost a chunk of their borderland to a monk who thrashed their armies, agreed, if only to give themselves more time to improve their defenses.

Though the ceasefire did not last for more than a year, the two temporarily cooperating armies managed to celebrate Christmas before the war began once again and into a higher gear.

For this reason, the founding year of the Kingdom of Cer is also known as the Year of Christmas Truce.

-VB-

“But I didn’t tell them to leave politely! I told them to go fuck themselves!”

Johan von Arnulfshapft sighed. “Your Highness, crass language has no place in official history.”

Despite being over a hundred years old with appearance to match (at least on the surface), the “enlightened” King of Cer whined like a petulant child.

“Crass language, my ass!”

If Johan was anyone other than the man he was for he had been His Majesty’s Chancellor for the last three decades, then he would have been flabbergasted by the dirty mouth the last king of the Balkans had in private.

Instead, he just sighed again because an old man like him could only do so much.

‘Believe me, I tried when I was younger,’ he thought to himself while he watched his king continue to pout and grumble upon the throne. “Your Majesty, we have five minutes before the official meeting of the Estates begin.”

“Why did I even set up that system in the first place…”

“Because you were too lazy to take care of everything, and so you had us - the nobles, the merchants, and the people of all ethnicities - work on your behalf. It was delegation, was it not? If I remember the history book correctly, then you were quoted to have said ‘work together or get out.’”

“I said ‘work together or I’ll kick all of your asses and make you all work together!’”

“Same thing.”

“Is not!”

“It is unkingly to continue to whine, Your Majesty. If you continue to whine, then I will have no choice but to inform the Crown Prince of your conduct here.”

The old king quickly sat up and his face turned into a rigid and almost downright terrifying visage. “I am ready.”

Johan huffed irritably. “Very well then. I shall have the herald bring the people in. The first guest of the day is … the Headmaster of the Chakra Arts Academy. He wishes to discuss with you on the merit of accepting communists, especially belligerent communists, into the academy.”

It was miniscule, but he saw the king’s cheeks twitch.

“After that, it is the CEO of Arnamax Heavy Industries wishing to talk to you about mining rights in…”

As the king’s eyes glazed over, Johan sighed once more.

-VB-

The Kingdom of Cer sits upon the Mountain of Cer, and holds a territory of six thousand square kilometers, which is five hundred square kilometers smaller than Luxembourg. It is the last absolute monarchy of the European Continent, which paradoxically rose up during the fall of absolute monarchies in the rest of Europe.

Led by the Monk-King, the founder of the kingdom, the kingdom introduced the world to the up-to-then unknown internal energies within humans colloquially called “chakra.” He used the chakra within and the years of self-imposed self-study to carve out a small territory away from both the Serbians and the Austro-Hungarians. Expanding mostly into the Bosnian lands and only a little into Serbian lands even against the combined - if poorly coordinated - might of the Austro-Hungarian and Serbian militaries, he decimated not the men of the armies but their supplies.

With no way to fight off an enemy capable of traveling underground, turn invisible, change shapes, cause fire without equipment, induce nightmarish hallucinations, and more, both armies gave up and turned back their focuses upon each other.

Having claimed a small territory comparable to Rhode Island, he quickly opened the doors to refugees fleeing the “useless war.” It was here that the people declared him their saint-king, but the now proclaimed king quickly dissuaded any sentiments among the populace about linking him to any religion.

When the Great War came to an end, the Allies sought to bring the Kingdom of Cer under control, but failed diplomatically.

They soon became a member of the League of Nations…