Start With Contracting Sprites - Chapter 2

We have all heard the legends of great wizards, but do we know how those stories begin? Ardan Egobar, a young man living in a remote corner of the New Monarchy Empire, does not. He doesn't realize that this story is about him. Not yet...In a world where steam locomotives chug along iron rails, where massive airships hover in the skies, where in the cities you might encounter orcs in suits involved in organized crimes, dwarves with cigars controlling major banks, or elves strutting down fashionable boulevards, where humans have built vast nations on the brink of a world war, almost anything seems possible.Maybe, in such a world, even an ordinary young man, the last of the mountain hunters, might one day become the greatest wizard in history.

A striking man of mysterious origin and peerless talent, he looks back at the world, in all its entirety, with utter disdain. And yet, in the treacherous and unpredictable ultimate formation of the Boundless Secular World, he guards a breathtaking ancient qin with broken strings, waiting silently for the destined one to arrive!

A boy encounters him, and knows for the first time that the world beneath the Heavens is a fickle place. Not even demons, devils, ghosts and monsters can match the frivolity of human nature!

A slender physique, and jade-like beauty, but the sword that strikes between heaven and earth is not unlike a streaming rainbow!

The vastness of the starry sky, the seven emotions and six desires! Greed, anger and ignorance! The teachings of Buddha will grant you boundless strength!

A sea of blood will come, at the cost of all mortal beings full of honest hope!

The ghosts wail as the gods roar, but the sea of blood has no end!

Where, pray tell, is the path I should take?

Since there is no path, no matter how bitter and bloody the sea, even if my boat is made out of bones, I will soar to the heavens above!

- Description from Novelupdates

He wanted to be accepted for who he was; a bastard. But the world was a cruel place for bastards, especially in the vampire realm of Eldoria.A vampire prince, born a bastard, was a disgrace not only to the royal family but the realm at large. And for that, Gabriel Sinclair grew up in harsh environs within the very castle his brother considered heaven.And as if being bastard was not enough wound to scar him and put him miles away from the throne, they made marry a human to seal the treaty between the two warring species.*****Elena Thornhart always dreamt of venturing beyond the walls of Mysthaven. Since childhood, she had been confined in the castle of Mysthaven, safe from the vampire's reach.But not everything goes as planned. In an effort to save the nearly extinct human population, Andrian Thornhart, the human king and Elena's brother, offers her as the sacrificial lamb.Now Elena must navigate the treacherous Vampire court and royal family and protect her husband from his own kind.Little does she know her presence is set to unleash a side of Gabriel Sinclair that he never knew existed, a secret that might set the realm apart or unite it!