“Pffft…”

The seriousness was broken for a moment as a little girl started to chuckle uncontrollably. I scratched my head with a finger and was speechless.

“You…” she paused to laugh a bit before continuing, “You literally named your right hand the Goddess of Light?”

I held up my right hand and it was glowing brightly while it was embroidered with golden silk threads. The ends of the fingers were tipped with ruby claws, with a golden wing design pattern running along the barely visible white glove.

“Hold up, I have a very good explanation for this.” I raised my other hand in protest.

“HA! I’d love to hear it!”

“Well, I was surrounded by angry, muscled men for a long time and there were no nice women to meet so-…”

The earth hugging me started to tighten which caused me to stop. Satallia stopped laughing and started choking as well, which made me think that Satallia wasn’t doing this intentionally.

Using my right hand, I slammed onto the hands holding me. As my memory started to leak physically into the real world, my white robe slowly turned black, its fabric turning to that of black raven feathers.

The ground shook as I shattered my way out, but Satallia broke one of her hands free and pointed at me, causing the large floating wooden face to turn towards me. It opened its eyes and mouth, forming a spiral of energy in its mouth. The face shot a dark green beam towards me, disintegrating everything in its path.

I broke off from my would-be tomb and scrambled to dodge the beam. I once again stirred the mana in the surrounding and became spectral. I swam through the sea the earth and wood, trying to get away from the beam.

Seeing as the only way to stop this beam from eating me was to stop it from the source. Using my right hand, I snapped my fingers which caused me to cease my incorporeal state. At the same time, ghostly winged knights made from white chains came from every direction charging at Satallia.

This was some of my earliest memory of the Yoke of Endlers. The event had many names, the War in the Sky, the Apocalypse and my favorite, the Heavenly Beatdown. I couldn’t remember what exactly happened but I knew someone had their ass whooped so hard, they stopped existing, thus the name.

Satallia panicked at the sudden arrival of angry winged angel knights and redirected the beam towards them. The angels extended their wings and took to the skies, charging at the face instead.

As more and more angelic knights appeared, chains grew from my right hand and lashed at me, tying me around. As I got chained down onto the floor, my robes finally turned completely black and the ground started to get corrupted by the influence of the God of Death.

“So, you’re playing God?” Satallia’s voice echoed across the battlefield.

“No, it’s just what the people think. Names don’t necessarily mean the truth,” I whispered as the chains drained my strength down, but I knew Satallia could hear me nevertheless. Both of us burdened, something tying us down with a reason that we imposed unto ourselves.

The ground around me slowly withered and turned black, Satallia’s roots and earthly hands trying to contest and fight my influence back. As she controlled Life, I controlled Death, a fitting opposition for one another.

However, we both knew we couldn’t keep this up. If we kept this up any longer, we would only serve to destroy ourselves, leaving no one as a winner.

“Hey, Satallia. If both of us die, does that mean,” I paused as I shuddered thinking about my next line of thoughts, “neither of us is real?”

Satallia’s eyes went wild as she started to struggle against her ever-growing earthly blanket and cursed loudly at everything. She was enraged now, trees violently coming out of the ground at every scream.

Looking at her, she must be teetering at the edge of insanity. Satallia’s gone through several emotions in just a span of a few minutes without any reason. First, she was calm, and then she was cocky and brash before becoming suddenly depressed. It was easy to predict that questioning her would cause her to go wild.

As the group erupted with trees, my entire body was covered in golden chains. When it couldn’t cover any more of my body, it simply tightened me like it was hugging me.

With all these things closely hugging me, I might actually develop claustrophobia.

As I thought to myself, a figure shimmered in front of me. I could barely make out the details of the figure. It was a woman, with a long hair. Her face was blurry but her aura resonated with a motherly presence.

I raised my head, trying to get a better view of her and was awed by the beautiful woman looking down at me. My vision of her was cleared and my mouth just hanged open. The woman brushed her hands against me and I pulled my head back.

…Who is she? I couldn’t remember. Was this part of Satallia’s memory or mine?

“Bahas…It’s me. The Goddess of Light.”

“Goddess of Light?”

“Indeed. The people believed in you and from you, I was born.”

“The people?”

“It was a long time ago already. I haven’t had the chance to personally thank you. Oh, by the way, your handwriting could use some work,” The goddess said as she pulled out the paper forms I filled out a long time ago and waved it.

I started to cry. Not because there was anything significant in a goddess being born. It was because my god damn right hand managed to actually become personified. If there was a true God somewhere out there, please kill me. End my miserable life.

Honestly, when that angel Clouds asked me for my paperwork, I thought that it would’ve passed to some kind of council of angels. I didn’t really think there was actually a Goddess of Light. Even I thought the goddess the Path worshipped was just a made up fiction of my right hand.

“This is a very weird and a really bad time to ask, but does that mean you’re my daughter?”

“In a way, you could say that?” The Goddess of Light tapped her chin with her finger while looking up, like how I normally would when pondering things.

Wouldn’t she be closer to an independent alternate personality than a daughter, though?

A wave of branches shot towards me but the Goddess blanketed me with a shield made out of light. Satallia was still enraged at my paradoxical question so she was tossing a lot of dangerous things at me who was currently defenseless.

“This is all so sudden. Why appear now of all times?” I asked the goddess.

“Well…” she raised her hand and sunk through my chain dress. She freed my right hand that was still glowing with power and held it by my wrist. “You’re currently invoking my power.”

“Isn’t an undead calling upon the power of a Light God questionable?”

“Weren’t you thinking that I’m just an alternate personality? Isn’t that a bit more questionable?” She knitted her brows and gave me a pout.

“So, the people believed that there really was a Goddess of Light and you popped up?”

“That’s true, I suppose.”

“Then why not Bahas? The God of Death? Does he exist? Is he a handsome guy like me?”

“No.”

“He’s not handsome?”

“No, I mean, there is no Bahas that isn’t you. You’re Bahas and you still are.”

“But why?!”

“Hmm…” The goddess placed a hand on her hip and raised one of her arm to raise a shield to deflect some incoming boulder. “I don’t think now’s a right time for question and answer, Bahas.”

“You’re right.” I dropped my head and sighed, “But can you do something about her?”

The goddess turned towards Satallia who was now cursing at me in old fairy language. It was mostly about how she was real and that her life was tragic or something trivial.

“I know what you are and what she is. I don’t really understand it fully but I do know that I can’t touch her. One thing I can do, though, is to temporarily summon a bit of The Abyss.”

“The Abyss?!” I gulped and thought about that damned woman-blackhole-thing. I thought about it for a full second before muttering regrets under my breath. I nodded and said, “Do it.”

The Goddess of Light slapped her hands together and slowly disappeared into a bright light. Before leaving, she whispered close to my ears, “Let’s talk again later, alright? No matter who you were before, right now, you’re a lazy bag of bones so don’t forget that!”

“Who the hell are you talking to?! Have you fucking gone insane?! Ha! So the truth had finally dawned upon you right? That’s it! I’ve won! Every cycle, I knew this day would come so I…”

Apparently Satallia couldn’t see the Goddess of Light but she stopped yammering when she sensed what was going on.

“Is….Is The Abyss coming?”

I didn’t nod or reply to her as I was busy trying to plant my face onto the ground as deep as possible. I erased my name which caused the angel knights to disappear. My identity returned to simply being a cranky old Archlich who only wanted to get coffee. My black robes slowly turned white and the chains melted away into nothingness.

“You mad man! You’ve really gone insane! You’re a lunatic!”

Between Satallia and me, something flickered, distorting the area. It was like someone broke a window that was floating in the middle of the place. Soon, a black hole formed in the distorted area. Although small, it was enough to cause Satallia into a panic as everything started getting sucked into the black hole.

The Abyss – the true paradox of life. While we have the answer of ‘I exist and don’t exist’ and ‘Only I exist’, The Abyss is the ‘Nothing exists, thus is.’

Even trying to delve deeper into The Abyss only caused The Abyss to gaze back at me closer, so I never really tried to study her beyond the surface.

As Satallia’s memory was sucked into The Abyss, she realized it was only a small part of The Abyss. There was nothing to stop the black hole so she did the only thing she could do – To override this memory.

“I invoke my name, Evergreen, Eternal Name of the Elves!”

Almost immediately after she said that, I started falling into nothing. It was like I tripped into a pit, except it felt like the pit tripped into me. It was a good thing I was an undead, or else I would’ve vomited a lot from disorientation already.

After a few minutes, or at least what I think to be minutes, my feet landed on hard ground. I balanced myself as I swayed around, almost falling. I looked around realized I was familiar with this place.

I looked in front of me and saw a cage made out of hardwood. Satallia, now Evergreen, sat down in on the floor. This was our first meeting, it seemed.

“You were Evergreen the entire time, huh? Well, surprises aside, what’re you going to do now that you’re trapped?” I tapped onto the cage bars and tilted my head.

Evergreen raised her head and chuckled.

“Am I really the one trapped?”

Huh?

I grabbed the bar and looked around. True enough, it seemed that I was the one inside the cage. I tried to gather some mana to cast a spell but realized nothing was happening. I looked at the cell closely and found the culprits. Those anti-magic crystals were coated into the hardwood.

“The elves had me locked in this anti-magic prison for such a long time that I could remember this place with my eyes closed,” Satallia said as she started rotating one of her fingers in a circle. This place and memory was totally depleted of mana!

The black hole still exists as long as we continue our battle but to Evergreen, she had probably spent a long time inside this cell doing nothing that it didn’t mean anything to her if she lost this part of herself. On the other hand, I treasured all of my memories.

Cheating! She cheated me!

I secretly reached for my hips and felt the hilt of my sword, Fatebinder. I was formulating a plan on how to chop my way out and win this through brute force but I realized something.

‘No matter who you were before, right now, you’re a lazy bag of bones so don’t forget that!’

I sat down and crossed my arms.

“Giving up? Well, don’t worry. I’ll only keep you here for eternity. While you’re trapped here, I’ll go out and make my own world,” Evergreen shrugged and yawned.

Right, with no mana, I had to improvise. I tried to think of any other alternatives. Damn it, I felt like a damsel in distress. I wish a hero would save me or something.

…

Kendra mentioned that inscribing technique so I might as well try it here and now. The technique was a modern creation so it obviously needed modern inscriptions. I should seriously learn to read and write Commons…

Learning Lucia’s technique of passively storing essence of blood paid off as I started to shoot blood from my hand onto the floor. I spelt the word I needed and Evergreen’s eyes went wide. She started conjuring spells to throw at me in order to stop me.

Compared to the scroll version which would require a ritual, if what Kendra was telling me was correct, I didn’t need a ritual. It was much more compressed and simplified.

“What are you doing?!”

“Let me tell you of something else…”

A world without magic - What could that mean? Is there no mana in that world? Would that really be what I would call the zero dimension? Why was Lard getting fatter every day?

Well, I’ll just ask him now.

“SUMMON HERO!”