“Is this my fate, to stare endlessly at the sky in this fake world?”

Nur Finnerman could only wonder at the state of his predicament.

“You are scared, are you not?”

“You should be!”

“Ha-ha-ha-ha…”

The voices were everywhere around him, mocking him for his inability to escape.

Among them, only one voice was different.

It belonged to an enormous black serpent.

Rather than mock him, it sounded gentle, almost sympathetic.

Serpent: “Why so afraid of the evil that lurks within you?”

The serpent slithered closer and closer to where Nur lay motionless.

Nur: “Because it wants to consume me and destroy everything”

Serpent: “Even if that evil will make you more powerful than you have ever dreamed?”

Nur: “But at what price? Losing my humanity and all my capacity to love or cherish? If I lose that too, I will have nothing left”

Serpent: “Love is a weakness. Look where it has got you. Lost and trapped within your own soul”

Serpent started to wrap itself around Nur, circling itself in a deathly embrace.

Serpent: “You lost everyone you have ever loved”

Serpent: “None even knows your name”

Nur: “I don’t care. I refuse to turn to darkness”

The walls of the mental realm were overflowing with ooze-like substance that kept on growing with each passing second.

Serpent: “You may not turn to darkness, but the darkness has already turned to you”

Right after saying that, serpent sank its fangs into Nur’s heart.

With the spread of the poison, the darkness started to cover Nur’s body until he was drowning within it. There truly was no escaping it.

Serpent: “Sleep, Nur Finnerman, sleep….lose yourself in an endless dream”

Sleep for eternity….

* * *

Once, he was considered the strongest person within the human kingdom, but now, his identity was known only by a select few.

But those who were aware did not take his existence lightly, considering him to be something akin to kingdom’s secret weapon.

While Arisius Aristan believed to have cut all his ties to the kingdom, for some strange reason the king still sent him letters with the emergency summons.

“Candor, you really have no shame, do you? Just when I am so close to tracking the bastard down!”

For anyone else, calling the king by his first name would have been viewed as an act of extreme disrespect, but the current king and Arisius happened to be old acquaintances.

Despite looking like a young man, Arisius was in his late forties, only a couple of years younger than King Candor.

Due to his Divine Grace, his aging process had slowed down after he had reached his prime form.

Candor’s letter was all but begging Arisius to come back, telling of the threats of the Elves, the Demon King, and some strange note about a man called Dark Lord.

Arisius: “Not sure what he is so stressed out about. If the Elven King is dead, then the elves will only be temporary nuisance, not worth my time”

“As for Sorin Draco….It is him still leading the demons, right? Lately I have been a little out of touch with the current events. Anyways….Sorin is not strong enough to pose a threat to me, not at my current level”

“And who the hell is Dark Lord? Another pretender who thinks he can be contender? Ha! He is a hundred years too early to pose a challenge to me!”

“Candor, if you are going to write me a letter, write something that is more fun for me to read, not this nuisance”

While all Dragon Lords were far more powerful than Legendary Heroes, there were still strong and weak ones among them.

As he was now, Sword Saint approximated that he was comparable to a low-tier Dragon Lord.

Unfortunately, the one he was after, Earth Dragon Lord, was one of the strongest.

He could not abandon his quest, not when he was this close to reaching it.

Though driven by selfish desires, Arisius was not a completely heartless man,

Sometimes, he would visit the kingdom in secret, track down the heroes and challenge them to a duel, with the intention of gauging their strengths.

Much to his ire, most of the heroes were subpar or incompetent, at least by his standards. It became obvious that with his absence, the quality of heroes ended up drastically declining.

Only two heroes managed to peak his interest.

First one was the man named Leon Revilles, or as they called him, the Knight of Light.

To make sure he did not reveal his identity by accident, Arisius only used one tenth of his true strength, but that proved to be too much for most heroes to handle.

But not for Leon Revilles.

Granted, Arisius was not using his full power, but Leon’s feat was impressive regardless, and at such a young age.

In ten years or so, Leon had the potential of reaching Arisius’s level, maybe even higher.

As for the other hero, it was none other than Larat Lemuri, the Knight of Night.

His power was nothing to write home about.

If anything, he was around the same if not slightly stronger than an average hero.

But he had the attitude of someone so obsessed with strength that Arisius couldn’t help but find him intriguing

Within one week, Larat, after losing the first duel, challenged Arisius 67 times, losing each and every time.

But the stubborn fool kept insisting that they have yet another match, one after another.

‘Maybe the reason I sympathize with him is because I am in the exact same situation. But the one I want to surpass keeps eluding me…’

It was a frustrating feeling; that much he was certain of.

Sword Saint did not care or bother with weaklings; they can have their puny, insignificant lives to themselves.

His sole wish was to fight against someone truly strong.

And Earth Dragon Lord just happened to be that someone.

Human Kingdom may have produced three strongest warriors, but each one was far from perfect.

The mightiest, the Sword Saint, abandoned the kingdom in pursuit of strength.

Next strongest, Knight of Light, although renown, could not shoulder kingdom’s entire burden alone.

And the weakest, Knight of Night, despite lacking in power, was by far the most active hero in the kingdom.

* * *

“So much death and destruction….It sure makes it easy to walk among them”

Primordial God of Death, Olim furled his nonexistent brows.

In his natural form, he was a mere specter, a living mass of shadows embodying one of the aspects of this world, Death.

Where there is Death, there is Olim; such has been the case as long as he remembered.

But in a land where there is no death, he could not step foot.

Olim: “Son-in-law, you truly have outdone yourself”

The extent of the damage was not limited to a simple war.

Gods were panicking, and for a good reason.

Everything has been going out of whack.

All their fate-based machinations were thrown off the tracks.

It was although someone threw a wrench into their engines.

And now, they were desperately looking for the cause.

Many of the key events ended up drastically altered.

But the most disturbing was the fact that the Heaven lost its connection to one of its gods, Dominus.

Currently the gods were searching for him, but as the god of Death, Olim already knew that Dominus was no longer among the living.

Sooner or later, they will find out anyways.

This would be alarming in more ways than one.

If there was someone who could kill a god, then it would mean a dire threat to their rule.

As a primordial, Olim was keenly aware of each and every event, but he was not about to tell the Primary gods about them.

His chosen knight was taking action. That was good.

Olim: “He is still a newborn serpent. I wonder….Does he have what it takes to become a dragon?”