Ungdong sighed as his bones soaked in the warm rays of morning sunlight. Another night had passed with his stubborn old body clinging to his life. Even the stone he used as his resting place for the past sixty years, felt tired of his presence.

Not today it seemed.

He yawned, stretched his rattling bones and hoisted himself up. A maneuver accompanied by a cacophony of his moaning bones. His back in particular made an ungodly crunch-chreeek-plop-pop-pop sound as he brough his body to a more or less vertical position.

As he was about to leave the peak he chose as his final resting place, an odd vibration spread through the land underneath him. The ground shook so much so the pebbles and smaller stones danced all around him.

Zoooooooooooooom!

A flash of lightning with a face of a village idiot, a handsome village idiot, run past him, blasting his fragile frame with a boiling shockwave. It tossed him good five feet away from where he stood and forced him to once more scramble to his feet.

crunch-chreeek-plop-pop-pop.

Eh, the young people. Always in a hurry. No respect for their elders. None whatsoever... hmm?

Ungdong shoved his bony finger into his left ear, the one he still could use, and after twiddling it for a while, he excavated a fair amount of... curious green goop that appeared to move and live with its own life. It did appear much livelier than he was.

He cleaned his finger against his backside and cupping his ear with his hand, he listened. Out in a distance a horrified female shriek rumbled as if approaching him. And it did so with speed. At the same time, light appeared dimmer and dimmer as if something sucked it out of his surroundings.

“....aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

As darkness swallowed him, Ungdong could swear that he saw a tentacle connected to a mass of other wiggling tentacles, dragging... huh? The screaming creature vanished from his view. Instead, a gentle, pale hand covered his eyes.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

The ungodly shriek of whatever came to pass him overpowered all his senses. Even his bones began vibrating in sync. His curiosity made him reach up and try to remove the obstacle blocking his view yet the pale hand did not budge no matter what he did.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...”

“What on the boiling burlack is happening and who... Oh.”

As the strange voice died in a distance, his eyes were once more free to gaze at his surroundings.

He looked at the owner of the pale hand that blocked his view just a moment ago. Fear, excitment and unspoken calm mixed inside him to create an interesting cocktail of emotions his ancient body had not felt in a long time.

“...are you perhaps?”

“INDEED.”

Voice of a rattling chain and grating tombstones confirmed his guess. For some reason, in that moment it sounded to his tired ears as the sweetest melody.

He let out a sigh.

“Not that I would complain but you took your time. Haven’t seen you in a while.”

Quite a bit of time. All nine hundred ninety-nine years, nine months, nine days, nine hours, thirty-six minutes and nine seconds.

“THERE WERE SOME ISSIUES WITH THE LATEST UPDATE. SOME RECORDS WERE MISSLABLED BUT ALL HAS BEEN SORTED OUT.”

“So, it’s time? My time?”

“THAT IT IS. ANY LAST WORDS?”

“None in particular. A question maybe? What was that?”

Death cut him with her sword.

“I DO NOT KNOW. I SAW NOTHING. NEITHER DID YOU.”

“Oh.”

Ungdong looked at his body resting motionless on the ground. Freed of this ailing sheath, his mind returned to his prime, his soul taking on the muscular look of his past heroic body.

“What now?”

Ungdong smiled one last time at his most trusted companion of his youth and the only one that followed him through all his adventures. A lot has changed since then.

“NOW YOU GO.”

She pointed at a land of endless black sand stretching onto eternity.

“YOU ARE NO LONGER MY PROBLEM.”

***

“Ouchie. I got a bubu...”

A mass of darkness, tentacles and other unmentionables moaned as it lift itself back up. A mountain sized bump appeared somewhere in the middle of a part of darkness that one might consider her forehead. Just above the solitary eye.

She massaged the sore spot with her tentacles but the bump refused to go away.

That’s what you get for smashing into the ground at near light speed. A headache and a handful of other relativistic aftereffects. For a moment it even felt as if she had two teary eyes instead of one.

What a crazy sensation.

Applying a generous amount of slime on her bump, she covered it w pink band aid. One of the cute ones with an image of a smiling cat in its center.

With that taken care of, she cast a quick glance around. They were alone inside a cozy and quite a picturesque valley, somewhere among fertile plains. A perfect place for a village. A little bit dripping with slime but, still much better than that desert they left a moment ago.

Trying not to damage anything, darkness shuffled aside, exposing a steaming body, embedded two feet deep into a rock. Thankfully they were still connected by her tentacle otherwise Joe would not survive such an abrupt stop.

A curious thing for him to trip and fall in such a perfect place. She could swear that at just the right moment, a root sprang out of the flattest path she ever saw and ensnared his foot.

“WHY DO THEY NEVER LERN. ONE CANNOT OUTRUN HIS DESTINY.”

“Eeep!”

A horrified darkness jumped up and fell down, causing earthquakes and possibly a tsunami on the other side of the world.

“O-oh, i-it’s you D. W-What b-brings you here?”

“I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT WITH JOE.”

Death consulted her hourglass. Its top part appeared empty, sans a single solitary, stubborn grain stuck in the middle that refused to budge either way.

“HAVE YOU SEEN HIM?”

“N-no?”

Death lowered her eyes at the suspicious human shaped hole in the rock. It even had the shape of Joe’s face embedded into it. Alas there was no sign of him anywhere nearby. How peculiar. Was the system wrong again?

“I SEE. HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HERE. IT SEEMS THERE ARE STILL SOME ERRORS LEFT IN THE SYSTEM. I SHALL GO AND OPEN A TICKET TO RESOLVE IT. IT MAY TAKE A WHILE. YOU BEST STAY OUT OF TROUBLE WHILE I AM GONE.”

“Y-yes. S-sure thing D.”

Casting one more suspicious look at her, Death vanished in the way only she could vanish.

Just in case, darkness sat there twiddling her tentacles. Certain that now they were alone, she pulled at one of her tentacles extracting it from within a place one should not name. A place so dark even Death could not see into.

With a wet pop, Joe’s body slide out of darkness and hung limp at the end of her tentacle.

“Joe?”

His mouth was foaming, and his eyes weren’t focusing, each one aimed in a different direction. Worse yet, whenever she shook him, something slushed inside his body.

“Oh dear.”

The Avatar of darkness status granted him temporary immortality alongside access to a portion of her power but the moment she would take out her tentacle, Joe would indeed die. The accumulated damage was too great.

“Buuuu...”

Why did it had to come to this? Just when she got her first believer. And a prophet at that. And the cookies. Well, Joe wasn’t much of a cook but he made them for her.

She grit her countless teeth.

No more.

She would watch no more.

She would never again remain silent.

No more.

*D-D-D-D--D--D--D--D--D------D-BA_DOING!*

WARNING! My Eyes! Oh gods, what did I just saw?!

*Ba-D-D-D-D-i-i-i-i-i-i-n-g...*

Through [Censored to preserve the mental safety of the reader], skill Favor of Darkness evolved into ?????????? I warned you, did I not?

Sigh...

*DING*

?????????? LvL MAX+++ Skill Class: (R+)Legendary Epic Rare Unique Heroic Skill Type: Passive

Range: You and those in your possesion or under your influence

+Stealth - Only you and the one that granted you this skill can see it and know of its existance. +Taboo - This skill should not exist. Your existance will be erased if you tell anyone about it. +Progressive - Skill effects will varry based on your remaining HP +?????????? - [information blocked by ??????????] +?????????? - [information blocked by ??????????] +?????????? - [information blocked by ??????????] +?????????? - [information blocked by ??????????] +Contagious - Warning! This skill may influence others! Efects depends on target's affection twords you.