He passed out for five hours or so before waking up, wailing.

This emotion sharing thing with the kid is bothersome. Why should I suffer for his weak body? But well, I guess being able to feel his pain was the only thing that stopped me from crippling the boy, which indeed equated to crippling myself.

He was howling incessantly for several minutes now, I was kind of angry but let it slide, I knew my strength was too overwhelming for him. Luckily, it was just a fracture in his index finger but ohh man, this brat isn't shutting down! What pissed me more was that he was laughing frantically in between his wails, can't blame him though, it was his first time witnessing a god's power, but if he could laugh then why not stop ripping my ears apart first?

"You are a god all right." He said out loud, more to himself than to me. Can't say I didn't like the genuine compliment though.

Even I was surprised, to see that although I was weakened, I was still leaps and bounds above these humans. That saves me the trouble of being worried about this boy's safety all the time.

But those eight beings I saw when I first arrived here, they are still stronger, far stronger even if I weren't restraining myself, but it seems this boy hasn't even heard of them so they are most probably detached, not bothering about these bug's affairs either. Seems reasonable considering I couldn't spot any signs of life in the areas, the size of medium to large continents, around them. They were true monsters.

That leaves me to the matter at hand.

[Boy, you are too weak as of now. You'll have to strengthen your body or else my powers are all for naught. No point using a strength that will end up destroying you and in turn me.]

[Yeah, I know but what exactly am I supposed to do to make it easy for a "god" to use all his strength?] His tone reeked of sarcasm, especially when he emphasized on the god part.

[Yeah, yeah. I know I have to tell your shell of a brain every single thing. You'll have to do body conditioning every day both physically and mental. You should start with five hours of physical training followed by two hours of meditation everyday.]

[What? My brain may be a shell, but don't you realize with that mighty one of yours that the human body has limits!?]

[I fully do and that is why I am asking you to start with a mere five-two regime. Let me tell you kid, you are going to wish you hadn't met me and resent yourself for craving power but in the end, you will have strength far more than you had hoped to achieve.]

I had to say, this kid was resilient for his age, other than the fact that his body couldn't bear my presence, it was his mind that was hindering me from taking over his body. I know he'll pull through.

It was only after our little princess calmed down that we were able to take a closer look at the phoenix that was twittering near the boy's face.

I didn't know how it came here and whether it was alone or was there a whole den somewhere. They are strong beings, and their intelligence must be on par with this brat if not more but they were only found in the holy forest, in heavens, to the best of my knowledge.

Knowing how it came here can help me find my way back up but the thing is that it is most probably abandoned. Tracking a phoenix was difficult even for angels with their heightened senses. There was no way it's parents just let me find this little one out when they weren't showing up themselves.

Incidentally, the best part of it all wasn't that I was stronger than I had expected, or that we found a phoenix, it was the state of the boy after he had seen me and damn, I couldn't remember the last time I laughed so profoundly as I did seeing him questioning his very existence.

Stevenson

I didn't know how I was going to interact with Adron after... after what I had seen.

I was hesitant, hesitant to even talk to him, but I guess he had sensed it and joked, shaking me out of my self pity 'Great as I am, now don't go on kneeling every time I exalt you with my grace all right lesser?' which, if was meant to lift my self worth up, worked splendidly.

'Why would I kneel to a parasite that just broke my fingers?' I quipped, finally managing to laugh, managing to show any emotion to this person for that matter.

All my life, I was a poor orphan, an unblest with just two people in this whole world to shed tears on my death and it's not like I minded that, I was genuinely happy to have those two and wanted to cherish them till the very end.

Glory, strength, fame, comfort, all these things escaped me.

Any semblance of pride I had aroused from the fact that, as far as I knew, I was the most knowledgeable person in the village having read a lot of books and I was strong, for an unblest at least.

But now all those thoughts seem naive if not idiotic. I was in disbelief at the sheer scale of things I just saw and yet somehow, I couldn't stop myself from letting out a smile, I smiled imagining all that lied in front of me, a life I could have hardly even fantasized as a peasant.

Enough of that, there's no end to falling down this "self worth" thing.

The finger that I broke-that Adron broke, it healed on its own in an hour or so.

Must be because of him of course but what intrigued me more than my newfound regenerative ability(which is extremely rare even among blests) was this little bird that was just teetering around me since I woke up.

It had smooth silver wings and a strangely long tail or rather belts which emerged from its trunk, they shined and swayed as it leapt on my shoulder. Strangely, it acted

as if it was very familiar with me, not the slightest trace of fear in it's gait as it circled and prodded me with it's beak.

"khyuuu" It let out as I was about to-

[You sure your mighty eyes aren't just dreaming? Trying to find traces of heaven in everything.] I questioned, stifling my smile. I wasn't just joking, this thing hardly looked like anything as mighty as he had mentioned

[You'll have to live a thousand lifetimes for the merest chance of seeing me hallucinate and just so you know , everything in this world is a vestige of heaven. Anyways, this Phoenix would have been a far better host for me than you, they are strong all right.] He said matter-of-factly. He is right though, these angel guys really do live long.

[So what exactly are we going to do with it?]

[Nothing. Our little friend here seems to have taken a liking to me, the strong recognize the strong as they say. It stays with us, that's it.]

[But judging by the time you people have at hand, how long is it exactly going to take for this phoenix to become strong?]

[Oh, that… Well… Hey, just about your own training! You starting to find people to save your sorry ass already?] He said, this time he was actually serious.

I was just interested to see what an heavenly bird was capable of but he was right, of all times, thinking about relying on others now was the last thing I should do. The little creature, perched on my head as we were talking and started prodding it with its beak.

[So let's find a name then. You have any idea?]

[Nah, I am not good at these things. You better do it yourself if you want it to have a name before you die.] He said nonchalantly. I knew he wasn't joking, and it was actually amusing to see the incongruity between us, it would be normal for them even if they took centuries to just decide a name, that's actually scary. I would be bored out of my mind having to live that long.

"Uhmm," I paused for a moment, patting the phoenix that was still prodding my head. I mulled deeply over the best name I could come up with for this iridescent eyed bird, which I would have called cute if it weren't for Adron's description of their species.

And the best name I came up with was..."Since he's silver, how about Argen?"

"Kuku" The little bird chirped as it flew right in front of my face. Well looks like it likes the name, no worries about it trying to kill me when it gets as strong as he said.

[Phoenix's are androgynous and your logic sucks but I don't mind.] He said impassively, guess name's aren't a

thing for gods. Well that settles that, but now what I have ahead of me is a hellish training.

The training plan he devised for me, at surface, looked nonsensical(Given the facts that he said, it was going to get harder.) like he just spouted whatever came to his

mind but I knew that he had actually thought all this through, keeping my anatomy in mind.

It looks really hard but as long as it's something I can do, it will be done.

All the time I spent cursing my life, my luck for my weakness, all that would amount to just some back alley thug's rambles about the harshness of life if I can't even push myself a little when I have been blessed with the strongest power in this world, blessed with Adron.