"Are you sure there's something here?"
"..."
"Uzzaran? Can you here me?"
"Danger."
The way she said that made it sound legit. Now all my doubts were cleared. Something was definitely off.
I waited, without moving a single muscle, knowing that something was about to happen. But the wait made it too quiet for me. I couldn't even hear the sound of the wind.
"I think we should get out of..."
Just as I said that, I felt an abnormal amount of pain in my head.
ERROR. CORRUPT MANA FOUND IN THE SYSTEM. COUNTER MEASURES ARE NOW ACTIVE.
"What?"
My knees gave out. My vision looked like an old TV that had lost its signal, switching between reality and static in irregular intervals.
I felt like my brain was just stabbed directly by a blunt knife. I couldn't take the pain and screamed my lungs out. Blood dripped down my mouth and eyes.
"H...hey. Yo...u ne...ed to get o...ut of h...ere!" Her voice was glitching.
What's happening.
It took everything that I had in me to just lift my head, because I barely caught something in the corner of my eye whenever my vision cleared. It looked the same as the forest I was in, but darker.
Something approached, fast and forcefully. It blew the trees away and split the ground in two at my direction. It struck.
At that moment, I had no idea what was happening, but I felt it.
The sound of my ribs breaking apart, my organs bursting. The gushing blood from my mouth. The pain.
"What the..."
Then I was flung away at an incredible speed, smashing trees that were as tough as iron, rocks and boulders. I felt every single one of them as I ragdolled across the ground, spinning faster than helicopter blades.
Then I smashed through a slope, literally caving through it, all the way to the other side. I came to a stop after sometime, lying on the ground with a broken back and legs as my blood surrounded me.
My eyes were wide open. I was somehow still conscious. And the pain was unbearable. My throat was cut, so no words came from my mouth. I cried, but only blood came out.
"Master! Can you heal?!"
How did that happen? I thought my skills made me physically tougher than most powerful beings... It hurts... What hit me? It hurts... Am I going to die? It hurts.
"You need to heal! I can't use healing magic!"
Wait... Why am I here again? I don't remember... What am I doing this for?
"Something is coming! Heal! NOW!"
My dismembered body quickly came back together. Every single drop of blood went back to where it belongs. Every broken bone came together. Not a single scar was left.
I took a deep breath as my senses came back. Then I continuously rubbed my sore eyes.
"Are you okay now?"
"You said something was coming."
"... Its already here."
Damn my luck.
I was dumbfounded by what I saw when my eyes opened.
"Tell me, what do you see?"
"The same thing I've been telling you. Some kind of dense fog that's currently surrounding us again."
"Anything else?"
"...What do you see?"
They all stood still. As if they were once walking or running or just, anything then suddenly turned into stone, or rather, dark shadows. Men, women, monsters, animals of all kinds from different timelines.
The ancient clothes from different races, their appearances, the way they appeared from nowhere. Some faces even looked familiar, like I've seen them on TV or something. Old japanese clothing, traditional tribe attire, cowboys? Even modern styles?
You can't make this shit up.
"I here something. Footsteps."
That's right. Things were happening.
The steps were light, like those of a person. Could they have been the one to land such a blow?
They were getting closer. This time, I wasn't gonna let them do what they did to me.
I tried sensing their mana to figure out their location. instead I was caught by the surprise of a lifetime.
The more I increased the area of effect of my skill, the more I was shocked until I finally reached my limit.
"There's no end to them."
How did I not know that before. Then a theory came to my mind.
"No end to what?"
"From the valley... They're from the valley. All those that we saw at the bottom, they're all here. How?
"What?"
Though almost all of them didn't move, one did. It slowly emerged from the depth of the fog. It looked the same as the rest, a body covered in pure darkness, like a walking shadow.
Then my eyes widened in shock. I recognized her. In fact, I knew exactly who she was.
But before I could say anything, I felt something going through me from the back. A spear. Once again, I actually felt pain from it and coughed out blood. But this time, I wasn't just gonna lay down.
I swiftly turned around with the spear still in me and swung my hand, absolutely destroying the head of the one that stabbed me.
I didn't even get a chance to remove the spear when a sword came into me next to it from the back again.
This time, Uzzaran took care of it by slicing it with her magic. When I turned my head to look, I was hit by fire magic from the front that somehow burnt my skin even though it was somehow weak.
I tried blocking it with a barrier then realized that I can't put it up. So I countered the magic with an ice wall that sent him flying into the air.
Before I could even breath, a monster appeared behind me and tried to bit. Luckily I sensed it and was able to kill it before it did anything.
Yet again, another attack, this time, from both of my sides. Two giant rock walls squished me in between them with ease.
What the heck is happening?
As soon as I escaped from it, the trees around me came to life and used their branches to capture me. Then multiple poison tipped arrows pierced my back, making me scream from the pain.
Why do I feel so weak right now?
"Uzzaran!"
Her enlarged appearance quickly emerged from my back. Her large legs hit the ground like a giant, then she spread out her hands across the ground, drawing a semi circle.
"Let all that is dead remain dead."
Then aura pulsated from her which sliced everyone of those, shadow things at the closest proximity.
When the area was clear, she held me in her large hand and kicked one of the trees that was holding me, sending it flying into the fog, and destroyed the other just by squeezing it in her other hand.
"Are you okay?"
I coughed out black blood, most likely from the poison and removed everything that was in me.
"Just barely... I'll be fine."
"What was all that?"
"I don't know, but something tells me that she's involved with it."
I was looking at the shadow from early on. It was still alive. In fact, it didn't even seem fazed.
"How is that one still sta... Wait. I've seen her before."
"Yeah. We did see her recently."
"Who is she?"
I got up from the ground, preparing for another round.
"That right there, is the empress of the Reunen Empire. Her majesty Lady Esther... And right now, something tells me she's the most dangerous one among the rest."
"I'll deal with her."
Uzzaran walked up to her, getting ready to get physical, when she suddenly lifted her hand, pointing it towards her.
Then the ground shook. The fog and the ground parted yet again.
It was a deadly force. Too powerful for either of us to take it head on. Especially me.
Uzzaran leaped to the side to dodge it. Now it was heading towards me. In the condition I was in, I couldn't quite dodge it properly.
My leg was obliterated. The pain I felt when that happened even made my veins bulge. My voice broke from the painful scream.
"Master!"
Uzzaran became angry at the shadow for me. She wanted to completely destroy it now. with her own hands.
She couldn't even get close to it when a freaking black dragon appeared from the fog behind Esther. You could only imagine the shock that Uzzaran was getting from being carried away by it so fast that they almost immediately disappeared from my line of sight.
That entire time, I still didn't quite know what the heck was happening. My pain nullification skill wasn't working. I couldn't make a shield, and my mana level seemed to have reduced by quite a bit.
There's something else I noticed too. It doesn't seem like the shadows have a mind of their own. To put it bluntly, they aren't showing any emotions, like dolls. And the way they're moving, the coordinated attacks and all, its too, odd.
I tried to wrap my brain around the situation after healing my leg, but Esther's gaze just sent me into a literal trance.
The way her gaze looked so expressionless and lifeless. Something about it caught my attention.
I was brought to my senses by Uzzaran and the dragon she was fighting in the distance. Judging by the loud destruction I heard, something tells me that things were getting a little hectic there.
The current events weren't heading at a good direction. There was need to end it.
So I held out my hand to activate a skill. Instant decimation was the perfect choice.
I took a deep breath and was about to say it, when my hand came off, splattering blood everywhere.
It was the same force that had now hit me three times. And each one of them was severely painful.
Enter a new enemy.
Steps as heavy as a giant monster. Breath that literally sucked some of the fog away. Heavy clanking armor. A sword on his shoulder so big and long, it looked like a whole ass tree.
His appearance was like that of a knight and a monster at the same time.
Things were not looking good.