Calamity Upon This World

Williams face went pale as he finally understood what had happened to him and the implications of it.

"So am I dead?" he asked.

"Of course not; we wouldn\'t be having this conversation if you had died."

"Just a few seconds before you died, I teleported you to a bath made of my blood, which ended up saving your life," Fariel replied.

"Also, that bath probably increased your stats quite a bit as my essence was absorbed by you."

But William didn\'t care about his stats increasing now, as instead his focus was on another thing.

\'So I almost died again,\' William shivered as he once again realised just how meaningless all his current strength was against the true powerhouses of this world, and even more so compared to those who existed out of it.

If not for Fariel\'s timely intervention, he would have died without even knowing how or why he died.

But despite this, William still had a question that he couldn\'t quite understand.

"But why would a god try to kill me?"

As far as he could remember, William had no memory of ever doing something that would offend a god.

So just why was he cursed?

Was his flaw even attracting gods to kill him now?

William\'s head ran wild as he tried to find a reason behind his almost untimely death.

Thankfully, before long, Fariel finally opened his mouth and said,.

"You were a threat to him."

"I was a threat to God." William exclaimed.

"Of course not, but you were a threat to his new vessel."

"That God has chosen a vessel and is trying to change his aspect rank to divine using the lives of all of you in this dungeon."

"And once he does that, he will forcefully take over the boy\'s body and descend into the mortal world."

"And since you were the strongest person present, he used his authority to kill you," Fariel explained in a solemn voice, hoping for William to understand the gravity of the situation.

William went silent as everything finally clicked for him.

He felt his blood boil as he remembered the scene where Sung pointed at him and cursed him.

\'I will kill him\' William vowed to make sure to make Sung suffer even worse than what he had gone through.

But this rage was quickly replaced by worry for his party and the miners who were still out there with the potential vessel of an evil god.

"How much time has passed outside since you teleported me inside the pool of your blood?" he asked.

William had spent hours inside the scenarios where he learned about fire; if time flowed the same way, chances were it was already too late, but he desperately hoped to be proven wrong.

Thankfully, Fariel didn\'t disappoint.

"A bit less than 2 hours have passed since you guys entered the second part of this double dungeon," Fariel replied.

William breathed a sigh of relief, realising it wasn\'t too late yet, but still he didn\'t want to try his God\'s awful luck.

"It was a pleasure meeting you, Fariel, but as you might have guessed, I don\'t have the time to stay here and talk. Let me go outside and stop the descent of that bastard," William said.

Since the evil God had already tried to kill him and probably already hated him, there was no need to treat him with respect.

"Very well, I understand."

"But make sure to not let your emotions control you."

"Also, your mana is still destabilised due to the aftereffects of the curse, and you won\'t be able to use it to its full potential. The same is true for your spirit energy, and it will probably take a few days till you can use your full strength."

"So instead of that, just use your bloodline powers."

William was a bit worried about hearing that thinking he\'d be weakened.

But there was nothing he could do about it except hope that all the effort he went through to gain his new bloodline was worth it.

"Good bye, Fariel, and thanks for the bloodline. I\'ll make good use of it."

William truly felt honoured to have had the pleasure to meet the first and last Phoenix in the universe and even gain his bloodline, and there were a lot of questions he had for him, but now wasn\'t the time his party and the people he promised to protect were in danger, and it was his responsibility to save them.

"Do whatever you want; I don\'t care." Fariel faked indifference at William\'s gratitude, and with a flick of his finger, William was returned to the real world.

Leaving Fariel all alone in the black void.

**

"How scary!" Fariel muttered as he stood alone in the void.

Fariel had used his eyes to peek into William\'s soul and had seen his essence, and what he saw confused him.

William\'s existence was a contradiction; while he belonged in this universe, he also didn\'t.

While the universe hated his existence and tried to kill him, mana, the building block of the universe, loved and cherished him.

This was probably the only reason why he had managed to survive for this long.

While he was fated to be an evil destroyer, he did his best to be kind.

In his evil, there was kindness, and in his kindness, there was evil.

It just didn\'t make sense to Fariel how a single existence could be so full of contradictions.

Even Fariel, with all of his thousands of years of experience, just couldn\'t comprehend him.

With his special eyes, Fariel could see things that others couldn\'t see, and one of the things he saw was the branch of time.

Which allowed him to see the future of someone, and yet despite this, when he used it on William, it didn\'t work.

He couldn\'t see his future.

William\'s soul, like everyone else in the world, had a special colour.

His soul was crimson red, and due to the divinity gained from his divine aspect, the radiance of his soul was blinding.

And despite this, perfectly hidden inside this bright radiance was such a deep darkness that it threatened to even consume Fariel.

The darkness was even scarier than the God who had trapped him in this godforsaken dungeon.

Even Zephyr, whom Fariel had met 6,000 years ago, paled in comparison to William in terms of pure potential.

Fariel was truly curious about what kind of future awaited William and if he would be able to change his fate.

Sadly, it seems his curiosity would never be satisfied as he was already dead, and as if to hammer this fact into his soul, it started to dissipate.

Over his extremely long life, Fariel had a lot of regrets that still continued to haunt him, and they all led to him killing himself, a decision he still didn\'t regret.

In his final moments, Fariel only had two thoughts: the first was a wish for the downfall of the god who trapped him in this dungeon for so many years, and the second was for the inheritor of his legacy, William, to succeed in changing his fate.

And after a few minutes, the black void became empty forever as Fariel, the first and last phoenix of this universe, left the mortal world.