ã€ŠPlane of Darkness: The Beasts before Timeã€‹


 Chapter 1 - Back to Normal (Or is it?)

    ¡°Wake up, Innight! You are going to be late for school!¡±

    Back then, before I had known about this entire mess between the Elemental realms and about my true self, I¡¯m just another simple and normal human. I go to a normal school, I have parents, and I have everything that a normal child will have.

    ¡°Mmmm... Mum, just 5 more minutes¡­.¡±

    ¡°No more. You already had all those countless extra 5 more minutes. Get up now!¡± Saying this, my mum tugged around my blanket and pulled me out from it. I stood up lazily and wandered down the stairs of our house.

    Back then, I lived in a house, tugged snugly in the depths of the neon coloured buildings of the small island named Singapore. My life is not what you will call as a perfect life but it was sufficient for me. I was happy and my heart is full of light back then.

    Dad was busy reading his newspapers while having his breakfast. All I can see is his two arms, one holding onto the newspaper and the other grabbing the serving of breakfast with a spoon. I scooped my breakfast into my mouth and slowly chewed on it.

    ¡°You need to hurry up, Innight. You will really be late for school if you don¡¯t hurry up. Don¡¯t forget we don¡¯t have a Transporter because how poor we are!¡±

    ¡°Oh I know that. Next time just prepare a small serving of breakfast. I don¡¯t need to eat so much anyway.¡± I said this as I carried my bag and ran out of the house.

    ¡°Don¡¯t forget to come back early today!¡± A sound came from the house. I ran out to dark alley that our house resides in. I stopped just at the exit of the alley and sighed.

    We don¡¯t have as much money as many other families do. While others get to enjoy the benefits of the advanced technology in the year 2850, we are restricted by the ancient unwanted technology of early 2000s as they are the only technology we can afford and no one wants them except the Antique shop. Because of how poor we are, we live at the very bottom of the society, where the dumps are. I have to travel a great distance from my house to school, from the very bottom of the city to the top.

    I begin the run up the highway, the dump trucks passed by me. One took pity on me and asked where I was going. I mentioned to the driver I am going to the WWW middle school.

    ¡°WWW middle school? You must have very good grades or good connections to get in there. Here, hop on. We are just about to get the trash from there as well.¡±

    I was respected for getting into such a school. However, due to the poverty cycle we dropped ourselves into, I have no friends as I cannot hang out with them since I have very little money to do so. Ah, money has so much influence back then. Such is a relic of the past.

    ¡±Here, lad. Hop off.¡±

    ¡°Thank you so much, Mister!¡± I said this as I rushed off into the school. I quickly run into the school, up the stairs and towards the hall.

    ¡°Just in time.¡± I said this as I rushed in line with my class. The bell rang. The morning assembly came by and went. We all had our classes and as always, I am alone as always. The final lesson of the day then comes by.

    I excel to be the best in all classes, and I have done so, but because of my status and my level, I¡¯m always alone. That might have contributed to my cold character and level of mistrust towards others.

    We were in the middle of our last class of the day when an alarm sounded throughout the entire city.

    ¡°Attention to all citizens. There has been a detection of Abnormality on the Astral diagram. An asteroid is heading towards this city. Please evacuate to the nearest shelter.¡±

    Everyone panicked, only I kept calm. This is common in Singapore in those years. Somehow there is a tendency for Singapore to attract all those Asteroids from falling onto the city. However, never would I have known the fate of the world is about to change when that ¡°Asteroid¡± fell onto the earth.

    We all soon moved into the shelter. Just after the doors closed another announcement came.

    ¡°Attention to all citizens. The asteroid has mysteriously deviated from its¡¯ collision pathway. You are free to exit the shelters and resume your activities.¡±

    Since school was over by the time we left the shelter, we immediately left for home. I ran back down the highway back to my home. It felt pleasant and on the halfway down the spiralling highway, I found an abandoned scooter, slightly dented, but still usable. There is no tags on it so I assumed it was thrown out here and forgotten by the owner. I took it and scoot all the way back home.

    ¡°I¡¯m home.¡±

    That¡¯s when another announcement came.

    ¡°Attention to all citizens. The asteroid has changed its¡¯ course and is heading towards the city again. Please evacuate to the nearest shelter.¡±

    ¡°Ah, no worries for us. The entire huge city of Singapore up there acts against a shield against us. So even if the asteroid strikes, it will crash on the top of the city and not affect us.¡±

    Oh how much I regret on that decision. Had we followed the announcement my parents might have survive the incident. You will soon know what exactly happen to them both, read on.

    We stayed in the house.

    ¡°By the way, why did you asked me to come home early today, mum?¡±

    ¡°Ah, I¡¯m going out with your father to buy some ingredients for your cake tomorrow. We need someone to be at the house as a keeper.¡±

    ¡°You could have said so earlier.¡±

    ¡°Well, you are busy rushing off this morning, so I don¡¯t have time to explain to you.¡±

    ¡°Alright be off then. I¡¯m busy so I wouldn¡¯t leave my room.¡±

    They both waved goodbye to me and left the house. Just minutes after they left a huge crashing sound rang from the heavens. That must be the asteroid crashing into the upper city. Just minutes after the entire ground shook, and a huge crashing sound came from outside my house. I threw up my window to take a look, and just outside my window is this huge chunk of rock. A boulder, to be precise.

    That rock was the beginning of all the change humankind is about to experience. Goodness knows why did that rock land onto this Physical Realm, but now that I recall the incident, it must be a plan of The Avatars.

    When I was just about to throw down the window, I felt a strong wave of power expanding from the rock itself. It infiltrates my mind and disrupt my thoughts, it drives me to the edge of insanity, and it fills my minds with endless nightmares. I can hear other people that lives nearby screaming, possibly under the same effect as I do. I can still struggle to keep this form of madness in check, unbelievable to myself either. Then a blinding light emitted from the rock before an explosion followed.

    When I came to, my house is in ruins, no surprises here. What I am surprised, is I see puddles of blood everywhere, with traces of human remains. I suspect that the rock caused them to blow up in blood puddles. I found a few cuts on my arms and legs, but nothing too serious there. The entire dump region is in ruins, everything as far as I can see is in ruins. The blast from the rock must have reduced everything into this state. Then I saw two upper body that I recognize.

    It is my parents. The blast must have cause their upper body and lower body to be separated. I wanted to cry, but then I remembered what my father said:

    A man must never cry, under all circumstance. They must not cry to ensure that they can be relied upon everything.

    But then what should I do? In this scary world I now don¡¯t have anyone to rely upon but myself, even if the whole city comes back into operation again, I won¡¯t be able to have a normal life again.

    ¡°Huh? Who are you?¡± That was a girl¡¯s voice.

    I turned around, the speaker is a small blonde hair girl with a pair of blue eyes.

    ¡°My name is Innight. Looks like the city is in ruins now. We should be together now to ensure safety. What is your name, little girl?¡±

    ¡°My name is Nectilius. What happened to you, Innight? Where are your parents?¡±

    ¡°They are dead. Do you see these upper body of human? They belong to my parents.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry that I asked you about this.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t be.¡±

    Then at once the wave of energy began emitting from the rock again, this time more intense than ever. I can see Nectilius is in pain as well. When it stopped, the rock opened up and figures came out from it. They look human, but they have a dark purple aura hanging around them. I tried to approach them, but a wave of power swept over me and pushed me away from them.

    ¡°Look, a human. Let¡¯s ask him about this place.¡± One of the dark figures pointed at me and said this.

    ¡°Look here, human, we have no intention to harm you, may I ask, where is this place exactly?¡±

    ¡°What are you people? You don¡¯t look human.¡±

    ¡°We come from what you humans will consider as a story: The Void.¡±

    The other person whispered to him something. He nod a few times.

    ¡°Sorry to keep you waiting, human. Allow me to introduce ourselves first as we are the guest in this Realm. We are the Void Elemental from the Void Elemental Plane. At this very moment, all our kind is spreading across this planet of yours to invade your mana pool. We have no intention to harm anyone. May I know where on this planet of yours are we?¡±

    ¡°Do you have a world map? You are currently on the South East Asia region, on a small country named Singapore.¡±

    ¡°Singapore. I see¡­ Fellow human, you might want to alert the other humans around this region. We are about to initiate an invasion in this area, to take over all of your mana pool. We have no intention to harm or kill anyone. However, there might be waves of magic disturbance around the area as we harvest from your mana pool.¡±

    I took the hands of Nectilius and ran off.

    Ah, back then I was so young and knew nothing. What could have made any adult believe a 10-year old child¡¯s story about invasions? No one listens to me then since who on earth will believe the words of a 10-year old? They all laughed at my story and stroked my head, telling me to go back home. My home is in ruins, I don¡¯t have anywhere to go now. That is when the invasion started.

    The entire sky was suddenly covered by clouds, thunder struck everywhere. More waves of powers struck everywhere, I can see people literally exploding into puddles of blood and flesh. The image is permanently scarred into my mind, I could never forget how it actually happened. That weapon that they are using to kill us, without the enemy making a physical contact, is deadly to humankind. They can potentially destroy the entire city by doing so.

    Yet they mentioned that they are not intending to kill anyone. So could this be a side-effect of them entering into our world. They mentioned they came from the Void Elemental Plane, which is definitely not something of this Universe. I will have to find a rescue centre to rest our feet first, we cannot keep wandering around with all the dead bodies around like this. We wandered into an abandoned shop, ignoring all the dead bodies and puddles of blood, we decided to take a rest first.

    We were in a television shop. I decided to switch one of them on. The first thing that appeared on the screen is a news report.

    ¡°Breaking news! Strange purple creatures are invading the city and destroying everything that comes near it! Our city is under attack! In the middle of the dump the asteroid is thought to be the source of this invasion, but no one can approach it. We have also reports that the same attacks are found everywhere in the world, is this the end of world? Ah, they are coming! We-¡°The news is then cut off by signal static. That probably suggest they are killed by the invasion or they simply exploded into chunks of flesh and blood under the stress of the power wave.

    Whichever it is, it does not matter now. Our highest priority is to stay hidden and survive until they are done with their business of¡­ what was it again? Ah yes, extracting our ¡°mana pools¡±. Whatever that is. Outside a cloud of purplish creatures pass by, I signalled Nectilius to stay silent and hidden while I approach the door to take closer look at the creatures.

    They look like spiders, perhaps the nearest creature I can describe. On top of the spiders there lies an upper-human body. So they are considered as human, I guess? More other creatures passed by but they are too fast for me to grasp a look on how they are like.

    Strange to others, instead of feeling disgusted or fear, I feel attracted to these creatures. Well, back then I wouldn¡¯t have known the reason why, but now I know. Since I¡¯m the Grand Ruler of the Void Elemental Plane that would make perfect sense.

    Soon the creatures left the street. I grabbed Nectilius by the hand and moved out to the street.

    ¡°Where are we going, Innight?¡±

    ¡°To the upper city. The upper city is likely to be unaffected by the waves spreading out over the region here so there are likely to be people that we can rely upon there. Once we reach there, we will go separate ways, you go look for your parents, while I will survive this on my own.¡±

    ¡°Aren¡¯t you going to help me out?¡±

    ¡°You have a bright future compared to me. I live in the dumps with a poor family background, while you yourself, with all those frilly cress that you are wearing, signifies you came from a rich family. You have a bright future even with all this invasion happening, while I am uncertain on how my future will turn out to be. It will be better if our paths never crossed again, I will be despised by your family if I met them. Now, let¡¯s move.¡±

    I took Nectilius¡¯s hand and run up the spiralling highway. At the halfway point, we encounter a small cluster of the Void Creatures (That was what I called them back then)

    ¡°Hey, human, come play with us.¡±

    I don¡¯t want to go against them. They can kill us through ways we don¡¯t even know so it would be wise to not anger them. I move toward the creatures.

    They held up a strange purple glowing dice, I stretched my neck and find them playing a board game.

    ¡°Human, if you win we will give you a special gift, if we win you have to tell us about your city.¡±

    ¡°Alright. How do you play this game of yours?¡±

    ¡°Simple. This is a 12-sided dice, this-¡°They handed me a chess piece shaped like one of their creatures. ¡°Is your game piece. This game board is the playing area. We just started a new game so we are all on the same spot. If you have noticed, this game board is shaped like your city. So every action done on the game board will inflicted on your city itself so be careful.¡±

    I played with them a little while. In the midst of the game, Nectilius accidently knocked over two towers, trampled over a reservoir, and broke a few trees. I still won the game despite all that.

    ¡°Here, human. This is a book we have in our library. In it describes about the Elemental Realm and about us: The Void. Treasure it well, you wouldn¡¯t find a book like this in any library of your world.¡±

    We bid the Creatures farewell and continue the upward climb on the highway.

    I still have the book that those Creatures gave me. It introduced me to the world of the Elemental Realm before I even have any method of contact to them. It wasn¡¯t until I met Nightius before I manged to find a way to communicate with the Elemental Realm. I am still thankful that I had the book during that time. However, the worse of the invasion has yet to come yet.

    We then reached the top of the city. We were greeted by piles of dead body arranged in a criss-cross manner at the gates. I spotted a Creatures arranging the dead bodies and I scurried up to it. I was repelled by the aura hanging around them.

    ¡°What are you doing? Didn¡¯t your leader told you to not kill anyone?¡± I screamed at him.

    ¡°We are deeply sorry for this. Apparently our waves of magic is too powerful for you humans to handle. We never knew since we have never come to a Physical Realm before. We could not revive them as we are not powerful enough. We will repay this later with something only we are able to do.¡±

    ¡°Never mind. Let us pass through the gates.¡±

    ¡°Sorry, but our leader is currently extracting the mana from the mana pools inside. We are instructed to keep humans away from disrupting the process. We will allow you to pass through the gates once we have received instructions to do so. Ah, wait a second please-¡°

    The Creature took out a red crystal and whispered to it. I waited for them to finish.

    ¡°The leader said he is done with the extraction. We will leave your Realm, right after we leave behind a gift as compensation for the damage done. You may now walk through the gates.¡±

    We entered the gates together. We have not seen any human carcasses anywhere but puddles of blood are visible. It is clear that some of the humans tried to fight back as I can see weapons lying all around. However, no matter how powerful our weapons are, it is useless against Magic, which is on another level of power altogether.

    ¡°This is where we part, Nectilius. You go and look for your parents. If they are dead, come to the Harbour, and wait by the gate there. I will be at the harbour looking for survivors, since it is the best hiding spot amongst this ruins the city is in now.¡±

    ¡°The government should not have given the safe notice until they really ensure that the asteroid is of no other abnormality. Also the wave of magic is killing countless amount of people. How is Singapore going to rebuild itself after this incident? Nectilius, you should go now, your parents should be dead worried about you. Goodbye.¡±

    Saying these, we parted ways. As I searched the harbour for some resources for my dinner, I found many more carcasses and some Creatures still loitering around. Then in the middle of the harbour I found a giant blue sphere floating there. That is when an announcement was given.

    ¡°Attention to all humans. We are delivering a globe of pure mana to you as a compensation for taking so many lives in this operation. You may use it to your own free will. This will be located in your harbour, if you will excuse us, we will have to leave now.¡±

    The Creatures that were around the region left for the asteroid, probably their spaceship. I stood watching the orb of mana, I stretched out my hand to touch it. It felt wonderful, it feels like something is travelling through the blood vessels and circling around my body.

    Then the whole ground shook. A huge creature made up of the rocks, with same purplish aura that the other Void Creatures, appeared and begin destroying more of the already destroyed city.

    Back then, I was terrified. They already mentioned that they are redrawing from the city and leaving in peace, so why did they initiate another attack on the city? If they continued, this city will never be able to recover from the shock. I wanted to do something to help, but I was so weak then.

    Anger and hatred boiled up in me. They killed my parents, destroyed most of the city, and thinks that still isn¡¯t enough? Come in peace and intends to kill no one, all nonsense to me. I wish I had the ability to cast magic and end the invasion. That is when I felt a great amount of power flowing from the orb towards myself. I wanted to retract my hand from the orb but it felt stuck to it. An immense amount of power begin to build up within myself. Strange thoughts begin to invade my mind, heat begin to build up everywhere. I lost that mind and consciousness soon after that.

    What exactly happened after that, I can only guess. I suspect all the mana in the orb caused the seals hidden deep within myself to be flooded by magic, so much that it gave way and was lifted temporarily. This is only a guess though, and whatever actually happened will always be a mystery to me.

    When I finally consciousness and opened my eyes, the entire city is destroyed completely, without a trace of any buildings remaining. There were no signs of the huge creature in sight, crowds of people gathered around myself. They must be the ones who stayed in the shelter despite the announcement. I crawled up from the ground, my whole body ached. I took a glance at the blue orb, the sphere is empty. I must have consumed all of it while I was unconscious.

    ¡°He-He-He¡¯s a monster!¡± Someone from the crowd cried.

    My whole body aches and I can¡¯t think since even my brain hurts. What do they mean? Is the invasion over?

    ¡°Here is the boy! Mummy, Daddy, hurry up!¡±

    That voice sounds familiar. If I can recall, that must be¡­

    A pair of blue eyes appeared and starred at me.

    ¡°Thank goodness he is still alive. Here, mummy, daddy, this is the boy who brought me back up to the town area.¡±

    ¡°Are you sure, my dear girl? He destroyed the entire city of Singapore together with that other monstrosity!¡± A man¡¯s voice sounded out.

    At that point in time I was shocked. *I* destroyed the city? But I¡¯m just an ordinary human! It is good news that I destroyed the other Creature, but how did I destroy everything else?

    ¡°Argh. It hurts so badly.¡± I turned my head towards the parents of Nectilius.

    I starred at the parents of Nectilius. Her father looks like is in his early 30s, wears a suit, with sea blue eyes, just like his daughter, in one of his hands he is carrying a yellow laser gun, clearly for his protection. Her mother looks very young, probably just over 25. She has long blonde hair and also has a pair of sea-blue eyes.

    ¡°I guess you are the parents of Nectilius? My name is Innight.¡±

    ¡°Indeed we are. We are grateful over the fact that you guided our daughter towards to our location from the dumps. However I represent the Ministry of Education since I am the Minister, and you caused a great amount of damage to the city itself. Unless you can do something to repair the city, I¡¯m afraid we cannot repay the debt.¡±

    That was when something strange happened. I have no idea on how to cast a spell back then and my seals were reactivated again so it should be impossible for me to cast any spells. Yet it happened.

    A deep, dark voice spoke in my mind at that moment. Overclock: rewind. I raised my hands and repeated it. From the ground the buildings reappeared from the nothingness, every single building that has been destroyed during the invasion rebuilt themselves. I was amazed that I can do that.

    ¡°Now I have rebuilt the buildings and I have repaired the damage done. You can thank me now.¡±

    The parents stood there in awe. Then they turned their attention towards me.

    ¡°Very well. Ask for your reward. You saved my daughter from various trouble, I am deeply grateful of that. Ask for anything that you want, as long as it is in my power.¡±

    ¡°All I ask is simple. Give me an eighth of your entire fortune and I will not bother you again. I would not stay in a rich person¡¯s house as it will be extremely uncomfortable for me and it will create a bad reputation for you as well.¡±

    ¡°If that is your wish, we shall grant it for you. Please give me your bank account number, I will have it done before nightfall.¡±

    I took out a pen and a piece of scrap paper from my pocket, wrote down a string of numbers and gave the paper to the father. During the entire process the whole crowd stared at the both of us.

    ¡°Very well. Nectilius, say thank you to your saver. We won¡¯t be meeting him again as he belongs to the lower end of the society while we are of the higher up sin the society ladder.¡±

    Nectilius waved goodbye, then the family turned and left the harbour. After that I passed out again due to the immense pain. Nobody came to help me but it does not matter to me, I will have to survive on my own someday so this will be a test for me.

    Ring¡­¡­¡­

    I woke up. All that I have described before was a dream of mine. A description of a dream of my past, about the Invasion Disaster. Shaking my head, I shook the three girls sleeping beside me.

    *groans* ¡°its 6 a.m. already? I wanted to sleep more¡­¡± The three of them harmonized and mumbled.

    ¡°Wake up, the three of you. There is school for us today. You don¡¯t want to be late for first day of school don¡¯t you?¡±

    Saying these, I pulled the girls out of my bed. They all rubbed their eyes and crawled up from the ground.

    Let me introduce myself first. I¡¯m Innight, a 19 year old boy. One year ago, I met the Grand Ruler of Darkness Elemental Plane, which is currently my Master, learnt my true identity as a Piece of Darkness itself and was involved in the whole mess of the Elemental Realm. We fought off various attempts of Light invading the school, turned our normal human school into a magical school, and even faced a dangerous enemy of my past.

    In the midst of all this chaos, I have met a few friends. There was Luthriel. He was originally a roommate of mine, I always thought of him as an annoying human character, he later unwittingly saw an operation performed by my Master and was forced to be converted as a member of the Darkness. He was later killed during a battle in our Darkness Elemental Plane between us and The Void Creatures. He later revealed to me, after his death and through a letter, that he used to be a member of the Light Elemental Plane, but was stripped of power after refusing to help our in one of the operations involving the kidnap of me. He will be remembered in my heart forever.

    The next is Time. She gained her powers over Time during the Invasion Disaster that I have just described. The others met her first. She first appeared during an event that my seals are lifted and my true self is revealed, she helped in preventing my true self from destroying the entire Existence. She helped us in various places using her powers over Time and shadows. She was killed during an invasion that Light started against the school but I revived her using my magic. She currently is one of my wives, verified by my Master and the other 24 Rulers of the Darkness Elemental Plane. This is still a secret from the rest of the school population, because humans don¡¯t get married that early in life, it will cause a huge commotion, in addition giving me more attention when I already have a good popularity boost in the battle against the invasion of Light.

    Then there are the twins, Nicki and Charlotte. They are members of the Light Elemental Plane and are of Archangel Level, but after being treated by me in kindness, they abandoned their duty as Archangels and fell in love with me. They fell into the same fate as Time did, and were both slain during the invasion, I also revived them. They are the other 2 wives of mine. Similarly to Time, this is verified by the Rulers of the Darkness Elemental Plane, and is also kept a secret from the rest of the school with the same reason.

    After the recent incident of the Light Invasion, I gained a reputation of being the most powerful magic caster in the school itself. This isolated me from the rest of the school population and also prevented me from entering any fights initiated by others. There has also been no magic abnormality ever since I have removed the carcasses of The Creator and stopped the Light Invasion, thank goodness for that. Every problem seems to have left after the Light Invasion, so I guess I have graduated from there in peace.

    There used be another girl that get along with us. Her name is Aquis. She used to be a spy working for us, the Darkness Elemental Plane. She was the one who initially discovered that Luricerite, the Grand Ruler of the Light Elemental Plane, was planning to excavate the remains of The Creator, and worked together with us in many of the operations. However, in the last Light Invasion, Luricerite revealed to us that she was a spy for him instead, and she has been revealing my secrets all to him. He also revealed that he is holding her parents as hostage, so she is forced to do this job. After the Light Invasion, she vanished from the school itself. Master and I intended to rescue her parents but they vanished from the dungeons of the Light Elemental Plane as well. So currently we have no idea on her whereabouts and how is she doing now.

    Today is the first day we enter the Rescendant College, which is connected to our old high school in the same hierarchy. However, what is different from it, is that it is not a magic school. It is just like any normal human school. So, in here, we will not be experiencing any magic casting. At least that means everything starts anew here. Well everything except the fact that me, Time, Charlotte, and Nicki are married and are all magic casters.

    I went into the kitchen and prepared breakfast for the 4 of us. The 3 girls clambered onto the dining table and yawned.

    ¡°What¡¯s for breakfast, Innight?¡± That should be Time.

    ¡°Be patient. He needs time to cook. Same goes for you, Nicki.¡± That must be Charlotte. She is the oldest among the three and is acting well as a good older wife.

    ¡°Yes, be patient, I¡¯m preparing French toasts with bacon and fried eggs today.¡±

    ¡°Yay!¡± The three of them cried.

    In 15 minutes time, I produced the breakfast on the table. We started eating. I begin my lecture on them as I eat.

    ¡°Now, the three of you. Remember we are in a normal human school now, all forms of magic is forbidden, no matter the circumstances. Do not leak out any information about our high school is a magic school and please do not gain any unwanted attention. I had enough attention in our high school for being the person stopping the entire Light Invasion and being the most powerful caster in the entire school. I wanted to start all over, as a normal human in the society.¡±

    ¡°Uh-huh.¡± The three replied while munching on their breakfast.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!

    ¡°If possible, try to look for which industry you all intend to work with, in the future when we enter the society¡¯s workforce we have to work to earn a living together under the same house.¡±

    ¡°But, Innight, why don¡¯t we just leave the Physical Realm and instead live in the Elemental Realm? We could all live in the Darkness Elemental Plane. We betrayed our Plane and our Grand Ruler is gone, Time has a property of Darkness, and with the continuous peace now in the Elemental Realm, we should live there!¡± Charlotte asked.

    ¡°Do you think it will really last forever?¡±

    ¡°Eh?¡±

    ¡°Judging by how The Unknown has placed the curse on all the Creatures of Existence, and how Luricerite turned out in the end, do you think that this peace will last forever? After the incident of Luricerite and The Unknown, I doubt the war between Light and Darkness is going to end anytime sooner. The next Grand Ruler of Light is likely to carry the same mentality as Luricerite did and start the war of Light and Dark again, it is only the matter of time when. The Curse of The Unknown is purely evil, and Greed is one of the very many evil. Being powerful is one thing, but Greed will push the person¡¯s wants even further, I won¡¯t be surprised if the next Grand Ruler of Light is going to follow what Luricerite did. That is why I intend to stay in the Physical Realm: To avoid any battles with the Light. I should have mentioned this before, I hate fighting. With us out of the Magical High School we can avoid any contact with the Elemental Realm, though I will still contact with Master every now and then since he is my Master, after all.¡±

    ¡¯A question, Innight, how did Lord Inoxion became your master when, in terms of power, you are far greater than him?¡± Time asked.

    ¡°Well look at the time! Hurry up the three of you, we are going to be late! I will answer your questions after when we come back home.¡±

    I rushed the girls to finish their breakfast, and washed their dishes afterwards. The four of us then rushed out of the house while I locked the door.

    ¡°Luckily we still have time, we can walk to school and talk at the same time.¡± I said.

    As we walked along the road to school, the four of us talked.

    ¡°So, to continue my question, how did Lord Inoxion become your master when you are so powerful?¡±

    ¡°If you have studied the history of the Elemental Realms very well and very thoroughly, you will have noticed that there is a gap between the Creation Point and order and peace in the Elemental Realm. During the history gap is where I created the Elemental Planes and where I reduced myself into a Void Cube and hid within The Void. I did so because I wanted peace greatly and decided hiding in the Void is the best option. That is when Master Inoxion begin signing a contract with the Creatures of The Void, claiming everything within a certain region of The Void under his control. I was, luckily or unluckily, happened to be in that region. The Creatures of The Void found me before Master does and has claimed me to be their Grand Ruler of their Void Elemental Plane, so that is why I¡¯m the ruler of their Plane. After Master discovered me in my true form, I was forced to serve under him. I was slightly unhappy that I was disturbed by something else, but I¡¯m glad that he is not a warmonger. Due to all this, he became my Master since I¡¯m bounded by the contract. Not that I¡¯m unhappy about it.¡±

    ¡°Another question, is there any other Creatures of similar power to you, that is, of Infinity Level magic?¡±

    ¡°I really wanted to answer NO to that question, but the truthful answer is, YES, there ARE such Creatures. There are the Avatars of the Elemental Planes and the Ancient Beasts. Both these Creatures were formed as a result of my meddling with The Unknown, and I couldn¡¯t bear to destroy them. They were so young back then, little flames of magic swirling around in The Void, but then they become a problem. What actually happened later I shall not talk about it, I shall leave it to your imagination. All you need to know is The Avatars are vanquished and sealed, the Ancient Beast are all asleep in another Dimension.¡±

    ¡°I want to know more about the Ancient Beasts, Innight.¡±

    ¡°Maybe someday, not today. It is a long story, so now is not the right time to describe it. I can give you a sneak peak of how they are though. They are warmongers, all of them. They, together with The Creator, have thrown the entire Existence into chaos. It costed me great amount of power to put all of them into a deep sleep and trapped them in another Dimension. You should hope to never see them in your life.¡±

    ¡°Oh, Innight, look. We are here.¡±

    We arrived at the gates of the school building. The area it covered is so great that we cannot describe how large the school area is. The entire building is coloured in light blue with a light touch of silver. Everything is high-tech around here, not like our old high school. The buildings all give off an electric feel, everything feels different from what we have always been through before. We all stood before the gates, we don¡¯t know how to enter because the gates are all locked by electricity and the other students entered by using a card. We stood there for another few moments while watching the other students entering the gates, and that is when a female student took notice of us and approached us.

    ¡°Are you new students?¡± She asked.

    ¡°Yes, we are to reach building D6 of the school compound but we cannot enter the gates.¡± I replied.

    ¡°Ah, that¡¯s why. The main gate is open to all visitors and of course, new students as well. This is a side gate which is only open to our own school¡¯s students. You have to walk all the way left of the school compound then you will find the main gate.¡±

    ¡°Alright, thank you for your help.¡± I answered.

    We begin walking along the parameters of the school compound, we met many other students in the midway, and I overheard their conversation that they are new students, heading to the same spot as well. Once we crossed the gates and reached the inside of the school compound, we decided to take a look of the school map to figure out a way to reach building D6 from the main gate. That is when we found out to reach there, we have to take a hoverbus.

    ¡°Such a pain. We can just use ma-¡° Time wanted to say something, but I immediately put my hand over her mouth.

    ¡°I did mention before we are in a normal school right now. No using of such words as well. We will board the bus, let¡¯s see¡­ where is the nearest bus stop?¡± I traced my hands on the map looking for the nearest bus stop.

    In 5 minutes time we were on board of the hoverbus. We were squeezed around as there were many people on the bus as well, we almost couldn¡¯t breathe at all with all the people aboard the bus and we held onto the poles dearly as the bus swung left and right. Finally we reached the stop where building D6 is located, in region D. We exited the bus with the same crowd of people that board the bus and we all headed for building D6.

    When we entered the building, we found that it is a large auditorium and there were many people already sitting inside. We each found a seat and sat down together. We waited in silence as the auditorium is filling up.

    ¡°So this is how college is like, well nothing is to be afraid of in the world of the Almighty Queen!¡± someone beside me mumbled.

    I turned my head around. It came from a crimson haired girl, she has a pair of turquoise coloured eyes, the strange thing about her eyes is there is a plus sign in the iris of her left eye, a negative sign in the iris of her right, just like a battery.

    ¡°Ah, you overheard my conversation? Be grateful that you get to hear the voice of the Almighty Queen herself!¡±

    ¡°Huh? What Almighty Queen? You are nothing but a normal human.¡±

    ¡°How dare you violate me like this? Don¡¯t you know the Almighty Queen herself?¡±

    ¡°No. Who is that?¡±

    ¡°Hah. Her name is Alicia Omi, the only daughter of the President of Singapore himself! She is gifted in all fields and is termed the ¡®Perfect Girl¡¯ by all others. She always held the highest position in the school itself and has always excelled in everything. Now that you know her, you should bow your head towards her!¡±

    ¡°No thank you. Everything begins anew here. Whatever achievements you have in the past is voided in the new school. You may be used to be this ¡®Almighty Queen¡¯ but that does not mean you will be in this school. You will earn my respect when you have topped out in this school itself. For now you are just a random student in this school.¡±

    ¡°How dare you! You ¨C ¡° Then she went silent. She cannot argue back because what I have said is completely spot on. I know she has great authority over the school itself, but with my magic, I can instantly destroy it without too much effort. Even without using magic, she wouldn¡¯t be able to authorize the movement of her father¡¯s power without being called a baby that relies on parents, so she wouldn¡¯t be able to exercise her authority over me, she will have to earn it. Whatever it is, I hope she isn¡¯t going to be in my class, if she is, she will be a pain to handle.

    That is when I realised the auditorium is full. The entire front stage suddenly is filled with white, thick smoke. I begin to sense magic on the stage, which surprises me. I thought this school is a normal school, not a magic school! What could this mean? I really wanted to get back into the human society without the involvement of magic and the rest of the mess of Elemental Realm. The smoke cleared and a woman appeared on the stage.

    She appeared to be over 70 years old, with long white hair streaming down her shoulders, she has a walking stick in one of her hands, but she is not using it to walk around. Her eyes, yellow coloured, looks old but has a twinkle of youth within them. Even though she looks human with all sides, I can detect traces of magic residing deep within her, they are weak but they are there. This means the principle is a magic caster herself. I hope this does not mean that this school is a magic school. I have had enough of the mess in magic in high school and I don¡¯t want another repeat.

    ¡°Hello, students.¡± She begin speaking in a very old voice, but with a touch of energy sprinkled on top. ¡°Hello and welcome to your new school of education. My name is Mdm. Lillie, I am the principle of the Rescendant College. Firstly, I will likely to warmly welcome all of you making your way into Rescendant College. We produce students worthy of entering the various Universities of Singapore and also overseas¡¯ Universities. We are pleased that you have chosen this school as your next level of education.¡±

    ¡°In this school, we believe that all students has the potential to perform well, your presence in this auditorium right now proves that all of you are capable of doing well for all your exams. We have many success stories of our students becoming good lawyers, doctors, and other high ranking jobs in the society. We believe that, even if you perform badly now, you are capable of performing much better than what you already had.¡±

    ¡°We also believe in giving second chances. This is why, if you have a bad history record in your high school, we can forget about them and give you another clean canvas to paint on. We believe that deep down, everyone has a kind heart and will do what is right, not what that is popular. We hope that you will enjoy your two years of education in the school. I shall not drag on this speech any longer as I suspect all of you are excited about the orientation camp. We will inform you on how we distribute you into different classes during the middle of the orientation camp. Now I shall let the Emcees take over.¡±

    The principle then stepped down from the stage and went through the exit door. She left behind traces of magic as she walked by. She definitely did this on purpose as a professional caster would not leave any traces behind to prevent others from detecting them. Why though, that is a question that I would like the answer to.

    A pair of Indian girls climbed onto the stage. They wore black shirts along with the school blue skirt, they seems to be filled to the brim with youthful energy, which usually is a sign of trouble to me. I am very inactive, I don¡¯t like sports, I hate being active, my stamina is naturally low, and I have endurance issues. This is going to be a nightmare.

    ¡°Hello everybody! We are the Emcees for the orientation camp! My name is Sunguitar!¡±

    ¡°And I¡¯m Satra!¡±

    What a comedy duo they are.

    ¡°We hope that everyone is ready for the orientation camp! It is going to be full of activities that grants you excitement and happiness, everyone, please participate in all the activities with your greatest effort!¡±

    Greatest effort. My foot. All that is going to come out in the end is a bunch of noisy children messing up everywhere they go. I will try my best not to get too involve with them. The best method to do so is to maintain a cool position and avoid participating too much in the activities.

    ¡°Now, you might be wondering how we are going to play with a huge group like this. We have already divided all of you into 4 large factions, and each faction is further divided into 4 sub-groups. From left to right of the auditorium, the factions are labelled as Candor, Abnegation, Amity and Dauntless.¡±

    I should give them 100 points for Creativity. They copied the name of the factions in a particular movie and used it here. They could have come up with more creative names or even use Name Generators to do so but no, they are too lazy to do that.

    ¡°So first off, we are to teach you cheers¡­¡±

    I guess I don¡¯t need to describe what happened after. They spent two whole hours going through cheers and I have to act as if I I¡¯m following or else I will get picked out, since I sit at the first few rows. I hate it, absolutely. I always hated people being extremely lively, it appears to be childish, in my opinion.

    And I hate children.

    After the nonsense about cheering is over, we were briefed by various teachers from various departments. All of them gave us talks about the various subject that we will be choosing from, the topics covered, and the examination format of the various subjects. We have the three big branch of Science with Mathematics as an accompaniment, the Humanities of Geography, History, Literature and Economics, all under H2, short for Higher 2. The same subjects were offered for H1 as well, short for Higher 1.

    From all of these choices, we are to choose at least 3 H2 with 1 H1 subject, together with the compulsory Mother Tongue and General Paper. These will be the subjects that we will be taking for our final paper in the school, the ¡®A¡¯ Levels. I thought deeply and thoroughly about which subject I intend to study while the talks are going on. The 3 other girls must be doing so as well. All the while the ¡°Almighty Queen¡± is giggling at all the talks and talking among the other students. No respect at all.

    Then come lunch break, we all left the main building and gathered at the canteen. There were 20 different stalls and a gigantic Gold Ruberg Machine operating in the back. I watch how the machine operates. The stall owners handled the dished on the tracks of the machine with a number, then the tray works through its way through the machine and landed on the students that holds onto the number of the dish.

    Talk out automation.

    Packet lunch begin dropping down on parachutes onto our table. I looked up and saw drones flying in from various sides. I opened up mine, it was filled with fried rice. Nice dish, but I can¡¯t eat it.

    Because it is filled with prawns. The very ingredient that I¡¯m allergic to.

    I pushed away the packet and mumbled to myself. ¡°I can¡¯t eat this. I¡¯ll just have to starve myself.¡± The leader of our group, a white haired girl, stopped by me.

    ¡°What is it? Aren¡¯t you hungry?¡± She asked.

    ¡°I can¡¯t eat this. It is cooked with Prawns, and I¡¯m allergic to it. No worries though, I can go about a day without anything to eat. I wouldn¡¯t die.¡±

    ¡°You can¡¯t do that! You will need energy to go along with our activities! Here, have some money, order something from the food stalls, you can¡¯t go about the day without having lunch!¡± She cried.

    I took the money and went up to one of stalls labelled ¡°fried noodles¡± and placed my order there, then I went back to my seat. In a couple of minutes time a metal pipe stretched out from Gold Ruberg Machine behind us and my fried noodle is delivered to me. I begin chomping on it in delight. That was when someone came by and snatched the group card away.

    I forgot to mention something here, for each group, we were assigned with what they call as a ¡°Group Card¡±. It is essentially a cardboard, with our Faction Yellow, Dauntless Red, Abnegation Blue and Amity Green. Since I belong to Candor, we have a yellow cardboard and since I am in the 4<sup>th</sup> group, it is decorated with the word Candor 4. We also have a Faction Flag that we are to secure, the colours assigned to each Faction Flag is the same as the card.

    There is also a point system that I forgot to mention that they explained to us during the cheering session. It is mentioned that we have to keep our Card and Flag secure with us at all times, because they worth a certain amount of points, and the organizing committee will try to steal it from us. Every time they managed to steal it from us, they will deduct a fixed amount of points from the total amount of points that each Faction have. These amount of points will determine the wining Faction at the end of Orientation Camp, which is in 2 days¡¯ time.

    So, after this explanation, you will understand that if the card get stolen, the blame will be placed on the careless fool that guards the card. Unfortunately that happened to be me, and as I have described previously, someone pickpocketed the card away from me. I fear for the amount of blame that will be placed on me.

    ¡°Haha. So how useless this boy is indeed! So much talk but performs nothing at all.¡± That was Omi, the Almighty Queen. I knew she is bound to say these words, since she is known to pelt others with insults to break their dignity.

    I can feel all the gazes finding their way onto me, along with hatred. No one spoke a word about it, but I can feel they are angry at me. All except Time, Charlotte and Nicki. They have a sense of empathy instilled within themselves. The leader came over and said: ¡°Don¡¯t worry, it happens every now and then, don¡¯t take it too much.¡± But I know better, since I can read his mind. Deep down, he is scolding me using all the foulest language you can think of.

    After lunch, the talks on the subjects continued. It went on for another good 3 hours, then activity time came. We played a game of Capture the Flag in the school football field, and it rained. Being sane, I stayed out of the game since I know I cannot run well and fast enough. The game carried on despite the rain and it continued until after a thunderbolt nearly struck someone.

    Finally it came, the time for the first day of Orientation to end. Following the point system. Our Faction claimed the last position, losing to the Faction in the 3<sup>rd</sup> ranking, which is Amity, by a mere 10 points. I can already read the minds of others that they blame that this is happening because I let someone stole the card. The dismissal that I was longing for finally came.

    ¡°Today was fun, don¡¯t you think so, Innight?¡± The three of them harmonized as we walked back home.

    ¡°No. Not at all. I hate it. The entire Camp is a stupid rip-off of the movie ¡°Divergence¡± if you haven¡¯t notice. I would have enjoyed the subjects talk if it wasn¡¯t for the ridiculous ¡°Queen¡± sitting beside me ruining the atmosphere. I only look forward to the time where we are introduced to the CCAs, whenever that is. Whatever games that they are planning, is all sports based or cheering based, which are nonsensical, in my honest opinion. Heavily biased, if I may say so.¡±

    ¡°Why so? Everyone loves sports.¡± Time asked.

    ¡°I¡¯m very weak physically. It is a genetic disease that I have, I cannot train to improve my fitness because whenever I tried to do so, it ended up really badly, with me fainting. As such, I¡¯m physically weak and I hate sports as a result. Besides, have you seen me training myself? I¡¯m too busy for that.¡±

    ¡°Besides all this, don¡¯t you find the principle to be a little strange?¡±

    ¡°You have realized it as well, Time? She appears to be another magic caster, and she purposely left behind traces of her magic when she left. She must be testing us, to see if there is another magic caster in the group of new students. She probably will be addressing us again tomorrow and will give us hints on how to notify her. We will see what she has in store for us tomorrow.¡±

    I unlocked the door and turned on the lights. The girls stayed in the living room while I entered the kitchen to prepare for dinner. After dinner, the girls went to have their bath first while I called Master.

    ¡°I hope you have had a good day, Innight.¡±

    ¡°No. Not really, Master. It was awful. I still don¡¯t understand why people wants to be all lively and excited over something like this. So childish, not like how an adult should behave.¡±

    Master chuckled.

    ¡°What¡¯s so funny, Master?¡±

    ¡°You are becoming more human the longer you stay there, but your personality never change.¡±

    ¡°Ignoring about me, Master, any new updates for me on your side?¡±

    ¡°Ah yes, there is. The mess over new Grand Ruler of the Light Elemental Plane has settled down. They have decided the next Grand Ruler to be Remius. Currently, he has not struck us with any attacks, which is something that I am grateful of. However, judging by how you told us about the curse of The Unknown, I know it is only a matter of time before he follows the path Luricerite did.¡±

    ¡°Also, we have tried entering the remains of the Infinity Seal, and found an entire new Realm inside there. We cannot even describe about the things we have seen in there, as they are not of this world. Space and Time don¡¯t operate the way they are in that Realm. You might want to come and visit this Realm one day if you have the time.¡±

    ¡°Innight! We are done with the bath!¡± The three girls shouted.

    ¡°I need to go for my bath, Master. Any important updates for me? If not I need to be off. I need a good rest before facing the new nonsensical activities they have in plan for us tomorrow.¡±

    ¡°Yes there is. Watch out for the people around you, Innight. Words has come to me that the members of Old Magic of The Void has connections to the school itself. We do not know much about that gathering of people, and their aims. All we do know is, however, that they aim to do something to you, the true form of you, that is. Also, the Styx cult that you have met in the Nightmare of Nicki, we have traced down records of them. Their last appearance happened to be in your school itself, so we figured that they must be hiding in your school, waiting for something. With The Unknown dead, though, they should not be around anymore, but just be careful in case they are.¡±

    ¡°Alright, I understand. Goodnight, Master.¡± I turned off the Calling Crystal. I then head for the bath.

    As I sit in the bath, I kept thinking. A strange principle that is a spell caster and careless allowing her presence to be detected. A gathering of people that intentions is unknown and is connected to the school. A strange cult with dealings with The Unknown and its last appearance is the school itself. There are too many abnormalities to be a coincidence. It almost seems as if someone is tugging behind the strings and playing out a puppet show around me. I wanted to have a normal life for a short period of time, but it looks like my work with the World of Magic has not paused yet.

    First, I will need to figure out who exactly this principle is, and which Elemental Plane she is working for, since she has considerable power in the school itself. This will take the highest priority as I will have to know whether she is going to any an enemy or a bystander. Next, we need to read up on the history of the CCAs here, whether there is a CCA that has dealings with the Occult. That will give us the largest clue that we will be able to have on the dealings of the Styx Cult and the Gathering of Old Void.

    I exited the bath, feeling refreshed and went to my room. The girls were all busy watching television in the living room so they are not in the room at the present. This gives me some space to practise my magic.

    ¡°Eden: Dimension Pocket!¡±

    I used my magic to open a dimensional pocket in the room. If you have no idea what a dimensional pocket is, let me explain to you. Dimensional pocket is a small pocket of space created by the caster, separated from the original dimension. It exists in the same spot of where the spell is casted, but in a different dimension. This Dimensional Pocket lasts as long as the castor wants, or when the dimension is unstable and collapse upon itself, swallowing the caster inside into The Void. Yes, it is a spell that can backfire and kill the caster itself, however it is restricted to only those of Lord level magic casters.

    After an intense amount of casting, I decided that it was enough, and disabled the pocket. That was when the 3 girls came in.

    ¡°Had enough of television?¡± I asked them.

    ¡°The show was boring. There is nothing interesting on the television right now. Anything interesting going on, Innight?¡±

    ¡°No. There isn¡¯t. Just read the books I have retrieved from the Forbidden Library to pass the time.¡±

    ¡°¡­¡±

    The next day arrived with the rise of the morning sun. I have to drag the 3 girls from the bed again to wake them up, and I prepared the breakfast as well. Soon we were on the road to school again, and just like yesterday, we took the hoverbus, and is squeezed by the huge crowd taking the same bus at the same time.

    ¡°Every time we take the bus, I feel like I might die of suffocation.¡± Nicki complained after we take off from the bus.

    ¡°Well there isn¡¯t much we can do about it. The school here itself is too large to navigate on foot so we have to use the bus service here to move around. We could get a hovercar, but to use it we will need a license, and those things are very difficult to get. Thanks to all the traffic control policies the government is using these license are getting harder and harder to get every year. We can also think of an electric bike, but are you sure that you all can maintain one? They require constant maintenance and they need to be recharged, which is going to build up a high electric bill. Remember, we are not earning any money yet, all the bills are accounted for by Lord Nightius, and I do not want to incur any problems for him.¡± I explained.

    ¡°Then we could just use the old metal bikes, can¡¯t we, Innight?¡± Charlotte chirped in.

    ¡°That is possible. It will train your muscles as well, the only question is, where do they stop their bicycles?¡±

    ¡°There.¡± Nicki pointed at a row of bicycle racks near the entrance of the building D6. There were a few other electric bicycles parked there.

    ¡°Oh. Alright, I will get some of the old bikes of the past once we get back home and we all will ride them to school tomorrow. This can serve as a form of physical training for myself as well.¡±

    We then went inside the auditorium and found the same seat as yesterday. The annoying ¡°Almighty Queen¡± Omi isn¡¯t here yet, so I get to enjoy a brief moment of peace and silence. I closed my eyes and thought about the why I came here.

    This is a normal human school, as far as I know, I have did my research before deciding to come here. I wanted to come here for a variety of reasons. One, this school is one of the top best colleges in Singapore. By entering a good school I will have a brighter future and hopefully a good profile. Two, this school is connected to our high school, by going to the same school under the same hierarchy I can avoid all kinds of complications during the enrolment. Thirdly, this is one of the very few schools that I know that has an Occult based CCA. I always wanted to interact with other humans and see their view on how the World of Magic is like. It is unlikely that any of them will actually know the truth, but it is interesting to see from different viewpoints.

    Then I sensed there was magic casted once again. I opened up my eyes and saw the principle standing at the stage. Beside me the ¡°Almighty Queen¡± Omi is sleeping, which is a great thing for me, I can earn some silence during the talks.

    ¡°My new students,¡± she begin. ¡°Welcome back to your second day of school. Today you are invited to have a tour around the school compound together with viewing with the various CCAs. You are reminded as well that you are to select your subject combinations before midnight of today. I shall not intend to delay your moments of excitement any longer. I shall take my leave now.¡±

    The principle stepped down from the stage, and that is when a whisper came into my ears.

    ¡°Those of you that can hear me, find me in building B5 during your break time. I will be waiting for you there.¡±

    I took a quick scan over the entire auditorium. No one showed signs of being surprised, it may be because that no one is a magic caster so they could not hear it, or it may be because they themselves are magic casters and already know the principle is magic caster herself so they are not surprised that she is able to do so. I whispered to the three girls that we will be going there together later. They nodded in agreement.

    The day started with the exact same thing, with showing us the current Faction rankings and giving us the Faction Flags and Cards and the cheering. I can still feel the hatred some people have over me over what happened yesterday over the Card incident.

    Then came the tour. Because of how large the school compound is, we are only touring around the buildings in region D. From what they have mentioned, they are 5 regions, each regions correspond to each main subject, Mathematics, Biology, Physics, Chemistry and The Arts subjects. Each region has 5 different buildings, one is the staff room, one is the lecture theatre, or auditorium, one is computer room, and two are for classrooms. For the Science regions, there is another building assigned as laboratory. Region D happened to be a Science Region, and is Biology, which happens to be my favourite subject. We are not allowed to enter building D3 and D4 as those are classrooms blocks and the older students happened to be have lessons there. In the middle of the tour, I allowed the card to be stolen once again.

    I¡¯m such an airhead.

    After much scolding from Omi and the leader, the lunch break finally came. Today¡¯s lunch is white rice with cabbage, steamed egg and beef. I ate everything but the cabbage because it is cooked with prawns, once again. I then gathered Time, Nicki and Charlotte and took the hoverbus to Region B.

    On the way there, I spoke to the 3 girls.

    ¡°Remember, do not let any others know that we are from the Darkness Elemental Plane. After the entire mess of Luricerite, we have gained a bad reputation in the Elemental Realm.---- Granted, we are the strongest Elemental Plane so they will not dare to say anything bad against us, but still keep it a secret, tell them that we work for the Void Elemental Plane, which is somewhat close to the truth.¡±

    We then reached the building. When we opened the door and went inside, we found it to be another auditorium. There were already some people sitting inside there, we approached the front row¡¯s seats and sat down there. In a few moments later, white smokes appeared on the stage and traces of magic become visible. The principle then appeared out from it.

    ¡°Well, well.¡± She begin. ¡°Look at all the people we have here. Wonderful. I expected more people but this will do.¡±

    ¡°Can you explain why you have gathered us here?¡± Someone shouted.

    ¡°Look, my students. This school is much more than you would discover on the surface. On the surface, we are a reputable school, much deep down, we are a training school for magic casters.¡±

    ¡°But magic casting is useless in the current society!¡± Someone cried.

    ¡°That is going to change someday. Right now my job is to discover the survivors of the Invasion Disaster and sieve out the magic castors. We have a company that is sponsoring us which are involved in the research of magic. Your final destination as magic casters in the society is to enter this company. They will provide support for you as they conduct experiments with your magic.¡±

    Such a company exist? We might try to enter such a company, since we can train our forms of magic while earning an income. I have never heard of this company before, probably it is because they will be called as maniacs if they allowed others to know that this is what the company do.

    ¡°Anyway, my new students. You all are here is because you are potential good magic casters. We are to train you to become real magic casters of the future. Because in the near future, all the technology of the current society will fade, and magic will reign.¡±

    ¡°How do you know all this?¡±

    ¡°That will be a secret, my dear student. Now I have gathered all of you here for one purpose. I need to show you your special schedule, separate from the other normal humans. You are to not attend the orientation camp any further, but to come here for the rest of the 2 days. For today, I will need all of you to demonstrate your powers. Before doing so, introduce yourself by providing your name and state which Elemental Plane you work for.¡±

    Everyone in the room went up once and showcased their specialty in powers, all of them worked for either Fire, Earth, Wind or Water, none of them worked for Light Elemental Plane or Darkness. All of them were just very basic powers to me. From conversion of matter to voice amplification, none of them are impressing at all. Then when it came to Time¡¯s turn, she sent her clones flying everywhere and draining other people¡¯s Time so much that some people actually died. I have to step into revive the people and apologize for her behaviour, but the principle only smiled.

    The next person that came up after Time was the ¡°Almighty Queen¡± Omi. I myself is interested to know what powers she holds as the ¡°Almighty Queen¡±. Can¡¯t be all that strong if she is only someone that comes from a human source and when she belongs to a rich family.

    If you haven¡¯t read the first book, you will not understand why I said that, for the sake of those that have forgotten or have yet to read it, I shall explain it here. I have stated previously, during the Invasion Disaster, there were waves of magic spreading out throughout the city. Many people were unable to handle the wave of magic and exploded into chunks of flesh and puddles of blood, i.e. they died. However, among those that managed to survive, some of them gained the ability to cast magic. The level of is dependent on how much psychological damage were done on their brain since young, the greater the damage, the more powerful their magic will be. For Time, she gained the powers over Time and Shadows after surviving the Invasion Disaster, and that probably meant she had a thoroughly dreadful life. I will not pry too deeply into that. Thus, for someone like Omi, she is likely to have very weak powers.

    Omi closed her eyes and mumbled her spell. Then suddenly, I felt something is controlling me. My hands and legs won¡¯t obey my instructions. The same thing went for everyone else in the auditorium. So this is her power, to control over the flesh of others. Not something impressive enough for me, her power signature is not powerful as well, probably up to a General level at the most. I broke myself away from the spell using Insigma, the principle probably sis the same thing as she appears to be free from the spell.

    Finally it is my turn. I want to surprise the entire crowd using an Infinity Level Magic, but something that is not dangerous in nature as well. Then I decided to just bind up everyone using The Void, that kind of spell is likely to peak Lord Level magic at the least, which will showcase my strength in magic.

    ¡°Good afternoon to everyone here, my name is Innight. I work for the Void Elemental Plane.¡±

    I paused for a moment. Then casted Void: Viral pixel.

    The entire room is then enveloped in The Void, no one could move and speak and everything started glitching out like a glitched computer program. I turned around and saw the principle unable to escape the spell as well. This is a Lord level spell, so if she is unable to break it but is able to break Time¡¯s, Charlotte¡¯s and Nicki¡¯s, her level of magic is probably on the far end of Arch level. I disabled the spell, everyone crumbled down onto the floor, even the principle, gasping for breath.

    ¡°Impressed?¡± I asked her.

    ¡°Ve¡­Very. How strong are you exactly, Innight?¡±

    ¡°That is a secret. However I can reveal to you that I¡¯m more powerful that anyone you could have met, on Earth itself or in the Elemental Realm.¡±

    The principle shot me a look of fear and dread. I can sense that she is afraid. Afraid of how dangerous I am if I am allowed to use magic in the school compound.

    I wandered back to my seat. The principle continued to gasp for her breath for another few moments, the same goes for the others.

    ¡°We¡­Well, this concluded the test drives we have. You should re-join your Factions to view the CCAs in the school and decide which one to choose from. We will gather back here again tomorrow for your allocation to the 4 house, Garnet, Sapphire, Onyx and Zircon.¡±

    We then took the hoverbus back to region D and walked back to building D6. Just as we sat down, the principle appeared in the auditorium. She most likely used teleportation spell to move around places that fast, is she not afraid of others knowing that she is a magic caster?

    ¡°New students,¡± She begin. ¡°Now is the time for you to have a glance of our wide variety of CCAs we offer in our school. Do remember not to cause a scene and you are to choose your CCA before the end of the orientation camp. Have fun for your evening. Once the time reached 5 you are allowed to leave the school compound.¡±

    As we wandered around the region, I took a look at all the CCAs, none of them really caught my eyes, and majority of them are sports based. Then one particular CCA caught my attention, it was as signboard writing ¡°Occult Research Club¡±. I read the signboard. It says that it has only one CCA session per week, and it is recruiting anyone that has interest or knowledge of the Occult.

    That sounds perfect to me. I pulled Time, Nicki and Charlotte over to the signboard.

    ¡°This sounds interesting. We could all come together and discuss on the Elemental Realms.¡± Charlotte mentioned.

    ¡°Indeed. I don¡¯t need to physically strain myself either.¡± I said.

    ¡°Let¡¯s go take a look at where their booth is.¡±

    When we found it, it is in a completely dark room. I used magic to view the room and found three people sitting inside.

    ¡°Hello?¡± I wanted to strike a conversation but the silence continued.

    Then I analysed the mana flow of the humans, then found that their mana have been heavily drained. I quickly took out some mana crystals and placed on their foreheads. The mana flowed from the crystals into their body. I can sense they begin to awake.

    ¡°Huh? Where are we?¡± One person exclaimed.

    ¡°We saved you. What in the world of Gilead are you doing?¡± I asked.

    ¡°We tried out a ritual. Do you see the magic circle on the floor? That was what we were doing.¡±

    ¡°Seriously you people are idiots. You have no idea what you are doing. That could have killed all of you if I did not arrive here on time.¡±

    ¡°You knew what this is?¡±

    ¡°I do. And I know that you should not try this out unless you are a magic caster. But that¡¯s beside the point, I want to know about your Club.¡±

    ¡°Ah yes. We are the Occult Research Club, every week we meet up once, on Wednesday. We discuss and perform rituals to know about the unknown entities in our world. We also exchange our information with other Occult Clubs out in Singapore as well. That is all we do in this club.¡±

    ¡°That information is enough, let¡¯s go.¡± I took the hands of Time, Nicki and Charlotte and left.

    Then I stopped, and reminded them something before I left: ¡°Don¡¯t perform any random rituals, some are so dangerous that will bring the world to an end.¡±

    We took the hoverbus after the clock tower in the distance struck 5. Surprisingly there were very little people boarding the bus today. I suspect most of them probably left way before 5. Well, the school cannot track them so they can do however they like. I sighed.

    As we walked back home, we took a small detour and went to an antique shop. From there we brought 3 metal bicycles and we cycled home.

    When I opened the door, I hear noises from the living room. I took a peek and saw Nightius sitting there.

    ¡°What are you doing here, Nightius?¡±

    ¡°Nothing. I¡¯m here to see how you are coping at your new school.¡±

    ¡°There is no need to do so. I am coping perfectly well at the new school, you do not need to check up on me.¡±

    ¡°But Lord Inoxion requests so, I cannot go against his order.¡±

    ¡°Why does he care so much about me in the human world?¡±

    ¡°Who knows? Anyway if you are fine, I guess I should go. Did you children brought something?¡±

    ¡°Yes. Just bicycles though.¡±

    ¡°Oh. Thought you bought some food. Never mind then. Bye Innight.¡± Saying these, he opened up a portal and walked through it, then it closed.

    I cooked up a storm for dinner and we had bath after, then it¡¯s time to sleep. I thought about the principle. She has connection to a named company that experiments with magic, is of Arch level magic, and is intending to train all of us magic caster into stronger casters. On the surface it sounds like she is helping us, but I can¡¯t help to feel that there is something hidden beneath. After going through the entire mess Luricerite made I have come to trust people even lesser, so probably it is just my imagination.

    I closed my eyes and fell into sleep.

    Inside the building D6 of Rescendant College, a gathering of people is sitting on the stage. All of them are wearing purplish robe and have hoods covering their faces.

    ¡°Are you sure, leader?¡±

    ¡°Positive, my follower.¡±

    ¡°Then what shall we do?¡±

    ¡°Nothing at the moment, my followers. We are to establish the Ordeal, but not now yet. Our first job is to complete the machine. How far is the progress on creating the machine, Member 3?¡±

    ¡°I say we are nearly complete, we can begin the testing tomorrow.¡±

    ¡°Good. Good. Good. That is being diligence. Remember, we are to keep track of Zealus¡¯s movement and complete the machine before he realizes it. At the same time, we need to find out the seals where He is being kept and free him from His imprisonment.¡±

    ¡°Leader, we have an update regarding Him-¡± One of the Member started.

    ¡°WHAT?! HOW COULD YOU HAVE ANY UPDATE FROM HIM! I AS THE LEADER I AM THE ONLY ONE HE TALKS TO, NOT ANYONE ELSE! THAT IS MY AUTHORITY AS THE LEADER OF THE GATHERING AND THE STYX CULT!¡± The leader screamed and begin to punch the Member repeatedly in the face.

    ¡°Leader¡­¡± The Member continued after the leader stopped punching. ¡°He is dead. He tried to combine with the previous Grand Ruler of the Light Elemental Plane to gain a body of flesh, then his magic overflowed and he is reduced into pure mana.¡±

    ¡°NO! THAT COULD NOT BE! OUR MASTER THAT WE OUGHT TO SERVE CANOT DIE THAT EASILY!¡± The leader yelled.

    ¡°We have yet to prove that to be true. We will have to interact with Zealus to know the truth. He is the Creature who sealed our Master and he is rumoured to be the Creature that saw this.¡±

    ¡°Well, Member 6, asked him thoroughly about what actually happened when you have the chance to interact with him! If he is dead, we will have to find his remains and revive him! If not, we shall turn to the Ancient Beasts instead!¡±

    ¡°Understood, leader.¡±

    ¡°You are dismissed!¡±

 Chapter 2 - The Visitor

    The third and final day of the orientation camp arrived. We cycled to school this time and avoided the large crowd of people on the bus. We ran into a small problem because apparently many people seems to be thinking on the same train of thought that we did, and we ran out of space for bicycle racks. Luckily we can perform magic, we cycled to an isolated corner and used magic to shrink the bicycles down to a size of a stamp. Then we entered the building B5. The principle isn¡¯t here yet, she is most probably addressing the entire new student cohort now in building D6.

    Then Omi passed by me. I can tell she wasn¡¯t happy that someone is stronger than her. She most likely has claimed the top position in everything in her high school, and never had someone defeating her in anything before. Suddenly with someone much stronger than her appearing it is of no doubt that she will be mad.

    ¡°I will defeat you, Innight!¡± She said these as she passed by me.

    I ignored her. No matter how powerful she becomes, she will not be able to defeat me, someone of Infinity Level magic. The stage is once again filled with smoke and the principle stepped out from it.

    ¡°Good morning, students. Today we aim to train all of you in terms of Light magic. We have a few cursed artifacts, and your job today is to purify them completely.¡±

    Time groaned when she heard that, and I can understand perfectly why she did so. She excels in Time and Shadow magic, and Shadow magic happens to falls under Dark magic. Casters that excels in one particular form of magic will be weak in the form of magic that counters it. To explain it further, it means that for Time, her weakness will be Light magic since Light is the counter magic of Dark. Well, this kind of weakness does not apply for me because I excel in Void magic, which is known as the Master form of magic.

    We begin our work right away. I begin analysing the form of curse that is lying within the artifact. My artifact is a cursed blue helmet, from what the principle told me when she gave me the artifact, it used to be a helmet of a dragon hunter.

    One day, when the dragon hunter was hunting dragons, it came across a Black Dragon. As everyone knows, Black Dragons are rare and carries with them strange treasures, so obviously the dragon hunter killed the dragon. However, later he found out the Dragon isn¡¯t any normal Black Dragon, it is a Curse Black Dragon. Killing one will transfer the curse on the dragon to the hunter himself. This helmet thus became cursed. The curse on this helmet is that once every 10 minutes, a blood vessel within the wearer will burst. This will continue until the wearer dies of internal bleeding.

    Then I found that the curse has traces of Old Magic of The Void. The curses that a Curse Black Dragon carries with itself is usually of Darkness origin. Someone must have tampered with the helmet before. I tried retracing the Creatures that have come into contact with the helmet before, I found out the last Creature that placed the curse of Old Magic origin is a hooded person. I cannot see past the hood so I cannot determine who is there. However, what is interesting is that after the helmet has been curse, I can see the helmet being shoved into a storage room of some kind. After that, the helmet is taken out by Mdm. Lillie and she then took it here.

    This means that my hunch was right. There are members of The Gathering here. This may be a blessing or a curse, depending on their intention of being here. Why do they curse this helmet? How did they know that I will be getting it? What are they real intentions? I cannot ask Time because Time has severed all connections with them after the Light Invasion.

    So many questions but no answer, I will have to let Time pass to get answers for them. I will have to clear the objective for today first. I continued analysing the curse and found that it is a mixture of two curses, one from the Dragon, one from The Gathering. To break the curse, I will need to find out the starting sequence of magic flow.

    To best describe on figuring out how to break a curse, it is almost like untangling a bundle of rope that is bundled into a bunch of knots. To break a curse, you have to find the start of the magic sequence first and unbundle the compressed sequence, finally you dissect the sequence into pieces.

    That is what I¡¯m doing. I can identify the starting of the magic sequence of the curse, and able to decompress the sequence, but to dissect it will be difficult without ingredients. As mentioned in the previous book, these types of curses are hard to break without the proper ingredients, and they all require sinful acts to be carried out to break them. If you intend to break them without the proper ingredients, then the magic required will be magnified by thousand fold, and it may backfire and the curse might trace its way onto the caster itself.

    I took a glance at Time, Nicki and Charlotte. They all received normal cursed artifacts, cursed with the powers of Darkness. I suspect only mine is cursed with such a powerful curse. This can be troublesome, because I have seen this curse before, it can grow in power. The curse feeds on evil that resides in a person¡¯s heart, and attack any others that has a good will. Once the curse matures it materializes itself and can act like a Creature itself, and it will stay that way until the object that is bounded with the curse is destroyed.

    I continued my work on purifying the helmet. I begin pouring Light magic into the helmet, but it instantly gets destroyed and devoured by the curse. It appears that using Light magic will not disable the spell, then perhaps I can use the opposite, but then the principle is likely to be unhappy about it. I decided to increase the level of Light magic used instead. Then I was disturbed by Omi.

    ¡°Can¡¯t you even perform a simple little purification spell? How useless! You might be powerful, but if you don¡¯t know what to use, you are useless!¡± Came the insult. I ignored it. The curse itself suddenly materialize a hand, stretched out, and punched her.

    ¡°What do you think you are doing? You moron!¡±

    ¡°I did not do anything. That was the caused by the curse I¡¯m trying to remove.¡±

    ¡°What kind of trash are you sprouting? There are no such curse!¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t know about curses. Curses are not just restricted to curse of Darkness, there are curses from the Old Magic of The Void as well. You are far too young in this world to have dealt with such curses that belongs to the old form of magic.¡±

    ¡°How dare you say these kind of words to me?!¡±

    ¡°Now please go away before you get injured by the hand again. I cannot control over how the curse move and I will need to focus to remove such a powerful curse.¡±

    ¡°Did you say Old Magic of The Void?¡± The principle came up and asked me.

    ¡°Indeed. The curse on this artifact appears to be very powerful, more powerful than any curse that I have met before. The only explanation for this is Old Magic.¡±

    ¡°Oh, then it is my mistake. I should have analysed the curse thoroughly before giving it to you.¡± The principle begin to take up the artifact, but I snatched it away from her and put it back on my table.

    ¡°I want to break this curse on my own. I will need permission from you, Mdm. Lillie to use Dark magic to break this curse instead.¡±

    ¡°If you really want to try then I will not stop you. Go ahead.¡±

    I allowed Dark magic to flow through the artifact. Slowly I can feel the curse beginning to melt into the Dark magic. I begin to retract the magic from the artifact, then I felt a tug behind me and I turned around, it was Time.

    ¡°What is it?¡±

    ¡°The curse¡­ It¡¯s materializing!¡±

    I turned and look at the helmet, and indeed the curse is materializing. After the hand that just appeared, another hand slowly begin to form.

    ¡°Too bad, it looks like we are out of time. If I take any more time to break this curse it might spiral into something out of control. Mdm. Lillie, if you please.¡±

    She nodded her head.

    I use The Void to bind the helmet and destroy it completely.

    Mdm. Lillie then returned to the stage.

    ¡°Good. All of you have successfully cleanse the object of the curse, other than Innight, which I will regard as an abnormally. This is the end of lesson for today. Tomorrow you will be starting school in your assigned classes. Before you go, I need to show you your assigned House. This paper shows your assigned House.¡± Saying these, she used magic to assigned papers to us. I took a glance over it. Me, Time, Charlotte, Nicki and Omi are assigned to the same house, Garnet.

    ¡°Can¡¯t I ever stay away from that little bug?¡± Omi complained.

    ¡°I would like to say the same thing. But¡­ Bear with it, Omi.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s rude! You have to call me Queen Alicia!¡±

    ¡°You are not queen. I have mentioned this before, you are but a random student in this school. If you want others to call you a queen, wait until you actually claimed the top spot in every ranking of the school itself.¡±

    ¡°Alright stop arguing, the both of you. I will personally inform all of you when we will be having magic lessons once again. Before then, please behave yourselves and do not show others your side of magic. You should now return back to your orienteering groups, they will be playing some other games right now.¡±

    Saying this, grey smoke appeared from the stage and the principle stepped into it. She disappeared after that, and we all begin to leave the building.

    Once we are outside the building, we took out our bicycles from our pocket and returned it to its original size. We then cycled all the way to building D6 and parked our bicycles on the bicycle racks. When we entered the building, we found all the seats were retracted and all the Factions sitting on the stairs.

    ¡°What are you guys up to?¡± I asked them.

    ¡°We are to carry out a skit to the other three factions. The content of the skit corresponds to meaning of our own faction. Since our faction is named Candor, it means honesty. The organizing committee will judge the skit and give out points depending on how close we are to the meaning of the faction, and how well the skit is performed.¡±

    I leave them to discuss over the skit while I talked to the girls.

    ¡°After all this, I hope we are going to have a perfectly normal school life. I myself already have more than enough experience on magic so I will not need any training. If possible I will like to keep myself away from her magic lessons. The only interaction with Magic that I will want to have is to have conversations over it in the Occult Research Club.¡±

    Then we carry out a skit that some random person decided. It involved a replica of the entire camp, but with the score keeper being dishonest and is bribed into changing the scores. The Candor group managed to find it out and scolded the score keeper. We were then awarded with the most points for the best acting. However, I can sense unrest in the organizing committee, and that they are unhappy that they are being replicated in the skit, even with all the changes in names.

    After the skit activity, we have a long 1 hour break. Outside the building, I can hear rain pattering down onto the Earth. Usually, when it rains, it signifies something bad is about to happen. That is the experience I have gathered over the years. What is going to happen?

    That is when the alarm sounded. So another asteroid is about to head towards Singapore. As I have previously mentioned, Singapore appears to be strangely attractive to the asteroids for some reason unknown to any of us. We begin to evacuate to an underground shelter near to our building. On our way to the underground shelter, we found someone familiar.

    It was Nectilius.

    ¡°Nectilius! I never knew you applied to the same school as we do!¡± I exclaimed.

    ¡°Innight! I never knew you will go to the same school as I do!¡±

    ¡°Everyone, this is Nectilius. I met her during the Invasion Disaster and also met her twice again in our high school.¡±

    ¡°Nectilius, sorry to ask this, but what is your power?¡± Charlotte asked.

    ¡°Death. I curse everything I touch to death. Every spell I cast kills anyone that touches it, even if it only scratched them.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s amazing! Such a power is rare to have!¡±

    ¡°No it is not.¡± Nectilius replied.

    ¡°It isn¡¯t indeed.¡± I added. ¡°You cannot touch anything without killing it with such a power. You will need to have an additional protection, like a glove, to prevent others from being cursed by such a power. Am I right Nectilius?¡±The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

    ¡°Correct. I cannot feel the warmth of human touch because of this. I have not touched anything with my bare hands for years due to this power.¡±

    We talked as we stayed in the underground shelter. That was when a whisper came into my ears.

    It is the principle again. She wants us to gather at the entrance of the underground shelter. The 5 of us, including Nectilius, went to the entrance and stayed there. Suddenly I see a magical circle appearing under out feet and we are absorbed into it. When I can see again, I found all of us in the middle of the school football field. Together with us were many other students, which I guess are magic casters as well. The principle is standing in the middle of the field and using magic to transport more magic casters to the field.

    ¡°Mind explaining to us why did you teleport us here, principle?¡±

    ¡°Your job is to greet the visitors to our Realm. These asteroids that you have heard all these years are actually transportation tools for the Creatures of the Elemental Realm to our Physical Realm. They can only enter our Realm by either using magic circles, which can appear randomly and cause panic and alarm to the public, or by using Asteroids as a form of transportation. Using the latter option will cause lesser alarm so they prefer using Asteroids instead. Our job is to lessen the impact cause by the landing of the asteroids on Earth itself and to greet them promptly.¡±

    ¡°Ah.¡±

    ¡°Enough talking, here comes the asteroid!¡± the principle barked. ¡°Use spells to cushion the impact the asteroid!¡±

    I snickered. This will be an easy job for me. I opened up a field of The Void in front of everyone.

    ¡°Who is the caster that is using Void magic? It is not allowed in this school!¡± One of the older students bellowed.

    I kept silent. They cannot trace magic to the respective casters as they are not capable to do so yet.

    ¡°Innight, you heard them. Use other forms of magic.¡± The principle whispered in my ears.

    I switched to using Dark magic.

    ¡°Asteroid incoming!¡± Someone cried.

    Everyone braced themselves. The asteroid crashed into others¡¯ spells first, but it broke right through them. Then it reached the Mdm. Lillie¡¯s, the magic absorbed most of the impact, at first everyone thought it will held but then the magic shattered. Finally the asteroid reached my spell, once the asteroid reached the spell it closed in and absorbed all forms of movement from the asteroid, then it allows it to softly touch the ground.

    ¡°Good work everyone. Especially Innight. Had you not use spell on the bottom the asteroid will have crashed into the ground and injuring everyone here. Alright, let us welcome the visitor to our Realm. Everyone, stand in rows of two with a space between the rows. Innight, you come with me. The visitor appears to be from the Void Elemental Plane, so I want you to interact with them.

    I understand what she meant. Not all Creatures of the Void Elemental Plan knows the universal language of English. They may be old, but they are not adopting to the new world since they constantly isolate themselves from the others.

    The asteroid opened up. A human like Creature climbed out from it. I can sense the amount of Void magic flowing from it is not pure, and is mixed with Dark magic. This implies that this Creature came from our artificial Void Elemental Plane in the Darkness Elemental Plane.

    ¡°Welcome to our Physical Realm, Creature of The Void.¡±

    The Creature tilted its¡¯ head and stared at the principle. Then out came a garble of words that no one but myself understands. Then it stopped. It took out a pill from the asteroid and consumed it, then it spoke in English.

    ¡°Ah yes, yes. You must be Mdm. Lillie. Thank you for the arrangement. I have signed the required documents for the stayover, please take a look at them.¡± The Creatures replied slowly.

    The Creature took out a stack of papers from the asteroid and passed them to the principle.

    ¡°While I look through the papers, can you please introduce yourself to the students here? I¡¯m sure they are excited to know about your plane.¡±

    ¡°Ah yes, yes. Greetings, students of¡­. What is your name of your school again, Mdm. Lillie?¡±

    ¡°Rescendant College.¡±

    ¡°Greetings, students of Rescendant College. I am a Creature of The Void, I have a name, but it is too complicated for humans to mutter that in your language, so just call me as ¡®Liz¡¯. Do you have any questions for me?¡±

    A hand raised up from the crowds of people.

    ¡°Yes. Your question please?¡±

    ¡°Who is your Grand Ruler of the Void Elemental Plane?¡±

    ¡°He is the Almighty Creature, the Creator and Destroyer of Existence. His name is Zealus. Currently he is absent from the Elemental Plane as he is sealed in as human, but we believe one day he shall return to us. Any more questions?¡±

    Another hand raised up from the crowd.

    ¡°How is your Elemental Plane like? We are curious about this element known as The Void.¡±

    ¡°You need to be there to understand. There is no words that can describe how The Void is like.¡±

    ¡°Isn¡¯t it empty, since The Void actually meant nothingness?¡±

    ¡°That is a misconception, my dear child. The Void is filled with what you humans know as Dark Matter, and it is very powerful, mind, since The Void created all forms of magic known to you.¡±

    ¡°Alright everyone, that is enough. Liz, you need to assume a human form to stay in this school. Can you transform?¡± The principle interrupted.

    ¡°I can. Just a moment.¡±

    The creature retracted its purple aura surrounding itself and assumed a more human shape, I can see he is a handsome male, almost like a prince. I can almost feel a shining aura surrounding him after the transformation is done. Everyone, except me, starred at him.

    ¡°Is it not perfect?¡±

    ¡°It is perfect. Too perfect.¡± Someone said.

    ¡°Everyone. Creature will now be a student of our school. He will be here for a period of 6 months before returning to the Elemental Realm. Please be nice to him.¡±

    We, together with Liz, then walked our way back to building D6. Everyone is already seated by the time we reached there. Everyone is having a break, and everyone, absolutely everyone has their eyes fixated on Liz the moment we entered the building and until we sat down. Liz sat down beside me, replacing Omi¡¯s seat.

    ¡°Boy, what is your name?¡±

    ¡°Innight.¡±

    ¡°Innight, I want to ask you this, are you working for Lord Inoxion of the Darkness Elemental Plane?¡±

    ¡°Yes indeed I do. Why do you ask?¡±

    ¡°You appear to have large amount of Void magic stored within yourself, and this is mixed in with traces of Dark magic. Are you a Creature of Void?¡±

    ¡°You may say so. I am not really any random creature. For my own safety I will not tell you who I am exactly, but you can randomly guess who I really am. I am not going to tell you that.¡±

    ¡°I need to ask you something, Innight. Since you are a member of Void, did you know about the incident regarding Luricerite, the previous Grand Ruler of Light?¡±

    ¡°I do. What do you want to know about it?¡±

    ¡°I heard that a Creature named Innight is involved in this incident. Are you the Innight that they are talking about?¡±

    ¡°I am. Do you want to know about the details of the incident?¡±

    ¡°Yes. I heard you saw how something called¡­ what is it called¡­ The Unknown or something among those lines, merged with Luricerite. Can you describe in detail what actually happened?¡±

    ¡°Well I-¡°

    Then we were interrupted by the Emcees.

    ¡°I will get back to you later. I will give you my number in the communication system and you can use it to contact me. Here.¡± I passed him a piece of paper with my code number.

    ¡°Hello everybody! I hope you are ready for the final activity for the day! You are to learn a dance and perform it to the parents group before you leave!¡±

    I groaned. I hate dancing. I love to see others dance but ironically, I do not like to do that myself. I hate any activity that exhaust my limited physical strength. I considered myself lucky because had it been 500 years ago, I would have been in trouble. There used to be National Service in Singapore, for those who do not know, in the past boys that reached the age of 18 are supposed to serve in the army of Singapore for 2 years to train their physical strength. This system has been abolished in the end of 2300s, as technology has become so advanced that robotics are used instead of human for the use of war.

    After 1 entire hours of living hell, I am exhausted. We performed the dance in the view of the entire parents community of the new student cohort and everyone is happy except me. I am dead tired and all I want is to go back home and have a good rest before the start of normal school days.

    Then came the final program of the day, to reveal the winning Faction and distribute the prizes. We lost to the Dauntless Faction by a mere 10 points. I can feel all the glares from everyone finding their way onto me. I sighed. I could not possibly explain myself now, and even if I do, no one is going to listen to my explanation anyway so I kept silent. The organizing committee starts to distribute the prizes to everyone. We got a huge pack of delicious snacks and chocolates, but not as large as the one Dauntless got. Everyone has a packet of snacks and chocolate, but when it came to my turn, there were none left. I suspect some of them must have taken extra, or they just tried to ¡°accidently: create an event where I don¡¯t have any. Either way, it does not matter. I love sweets but I can still live without them. It just saddens my heart a little that human as such creatures, so nit-picking over a small little thing like this. At least I can have some peace after this entire orientation camp. We are then dismissed.

    We then went over to our bicycle racks. The bicycles of the girls are all fine, but mine has been obviously tampered. The chain I used to lock it is missing, the tire has been flattened, and several metal pieces has been beaten so much that is it changed shape. I sighed. Such is the behaviour of human. Can¡¯t they be slightly more forgiving? It¡¯s not something that great after all, just a small competition over the temporary ¡°Factions¡± and it does not even go into any records or testimonials. It is only a small friendly competition, so do they have to resort to this if they failed to claim the top position? I sighed once again.

    I pushed the bicycle to an isolated corner and used magic to repair the bicycle. We then cycled our way home. When we reached home, I received a message on my Calling Crystal, it was from Liz.

    I spent the next hour explaining the events of the Luricerite Incident to Liz. When it was over, he thanked me for providing him this information.

    ¡°Innight, you can use the bath now!¡±

    I sat in the bath as I think things over. Liz seems to be very interested over the Luricerite Incident, but why? That incident does not affect the Void Elemental Plane, it only troubled the Light Elemental Plane greatly because it was their grand Ruler behind this entire Incident, and it also troubled the Darkness Elemental Plane because I, The Piece, was involved in the mess as well. However, the other Elemental Planes have nothing to do with it, less it be the Void Elemental Plane. So why does he press against me to know so much? Something is off.

    I allowed my head to sink into the bath and thought about it. The strange thing is, as well, is why is a Creature of The Void staying in a human school? Interest? No, that could not be it. Besides, how did Mdm. Lillie contact the Creature? There is definitely something going on behind the background that I do not know. It is of essence to understand that. I do not trust anyone in the school itself since anyone could be a member of The Gathering or the Styx Cult. Our first mission, is to figure out where the members of the Cult and The Gathering are. To find that out, I will need to trace back on that helmet.

    I opened up a portal and from it I took out a small glass bottle, inside is the curse that I extracted from the helmet itself today. I begin to read the sequence of the curse. It resembles a sequence that I have analysed before. Then I remembered, this magic sequence is similar the one that I have extracted from the cursed object in high school. For those who do not know, please refer to the first book for reference.

    That means that it is the same group of people that have placed this curse, this also means that they already have been observing me from the shadows ever since in high school and I do not know it until now. I kept the bottle back into the portal and shut it off.

    I have not learnt anything new besides knowing that The Gathering has been observing me ever since I was in high school. This is not good, we have no idea what they are planning against me since Time has left The Gathering after she was revived and married to me. Before Time left, she has started to warn me that the objective of The Gathering has changed because the previous leader died.

    Suddenly a wave of mana swept over, and begin to feel my magic being sucked by an unknown source. I quickly encrypt my magic to prevent it from further being drained. This must be the girls playing with a spell from a book I have retrieved from the Forbidden Library. I will lecture them on this later when I get out of the bath.

    Then the sucking stopped. I got out the bath and wore my clothes, and went upstairs. In my room I found Time playing with Nicki using magic. Charlotte is reading a book on my bed.

    ¡°Now, admit it. Who was the idiot that carelessly used a magic draining spell?¡±

    ¡°We didn¡¯t, Innight.¡± The three girls responded in harmony. ¡°We are also victims of the magic draining spell.¡±

    ¡°Eh?¡±

    ¡°Really, it is true, don¡¯t you believe us?¡± The three harmonized again.

    ¡°I believe you. It is just¡­ who did that?¡±

    ¡°Can¡¯t you trace back the magic caster?¡± Time asked.

    ¡°I could, but the spell has stopped. If it has left traces behind I could analyse the source of the spell¡­ Wait. I remembered, I encrypted my magic to prevent the magic from further flowing away, I could have possibly encrypted some traces of the spell in process.¡±

    I dove into the Alzelea state again, and indeed, I found a small piece of the spell remaining on the encryption of my magic. I came back to my senses, decrypt the magic and begin analysing the spell.

    ¡°It came from the school.¡± I said, after I finished analysing the spell.

    ¡°What does this mean?¡± The three of them asked simultaneously.

    ¡°It means, someone in the school is being greedy and wants to steal the magic power of this city. For what reason I do not know, but they need to be stopped. If you drain magic from humans, who already have very little magic, they will exhaust their magic and die. Also, the magic extraction is not of a human source spell, it is much more intense, as if¡­ yes, as if it is coming from a machine. The spell is executed repeatedly, in the same exact sequence every few minutes. Only a machine is capable of doing that. I might be wrong, and it could be just a human mimicking a machine for maximum efficiency of the spell itself. Whatever it is, it cannot be allowed to continue. We need to know more about the school population before we can take any action.¡±

    I sighed. ¡°Why can¡¯t ever have an end to all of this mess of the Elemental Realm?¡±

    Back in the darkness of the Main Building of Rescendant College, a hooded human is operating a machine. It has a huge cylinder connecting the ceiling and the floor of the room itself, gradually filling up with blue liquid, and with wires, gears and metal pieces popping out around it. A computer screen connected to it glowed and showed a reading of a bar filling up. The machine roared as the machine runs.

    ¡°Leader, the machine is successful.¡± The hooded man operating the machine said.

    ¡°Wonderful! Wonderful! I am shocked beyond words can describe! That is diligence, my dear members!¡± the leader exclaimed. ¡°Disable it now, we do not want others to discover this creation of others, do we?¡±

    The Member flipped a switch near the wall of the machine. The roaring of the machine ceased, the screen stopped glowing and the blue liquid stayed in there.

    ¡°Member 6, how did your little talk with Zealus went?¡±

    ¡°Update, my Leader. He personally informed me of what truly happened in the Luricerite Incident. According to him, our Grand Master tried to combine with Luricerite, but failed, and he is reduced into a ball of pure mana, which is currently kept by him.¡±

    ¡°IMPOSSIBLE! INTOLERABLE! IMPROBABLE! UNBELIEVABLE! OUR GRAND MASTER DIED?! THIS IS THE END OF US! WE WILL HAVE TO REVIVE HIM AT ALL COST! WE NEED TO FIND OUT THE MANA BALL TO REVIVE HIM FROM THERE!¡± The leader shrieked.

    ¡°Leader, another update, apparently our Grand Master is not completely dead yet. There are pieces of his soul floating around in The Void that managed to leak from the seal. If we can gather enough of this, we can probably revive him from there.¡±

    ¡°Wonderful! Delightful! Enchanting! Magnificent! We can start by finding the ball of mana first, identifying the magic sequence and tracing them in The Void! What a splendid idea you have, Member!¡±

    ¡°I am grateful that I can provide the little that I have to achieve the Ordeal.¡±

    ¡°Indeed. Our Ordeal. To kill Zealus and bring a world of terror and delight in our Grand Masters, The Unknown and the Ancient Beasts!¡±

    ¡°But leader,¡± Came from another Member. ¡°That is not our Ordeal as the member of The Gathering. In The Gathering, we aim to extract Zealus from his human form and convert him into his magical form.¡±

    ¡°THAT IS OF THE PAST, YOU WORM! *I* AM THE LEADER NOW, NOT THE OTHER USELESS LEADER OF THE PAST! NEW LEADER, NEW OBJECTIVE! THIS IS THE OBJECTIVE OF STYX CULT AND MINE! NOT THE OLD GATHERING! DO YOU NOT HEAR ME?! UNSEEN HAND!¡±

    Long purple hands stretched out from the back of the leader and it crushed and curled the poor Member into a human ball. Screams echoed throughout the room as the Member is curled into a ball, crunch of bones cracking can be heard throughout the process. When it is over, the hands retracted and the Member, now a ball of flesh, dropped onto the ground.

    ¡°I hope no one else is foolish enough to challenge me. Remember, I AM THE LEADER AND MY DECISIONS ARE FINAL!¡±

    Silence ensured.

    ¡°Tomorrow, Member 6, search through the belongings of Zealus, find out the ball of mana and steal it. Consider it as a work done for The Ordeal. That is all, you are all dismissed!¡±

 Chapter 3 - The Occult Research Club

    Today is the official first day of school. The 4 of us, with Omi again, were assigned to class 75S3. The number 75 most probably represent the year 2875, S represents a Science class, and the number 3 represents we are the 3<sup>rd</sup> Science class of the cohort. Our subject combination for the class is H2 Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics and a random H1 subject, for me and the other 3 girls, we took up Economics. On our cycle to school, we met Nectilius and stopped and asked her class, and she replied that she is in the same class as we do.

    Talk about coincidence.

    We talked with her as we slowly cycled to school. As all normal school in Singapore operates, the entire school have to attend a morning assembly. During the morning assembly, the higher ups of the school, that is, the Principle and Vice Principle will address us, there will also be announcements made by the various committee of the school itself or by students in general.

    Today there is only one announcement, and that is to ¡°remember to check your assigned CCAs at the noticeboard by the General Office of the Main Building.¡±

    Then we sang the national anthem and took the pledge before we are dismissed for lessons. Our first lesson was Biology. We entered the classroom 01-11 of building D4 and waited for the teacher to arrive. A young man, probably no older than 30, entered the classroom, on his hands he carried a laptop, on top of the laptop is a stack of handmade cards. I wonder what those cards are for.

    ¡°Hello, everyone. I am your Biology teacher, my name is Mr. Leo. I welcome everyone warmly to our first Biology class. First, I will let everyone introduce themselves. I have a stack of cards here which I have created with your names recorded on top. Everyone take a random card and look for the student that your card is recorded. Ask about their full name and what they like and dislike about Biology, then you will introduce them for us.¡± Then he started distributing the cards.

    I, for some reason, got the card with Omi¡¯s name on it. It there some kind of conspiracy behind this? Every time I want to avoid getting into her attention I keep getting thrown right back in. Everyone else is busy talking to each other, I slowly left my seat and approached Omi.

    ¡°What business do you want with Queen Alicia?¡±

    I raised up the card.

    ¡°Oh. You do know Queen Alicia¡¯s full name since she has mentioned it to you before, but in case you have forgotten, her name is Alicia Omi. Call her Queen Alicia. Her favourite topic about Biology is about Nervous System, her least favourite topic is DNA.¡±

    Interesting. I thought. So she can talk normally. Why does she have to put a princess aura around herself? I find her more approachable if she talks normally like this.

    I looked at her card. On it is scribbled Time¡¯s name.

    ¡°Good luck talking to Time. She can be a little sneaky.¡± I told her before I leave for my seat.

    ¡°Hey. You forgot to add the honorifics! Address me as Queen Alicia!¡±

    ¡°I have told you numerous times, I will not address you as such. The most I will use is Ms. Alicia. Earn your position through the various test that we have.¡±

    She looks like she is about to burst any moment in anger. I quickly noticed the signs and walked back to my seat.

    We later introduced all of us using the cards. Mr. Leo says that we are not going to have any lessons since it is the first day of school, but he will have any conversation with us and he can answer any questions we have about the school. We have fun for the next 2 hours.

    Next came Chemistry. We cycled our way to Region A, which is the Chemistry region. We walked in to our assigned classroom and found a young female teacher waiting inside already.

    ¡°You all are late, all of you.¡±

    ¡°Huh? But we are given 15 minutes to move around venues.¡±

    ¡°In my definition, late is not being in the class before the teacher does.¡±

    Now that is some very wonky definition of late.

    Everyone settled down quickly in the classroom itself. The teacher introduced herself as Ms. Liew, and the rest of us all introduced ourselves one after another. Same as Biology, since it is the first day of school there will be no teaching, but a talk of anything of any kind. This lasted for 2 hours as well.

    Then came Mathematics. We cycled our way to Region C, the Mathematics region. When we reached the classroom, we found the teacher, another young man that is no older than 30, dancing in accordance to a music being played somewhere. Then he realised we are here, he then quickly turned off the source of music, which is his hand phone connected to the speakers through an audio cable.

    ¡°Haha. I allowed the few early birds here discovered a true side of myself.¡± He grinned.

    When everyone has arrived and settled down, he begin to introduce himself. His name is Mr. Sem. He is the head of IT and a teacher in the mathematics department. We all introduced ourselves again and he begin teaching. Since the lecture notes are not out for sale yet, he printed out the notes for us this time. We then delved into the world of mathematics for the rest of the two hours.

    Then came lunch break. That was when we notices there are posters everywhere in the canteen. All of them saying that a group named MuSiq are recruiting singers/drummers/keyboardists/guitarist for Transcendence.

    Transcendence? I thought to myself. What in the world of El Gram could that be? Since it has relation to a band member, is it some kind of performance? I will have to ask the seniors of my CCA tomorrow.

    Breaktime over, then it was Home Tutors Period, were the entire class is supposed to gather at our home classroom in Region A, in classroom 01-11.

    We then found out that our home tutors are Mr. Leo and Mr. Sem.

    ¡°Home room is now in service. I need everyone to pay attention to the following announcements we are about to make.¡± Mr. Sem said.

    Next came a list of announcements, some regarding the attendance recording system, some regarding the CCAs, some regarding the school¡¯s academic system. None of them are really important as the final announcement, which is that all believers and members of the Occult are to submit a form to the school for whatever reason.

    After another 2 hours, the final school bell rang, signifying the end of school today. I went to check the noticeboard outside the General Office about our allocation of CCAs, and found me and the three girls are successfully allocated to the Occult Research Club, while Alicia, luckily, was admitted to another CCA. Apparently we were the only ones who choose this club as our CCA, so we are going to feel a little lonely.

    Nothing new in school today other than meeting new teachers and learning something new in Mathematics. We also have no progress in tracing The Gathering or the Styx Cult, nor do we have any progress finding out the caster of the magic draining spell. If we could just find out something from others tomorrow¡­

    ¡°Innight, we are done with the bath!¡±

    I sat in the bath as Master talks to me using the Calling Crystal that I carried around me.

    ¡°So, Remius has started on attacking on the Darkness Elemental Plane. Any reason why?¡±

    ¡°The last time I have contacted him, he spoke about this being a tradition and he thinks that the Ancient Beasts are also likely to tell them the same thing. Traditions are hard to change, he said. We told him that we should not be fighting in such case but he cut off my call.¡±

    ¡°Habits are hard to change. Why do we have to fight, I wonder. Why can¡¯t we just live in peace as the other Elemental Planes do?¡±

    ¡°Ah yes, one more thing, Innight. Apparently they planned to attack the Physical Realm as more and more people have been turning away from the normal religion. As you would have known, religion is only a matter of story that Light has created to assimilate humans under the same power. Earth is supposed to be a place where the Light creates more soldiers from it. They wanted to keep the people going to the right track, so as to speak. I do not know when they are going to initiate the attack or are they even going to, but just be careful.¡±

    ¡°Anymore updates?¡±

    ¡°We have discovered another abnormality under your school. We are unable to track down what they are, but from what we have gathered, they seems to be coming from a type of Creature. Mind you, there are thousands of those Creatures hiding under your school. We have no idea what they are up to, but be mindful, they are large in numbers. I suspect your school is not just any normal school, Innight. If there is something hiding under your school, it is definitely involved with an operation of some kind.¡±

    ¡°So much for finding a normal school. I guess I can never escape the grip of the World of Magic. I need to find out on the magic draining spell, The Gathering and the Styx Cult, and now we have this other Creatures under the school itself. So much work to deal with, but so little information. I guess I can first start with gathering information about this Occult research Club first, it may have the most clue as to when did the Styx Cult and The Gathering entered the school.¡± I turned off the calling Crystal.

    After my bath I went to my room. I begin fiddling around my bag to find the ball of mana, but¡­

    It is missing.

    Where did I drop it? I don¡¯t have a hole in my pockets, I can be sure of that. Did I left it somewhere? Luckily it does not hold much importance to me, it only serves as a trophy for defeating The Unknown. But to other magic casters, this is worth as it is a ball of pure mana. It can enable them to cast very powerful spells that they normally could not be able to.

    I begin to trace back, by casting a Time spell that allows me to view backwards in Time on the bag, on the movement of the bag. I then stopped at the period of Time where a hand stretched into the bag and begin fiddling around it, it then touched the ball of mana and took it out. I begin to readjust the point of view to see the thief, it took me great effort to adjust the point of view as I am currently taking the point of view of a bag, but I managed it and saw a familiar face.

    It was Liz.

    What could have caused him to steal an object from me? And of all things to steal, why this? He could have stolen my own personal copy of the Dark Codex, which is the most precious thing to me, but he didn¡¯t¡¯. What is the reason for him to steal that ball of mana from me? I will have to confront him tomorrow to ask that.

    Night time, the Rescendant College still has lights on in the Main Building despite there is no activity going on. A group of hooded Creatures sat down in the Main Building.

    ¡°Leader, this is the ball of mana that Zealus mentioned.¡± One of the hooded Members took out a ball with intense blue colour.

    ¡°Goodness. Did you create a replica and put it in his bag?¡± The leader said.

    ¡°No, I have forgotten to do so, leader.¡±

    ¡°HOW CAN YOU?! WITH THE ORDEAL SO NEAR AMONG US WE CANNOT ALLOW OURSELVES BE DISCOVERED BY ANYONE! YOU HAVE CREATED A PROBLEM THAT POSSIBLY LEADS TO THE DISCOVERY OF US!¡± The leader screeched and did a wrestling move on the Member. Cracking of the bones can be heard by everyone in the room.

    ¡°I am greatly sorry for my actions, leader.¡± The miserable Member muttered.

    ¡°BECAUSE OF YOUR ACTIONS, WE HAVE TO SPEED UP OUR PLAN! Luckily for us, you already obtain the ball, I need to analyse it and trace down the souls of our Grand Master. Give me a day, and we will be able to start tracking down the remains of our Grand Master. From there, we will then be able to find out about the Ancient Beasts, and awaken them. The Ordeal is so close that I can feel it!¡± The leader shouted.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    ¡°Member 6, create a replica of the ball of mana and return it to him! If that is all you have to report today, then you are dismissed!¡±

    Today is the day I have been waiting, the day where we get to interact with the members of the Occult Research Club. I can barely hold in the excitement as we have our lessons, and I can sense the same goes for the rest of the class.

    After 7 hours of lessons, finally CCA hours starts. We gathered in the special classroom 01-15A in Region A, which we are told on the noticeboard yesterday is our CCA room.

    ¡°Ah, are you the new members?¡± A girl came to room and asked us. I recognize her, she was one of the members of the Club that attempted the ritual on the day of CCA open house.

    ¡°Ah I recognize you! You were the one who saved us from the ritual on the day of the CCA open house!¡± The girl exclaimed.

    ¡°Yes. Yes I am. Can you please open the door for us? I assume you all have the key for it.¡±

    ¡°Yes we do, give me a moment.¡± She fumbled her pocket and took out a key card. She slide it on the card holder and a *click* sound came from the door. She took the handle and pulled the door outwards. An ominous feeling crept onto my skin as the door opened, a huge blast of dust swept outwards as the door opened.

    ¡°It almost feels like this room has never been used in years, with all this dust here.¡± Time begin as we walked in.

    ¡°Eh? We have been using this room every Wednesday. It has so many dust because of how many magic spells we actually used.¡±

    ¡°Then what about this ominous arura that I am feeling in this room?¡±

    ¡°That is most likely caused by our rituals. We have summoned quite a number of Spirits into this room itself, evil or good, it does not matter, as long it is the supernatural, we will do it.¡±

    ¡°That is a very bad move to take.¡± I said. ¡°You might never know what you actually summoned could do to the world itself. What if you have summoned The Unknown? That would have been the end of the world itself.¡±

    ¡°The Unknown? What is that?¡±

    ¡°I will give you a very detailed explanation of what it actually is after all the members arrived. How many year 2 students do we have?¡±

    ¡°This CCA is not really a popular CCA compared to many of the others out there so we were grateful that you all choose to attend this CCA. We currently have only 5 Year 2 students. I am the only girl among the year 2 seniors, my name is Lydia. What are yours?¡±

    ¡°That will have to wait until everyone is here. I hate to repeat doing certain things when it can just be completed in one try.¡±

    The entire room is filled with symbols, dreamcatchers, magic circles, and many other occult stuffs. It may be just me, but the room appears to be filled with a very ominous aura, almost if something very evil stayed in this room.

    ¡°Really I will need to investigate your room after everyone arrives. I suspect you called upon something very evil in this room and I don¡¯t like the feeling over here.¡± I started.

    ¡°I don¡¯t think the president of the club is going to be happy about that if you did do it.¡± Lydia replied.

    ¡°I call upon something friendlier to fill the room. I came from The Void and work for the Darkness Elemental Plane but that does not mean that I love ominous objects.¡±

    ¡°So are you a Creature?¡±

    ¡°How come you are not surprised when I said that?¡±

    ¡°That is because we are notified by the principle about these kinds of things.¡±

    ¡°Hey, Lydia, are these people, like, the new members?¡± A boy with black coloured hair popped his head in.

    ¡°Yes, they are. Everyone, this is the president of the Occult Research Club, his name is Ashley.¡±

    ¡°Hello to all of you. This room, like, is kind of, like, haunted, so you may feel kind of, like, unpleasant feel from it.¡±

    My eyebrows twitched. I cannot get used to people with strange speaking habits. The last time I encountered such a person I refused to speak to the person just so that he will not use his strange talking habits. Since he is the president and my senior, I guess I will have to tolerate him a little.

    ¡°So, can you, like, introduce yourself?¡±

    ¡°I will wait until everyone is here before I introduce myself. I don¡¯t want to repeat unnecessarily.¡±

    ¡°Hello everyone!¡± Three other people popped in.

    ¡°Ah, everyone, these are our new members. Everyone, introduced yourself.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m Arnold, the Vice President of this club.¡± The ebon coloured hair boy spoke.

    ¡°I¡¯m Argen, a member of the club.¡± The blue coloured hair boy spoke

    ¡°I¡¯m Aschubel, another member of the club.¡± The white coloured hair boy spoke.

    ¡°Alright, since everyone is here, it is time for the new members to introduce themselves. Boy, you first.¡± Lydia spoke.

    ¡°Fine. Greetings everyone, my name is Innight. If you have studied the history of the Elemental Realms well, you should have known about a Creature of The Void that is named as the Creator and Destroyer of the Existence itself. Did you know about this?¡±

    ¡°Somewhat. We have access to the knowledge that there is the presence of such a Creature. What does it have to do with you¡­ No, wait. Are you¡­ it can¡¯t be¡­.¡±

    ¡°Yes, you are on the right track. I am that Creature, in human form. I am the Grand Ruler of The Void Elemental Plane as well. Please keep this as a secret within these four walls. There are members of Light who does not mix well with me and will intend to start a war against me if possible. My real name is called Zealus, which apparently has been forgotten by Time, but please do not call me by that name, please call me by Innight.¡±

    ¡°Are you sure about this, Innight, that is, you are the Almighty Creature?¡± Lydia asked.

    ¡°How do you want me to prove it to you? I can do almost anything, you know, since I am Omnipotent.¡±

    ¡°No need. We just want to be sure, since it is almost unbelievable that such a powerful Creature will come to visit us.¡±

    Next Time came up.

    ¡°Hello everyone, my name is Time. I am a survivor of the Invasion Disaster. I am a magic caster myself, and I am masterful in using Shadow and Time based magic. I currently live together with Innight under the same roof as we are husband and wife.¡±

    I face palmed. I told her many times to not say this to anyone. Luckily no one seems surprised over this fact.

    Then it¡¯s Charlotte¡¯s turn.

    ¡°Hello everyone. My name is Charlotte. I am currently an Archangel of the Light Elemental Plane and I hold the position of Gabriel. I am the older sister of us twins of Nicki and myself. We are the wives of Innight as well.¡±

    More face palms.

    Then Nicki¡¯s turn came.

    ¡°Uh¡­ Hello, everyone. My name is¡­ is Nicki. I ¡­ I am also an Archangel of the Light Elemental Plane and I hold the position of¡­ of Zafkiel. I am the younger sister of us twins.¡± She stuttered over her words, but manged to finish her introduction.

    Everyone clapped their hands after Nicki finished her introduction.

    ¡°Alright, what shall we, like, talk about today?¡±

    ¡°Ashley, Innight just now told me something of great interest, he mentioned about cleaning up the room up a little and also wants to talk about this Creature known as The Unknown.

    ¡°Alright, proceed with it then. Wait, clean up this room? Why?¡±

    ¡°I can feel an ominous aura the moment I entered this room, this is probably due to all the spirits and other Creatures you have summoned into this room itself. I need to clean up this room if I¡¯m going to stay in here.¡±

    ¡°But we don¡¯t feel, like, anything at all.¡±

    ¡°That is because you are not a magic caster. You cannot feel the flow of magic ad mana here while the rest of us are able to. Are any of you even a magic caster?¡±

    ¡°Ashley is.¡± Aschubel pointed out.

    ¡°Then aren¡¯t you uncomfortable with this ominous aura around the room?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t, probably because it gets build up, like, over time and I sort of, like, got used to it.

    My eyebrows twitched. Partly because of the way he speaks and partly because he does not mind about the negative flow of energy in the room.

    ¡°No matter what, I want this room to be cleaned up. I¡¯m going to wash away this ominous aura in the room so everyone stay where you are and don¡¯t move, unless you want to be sucked into the whirlpool and find yourself inside the bottle.¡± I took out a bottle and placed it in the middle of the room and opened the cap. No one moved from their seat.

    ¡°Anavel: Water Guardian Angel!¡±

    Water begin flowing out from the bottle and fill up the room. Since the water is only magic, it does not affect us either way and we can all breath normally. The water swirled in the room like how a washing machines does, then the water eventually is sucked back into the bottle.

    ¡°Now that is an experience of a lifetime.¡± The 5 of the seniors harmonized.

    ¡°Now I shall start my talk about The Unknown. No objections, right?¡±

    All of them kept silent.

    ¡°The Unknown. He is a Creature that is created alongside with me and The Creator in the Creation Point. He, similar as I do, has Infinity Level magic, the highest form of magic available. We used to be friends, the interaction of our magic created many things that you know now. The Elemental Realm and the Ancient Beasts, not sure do you know them, are the result of our magic. In the beginning, I thought he is a pure hearted Creature, and played along with him.¡±

    ¡°However, slowly I found that he is what you all may call as an Incarnation of Evil. He feeds on negative emotions to grow in power. So, to fuel his endless hunger for power, he begin bending his will to create Creatures of evil will. That lead to the creation of the Ancient Beasts and Avatars, what actually happened I shall not describe here, but I can tell you after the incident regarding the Ancient Beasts I lost all respect for him. In the end, the entire Elemental Realm was in pure chaos after the Ancient Beast incident. I figured out that, in order for the Peace in the Elemental Realm to ensue, I have to rid the Existence of this monster.¡±

    ¡°Now, we might be Almighty and powerful, but we still have to sleep every now and then. When he was asleep, I used seven Infinity Artifacts to seal him in an Infinity Seal. Then I used Ragnarok to reconfigure the entire Existence as after the Ancient Beast incident the entire Elemental Realm is in a mess. The Physical Realm does not exist back then so no humans died, of course. Just before he is sealed, he awakens and tried to stop me, but it is too late. He then placed a curse that evil will always be in the hearts of Creatures. That was the opening of the Pandora¡¯s Box.¡±

    ¡°Question. What is Ragnarok?¡± Someone asked.

    ¡°If you have read the Greek methodology, you would have come across this term before. Basically, it describes that due to a major battle, it causes the death of all major figures, which includes all Gods and Goddess, the occurrence of natural disasters and the submersion of the world in water. After this, the world will resurface, surviving gods meet and the world will repopulate by two human survivors. Similar to the Ragnarok described in Greek methodology, my Ragnarok spell destroys everything in the range of the magic circle, reduces it to mana, and then from the remains of everything, I will use my magic to reconstruct everything once again. It basically is a recycle of mana.¡±

    ¡°So, continue from where I stopped, I recreated the entire Existence using Ragnarok. Then for safety reasons, I stored the Infinity Artifacts into the Grand Rulers of the various Elemental Planes. So each Grand Ruler of the Elemental Plane holds one of the Infinity Artifact. I thought that, by doing so, the Infinity Artifacts will become inaccessible by anyone else, and even if someone manged to access the Infinity Artifact, they will not be able to break the Infinity Seal without the complete set of 7 Artifacts.¡±

    ¡°For a long period of Time after, including the Time that it took for me to reincarnate as human, the Existence is in peace. The only battle that is ensued is the tiny battles between the countries of the Physical Realm and the never ending war between the Light and Darkness Elemental Plane. That all came to an end when the greed within the previous Grand Ruler of Light, named Luricerite, begin to grow infinitely. He wanted to rule over the entire Elemental Realm, but with the Darkness Elemental Plane there, he could not. So he figured out that he will need a greater power to fuel his plans. That is when, I suspect, when a piece of The Unknown¡¯s soul reached Luricerite.¡±

    ¡°I suspect, the Infinity Seal is not completely protection proof so small pieces of The Unknown¡¯s soul can leak out of it. That is how he reached Luricerite and came out with the plan all the Artifacts. Luricerite is successful in doing so and he broke the seal. The Unknown then tried to combine with Luricerite to gain a body of flesh and fuel Luricerite with the power he wanted while he can feed on the endless greed and evil residing in the heart of Luricerite. However, he plans all comes to a fail as his level of magic is too powerful. From what I remembered, he absorbed magic from the Infinity Dimension inside the Infinity Seal and his power grew to near the far end of Infinity Level magic, just the absorption of any more magic will cause his level of magic to breakthrough Infinity Level magic, which I don¡¯t even know what will happen after as Infinity Level magic is the highest form of magic in the World of Magic.¡±

    ¡°After combining with Luricerite, his level of magic peaked Infinity level magic and the magic begin to collapse upon himself. He was converted into a ball of pure mana that I kept near my side. That was The End of The Unknown. I can show you now if you want.¡±

    I begin to fumble my bag, then I remembered it should not be there because Liz stole it. That is when I come into contact with a spherical object. I took it out, and saw that it is the ball of mana. That is strange, I swear that it has been stolen yesterday. Unless, that is, Liz returned it to me without notice.

    That thief.

    I showed it to everyone else the ball of pure mana.

    ¡°So beautiful. Almost like it is not of this world.¡± Someone said.

    ¡°It isn¡¯t. This kind of object should only exist in the Astral realm, which even myself have no idea on how to access it. I should consider myself lucky to have such an object with myself.¡±

    ¡°It feels so soft, yet hard at the same time. It feels like an unmeasurable amount of power is stored within this sphere.¡±

    ¡°That is because it is mana. It has no physical form in this world. Mana is the fuel that all magic casters need. If human can utilize their mana and have a certain amount of magic, they can too cast magic spells as well.¡±

    ¡°So this means if I have the ball of mana I can cast magic as well?¡±

    ¡°You will need magic as well. But if you have that fulfilled, then yes, you can cast magic as well.¡±

    ¡°Woah!¡±

    I put the ball of mana back into my bag. ¡°Did you record down all of that I have described into some kind of a record?¡±

    ¡°AH! I¡¯m so engrossed in the story that I forgot to keep a record of it! Sorry!¡± Argen exclaimed.

    Saying these, he went over to one of the cupboards in the room and opened up one of them, from it he took out a book, which I shall assume it is their record of the stories of the Occult.

    ¡°So, Innight, can you repeat your story? Please?¡±

    I sighed.

    Halfway through my story telling, the ground suddenly shook violently, throwing everyone off their seats. Then it stopped, everyone crawled form the ground.

    ¡°What is happening?¡± Time asked.

    ¡°I will like to know the answer to that question as well.¡± I said.

    An announcement came:

    ¡°Greetings, humans. We are the Arachnids. We have come over to take revenge over what you humans have been consistently doing to our dear brothers and sisters. We will be taking your world as our new residence, resistance is not recommended. Thank you for listening to our announcement.¡±

    Then the speakers got cut off. That is when the principle, Mdm. Lillie, whispered into our ears.

    ¡°Students. There is an invasion going on in the school itself. We need your help to slay the invaders and drive off the invasion. You are to fight off the invaders at where you are now exactly, we will gather once the invasion is over.¡±

    I smiled at all of them.

    ¡°Looks like we have our work cut out for us. Let us reclaim our school!¡±

    ¡°Uh, wait a minute Innight.¡± Ashley spoke.

    ¡°What is it?¡±

    ¡°I will not be helping out, I have other places to attend to.¡±

    ¡°Huh? Fighting off the invasion is more important! Do you want the Arachnids to take over the world?¡± Charlotte shouted.

    ¡°Calm down, Charlotte. Some people are not as strong as us do. He may be a magic caster, but we do not know his magical strength, depending on the type of enemy we meet, he may land himself into trouble. We do not even know the enemy strength yet so giving a weak soldier a chance to fight an unknown enemy is practically a suicide attempt. Let him be off.¡±

    ¡°Thank you for understanding, Innight.¡± Ashley said this and ran off.

    I rubbed my hands together and took out the ball of mana in my right hand.

    ¡°Alright, everyone let us drive out the invaders!¡±

 Chapter 4 - Arachnid Invasion and The Digiverse

    When we exited the room, we found that everywhere is simply swarmed by spiders. The floor is so densely covered by spiders that it is impossible to see the ground. The 4 of us flew up in the air to avoid getting swarmed by the spiders.

    ¡°So many disgusting spiders.¡± Nicki whined.

    ¡°Indeed. However, just use any Area of Effect spells will easily dispel them, the larger the better. Time, go North, Charlotte will deal with South, Nicki will deal with East, and I will deal with West and the center region. Once you have cleaned up the region gather back here.¡±

    We then went our separate ways. I took a look at the situation of the Invasion and found the movement of the spiders come from a specific region, the Main Building. We will have to fight our way there later if we wish to stop this invasion.

    I took a look at the spiders. ¡°You don¡¯t even pose a single challenge against us. So weak and powerless. Inferno: Brutal End!¡±

    A huge magic circle that covered the entire school building appeared, thousands of fire spears appeared from it and pierced through the spiders. I have specially configured the spell to avoid the buildings so no damage done there. When the spell is over, the entire region is free of spiders. This will probably last no more than 10 minutes before it will be filled up again. We have to quickly address the core of the invasion or else it will not end.

    I took a look at the three girls. They are building up mana to cast large Area attacks. I whispered to them that we will be gathering at the Main Building, they all nodded in reply. I flew over there first and waited. Then something reminded me. How did the spiders managed to use the system to speak and claimed to be able to overtake the world if they are so powerless and weak and unable to speak? Something is off.

    That is when I see strange human-like Creatures sprouting out from the Main Building. They have a human top, but with a spider body below, they also have a face of a spider¡¯s. Disgusting they are. How strong are they exactly, that is a question that I will like the answer to.

    Then some of them spotted me, and they mumbled something, suddenly I see white thick threads emitting from their mouth and aiming towards me. I dodged the first few attempts, but then afterwards so many of them shot at me at once I got trapped by the threads. I was then brought down to the Earth. I tried breaking the threads with magic, but then I discovered they were weaved with anti-magic, so magic does not work against them.

    I materialized a Dark Matter sword and cut through the threads. It appears that the spiders are able to counter our magical spells using Anti-magic. So the only way to win this invasion is to destroy every single one of them using physical attacks. I landed onto Earth and begin swinging my sword left and right of the Arachnid soldiers. Chunks of flesh and crimson blood begin to spill everywhere as I drive the sword into their bodies. I slowly advance into the Main Building as I destroy the soldiers.

    That was when the principle whispered to me. ¡°Innight, what are you doing? You are not supposed to approach the source of the invasion! They are all equipped with Anti-Magic spells and you will die!¡±

    I replied back. ¡°I have others way to attack, instead of using Magic, I can use Physical attacks. If I do not stop the source of this invasion, no one will!¡±

    I continued advancing the army through hack and slashing the army. I decided to take a risk.

    ¡°Fermion: Devastation!¡±

    A gigantic magical circle appeared under the entire Main Building, The Void appeared and swallowed everything

    It was eerily silent. It appears that the Arachnids are attacking us from the frontlines of the school itself, so the back of the building is unguarded. I entered Alzelea state to identify the enemies¡¯ location. I can see a group of 5 of them in the Main Building itself, accessing the Forbidden Region of the Library. That must be their main motive, while attacking us from the Main Building to diverge the attention. Then the rest of the enemy is appearing from a crater in the ground, near the entrance of the Main Building. I will have to deal with that later. First priority is the invaders in the Library, they are most likely finding record about making themselves more powerful.

    I rushed up the Building towards the Library. At the entrance of the Library I find 2 of the Soldiers standing there on guard. I sneaked up to them using an invisible spell and blasted them into chunks of flesh using magic. I advanced into the entrance of the Forbidden Region and fried the electric lock with large amount of electricity, then I kicked open the door. The group inside is surprised.

    ¡°How did you managed to infiltrate our forces?¡± One of them asked.

    ¡°You do not need to know that. Your operation comes to an end here.¡±

    ¡°No it isn¡¯t.¡± The Arachnid human replied. He shot a thread towards and bound my four limbs. I used mental power to move the Dark Matter sword and cut the threads.

    ¡°What kind of devilish trick is this? Our threads are Anti-Magic, you should not be able to use magic at all!¡±

    ¡°This is not magic. It is a usage of mental willpower to move objects. It requires intense training to be able to do so. Now, if you excuse me.¡±

    I accelerated Time on my side and quickly slashed my sword across their heads. 4 heads rolled on the ground and the body dropped dead on the ground, blood poured from the necks of the dead body. I pointed my sword at the remaining Arachnid human.

    ¡°Now, I want you to tell me your plans. If you refuse, then you will end like your friends here. If you lie, and I can detect lies, you will die here as well. If you are honest and truthful, I can spare you a life to live.¡±

    The Arachnid human trembled, and I can read that his mind is filled with fear.

    ¡°P-P-Please don¡¯t kill me. I-I-I-I surrender!¡±

    ¡°Then tell me what your intentions of this invasion are!¡±

    ¡°For us, the 5 of us here, we are to retrieve our Great One from one of the hard disks located in this library. The rest of us is to invade this school and cause chaos while the 5 of us retrieve the hard disks.¡±

    ¡°What is this Great One that you mention?¡±

    ¡°He is our Great Ruler, he was banished by humans many years ago and his soul was imprisoned in a hard disk. Humans are unable to destroy his soul, from what we have known, so this happened. We were told that the hard disk is somewhere in this school itself. We are to retrieve him and revive him after we have recovered the hard disk.¡±

    ¡°Alright. Please leave this place now. Tell your higher ups to stop this useless invasion at once or else I will erase every single one of you from The Existence.¡±

    The Arachnid human clambered and ran off.

    I begin searching through the Forbidden Region to find the hard disk. I traced to see if there is a foreign object locked within the hard disk.

    Then an announcement came.

    ¡°THE FOOLISH HUMAN WHO DARED TO SLAUGHTER MY, LIKE, DEAREST SUBJECTS, MEET ME AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE MAIN BUILDING OF YOUR SCHOOL NOW IF YOU WANT YOUR FRIENDS, LIKE, ALIVE!¡± The speakers boomed.

    ¡°Innight. We are sorry! We didn¡¯t know that they have Anti-Magic and we are captured!¡± That was Charlotte.

    ¡°YOU HAVE, LIKE, 10 MINUTES! AFTER THAT WE WILL SLAY THEM ONE AFTER ANOTHER!¡±

    Then the speaker got cut off.

    So Charlotte, Time and Nicki got captured. I need a negotiation item, and that is to find the hard disk containing their ¡°Great One¡±. Then a particular hard disk caught my attention. I picked it up from the ground. There is a strange form of magic flowing through the hard dis, it is not something of the norm. The magic is indescribable, it does not follow the flow of magic of any known kind. This must be the hard disk that is containing the ¡°Great One¡±. I pocketed the hard disk.

    I left the Forbidden Region and went down to the entrance of the Main Building. As I have expected, I saw an entire army waiting for me there. The army parted a way as I pass through them. In the very middle, a large Arachnid human, with a spider-like crown on top of his disgusting spider head. I expect that to be their leader.

    ¡°You must be the leader of this entire invasion.¡±

    ¡°And you must be, like, the human who killed all my, like, soldiers despite us being Anti-Magic.¡±

    ¡°You will be right in this aspect. Can I ask you to retreat your soldiers and release my friends? You are causing quite some trouble here.¡±

    ¡°We will retreat, like, under one condition. You will have to hand over, like, the hard disk and promise that you will not, like, harm any of our kind again.¡±

    ¡°I have the disk, but I shall not hand it over. You intend to revive something that the world once has treated it as a danger. I will not allow that to happen.¡±

    ¡°Then I guess we have no choice but to fight.¡±

    The leader of the Arachnid wore an Armor of unknown material, so I do not know if the Dark matter sword is able to cut through it. I can try it.

    ¡°CHARGE!¡± He commanded. Every single Arachnid soldier in the field used their threads and bounded me down. I turned myself into the element of The Void and consumed everything. I then create a separate Dimension Pocket and isolate everything from the real world.

    ¡°What kind of devilishly trick is this? He should not be able to use Magic!¡±

    ¡°I am not using Magic. It is my ability as the Creator and Destroyer of The Existence, Ashely!¡±

    ¡°Wha¨C How did you know my human name?¡±

    ¡°You speech pattern showed it. There is no one that I know that has the speech pattern as such. Also, I have been tracking your magic ever since you entered the room, I can identify that you do not have any normal magic. I allowed you to wander off back then is because I wanted to know what your true identity is. Never did I suspect you to be the leader of this Invasion. I will not spare you. Now that all of you are trapped in my Dimensional Pocket, prepare to die.¡±

    I melted in the walls of the Dimensional Pocket and begin to control the Pocket from the outside, the real world.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    ¡°No matter how much Anti-Magic you all have, you will not be able to resist the devouring power of The Void. Say your prayers.¡±

    I allowed The Void to flow from my body and fill in the Dimensional Pocket, it swallowed everything that it touches. The Arachnids tried to stop the advancement of The Void with their threads but to no avail as the threads were consumed by The Void itself. In less than a minute, every single Arachnid is devoured by The Void. I allowed The Void to flow to myself again and disabled the Dimensional Pocket.

    I freed Nicki, Charlotte and Time from the thread wrap using the Dark Matter sword.

    ¡°Is this The End of the Invasion?¡± Time questioned me.

    ¡°Not yet. There is still the presence of their ¡®Great One¡¯ in this hard disk ¨C ¡° I hold up the hard disk to them. ¡°And as long as this hard disk is present, there will be more of this invasion happening. For now, at least, there will be peace. However it will not last if this hard disk continues to exist. It has to be destroyed. The only thing is, I don¡¯t know how. I am not used to technology as I have always lead simple life. We will need someone who knows technology very well to do this.¡±

    ¡°Can¡¯t we just destroy it physically?¡±

    ¡°We cannot. This is bound to the soul through an ancient form of magic. The magic is preventing any attacks from breaking the disk, magic or physical. If you don¡¯t believe it, see ¨C ¡°

    I took up my Dark Matter sword and lashed it on the hard disk. The hard disk formed a barrier and held out the attack. I used an explosion spell and the same thing happened.

    ¡°See? We need to use an alternative way to destroy the soul bounded to the disk. That is, to enter the disk in the digital world. I have no experience in doing so, nor have I entered the digital world, which is otherwise known as the DIgiverse. Goodness know what is awaiting us inside.¡±

    ¡°But there will be no more spiders here right? Right?¡± Nicki pestered me. She is most likely afraid of the spiders.

    ¡°No, there wouldn¡¯t be any. At least for now.¡±

    Then the principle start whispering again.

    ¡°Good job all of you. Innight, you went against our orders but since you managed to stop the Invasion, we will forgive your actions.¡±

    ¡°Mdm. Lillie, we have retrieved something oddly interesting in the Library during the Invasion. It is a special hard disk that contains the soul of what the Arachnids called ¡®The Great One¡¯. From what I can infer, it appears to their Grand Master, and its¡¯ soul is sealed into a hard disk, which I am holding onto right now. I need someone with great technology skills to access the hard disk and destroy it.¡±

    ¡°No matter about that. Give it to me, I will be able to deal with it. No matter how strong it is it cannot be stronger than me.¡±

    ¡°That will be a risk, Mdm. Lillie. I suspect the Grand Master have magic level that peaks Lord level, perhaps even reaching Infinity Level magic.¡±

    ¡°No worries, this old woman needs to practice her magic every now and then.¡±

    ¡°We do not even know what will happen to you if you die in the Digiverse. We might want to prevent that. Anyway, I will call upon someone to do this job later.¡±

    ¡°You must not! It is too dangerous to let a student ¨C ¡°

    ¡°I must. I uphold the peace of The Existence, and if this disk is not destroyed soon, another wave of Arachnids will invade us again. We do not want the world to be conquered by the Arachnids, do we?¡±

    I can hear her tapping on an object. Perhaps weighting the decision.

    ¡°Very well. I will provide the system for you all to access the hard disk. Come up to my office right now.¡±

    The four of us went up to the principle¡¯s office. We knocked on the door and it opened up. Inside the room there is a large metallic table with a computer on top of it, together with the computer there were many others miscellaneous objects as well. The principle looked up at us from her computer.

    ¡°Hello to Innight and your friends. This is the machine that will help you.¡± The principle passed us a machine that resembles a Virtual Reality headset.

    ¡°Thank you so much. I suspect it functions the same as a VR headset?¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    We then left the principle office and went back to classroom. I told the rest of the members of the Occult Research Club about what happened to Ashley, and he wouldn¡¯t be coming back with us. Oddly, none of them looked surprised. Perhaps they themselves are Creatures of other kinds who can¡¯t cast magic but pretending to be human. Whatever they truly are, it does not matter.

    I explained to them about the hard disk.

    ¡°So the entire Invasion begin just because of a single hard disk?¡±

    ¡°Apparently so. Also, this hard disk may contain something much more powerful than just a Creature itself. It may be as powerful as someone of Lord level magic. To make it better or worse, it is in the Digiverse, which we have no idea how magic works within¡­ Oh yes, come to think about it, who is our teacher in charge?¡±

    ¡°It is Mr. Leo and Ms. Cindy. They usually are too busy to stay throughout the entire CCA session but from time to time they stay for the entire session. Oh here they are!¡±

    Ms. Cindy is an old woman, perhaps over 40, and has grey hair. She and Mr. Leo sat down on one of the chairs.

    ¡°So what are you people planning to do today after that Invasion?¡±

    ¡°Innight just brought something very interesting. He just got a hard disk from the Forbidden Region of the Library and from what he investigated, there seems to be a soul of a Creature of what the Arachnids called ¡®The Great One¡¯ stored inside the hard disk. This equipment that Innight has here is a machine that allows us to connect with the hard disk through transporting us into the Digiverse. Now, Innight wants us to operate the machine and transport him into the Digiverse to destroy ¡®The Great One¡¯ inside the hard disk. He says that once this Creature is destroyed, the Invasion will be stopped.¡±

    ¡°Are you sure this is safe, Innight?¡± Mr. Leo asked.

    ¡°Positive. I have done tracing the machine and there is no abnormality. Please start up the machine now, insert the hard disk into the machine. Only Time is allowed to come with me as she is strong enough to prevent any damage on her and she will not die that easily. The rest of you keep the machine is optimal condition to ensure we have the exit open at all times.¡±

    Mr. Leo start up the machine and slot in the hard disk. I put on the VR headset and immediately my consciousness is transported to the Digiverse.

    When I opened my eyes, all I can see is a world surrounded in green and black walls. I and Time are placed in a city made of up nothing but green materials. I wonder what kind of material that the city is made up of wince we are in the digital world. Then I found a sign sticking out from the walls of a building. I took a peak at it. It says:

    Welcome to the Digiverse! This region you are in now is a part of the Information Superhighway. A land of beauty! A land of science! Philosophy! Architecture! Fan Fiction! Everything you see, from the water to the leaves are made from sweet free flowing information. See if you can catch some information on your tongue! Of course¡­ the whole place was abandoned years ago. This must be all that¡¯s left.

    -The Sign Painter

    The Sign Painter? I remember this character. If my memory recalls, this character belonged to a game called World of Goo. So we are in a hard drive that contains the game called World of Goo. This must be Chapter 4 of the game itself, named ¡°Information Superhighway¡±. If my memory is correct, then there should be the ¡°MOM¡¯s Computer¡± somewhere in this Information Superhighway. It should be able to answer where ¡°The Great One¡± is. According to my memory of the game itself, the MOM¡¯s Computer should be overhanging the entire Information Superhighway. This means we have to fly upwards to find her.

    ¡°Time, I recognize this place. This is the Information Superhighway, in a game called World of Goo. We need to find the overarching person that overlooks the entire region, which is a program called MOM¡¯s Computer. It should be able to tell us where ¡®The Great One¡¯ is.¡±

    ¡°Ok. So where do we go to look for it?¡±

    ¡°If my memory did not fail me. According to the game itself, it is located above the Information Superhighway. We will have to fly upwards to find it.¡±

    ¡°Alright then, let¡¯s move!¡±

    We flew upwards into the endless Darkness that surrounds the Information Superhighway. Then we found a green icon labelled ¡°MOM¡±s Computer¡±. Time clicked it.

    A white window appeared, in it there is a textbox and two eyes, under the two eyes there is a line that says ¡°Search Engine¡±. I materialized a keyboard and connected it to the window, then I begin to type: ¡°The Great One¡±, and then I pressed ¡°Enter¡±.

    The textbox disappeared ad a paragraph of words appeared where the textbox should be. I begin to read it.

    The Great One, the Grand Master of the Arachnids. He used to be a human of unknown origin. One day, due to him wandering in the forest of Amazon, he contacted a strange type of disease, he nearly died because of it, but due to the advancement of technology he survived. However, the disease has caused him to lose his human feature and turned him into more like a spider-like creature. He was rejected by humanity and is left to live on his own.

    Later, it is known that he performed a strange ritual that allowed him to gain Lord level magic, which allowed him to assimilate humans to Arachnid humans like himself. After he realised this ability, the tried to conquer the world and erase all humanity, replacing them with Arachnid humans, the reason behind the attack, as he mentioned, was ¡°I will never be rejected again¡±. It took the power of the 6 Grand Rulers of the Elemental Planes to destroy him and his soul was trapped in a hard disk. His soul is trapped in the Storage Room of this very hard disk itself.

    Good. I thought. We now have the information we need. We just need to destroy his soul before someone finds this hard disk and give The Great One a physical form.

    After thinking through, I talked to Time about our next move.

    ¡°Time, you should have finished reading about everything here. You know that we have to find his soul and destroy it, if we have a map of this place the job will be simpler, but we don¡¯t, so we have to do this the long way.¡±

    ¡°Alright then. Which direction do you want me to look?¡±

    ¡°There is no need. There should be various signs located everywhere with the Sign Painter around in this game. Just look around for signs, there should be some that points to us where the Storage is.¡±

    We begin wandering around looking for signs that points us to Storage. Then Time found one. It directed us to the North of the City, inside the Clock Tower.

    We flew inside the Clock Tower. Inside we found it to be a storage of numerous amount of files. Inside there we find a black Arachnid human sorting through the files. He seems surprised when he saw us.

    ¡°Are you human? How did you access my hard disk?¡±

    ¡°We are. We used a little of advanced technology to do so. Are you The Great One?¡±

    The Arachnid human let out a long sigh.

    ¡°Ah yes. But I am no longer great. I wanted to die for so long but I couldn¡¯t.¡±

    ¡°You wish has come to a point where it will come true. Our mission here is to destroy you.¡±

    Happiness sprung into him.

    ¡°Really? I have been wishing for my own death for many years, goodness know how many.¡±

    Never have I seen someone so looking forward to die. Well, granted the situation here, I can understand. Being trapped in a world of information for so many years without anything else to do but to look over the limited information in this world, anyone will want to die to be freed of this monotonous and repetitive life.

    ¡°Since you didn¡¯t resist, I am going to administer you a swift and painless death. Time, step back.¡± I said.

    I begin to use The Void to consume him and devour him.

    ¡°Ah¡­ to be freed from this world. I thank you, Zealus.¡±

    ¡°How did you know my name?¡±

    ¡°I am connected to The Gathering and Styx Cult. They have combined together under one leader now, she is of an important person in your current school, Zealus. They now aimed to extract your power, awaken The Ancient Beasts and revive The Unknown.¡±

    ¡°Who is that?¡±

    ¡°¡­¡± He is completely devoured by The Void, never to be seen again. I will have to figure out who is the leader of The Gathering and the Styx Cult before they take action.

    ¡°Time, we need to leave now. He is the core of this world. If he is destroyed, this world will collapse.¡±

    ¡°Where is the exit?¡±

    ¡°From the game, it is in the Recycle Bin, it should be labelled as Deliverance.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think there is a Recycle Bin here, Innight. Look, at the very top of the Information Superhighway, there is a huge sign labelling ¡®Exit¡¯ there. Let¡¯ fly there.¡±

    I followed Time¡¯s suggestion and flew upwards. A blinding light emitted from the darkness of the world itself and enveloped everything.

    When the Light ceased, I lost sight of everything, everything is covered in darkness. I raised my hands, touched my head and felt the VR headset. So we are back to reality. I took off the VR headset.

    ¡°So did you successfully did what you are supposed to do?¡± Everyone asked.

    ¡°Indeed. We can now destroy this disk. All the data and information inside has been deleted. It is useless now.¡±

    No one did anything, so I used my Dark Matter sword and slashed it across the disk. It instantly was sliced into half and withered into dust.

    ¡°Ah yes, something I have forgotten to ask you seniors and teachers. What is this ¡®Transcendence¡¯ that everyone is talking about?¡±

    Ms. Cindy spoke.

    ¡°It is essentially a music competition between students of the school itself, it is conducted every year at the end of July. Are you intending to attend it?¡±

    ¡°If it is about music, definitely yes! The four of us can form a band and perform!¡± I looked at Time, Nicki and Charlotte. They all nodded.

    ¡°It¡¯s so good to be young.¡± Ms. Cindy said.

    We begin to decide on our performance as we cycled our way home.

    ¡°We have to decide which song to perform. Any ideas Innight?¡± Time begin.

    ¡°It¡¯s not I don¡¯t have. It¡¯s that I have too much that I don¡¯t know which one to choose.¡±

    ¡°Just choose from your favourites. That shouldn¡¯t be too hard.¡± Charlotte continued.

    ¡°It is still very hard. I have those that comes from a band, those that come from Deemo, and those that comes from Vocaloids.¡±

    ¡°What is Deemo?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a very old game. It is a music rhythm based game that involved you tapping the notes as they reach the bottom line, the more accurate you are on tapping the notes, the higher your score. It has been forgotten by many others but I know it. It is still regularly updated with new songs.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t choose from Vocaloids. Those songs have way too high pitches that is very difficult to reach unless you have a very squeaky voice, which all of us lack.¡± Nicki finished.

    ¡°I¡¯ve got it!¡± I cried.

    ¡°I will assign all of you your roles now. Tonight we will start practicing. Time, you will be the singer, Charlotte, you will be the guitarist, Nicki will be the drummer, and I will be the pianist.¡±

    ¡°Yeah!¡± Everyone shouted.

 Chapter 5 - Im still a Human, You Know?

    In Singapore, we have two major exams every year. The first is either before or after the June Holidays, the next one is either after September Holidays or during mid-October, all of which is dependent on various types of school. For mine, the first exam is directly after the June Holidays.

    We just finished our Mid-year Exams and currently is getting our papers back. The first paper that I get back was my Mathematics paper.

    ¡°As expected of Queen Alicia, scoring over 90 for the tests!¡± everyone that surrounded her says.

    Somehow because of her status as the daughter of the President, she easily earned this title from the other students, but not from me.

    I got my paper back next. I was happy of the results, though not perfect but well enough.

    Alicia walked over to my side, smiling.

    ¡°So, how well did you score, you lowly Creature?¡±

    She snatched away my paper before I even had a chance to stop her. She took a glance at my paper and her smile vanished. On her face it was replaced by an expression that I could only describe it as an angry bull.

    ¡°How could anyone possibly top over Queen Alicia?! You must have cheated!¡±

    She shook her fist while pushing my test paper on my table, on it is a score of 97. She showed me her own paper, which has a score of 95.

    ¡°How could I have cheated? Just believe that there are always going to be someone stronger than you in the outside world. This is a lesson that you should have learnt when you are much younger, but it seems you never had. Now you know.¡±

    She looks like she is about to burst any moment. However, instead of exploding in anger, all she resort to is to make a pouting face.

    ¡°I will still not give you any credit even if you make that face. You lost, accept it and move on.¡± I mentioned.

    ¡°Now, now.¡± Mr Sem came over to us. ¡°There is no need to fight over the scores. You all are together in the same class, so it is important to unite and keep the class spirit alive. Additionally, you all are supposed to be responsible adults now, you should not fight over such trivial things.¡±

    Alicia kept silent. I took back my paper from her and kept it.

    The same thing happened for Biology and Chemistry. I ended up being in a bad relationship with her. With her having this ¡°Almighty Queen¡± attitude, I have to truthfully say that it annoys me, and it makes her extremely difficult to be approached. To make it even better, she views me as her rival, and in her fantasy world of belief, rivals cannot be friends until the challenger has been subsided. In this case, that challenger is me, even though I didn¡¯t challenge her to anything. She just assumed me as the role of the challenger.

    Ever since I have known about Transcendence, I and the three girls have been diligently practicing our performance. We also went for all the rehearsals. In the beginning, the following feedbacks were given, signifying how poorly we are ready for the great performance:

    ¡°Time. You need to be more deep and active on singing the second verse. Listen to the song I have and try to mimic the exact same singing style the singer is adapting in the second verse.¡±

    ¡°Charlotte. You forgot your chords halfway through the song. This entire song is in C major key, you played some other chord which I do not recognize after the first verse.¡±

    ¡°Nicki. Your beat is off at the ending. It should be ba-da-da during the entire verse before ending the song with a ba-da-da-dum. Not whatever beat that you were trying to make. Also, remember the song is in 4/4, do not go off beat. You hold the most important position in the entire band, once your beat is off the whole group¡¯s synchronisation will be off as well¡±

    ¡°Innight, you have to ensure you synchronize with the 3 of your other group members. For now, you have been playing the piano as if you are doing a solo, which you are not.¡±

    That was 3 months ago, after our first rehearsal. We have greatly improved since then.

    Today is our last rehearsal before the real Transcendence itself. We gathered in the auditorium after school on Wednesday. We are excused from our own CCAs for attending the rehearsals. We and 25 other performers sat down and waited for the teachers in charge of the event to arrive.

    Now you might be thinking about this, why do we have rehearsals when the event itself is a competition? Perhaps I need to explain this a little bit more. To ensure the quality of the competition is of a certain standard so that it doesn¡¯t look like any amateur is able to enter this competition. As such, we are to practise really hard to produce a significant amount of improvement and meet a certain quality standard for Transcendence itself.

    Two teachers came in, their names are Mr. Tick and Ms. Shirlyn. They are the teachers in charge of the entire Transcendence, hence they provide feedbacks for us.

    ¡°Alright everyone!¡± Ms. Shirlyn said in a lively voice. ¡°Today is the last rehearsal we will have before tomorrow¡¯s Transcendence, so everyone please make sure to have the least amount of mistakes possible today, so that you are ready for the big performance tomorrow.¡±

    Our group, Dynamix, is the first perfomers. We took the stage and performed our song item. When it was over, we went back to our seat and waited for our feedbacks.

    ¡°Alright, Dynamix, here is your feedback.¡±

    We waited anxiously. We have been practicing very hard lately, after lessons every day the first thing that we do once we reach home is to practice. And practice is the only thing we do from the time we reached home until late at time, when it is time to take a bath and sleep.

    ¡°We have no feedback for you. You have completely mimicked the song to perfection that we have no comments to give you. Good work! Next group please.¡±

    Happiness arose in our hearts. If we can keep this up for tomorrow, then we should be able to win the competition and spread Mili¡¯s music to the world.

    We actually joined Transcendence with two motives in mind. One is to, of course, win the competition itself and claim the position of the best music performer in the school itself. The second motive is the real objective, and that is to spread Mili¡¯s music to the world. Most people will not know of Mili unless they are players of Deemo themselves, which are already very rare itself. So my job is to make Mili¡¯s name well known, at least to the school itself.

    The other performers went up and performed their item. None of them are as impressive as we did as most of them still have tiny mistakes here and there. This comforted us and gave us the impression that we will win among all of the competitors here.

    ¡°Alright everyone, remember to be in the auditorium of Region D tomorrow on time, by 5 p.m. and no later than that! You are dismissed!¡±

    ¡°So you are participating in a competition? Interesting.¡± Master said.

    ¡°That is not so important, new update for you, Master. In the Digiverse, we met The Great One and he mentioned that the Styx Cult and The Gathering has gathered under the same leader. From here I can safely assume that their previous leader died and someone that has connections with this two groups of Creatures and with a high position decided to merge the groups together. From what he describes as well, the objective of the group has changed. They have sort of combine and recreated a new objective, that is to extract my power, awaken the Ancient Beasts and revive The Unknown.¡±

    ¡°If that is really the truth we have to stop them at all cost. Only you have the capability to stop the Ancient Beasts so your power must not be extracted. Also, awakening the Ancient Beasts will possibly cause the history to repeat itself, which we will want to avoid at all cost. I do not wish to experience Ragnarok at all.¡±

    ¡°I will also like to not do that at all, if possible. There is another way to completely destroy the Ancient Beasts once and for all, eliminating this threat that has been present in the Existence for far too long, but to do that will require a great sacrifice.¡±

    ¡°Tell me about it.¡±

    ¡°¡­¡±

    ¡°Are you sure you are to do that?¡±

    ¡°If it has to come to the day, then I have to. That is only if The Gathering managed to awaken the Ancient Beasts. I wonder do they even want to do that.¡±

    ¡°The leader must be crazy. That will only bring The Existence to destruction and nothing else.¡±

    ¡°The successor of the Styx Cult is definitely crazy, after what I have seen in the Nightmare I can definitely be sure of that.¡±

    ¡°Alright, if there is nothing else I need to command our troops ready for the next battle of Light.¡±

    ¡°Alright then. Good night.¡±

    The day of Transcendence is finally here. We gathered in the Auditorium half an hour before 5 and were instructed to prepare ourselves, do our make ups, etc. at the backstage. Charlotte plucked the strings of the guitar to test the pitch and volume, Time sang a few notes to ensure she is using the right voice, Nicki and I waited anxiously at the backstage.

    Finally, the program begins.

    ¡°Welcome, everyone, to tonight¡¯s Transcendence! My name is Wright!¡±

    ¡°And my name is Olivia!¡±

    ¡°And we are the Emcees for the night!¡±

    The audience clapped.

    ¡°As you all may know, Transcendence is a competition of performance of different performers of different variety of music. The winner of this competition is dependent on you, the audience! You should have noticed by now that there is a screen on your tables, use it to vote for your favourite band or solo performer, we will collate the votes at the end of the last performer and declare the best performer for Transcendence!¡±

    ¡°And now, without further ado, let us welcome the first perfomers of the night, Dynamix!¡±

    The audience clapped. We walked out of the side curtains and gave a big bow. I sat on the piano, Time stood at the microphone stand, Charlotte plugged in her guitar and tested it, and Nicki sat near the drums and have her drumstick ready.

    I tapped on the floor with my feet.

    One, two, one two three go!

    We begin to perform one of Mili¡¯s songs, named ¡°Meatball Submarine¡±:

    Tomato sauce simmering with onion blocks,

    How Exciting.

    Butter up the sourdough submarine,

    Marinara flavoured bedding.

    Meatball seats in my submarine,

    Delivery under the sea.

    So I leap,

    And swim against Atlantic stream,

    to show you what I¡¯ve achieved.

    Going deep,

    Tonight we¡¯ll make dinner a feast.

    Just count it on me, Just count it on me.

    Soaring through the barnacle valley,

    And peachy coral reefs.

    Wait for me,

    Tonight we¡¯ll make dinner a feast.

    Just count it on me, Just count it on me.

    Parmesan crispy skin,

    Tasty dilemma Carbohydrates.

    Season up the gluten-free submarine,

    Slather it in mascarpone cheese.

    Meatball sits in my submarine,

    Prime shipping under the sea.

    Beep Beep Beep.

    What¡¯s going on?

    Radars went off,

    Showing the sharks on the screen.

    Closing in,

    The sharks opened up their mouth.

    They¡¯re biting on me, They¡¯re biting on me.

    Licked off mayonnaise dressing,

    Tore off my cheddar sliced cheese.

    I may be weak,

    But I¡¯ll fight your enemies.

    So count it on me, Just count it on me.

    Pierce and pierce and pierce and pierce it through

    All their tiny brains.

    An eye for eye,

    An arm for arm.

    I¡¯m invincible, Indestructible.

    Ham,

    BLT Salami,

    Veggie and cheese.

    So many submarines,

    Marine marine sub.

    Avocado,

    Roast beef, a

    nd teriyaki.

    So I leap,

    And race against those submarines,

    To show you what I¡¯ve achieved.

    Increased speed,

    Tonight we¡¯ll make dinner a feast.

    So cheer for me please, Just cheer for me please.

    Instead of looking at me,

    You¡¯ve decided on the roast beef submarine.

    Tomorrow I¡¯ll come back again.

    So wait for me please, Just wait for me please.

    When we finished our performance the whole auditorium was filled with applause. We are certain that we have completely reproduced ¡°Meatball Submarine¡± in its own glory, and have it perfected it all ways possible. We should be able to win this competition with ease. We left the stage, feeling proud of ourselves.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

    We didn¡¯t.

    Another group named Glory 3usi9 earned the title of Best Performer instead. We were shocked by the results. They have committed mistakes during their performance, just like every other performers did. I wondered why did we lost. There are no indicators of any sort to why and how. I¡¯m now curios to know how any of the audience voted for us as the best performers. Perhaps it is just a one vote difference¡­

    After the entire Transcendence is over, the teachers in charge, Mr. Tick and Ms. Shirlyn give us a piece of envelope.

    ¡°Inside is the results of how many votes you received from the audience.¡± Mr Tick said.

    We quickly opened up the envelope and open the piece of paper inside. We looked over the first piece of paper, which states the top 15 groups.

    Ours is not on the list.

    We flipped over to the next piece of paper and finally found our name on the last place, 25<sup>th</sup> place out of 25 groups.

    ¡°How many people voted for us?¡± Time buzzed at my ears.

    I looked over at the number.

    Zero.

    No one voted for us.

    I don¡¯t understand. We have the best performance, we performed everything to perfection. So why no one voted for us at all?

    ¡°Hey, Dynamix.¡±

    I looked up. It is the leader of the group Glory 3usi9.

    ¡°You all have done a great job in performing. You all have not committed a single mistake and have replicated the song to perfection, according to the Mr. Tick and Ms. Shirlyn. You all have met the standards of a professional performer. However¡­¡±

    I stared at him.

    ¡°¡­you need to know what the world wants. If you failed to understand even this, you fail. You fail as a performer. You are not worthy of entering the world of performers if you cannot even understand this basic principal.¡±

    He then walked away, humming his performance item.

    ¡°He didn¡¯t have to say all that!¡± Time cried as we pushed our bicycles home. The atmosphere around is heavy as we thought about our lost.

    ¡°Well, I thought we were good enough.¡±

    All of them looked at me.

    ¡°We put sweat and blood into practicing and performing. We did not commit any mistakes during the real performance. At the very least, we did ourselves proud that we can perform with such excellence. So we shouldn¡¯t feel down about it.¡±

    Time then asked me.

    ¡°Innight, isn¡¯t it frustrating?¡±

    ¡°Huh?¡±

    ¡°Aren¡¯t you frustrated by the fact that we did not win?¡±

    ¡°I will not lie to you that I did not, I do feel a little. However I am satisfied. We all get to stand up on a stage to perform to everyone else. That is enough for me.¡±

    ¡°So you did not win.¡± Nightius came by our house that night.

    ¡°Indeed.¡±

    ¡°Are you not frustrated?¡±

    ¡°Who isn¡¯t? But how can anger get me anywhere? It is best for me to deal with it and look at the positive side of things.¡±

    ¡°You are strong, Innight. Both magically and mentally.¡±

    ¡°I have to. I am the husband of three young and pretty girls who needs an emotional support. If I breakdown, it will only make everybody feel worse.¡±

    ¡°Ah, well, I have to leave now.¡±

    ¡°How is the school going?¡±

    ¡°We are training humans to cast magic now that all the batches with magical abilities are gone. Do you think it will be successful?¡±

    ¡°I can only hope. Magic can be useful, but it can also be dangerous. Let Time answer that for you.¡±

    I tossed and turned in the bed that night. I cannot sleep at all. I took a look at the clock, it is 5 a.m. in the morning, and it is raining. I decide to pay a visit to the sea. We live near the seaside if I have not mentioned this.

    ¡°Where is Innight?¡±

    The house is in a state of chaos as the three girls looked around for Innight.

    ¡°Calm down, the both of you! We can track where he is using magic!¡± Charlotte cried.

    She performed a tracking spell.

    ¡°Innight is in the sea!¡±

    ¡°He ¨C it can¡¯t be ¡­¡±

    ¡°The two of you stay here, I will look for him!¡± Time shouted out over the commotion.

    ¡°We are going too!¡±

    ¡°NO! Overclock: Temporal Prison!¡±

    Charlotte and Nicki both froze in time.

    Time ran over to the seas and begin to shout: ¡°Innight! If you hear me, please appear! Innight!¡±

    She feared for the worst to happen to Innight. She continued shouting.

    I was alone in the sea, trying to seek comfort of being alone in the Darkness and floating in it. It reminds me so much of The Void, then I heard someone shouting my name.

    ¡°Innight!¡±

    I recognize the voice, it is Time. I swam upwards and popped out of the surface of the water.

    ¡°There you are Innight! What on earth do you think you are doing?¡±

    ¡°I was seeking for comfort. It has been long since I have the feeling of stranding in the darkness and being all alone myself. I wanted to think some things over.¡±

    ¡°So what were you thinking?¡±

    ¡°I wanted to know what else besides wrong songs leading to our failure.¡±

    ¡°Did you find it?¡±

    ¡°Nothing comes to mind. Nothing at all.¡±

    A period of silence continued.

    ¡°I have been thinking. I cannot foresee things happening and I cannot plan anything well enough. Yet I want to be successful. This is why we all tried so hard to practice and practice again. I wanted to change the world, even though it may be small, on certain things.¡± I began.

    ¡°Take this performance, for example. I wanted the world to know about Mili, I want them to learn about something new. I want to share with them the joy of knowing that such creators of music exist. That was why I wanted to enter Transcendence. If I win, it shows that the world is eager to accept such new ideas and tastes, and are keen to test them out.¡±

    ¡°Yet what we got was the opposite. Yet we got zero votes. Zero....¡±

    ¡°We practiced so hard together, we worked so hard together, we trained so hard together, we picked the songs together, and we performed our best together. We aimed to be the best performers in the school itself. And yet!¡±

    I banged my fists on my head.

    ¡°And yet it is a zero! It¡¯s so frustrating! I don¡¯t care if we don¡¯t win, or if there is a big difference! It¡¯s frustrating! It really is frustrating¡­¡± I screamed.

    Then Time hugged me.

    ¡°I never knew that you cared so much. I thought you don¡¯t have feelings like us.¡±

    ¡±I am still a human, you know! I have to stay strong since I am the one who brought this upon all of you, and if I breakdown, everyone will feel horrible. That¡¯s why¡­¡± I whimpered.

    ¡°You don¡¯t have to do that. We all feel bad about it but that does not mean that you have to hide away your true feelings. You weren¡¯t the one who forced it upon us, we all decided to follow you. I did, Nicki did, and Charlotte did.¡± Time let go of me and stand beside me.

    ¡°Innight!¡±

    That was Charlotte and Nicki, standing on the shore. They probably overheard the entire conversation. They then walked into the sea and towards me, then they hold my hands.

    ¡°That is why you should not try to hide your feelings. Let them pour out. We are all in this together.¡± Time said.

    Tears begin to build up in my eyes. When it finally reached a point where I cannot control, I let it out. I let the tears flow and cried. I cried and let out all the frustration I have in my heart.

    ¡°It may be a zero now. But we will change it. We are unable to reach a large number right away from zero, but we can possibly reach one. We will see to it that it changes if we continued to work hard enough. We still have next year to try it out and we will like to see if it will work out.¡± Time continued.

    ¡°Okay¡­¡± I said as I continued crying.

    The sun shone through the clouds and the rain ceased. This day will always been imprinted in my mind. The day that I discovered I still have human feelings and became human again. I dried my tears.

    ¡°Now let us go back and take a shower before we catch a cold!¡± I told all of them.

    Deep under the city of Singapore, a group of hooded Creatures is exploring the ruins of an ancient city. The leader is using his authority powers, the Unseen Hand, to move aside the rocks blocking their way.

    ¡°Leader, are you sure that the portal exist?¡± One of the Member asked.

    ¡°I have checked it again and again diligently. It definitely is. Keep looking for it. Do you have the ball of mana?¡±

    ¡°It is with me, Leader.¡± Another Member said.

    ¡°Keep it safe. It is the activation key of the portal itself. Now, continue looking.¡±

    When they moved away a gigantic boulder, behind it they found an inactivated portal.

    ¡°Is this the one, leader?¡±

    ¡°We only know if we test it out. Give me the ball of mana!¡±

    The Member holding the ball of mana handed it over to the leader. The leader uses his Unseen Hand to place the ball of mana on the top of the inactivated portal, where there is a hole. The ball of mana fits perfectly, and the sides of the blackened portal begin to be filled with blue mana from the ball. Swirling energy begins to fill the emptiness of the portal. The portal is activated.

    ¡°Now we need to test it out. Which Member is willing to put himself to the test of faith?¡±

    No one moved from their spot.

    ¡°You! You looked like you are an ideal follower with the best test of faith, off to the portal with you!¡±

    The leader pointed at one of the Members, picked him up using Unseen Hand and threw him straight into the portal.

    Silence.

    Then the Member¡¯s voice came from the portal.

    ¡°It is as what the leader mentioned, this portal links to the Infinity Dimension! Come in, all of you!¡±

    ¡°Good! Perfect! Overjoyed! Delightful! Charming! All of us, let¡¯s move! To the place where The Unknown is sealed to find his remains so that we can revive him!¡±

    One after another the Members passed through the portal. The leader was the last. After he passed through the portal, the Unseen Hand came out of the portal, took out the ball of mana embedded in the portal and disappeared into the closing portal. The portal then deactivates.

    ¡°You found traces of swirling energy deep below the city?¡±

    After crying out in the morning and we took a bath after, Master arrived at our house. He came by personally because he was concerned about The Gathering. (We called the combination of The Gathering and Styx Cult as The Gathering now) Today he sensed that there were swirling energy deep below the city of Singapore itself, and was worried that The Gathering has started to make their move.

    Swirling energy, if you did not know, is a special kind of energy that portals used. Portals are very complex mechanisms that uses large amount of mana to create a point of connection between two separate places. In the activation of such portals, an activation key, usually a collection of mana, is needed. Portals then uses a very complicated series of energy conversion to convert from pure mana to swirling energy, which enable the connection of two places.

    As far as I can recall and read about the history of Singapore, there are no invasion of Creatures of any kind on the land itself, nor are there any records of any other Creatures other than human that stayed on the island. As such, common sense will tell you that portals would not have existed in the soil of Singapore.

    ¡°It appears to be the case. I suspect someone has activate the portal deep under the city itself.¡±

    ¡°You knew about that, Master?¡±

    ¡°I do. There used to be a group of Creatures named Mastroys living on this island. They were very advanced Creatures, just like humans are. They created a city on this island itself before the humans lived on the island. From what I remembered, they have connections to the Infinity Dimension, what exactly I cannot remember. They set up a portal in the city itself and it connects them with the Infinity Dimension, to activate it you will need a mana orb, or a ball of mana, whichever does not matter.¡±

    ¡°But how is it that there is no records of such Creatures on this island?¡±

    ¡°I wasn¡¯t sure about this myself. From what I know, they vanished from the island itself one day in an earthquake that caused Singapore to be separated from other islands. The whole city buried itself under the dust and earth thereafter, and the island was deserted for many years. It was only until much later humans started to populate the island itself. Even I have almost forgotten the existence of the portal until this morning.¡±

    ¡°So now we have known about this portal, we need to figure out who is activating it and why. I can use a Time reversal spell to figure out who, but to do that I will need to find out where is the portal first. Do you have a map or any record of the city?¡±

    ¡°I have a map of it in my head. I should go with you. I wanted to visit the city myself.¡±

    ¡°That will be fine as well. Now we need to find a way to access the city itself. Do you know of any entrance that does so?¡±

    ¡°No I do not. I do know the location of the city based on the energy signal this morning. We can teleport there as since I have the exact location.¡±

    ¡°Should we go now? Tomorrow is Sunday so we don¡¯t have school. We can go without sleep for a day anyway.¡±

    ¡°It will be good to. The Coordinates are¡­¡±

    The 4 of us, with Master successfully teleported into city. We found everything is in ruins, buried under layers of dust and earth and various paths covered with dust. We turned to the front, and saw the deactivated portal. I begin to do an analysis of the users that used the portal this morning.

    ¡°I can only see a robed people. I can identify the robes matches those of the Styx Cult. This means that The Gathering has used this portal this morning.¡±

    ¡°So they have indeed taken their first step. What can they be up to?¡±

    ¡°I think I know. Do you remember that I sealed The Unknown in the Infinity Seal, and it is connected to the Infinity Dimension? Since their objective is to revive the Unknown, they will need to locate pieces of him to do so. The only place that is left of his remains are within the Infinity Dimension, so they have used this portal to access it.¡±

    ¡°Should we enter it to stop them?¡±

    ¡°The things is, no one here is familiar with that dimension. From what the last discoverers said about that Dimension, normal physics of Time and Space is not obeyed there. Going left will cause you to end up right, going up will cause you to end up below. Time that passed there is not equivalent to any period of time passed here at all. I would rather not enter there without any knowledge of that dimension. ¡°

    ¡°Besides. I am sure that they will not be able to revive The Unknown. Even if they managed to gather up sufficient pieces to do a revival, they will need large amount of magic to do so. From what I have analysed, their strongest magic caster is of Arch level. To successfully cast a revival spell, one needs to be at least of Lord level magic. Also, they are reviving something of great power, which is going to raise the level of magic requirement even further, to at least low end of Infinity level magic. They are not going to be able to revive him without enhancing their powers, which can only be done through magic transfer, which is not possible without knowing the power signature of the transferred party.¡±

    ¡°So what can we do now?¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t need to do anything. They wouldn¡¯t be able to revive the Unknown with their current power. To awaken the Ancient Beast will also require intense amount of magic, it requires at least the amount of magic at the far end of Infinity level magic, which I myself don¡¯t even have. I can see what they are planning and how they are carrying out their plans now.¡±

    ¡°They aim to extract my power to revive The Unknown, then use The Unknown to awaken the Ancient Beasts. However they shall not pass their first objective. I suspect the magic draining spell that was casted some time ago was casted by them, using a machine. I have been very wary of it ever since and am ready to encrypt my magic anytime that it happens. All we have to do now is to actually discover where the machine is located on our school compound, destroy it, and their plans will fail completely.¡±

    ¡°Should we go back now?¡±

    ¡°Do.¡±

    Inside the Infinity Dimension, the Members of The Gathering gathered small pieces of white coloured energy and piled them up together.

    ¡°Now what should we do, leader?¡±

    The leader opened up a small bottle, inside is filled with a liquid that constantly changes colour.

    ¡°What is that, leader?¡±

    ¡°That is a portion of Zealus¡¯s and the other magic caster¡¯s magic. We extracted little by little from him while he is unaware of it using the machine. We did not managed to extract everything because he encrypted them before we could extract it completely. By doing it in small amount he is unlikely to notice and we can advance our plan slowly in accordance to Time as well. We have successfully extract about half of his magic, which is about enough to put our plan into action. I¡¯m going to drink it now.¡±

    The leader opened up the bottle and drank the contents of it.

    ¡°Ah¡­ my brain trembles¡­. So much power¡­. I can feel the Universe trembling inside myself¡­¡± The leader mumbled.

    ¡°Alright. Time to test out if our plan is successful! Mikene: Soul Revival!¡±

    Large amount of mana flowed from the leader to the pieces of white coloured energy. The mana created a sphere and enveloped the entire energy pieces. The sphere grew and from it a large white arm stretched out, followed by another. Afterwards a large head followed, with a sinister smile on it. The sphere then condensed into a floating body that supports the head and arms.

    ¡°Hi, hi, hi. Whats do us haves here? My dear follower?¡±

    ¡°Indeed. We are now known as The Gathering, no longer as the Styx Cult. We welcome you back, Grand Master, to The Existence.¡±

    ¡°My, my. I am indeeds grateful for you have done. My tiny mistake in combining with Luricerite ha¡¯ led to my de¡¯truction. I am indeed gratefuls that I have left behind piece of my¡¯elf for you all to revive me. Let u¡¯ continue our journey to the Ordeal.¡±

    ¡°Not yet. My Grand Master. We need more time to do so. Zealus is likely to detect you if you return to The Existence now. I suggest you turning into human and hide among the students of my school. I can hide your identity under as a transfer student. You can approach Zealus at the same time as well to know more about him. Let¡¯s see, can you transform into human?¡±

    ¡°Indeed I can.¡± The white Creature shapeshifted into a handsome white haired human with white eyes.

    ¡°I shall enrol you into my school by tomorrow. Go and research about Rescendant College. Tomorrow come to school with the correct school uniform, and I will use my authority to ensure you enter the same class as Zealus. By the way, his human name is Innight. Do not forget this. Be in the school by 7 in the morning. The school itself will inform you everything else.¡±

    ¡°Very wells.¡±

    ¡°Alright, let us move back to the Physical Realm. Grand Master, if you please.¡±

    ¡°Dimension Shift: Breakthrough!¡±

    A blue portal opened up in the middle of the room, and the Members begin to enter the portal.

    The leader was the last to enter. As he entered, he mumbled this words:

    ¡°I will show you, Innight. Who is the strongest in the world. Just you wait!¡±

 Chapter 6 - The Calm Before The Storm

    I felt a wave of magic imbalance swept through the city while I was sleeping in the bed that night. That level of magic imbalance does not match of any normal level of magic abnormality. It is much more powerful, it matches that of Infinity level magic. There should not be any Creatures of Infinity level magic other than me after the death of The Unknown. So who could that be? Are they of Evil or Good intention to the world?

    I kept rolling in bed until it was morning. I did not get to sleep a wink with all the magic abnormality about. It finally stopped at around 6 a.m. in the morning, when it is the time for me to wake the girls up for school.

    I blame the world for my lack of sleep.

    As I walk into school today, I can see people pointing behind my backs and laughing at me about me being a complete failure in yesterdays¡¯ Transcendence. I ignored them, knowing that I have performed my best yesterday, it is just only the world doesn¡¯t understand.

    During break time, I noticed that there is a new student in our class. He has quite a handsome look, with white hair and a pair of white eyes. He is busy looking at his smart phone at his seat. He must be another Creature in disguise as I can sense magic flowing in him. However, the amount of magic flowing in him reaches Infinity level magic. He must be the one responsible for the waves of magic imbalance this morning, meaning he must have been awaken by something, or someone, this morning. I will have to check with Master to see that if he has any records of a Creature with Infinity level magic sealed deep within the city itself.

    It is my duty to check the Creatures of Existence, especially when they are of high level magic, to ensure their intentions are not evil. This is important because I want to keep the entire dimension of Existence at peace. I had enough of fighting ever since the incident of Luricerite.

    ¡°Hey, new student, what is your name?¡±

    The new student froze for a moment, then looked up from his phone. He stared at me before saying:

    ¡°You. Your name is Innight isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°Indeed I am. What is yours?¡±

    ¡°Cal me Vincent. Nice to meet you, Innight, I have heard a great deal of things about you.¡±

    He stood up and passed by me, as he does so, he whispered:

    ¡°Especially about the Ancient Beasts, Zealus.¡±

    Then he left the classroom.

    I myself am stunned for a moment. There are no other Creatures that knows about that incident other than The Unknown and me. The Unknown is eradicated after the Luricerite Incident, so it is impossible for him to be here. Who can this Creature be?

    That was when I heard many voices sounding outside the classroom. I took a peak outside, and see every people is every class gathering outside their classroom, all of them seems to be awaiting something.

    ¡°What is all this commotion about?¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t know, failure? Richard the idol is transferring to our school, starting today!¡±

    So my nickname is failure now. All because of the Transcendence incident.

    ¡°What, is that someone famous?¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t you know Richard the idol?¡±

    ¡°I have no interest on the world of idols. They are nothing but normal humans to me.¡±

    ¡°Say what you want, but she is super famous in the region of Singapore!¡±

    I can¡¯t read with the commotion around the classrooms, I decide to pay the rooftop a visit.

    Our school¡¯s rooftop is beautifully decorated with some trees and flowers planted, with some benches available for students to sit there. I sat down on one of the benches and started reading my Dark Codex.

    ¡°You must be special, knowing about this place.¡± A voice came.

    I looked up from my book. The speaker is a sea-blue haired girl with twin pigtails and a pair of deep blue eyes.

    I stared at her for another few moments. She blushed and looked away.

    ¡°Don¡¯t stare at me so long, it will make others jealous!¡±

    ¡°Who are you?¡±

    She looks shocked. She took a few steps back from me.

    ¡°Ah, of course, there are bound to be people that do not know me. Ha, ha, ha¡­¡±

    She then proceed to take out a stun gun and shocked me. I was taken aback by action she has taken so that I didn¡¯t have time protect myself from that attack.

    ¡°How could anyone not know me?¡± She wailed. ¡°I am not an idol if people doesn¡¯t know me at all!¡±

    An idol? I thought. Could she be Richard? How could any idol have such a habit of using a stun gun on people?

    I quickly created a barrier to shut her off the contact from her with me. She was flung away from me.

    ¡°Are you, perhaps, another magic caster?¡±

    ¡°I am. Don¡¯t mess around with me too much.¡±

    I thought that this school is supposed to be normal! Why does almost everyone in the school treats magical caster as something common when it is supposed not to be known to the world?

    ¡°Well, I¡¯m a magic caster myself! Have you heard the new announcement made by the school itself? We are going to participate in a tournament! I hope I will get to face you! Remember me, my name is Richard!¡±

    ¡°Huh?¡±

    She then proceed to teleport away, perhaps back to her classroom.

    The bell rang, signifying the end of break time.

    After school, I went over to the noticeboard to take a glance of what Richard mentioned. There I found an announcement that matches Richard¡¯s description. It was written using magic so only us magical caster will be able to detect it.

    We are now beginning the annual magic tournament in Rescendant College. In this tournament students are allowed to use their magic powers to their fullest to defeat their opponents. To win the battle, the players are to either render the opponent unable to battle, or to force them to give up. The battle will take place during start of August, and it will be held at the Underground Arena. Winners will be granted one Artifact of their choice in our collection and win cash prizes. The draw of the competition is shown below. You will be informed of the battle through the announcement system.

    I begin to look for my name. I found it under block E, and my first opponent is some random people that I do not know. I do not worry about can magic caster in the school other than Vincent, which probably has a chance of defeating me.

    With all these evidence, it is evident. This school is most probably a magic school in disguise, it does not teach the casters on how to use magic properly, but to train them as fighters through fighting each other. This is worse than what I really wanted, the last thing that I wanted was to fight others, but to survive here, I will have to do so. Casualties are bound to happen with all of this in place.

    ¡°Innight, please report to the Underground Arena.¡± Came the announcement. That is my signal for the first battle of this entire tournament.

    I took a look at the map of the school, and found a lift at the main building. Once inside the lift, I found a hidden button labelled ¡°B1¡± and pressed it. The lift begin a downward descend into the ground. When it stopped and the doors opened, I found myself in a cavern, with stalagmites everywhere, a sign is stuck on the walls of the cave pointing to the direction of the Underground Arena, I followed the sign and reached a large opening of the cave. In there is a large amphitheatre, everyone is already sitting inside in the amphitheatre, and I can see my opponents getting ready in there.

    So, even normal humans gets to observe this tournament? What is wrong with this school?! Aren¡¯t magic casters supposed to be a secret from the human population?

    I sighed.

    I entered the amphitheatre and approached my pair of opponents. I recognize them, they are the members of Glory 3usi9.

    ¡°Hey, we heard of you, Innight. Hope you will give us an easy time defeating you, just like Transcendence itself.¡±

    ¡°I think you are going to be disappointed about that, my enemies.¡±

    ¡°Alright,¡± The speakers boomed. ¡°First battle of Block E, Innight vs. Emilia and Bhurt. Begin!¡±

    The two of them created a tornado of sharp wind to attempt to slice me into pieces.

    ¡°Weaklings. Doom: Envelopment!¡±

    The Void flooded the stage and consumed everything, the tornadoes disintegrates and the two opponents vanished into The Void. I win.

    The audience were silent for a moment. Then they roared, saying something like I cheated and configured the stage to swallow the opponents.

    All of them are idiots. Very little magic casters and even more so for humans have viewed The Void before. So it is no surprise that they say that I cheated because they have not seen The Void before. The judges should be able to clean up this mess though.

    The judges were able to identify The Void, luckily, so victory is granted to me. However all the audience, or most of them, jeered. They are all brainless.

    Every day after school I was summoned to the Underground Arena to continue a battle. For most of them I used a magic draining spell to quickly end the battle, for some of the opponents that attacked, I instantly used The Void to destroy their spell and the opponents at the same time. In my world, as long the opponents don¡¯t attempt to hurt or kill me I will give them a chance to live, for those that did deserve to die. Very quickly I was forced to face Charlotte, Time and Nicki, I just drained their magic to prevent a fight happening at all.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    Then come the day that Richard wanted, for me to face her. Everyone cheered for her, but jeered at me, there were also audiences that laughed at me, I can hear them saying that I will not be able to win over her since she is rumoured to be extremely powerful. Well, I have detected her level of magic, she is of high end of Lord level magic, but that is still weaker than I am. I will try to not hurt her too much and not devour her, because doing that is going to cause a huge uproar.

    ¡°Are you ready to be defeated, Innight?¡± Richard asked me.

    ¡°Far from it. You will know why once we begin.¡±

    ¡°I doubt so¡­ You have not faced anything on my level before. I am the strongest magic caster in the world itself, you will taste defeat, and then you shall acknowledge me!¡±

    ¡°Dream on.¡±

    The speakers boomed.

    ¡°Alright. Match 5, round 8 of the magic tournament, Innight vs. Richard, begin!¡±

    I waited to see what Richard has on her sleeves.

    ¡°I hope you are ready for this, Innight!

    The ground itself moved upwards and surrounded her, becoming an armour. In her left hand a sword of water materialized, in her right a mace of fire materialised.

    So she is a master of elemental magic. She may be a little difficult to be deal with, if this is going to be a case. Most of my Elemental Magic spells is going to be neutralized as an effect. I have to resort to using only Void Magic to counter her and defeat her. Perhaps add in a little Time and Space as well. This is going to be an interesting battle.

    Richard begin to rush towards me, swinging her mace towards me. I flew up into the sky and avoided the hit, the mace made a crater of fire on the ground.

    ¡°Oh, so you can fly. Well, I can too!¡± She flew upwards and threw the mace in my direction. I used my hand and caught it without any impact.

    ¡°Got you! Inferno: Phoenix Renewed!¡±

    The mace turned into a flaming phoenix and begin to set myself on fire. I know that it is of no ordinary fire because the fire were green, it is hellfire, and cannot be extinguished by water. It does not help her though. I can easily use this fire to my advantage.

    ¡°Do you really think that you are the only Elemental Master in the world itself?¡±

    ¡°Huh?!¡±

    I controlled the fire and begin blasting balls of hellfire onto her armour. The amour begin to crack but it immediately repaired itself by bringing up more Earth from the ground.

    ¡°This is starting to get stupid. Zafkiel: Heavenly Sword!¡±

    Her sword of water suddenly is infused with Light Magic, it duplicates itself and filled the entire sky with swords, and then it rained down on me, covering everything in smokes.

    ¡°Bow before me, everyone, I win!¡±

    ¡°You are far from doing so, Richard.¡± I said this with the barrier around myself.

    ¡°How come you are not dead?!¡±

    ¡°I have told you countless times, you have not faced someone of my standards. There are no longer any one in the entire Existence that has the power of mine. Had you not been any famous figure you would have been destroyed long ago.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t hold back! I want to see how powerful you actually are!!¡±

    ¡°Fine, you ask for it. Absolete: Annihilation!¡±

    A magical circle with the symbol of light appeared under the feet of Richard and a beam of light shot up from it, completely covering her.

    Instead of hearing screams of her, she laughed.

    ¡°I am the Elemental Master, such tricks does not work on me! I should be thanking you that you teach me a spell that I will not have known!¡±

    ¡°That was a diversion. Fermion: Inhale Magic!¡±

    All her magic is transferred from herself to me. I can sense that she is trying to put an encryption on her magic, but it is too late. Her magic is completely drained, her amour came apart and her sword and mace vanished.

    ¡°Now then, I win.¡±

    ¡°Not yet!¡±

    I can sense waves of magic imbalance spreading out from her. Purple tentacles begin to grow out from her, one of her eyes pops out of her face, hanging on a thread, and her canines grew out of her mouth.

    She turned into a monster, her power now reaches on the lower end of Infinity level magic. Just what kind of power did she receive? She now speaks to me in a distorted voice.

    ¡°You must be wondering what gave me this power boost. I have discovered a spell that can boost my power, I found it in a Codex that is hidden deep under the city itself.¡±

    A Codex? Under the city? It must be the Ruins that we have visited the back then with Master. SO there is an entrance to that Ruins that we don¡¯t know off? Either way, we have to erase the Ruins completely to prevent more people from accessing it. This battle is proving itself to be more troublesome than it really is.

    ¡°Now I¡¯m not satisfied with just rendering you unable to battle. I¡¯m going to take your head as a trophy!¡±

    She seems to be getting just a little too serious about this. I need to end this battle quick.

    ¡°Everyone here, cheer for me, Richard the Idol Queen!¡±

    Everyone cheered. Then she turned around and faced me.

    ¡°Time to erase you, Innight! The super invincible monster queen is here to greet you!¡± She said these as she ran towards me.

    I sighed. It appears that I have to eliminate her completely. I materialized my personal Dark Matter sword and used Overclock to accelerate my time. In seconds I sliced my sword across her multiple times and cut her up into pieces. Her head with the monstrous face looked at me.

    ¡°Who are you? Even with all this magical boosters I still cannot beat you. What are you exactly?¡±

    ¡°I am Zealus, the Creator and Destroyer of Existence. I hold Infinity level magic, and am the one who sealed the Ancient Beasts. Remember that in your mind as your soul wanders in the Death Realm.¡±

    Saying these, I used my sword to pierce through the skull of Richard. The head then withered away.

    The crowd let out an angry roar after I slaughtered Richard. I knew that after this incident, I will earn a bad reputation in the school for killing the famous idol of Singapore and in the school itself. I walked away from the amphitheatre as many people begin throwing things onto the play field.

    After that I have no more battles for an entire week. I do not know what the planning committee is up to, they may be preventing me from further fighting because of what happened to Richard and they are preventing me from further worsening the school¡¯s reputation.

    When I finally was called to fight again, I was assigned to fight Vincent in the finals. That is of no surprise, knowing that he has Infinity level magic.

    ¡°Nice to see you again, Zealus. However I have no intent to fight you. I withdraw the battle.¡±

    And so that was how I won the tournament. I did not get to win anything in the end because of how chaotic the entire school became after knowing I won the tournament through killing most of my opponents and in the process killing Richard as well. So in the end I wasted all my time and effort attending the tournament, only to earn myself a chain of bad reputations and hatred.

    ¡°In the end, you earned nothing at all?¡±

    ¡°Yes. Also that city has to be destroyed. It holds certain information that is likely to balloon into huge problems if left alone. That battle with that girl named Richard showed it.¡±

    ¡°If that is the case then we should move now. We need to find the entrance, though.¡±

    I did a scan over the area and found the entrance to be near our school itself. From what I can discern, it is located directly below the amphitheatre of the school. We begin our movement to the school. The girls begged to come along but I only allowed Time to come along with us as she herself can prevent her detection through manipulation over Time.

    When we reached the school, we found the main gain to be locked. Needless to say, the side gates are locked as well. Master asked me:

    ¡°Innight, can you pick the lock?¡±

    ¡°Rather than picking the lock, I can just break the lock itself and then repair it thereafter.¡±

    ¡°Actually, just pick the lock. I ¨C ¡°

    ¡°There, lock broken.¡±

    ¡°Never mind then.¡±

    We walked in to the school compound. The school at night is different from the school at daytime. Everything is so deadly silent and darkness surrounds everything, Form the Main Building the lights shone there.

    That¡¯s odd. The school itself is locked during the night so no one is able to stay around in the school itself during night time. Power supply is terminated during night time as well to conserve electricity, so why is there light on?

    ¡°I propose we explore the Main Building first. I am curious about why are they people inside the school compound in this hour.¡± I mentioned. Master agreed with me so the three of us entered the main building.

    We wandered through the empty building and first discovered, in a hidden room behind a false wall, a large cylindrical machine that connects from the floor to the ceiling, beside the cylinder were various wires, gears and metal pieces. A computer screen is also attached to the machine itself.

    ¡°I wonder what this machine does.¡± Time poked around the machine. She then found a flip switch on the wall beside the machine and flipped it down. The machine starts roaring and immediately I felt my magic being extracted from myself into the machine itself.

    ¡°Time, turn it off!¡± I commanded her.

    Time flipped the switch back up, the machine stopped functioning.

    ¡°So this is the machine that was responsible for all the magic extraction. We have to destroy it to prevent The Gathering from using this machine.¡±

    I used The Void to dissolve the pieces of the machine, all that is left is the cylinder. I produced a bomb and attached it onto the cylinder.

    ¡°Innight, maybe you should find a better way¡­¡±

    ¡°This is the best. Since it is attached to the ceiling and the floor I cannot simply use The Void to swallow it up. If I break it into pieces, it may lead to them being able to reconstruct it again with ease. This bomb is Void magic based and will remove anything that comes into contact with it, so this entire room will vanish once the bomb is activated. This will prevent them from building another machine anytime sooner.¡±

    I stretched out and took a glance around the room to see if I missed anything. Then I saw a robed someone out of the corner of my eyes.

    ¡°Hey, who¡¯s there?¡± I shouted.

    The robed person saw that he was spotted and quickly left the scene. I enter Alzelea state to view where the robed person went and discovered 6 other people with the same mana signature. There are gathered in the principle¡¯s office, just one floor directly below us. I melted into the floor and peeked out of the ceiling of the principle¡¯s office.

    ¡°Leader, there are in this building itself now. They might discover us if we stayed here.¡± The robed person rushed in and said these.

    ¡°Quick, move out of here! We cannot let anyone discover us now that the Ordeal is at hand!¡± The leader has a familiar voice.

    ¡°Too late, The Gathering. All of you are trapped in my Dimensional Pocket. Now, please reveal yourselves. Who are you exactly?¡±

    The leader used a spell to tear apart my Dimensional Pocket and held the Members¡¯ hand, then they warped away, but not before I tore off the hood of the leader.

    It was Alicia.

    She is the leader of The Gathering. But why? And how? So many questions suddenly pops up in my mind, but not a single answer to them.

    ¡°Innight?¡± Master called for me from the upper floor.

    I sank back into the hidden room.

    ¡°So did you catch The Gathering?¡± Master asked.

    ¡°No. They managed to escape my Dimensional Pocket using their own magic and teleported away, but not before I managed to catch a glimpse of the leader¡¯s face. The leader of The Gathering happens to be one of my classmate. She is the only daughter of the president of Singapore, and always act like a spoiled little princess, never be able to accept the success of others. I wonder why and how did she become the leader of The Gathering.¡±

    ¡°I think I know how they managed to escape your Dimensional Pocket, Innight. I have checked the operational date of the machine itself. It has been consistently activated over time and have only been activated for short pockets of time. It accumulates over time and thus give them your ability.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not concerned about the machine right now. I want to know The Gathering¡¯s movements and stop them before they take their next move. If they managed to steal my power, and they have accessed the Infinity Dimension, they would definitely have successfully revived The Unknown, all that is left of their plan is to awaken the Ancient Beasts. We don¡¯t have time. We have to prevent that at all cost. If the Ancient Beasts awakes, the whole Existence will be destroyed.¡±

    ¡°Then what about that city?¡± Time asked.

    ¡°That can wait. We have to figure out where The Gathering has gone to and destroy them completely, then I will have to find out and destroy The Unknown once and for all. This will have to take the highest priority over everything else right now. Tomorrow I will hunt that classmate down and question everything I can from her.¡±

    ¡°And what shall we do now?¡±

    ¡°Let me destroy the machine. They will not be coming back to retrieve it now that we have been here.¡±

    I activated the bomb and we retracted from the hidden room, the room is then destroyed completely.

    ¡°Can¡¯t you trace The Gathering now and figure out where they had gone?¡± Time asked.

    ¡°They appear to have vanished from the surface of the Earth itself. I fear for the worst.¡±

    ¡°That can¡¯t be! They should not have taken the move so quickly!¡± Master cried.

    ¡°I cannot find them anywhere at all. The only explanation is that they have teleported to the other Realms, or the other Dimensions. I worried that they are heading to the Prison Dimension, where the Ancient Beasts are asleep at. I can do another type of tracing spell, one that is across Dimensions, to figure out where exactly there are at, but it will take some time.¡±

    I sat down on the floor and entered Alzelea mode. This time I entered a deeper state of Alzelea mode and begin looking across the Dimensions to figure out the energy signature of The Gathering. After searching around for a few moments, I found them. It is as bad as I suspected. They have gathered with The Unknown and have reached the Prison Dimension. I returned to my senses.

    ¡°We have to evacuate the citizens of the city. They are at the Prison Dimension. The Prison Dimension is located in the same point in space as the city of Singapore is, but on a different plane. Once they managed to awaken the Ancient Beasts and escape the Dimension, the first city that will be to come under attack is the city of Singapore.¡±

    ¡°But how are we going to convince the citizens?¡± Time questioned.

    ¡°We don¡¯t need to, we only need to teleport the citizens away into another Dimensional Pocket first.¡±

    ¡°Innight, do you have any plans to defeat the Ancient Beasts?¡± Time continued.

    ¡°They are of high level of Infinity level magic, to destroy them will require an extremely powerful catalyst and using an ancient ritual. I will have to round up all the Ancient Beasts first before doing that. We should go back home and meet up with Charlotte and Nicki now. We also need to contact all magic casters to stand by to delay the Ancient Beasts once they arrived, so that I can prepare the ritual itself.¡±

    ¡°Let us begin. The Battle of Magic.¡±

 Chapter 7 - A New World and Goodbye.

    ¡°So this¡­ is the Prison Dimension. Wonderful! Wonderful! Wonderful! Wonderful!¡± The leader said.

    The entire sky is grey, mist surrounds everything that the eye can see, silence is everywhere and there is no sign of life anywhere at all. The Gathering slowly advanced into the endless mist, following the path that The Unknown is taking. Finally, they found themselves in front of a gigantic Gate.

    ¡°Insides this gate is where the Ancient Beasts haves been sleeping for eternities. Please steps back while I use my magic to open the gate.¡±

    The Unknown slowly allowed his mana to flow through the gates, the gate clicked and the mechanisms shifted, then the gate slowly opened up.

    ¡°Follow me closely, inside the Gate is an environment that will swallow you whole if you are not careful.¡± The Unknown said.

    Inside the gate is another world altogether, everything is dark and nothing is visible. The leader threw up a ball of light, lighting up the environment. They appear to be inside of a Creature itself, the walls look like flesh. One of the Members poked the walls, and a deep growling noise came from deep within the Gate.

    ¡°What do you think you are doing? I did said no fooling around, did I not?¡± The Unknown growled at the Member.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡±

    They continued walking deeper into the Gate. Then their path forked into 6 chambers.

    ¡°Each chamber corresponds to one Ancient Beast. I will gives each of you a mana stone. Places it on the magic circle that the Ancient Beasts are sleeping on. The stone will breaks the magic circle that is causing them to be asleep. Once you have done so, returns here.¡± The Unknown said.

    Each of the Members, excluding the leader, obtained a mana stone from The Unknown and went down one path each. They all found the Ancient Beasts and the gigantic magic circle that they are sleeping in. All of them placed the blue glowing mana stone on the edge of the magic circle itself. Then they quickly gathered back at the convergence of the road. Deep grumblings and roars can be heard from deep within the Gate.

    ¡°Who has awaken us from our deep sleep?¡± A deep voice came from one of the chambers.

    ¡°Who, who indeed!¡± Another voice came from another chamber.

    More rumblings and trembling followed as the Ancient Beasts came out of their chambers.

    ¡°Oh, so it is you who freed us, The Unknown.¡± One of the Ancient Beasts spoke softly.

    ¡°We offer our great thanks from freeing us from the spell that Zealus once set on us. There is no greater humiliation to have Infinity level magic and yet put into sleep by such a low level spell.¡±

    ¡°Alright. Time for all of us to resume and finish what we should have done many eternities ago.¡± The Unknown said.

    ¡°Indeed, indeed. To fuel Magic¡¯s power. He is hungry for more power and we are supposed to feed him. He must be severely drained of power by now.¡±

    ¡°Not yet. He is severely weakened, but not completely dead. The fact that we are able to cast magic is a proof of that.¡±

    ¡°Now, let us enter the Normal Dimension!¡±

    ¡°Innight, can you now explain to us about the Ancient Beasts, now that they are invading our world?¡± Nicki asked as we all sat down in our house.

    *Sigh* ¡°This is going to be a long story, so listen closely.¡±

    ¡°I previously mentioned that the Ancients Beasts were created as a result of us, me and The Unknown meddling with magic. Together with them there were also The Avatars. They are the personification of the Elemental Magic itself. They begin as how many things did, a small flame of magic dancing in the midst of The Void itself. They were tame and gentle, they feed on magic and mana to grow, which is understandable.¡±

    ¡°They soon hatched from the flames of magic itself. There were 6 Ancient Beasts and to accompany with them there is 6 Avatars as well. The Sylph is the Wind Beast, Phoenix is Fire, Undine is Water, Dragon is Earth, God is Light, and Devil is Darkness. Each Avatar has its own Ancient Beast to accompany with it, and together they rule over the initial Elemental Realm. A period of peace was ensued, and they ruled over their respective Elemental Planes wisely, and back then there was no fights between the Light and Darkness Elemental Plane.¡±

    ¡°Then one day, a Creature? Actually it is just closer to say it as a thing, I do not think it is even alive? a thing came by the Elemental Planes. I cannot even begin to describe it because it is a ball of magic, purely magic, mind. The only possible explanation for it is that the ball of magic came from the Astral Realm though a portal of some sort. It has no visible facial feature nor does it have any sign of being alive. It stayed in the Elemental Realm for a period of Time, being absolutely harmless. However, I suspect it has other intention, yet because it is created using magic, I cannot simply use magic to drive it off. I could not question it either as it appears not be even alive in the first place.¡±

    ¡°Then one day, fights broke out in the Elemental Realm. I do not know why or how, but I suspect the ball of magic has something to do with all this. I trapped the ball of magic in a Dimensional Pocket and begin to question it.¡±

    ¡®¡¯¡¯What are you exactly?¡±¡¯

    ¡°Then for the first time, I felt the mana in my body quiver and shook. I can feel the entire magic present in my body moving. Then the ball of magic answered:¡±

    ¡®¡±I am what you have perceived it to be. I am exactly what you believed I to be, I am Magic itself, coming from the Astral Realm.¡±¡¯

    ¡°¡¯What have you done to the Elemental Realm?¡±¡¯

    ¡°¡¯Nothing much. I wanted to have a little visit to see the Creatures consuming my power to fulfil their own needs. Is there a problem with that?¡±¡¯

    ¡®¡±I have seen you whispering with The Unknown whenever I am not looking at you. What is your real intention?¡±¡¯

    ¡°¡¯I was just having a small talk with him. It is nice to get to know users of Infinity level magic.¡±¡¯

    ¡°Back then, I distrust Magic itself. I can sense that it is lying. However I know that nothing will come out of me continuously asking it, because all that it is going to answer are lies. I decide to turn into The Void and approach The Unknown and Magic during one of their conversations. What I have overheard during that conversation was devastating.¡±

    ¡°¡¯So Zealus itself have not found out anything, that will be good.¡¯ Magic said.¡±¡¯

    ¡°¡¯I hope our deal still stands.¡¯ The Unknown replied.¡±¡¯

    ¡°¡¯Of course it is. I want chaos to fuel myself, and as a reward for helping me fuel my power, I will grant you a portion of myself. We shall both grow in power, while Zealus can remain the same as ever. Once you are strong enough, seal him away and you can rule over The Existence on your own!¡±¡¯

    ¡°I was shocked. My impulse was correct in the first place. I knew that Magic is up to something by being here. Also, The Unknown is betraying me, this is unacceptable. I will have to lecture him about peace in the Elemental Realm.¡±

    ¡°I waited for them to take their first move. I finally found them sowing evil magic into the Elemental Realms. That caused the wars and fights to begin in the Elemental Realm. The Ancient Beasts and Avatars were most affected by the magic, each Ancient Beast then takes on the role of a Sin itself, I sense that The Unknown also takes on a role of Sin itself, and that is the beginning of the Seven Sins. They are Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath and Sloth.¡±

    ¡°War and fights broke out in the Elemental Realm soon after they did so. The worst was the Ancient Beasts, they commanded the Creatures of the Elemental Planes to fight against each other to gain more power and control over the Elemental Realm. As I have mentioned countless times before, the last thing I like to see is battles and war. There is nothing more that I hate to see Creatures dying. I know that I have to stop this madness before everything in the Existence is wiped out.¡±

    ¡°I created Dimensional Pockets to isolate the Elemental Realms, but the end result is no better, because without anything to battle, the Creatures begin an internal war, fights that involves killing their own kind. It is heart-breaking for me to see Creatures to be battling against each other. I have to, in the end, wipe out all the Creatures of the Elemental Realm using The Void because I cannot stand seeing them fighting against each other.¡±

    ¡°Then there is the Ancient Beasts, they have Infinity level magic so I myself cannot destroy them without using an extreme catalyst or a ritual that I do not intend to perform at all. I cannot keep them in the Dimensional Pocket for long as they are powerful enough to break it, soon all of them came together and started a fight against myself.¡±

    ¡°Wait a moment, Innight, what about the Avatars?¡±

    ¡°The Avatars are connected to the Ancient Beasts. They are inseparable. However I will come to it what happen to them later. So, continue from where I left off, the six Ancient Beasts came together and begun fighting against me, their Creator. The Unknown, all the while, is not visible at all anywhere at that moment. Now that I come to think of it, I suspect he hid away from the situation to avoid getting dragged into the fight.¡±

    ¡°Whatever it is, the Ancient Beast went against me at that time. I cannot destroy them at all because I couldn¡¯t and I can¡¯t. I then used a power draining to drain them of their power so they could not fight at all. Next, I have to separate the Avatars from the Ancient Beasts as they could not be sealed together. When I have done that, the Avatars drained the magic of the Elemental Planes and counterattacked me. I then realised that they could not be left alive because they will drain the Existence dry of mana even if left sealed. I then used an ability of mine to erase them, draining myself in the process.¡±

    ¡°Without the Avatars on the Ancient Beasts, the Beasts are then extremely weakened. I can then easily cancel out their attacks. I imprisoned them in another Dimension and put them to sleep using a high levelled spell. After the entire incident, Magic itself vanished from the Elemental Plane and The Unknown continued to sow seeds of discord in the repopulated Creatures of the Elemental Plane.¡±If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    ¡°Innight, what is this erase spell?¡± Charlotte asked.

    ¡°It¡¯s a secret. I cannot tell you because it is too dangerous to be performed.¡±

    Then an alarm sounded.

    ¡°Looks like they are here. We have to evacuate everyone now.¡± Master said.

    ¡°I can¡¯t perform Dimension Break. My magic appears to be blocked. I suspect they brought along Magic itself as well this time. Magic must have had identified my magic signature and locked it away from me. So I am actually powerless now.¡±

    ¡°HUH?! Then the Existence is going to be completely destroyed!¡± Everyone in the room shouted.

    ¡°Looks like I don¡¯t have the ability to help out at all this time. Gather all the magic casters in Singapore to counterattack first. I will pay a visit to The Ruins to see if there are any records about Magic itself. We have to defeat Magic first before I can do anything at all.¡±

    ¡°Are you sure that The Ruins have any records about it?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know, honestly. However it has records over many other topics in relevance to the World of Magic. It really makes me wonder how those Creatures that previously lived here knew all this. Perhaps are Omniscient? I wonder if any of them are left in the Existence.¡±

    ¡°We will all visit The Ruins together. You might step into trouble and without magic, you might die, for real.¡±

    ¡°That is a good suggestion.¡±

    Then the announcement came.

    ¡°Singapore is currently under attack from strange Creatures coming out from strange portals all over the island. Please evacuate into the underground shelter under further notice, I repeat. Si?¡°

    The announcement is interrupted by something else, right after a garbled and distorted sound continued the announcement.

    ¡°I know you are hearing this now, Zealus, we have come to pay back what you have done to us many eternities ago. We have brought Magic together with us this time, he is currently disabling your magic. If you want your magic back, then meet us at the port of Habourfront. We will be waiting for you there, including your old friend who brought us back, The Unknown. We shall be having a battle of the legendary there, with you facing all of us at once.¡±

    ¡°Master. Keep the girls safe here. I will have to use the failsafe method to stop this madness once and for all.¡±

    ¡°Do you mean the one you told me?¡±

    ¡°Yes. Please keep the girls safe. Do not let them go near the port at any cost.¡±

    ¡°What do you mean Innight? Why do you not want us to be there for you?¡± The three girls cried.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, my dears. You cannot help out, this battle is between the Creatures of Infinity level Magic, and even Master could not approach this without getting a few fatal injuries. I promise you, I will return to you someday. I will not die that easily.¡± I said these as I ran off.

    ¡°What do you mean someday? INNIGHT?!¡± Time shouted and ran after me, but Master used Imprison Soul to prevent the three girls from moving at all.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry!¡± I shouted at them, tears begin to flow down my face. I quickly wiped them off.

    I ran all the way, from my house to the port. It wasn¡¯t a great distance since I lived near the sea itself. Finally I see them, wreaking havoc in the harbour. I ran as fast as I could towards them. Then they spotted me, and begin firing lasers and balls of spells towards me. I accelerated Time on my side and dodged them, then I felt magic returning to my body once more. So they did fulfil their promise. I stood in front of them.

    ¡°Welcome back, Zealus.¡± The Unknown and the Ancient Beasts harmonized.

    ¡°Can you please not drag others into this?¡±

    ¡°We cannot guarantee that. Magic needs chaos to fuels itself, and hence we are able to cast spells, without magic, many things you are seeing now will not exist. It is essential to fuel magic itself to keep many things alive.¡±

    ¡°I have a few words to tell you before fighting. First, I do not want to drag anything further into this entire mess. So please do not use humans as meat shields anymore during this battle. Second, I had enough for all of you messing around, so this battle will be a battle to the death. Third, goodbye to all of you.¡±

    ¡°Huh?¡±

    I take in a deep breath and puff it out, then use my ultimate ability.

    ¡°Rewrite: Erase.¡±

    This is my hidden ability. This is what I have used many eternities ago to erase the Avatars, seeing now how Magic is corrupted to the core, and all of the Seven Sins are gathered together, I will have to Erase them once and for all from the Dimensions. It is an extremely powerful ability, but it is also a double edged sword. Every time I use this ability a small portion of myself is removed together with the target. The stronger the target, the larger the portion of myself that will be removed. I have already prepared myself for this, that once I Erase these Creatures, together with magic itself, I will be completely removed as well.

    At least I know that once I have done that, the world will be rid of Evil completely as all the actions of The Unknown will come undone itself, the Seven Sins will be removed completely. That is a great compensation for my death.

    ¡°Crap! He is going to use his Erase ability! Run away!¡±

    ¡°I have trapped all of you in my magic circle, you cannot escape now.¡±

    ¡°When did you¡­¡±

    ¡°We are doomed!¡±

    A blinding light emitted from me and devoured the Ancient Beasts, The Unknown and Magic.

    ¡°Goodbye, world.¡± I said these as I closed up my eyes.

    ¡°Hey. Is he dead?¡±

    ¡°Wake up, Innight! You are going to be late for school! If you don¡¯t wake up soon I¡¯m going to give you a kiss!¡±

    Huh? Aren¡¯t I supposed to be dead? Why can I still hear people calling me?

    I opened my eyes. 3 familiar faces, with one stranger came into view.

    ¡°Goodness, so you are not dead after all.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t say such nonsense, Inoxion. Good morning, Innight.¡±

    ¡°Well, if someone just refuse to wake up no matter how much calling, common sense will tell me that he is dead. Ouch! Why did you knock my head?¡±

    Ignoring the black skinned boy beside her, Time took my hand and pulled me up from the bed.

    Am I in an alternative dimension? Wait a moment, I will ask them.

    ¡°Time, can you still use your Time magic?¡±

    Time looked at me as if I¡¯ve went mad.

    ¡°Magic?¡± She giggled. ¡°There is no such thing as magic! You must still be dreaming, Innight! Come on, get dressed and come down for breakfast. We are going to be late for school if you don¡¯t hurry up!¡± Saying these, she, Charlotte and Nicki left the room. Leaving me with the black skinned boy which I suspect is Lord Inoxion.

    ¡°Master¡­¡± I begin.

    The boy shushed me. He then looked around to see if there is anyone. When the he saw that the scene is safe, he let out a sign of relief.

    ¡°So, Innight. You still retain the memory of the old world?¡±

    ¡°I very much did. So what exactly happened?¡±

    ¡°After I you Erased Magic, I felt all my magic is instantly drained, then at that point in Time space begin to collapse and everything is destroyed by a swirling whirlpool of The Void that appeared in the cracks of Space itself. I closed my eyes as I know that I could not do anything to save myself. When I opened my eyes again, I saw myself in your house, and my body turned into human. I cannot cast any magic, nor did I feel any form of magic flowing through the entire Realm. I suspect the World recreated itself into a version where Magic did not exist.¡±

    ¡°That will explain it. But then why only us retained the memory of the old worlds?¡±

    ¡°Perhaps only those with sufficient magic can retain it, while those that are weaker have their memory erased.¡±

    ¡°I wonder what then happened to the Elemental Realm and the Astral Realm.¡±

    ¡°Perhaps those does not exist anymore. Those only came along with Magic. Once magic is Erased those cannot exist anymore and is thus erased from existence as well. I wonder about the other Creatures of the Elemental Plane, what actually happened to them, that is my greatest interest.¡±

    ¡°What are you boys doing? You are going to be late if you dawdle any longer!¡±

    ¡°Let¡¯s move, or else your wife is going to go mad.¡±

    I quickly dressed into my school uniform and went downstairs for breakfast. Normally it is I who will wake up the earliest and wake up the others, and I am the one making breakfast for all of them. In this world, it appears that things are different. Time seems to be the one waking us up and cooking breakfast for us. Also, Master Inoxion appears to be living with us, for some reason or another. Is really everything over? Magic has been completely banished from the world? The Seven Sins are removed as well?

    We then cycled to school, with Master alongside us as well. When we are in the school itself, I found Richard is still alive. I approached her to see if she remembers me, however¡­

    ¡°Who are you? I have never seen you before.¡±

    Alicia no longer has the princess attitude, she is just like any normal school girl. For that I am indeed glad about. Everything else is as per normal. During break time, I gathered up Master and the 3 girls and approached the Principle¡¯s office.

    ¡°Ah, Innight. Is there anything that you would to have from me?¡± Mdm. Lillie asked.

    ¡°This is going to sound strange to you, Mdm. Lillie, but have you experienced Magic?¡± I asked her.

    She gave us a poker face.

    ¡°So I guess you do not remember about the old world as well.¡±

    ¡°I have no idea what you meant about the old world. If you have nothing important to ask, please leave.¡±

    ¡°So, there used to be an old world where magic is dominant on this Earth?¡± Time pressed on to me. We gathered in our home class, no one is in the classroom now as everyone is off to have their lunch.

    ¡°Indeed. However after I Erased Magic using my ability it appears that all memories of the old world is removed from weaker magic casters. There were also the Elemental Realm and the Astral Realm, both of which, I suspect, were destroyed with the removal of Magic. So now in this world, the only power operating behind everything is Science.¡±

    ¡°And Unstable Magic.¡±

    ¡°Who said that?¡± I turned and look around. It was Master.

    ¡°What do you meant, Unstable Magic?¡±

    ¡°It is a new form of magic, fuelled by something else rather than mana, but by using Dark Matter. It is forbidden to be used as the name suggested itself, it is unstable. The spells casted are powerful, but they can backfire and consume you instead. For that reason, and the rarity of people capable of using Dark Matter, there isn¡¯t any records of anyone using it, nor there are any spells developed in that field.¡±

    ¡°I see. We should not need to worry about any battles or wars as such, should this be the case. After going such a big round, we have finally reached our objectives, though with much sacrifices. There is finally peace and quiet in the Existence itself after so long. I should have did this in the beginning, and not sealed the Ancient Beasts and The Unknown instead.¡±

    Then suddenly I felt something went into my body. To be precise, a soul of a certain someone that I think I recognize. I quivered and shivered. Then my consciousness is shut down.

    ¡°Innight?¡±

    ¡°It is too late. All of you.¡±

    ¡°Something is not right. This is not Innight. His power signature is not present. This is someone else.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s right. I am the Leader of The Gathering and the representation of Envy, Glurori von Flors!¡± the body laughed maniacally.

    The others looked shocked.

    ¡°Inoxion, you told us there are no more magic present!¡± Nicki cried.

    ¡°Indeed. But this is not magic. It is a form of soul possession. It does not require mana or magic to be casted. As long as the user is able to utilize the movement of souls they will be capable of doing this. Why have you taken over Innight?!¡±

    ¡°The Ordeal was so close at hand, yet it was ruined by Zealus, my body was destroyed in the process as well. So to revenge on him, I will take control of his body now!¡±

    I then regain partial control over my body. Materializing my Dark Matter Sword, I gave it to Master.

    ¡°Kill me.¡± I muttered. ¡°She is the only remaining evil of The Existence. Killing her will finally bring about what we have dearly wanted.¡±

    Master and the 3 girls were taken aback by my wish.

    ¡°We cannot do so! We have been through so much together and we have a long life to go!¡±

    ¡°I know. But if you let me live, you are giving her a chance to attack and kill all of you since she is practically evil. Master, I have something important to tell you before I die. Inside my second drawer of my desk there is a diary, publish it to the world to let them know about how this world used to be. That is my only wish. Promise me you will fulfil it and kill me.¡±

    ¡°I will. I will grant your wish, if that is what you have wanted for so long.¡± Master had tears in his eyes as he says these.

    ¡°No way am I going to die so easily! Endorsement: Unseen Hand!¡±

    ¡°Shut up! Magic Disability!¡±

    The purple Unseen Hand materialized for a moment before being cancelled out by my ability.

    ¡°I will never die¡­¡±

    Master swung the sword upwards and swept it down on me. I closed my eyes.

    After what Inoxion did happened, Inoxion and the 3 girls were expelled from the school for murder. There were eyewitnesses of the entire scene and they did not understand the context, the girls and Inoxion did not fight for the case either so they were all charged to be hanged. Before the hanging was carried out, Inoxion pleaded to let him publish the book Innight wanted him to. The judge agreed to the condition.

    So now that you have read the book, realize that this world that you live in now is a result of many sacrifices. Now you should go out and live a happy life, learn that the world has a positive side instead of constantly harbouring negative thoughts. The world, and more so for the Internet, has an extremely ugly face coated on it. But it has already been weakened by the action of Innight, learn to know that there is always a worse side of things, it is only that you have not discovered it yet.

    The End?