As far as the eyes could see, it was nothing but a desert.
Not a sand desert like the Sahara or the one in the middle east. In fact, there was barely any sand covering the hard ground.
Black rocks and boulders were the most abundant. Shapeless and limitless when it comes to sizes.
The little sand there was filled the air with dust. There was barely any vegetation in site.
Where am I?
Then I heard echoes of loud thunder from afar. When I turned around, I saw, in the far horizon, pure black clouds with an extraordinary amount of blue lightning. They blocked what lied ahead and below it.
The thing I found to be more strange was the overwhelming urge to go to it. The more I looked, the more I was drawn.
Clara. Where am I?
There was no response.
Clara? Clara?
Nothing.
I was confused.
From the last thing that I remembered, I froze myself to death, knowing what would come next.
I was to ascend to the realm of the dead. The realm of the gods. I was to go to heaven to become a god myself.
I remember feeling weightless as I rose to the sky. The feeling of being high, in more ways than one.
Am I really in heaven? Is this what heaven looks like?
My concern grew more and more. And to make it worse, Clara wasn't responding. Why?
"Who are you talking to?" A familiar voice. That's right. Uzzaran was still with me. But she doesn't know about Clara.
"No one. Wait a minute. How come you're with me? I though phantoms can't go to heaven."
"I didn't think it would work. All I did was, well, how do I explain it? It's like connecting my soul to yours, if that makes sense. That way, I was able to tag along with you."
At that time, I realized just how little of this world I know. Even though I have, or at least had, a skill that can be considered as universal knowledge.
"Master. Are you okay?"
It took me a while to respond. The a warm smile unconsciously appeared on my face.
"Yeah... I'm glad you're here."
"Of course I am. We made a contract after all. What are you going to do now? My instincts are telling me to go to the darkness. But I'll leave it up to you to decide."
That meant that she also felt like she was being dragged there.
"Let's see if we can find any other options."
I scanned the area, hoping to find a reason not to go there.
But for a while, all I saw was a barren, cursed like land.
Is this really what heaven looks like? I thought it was supposed to be a place where dreams come true. A place where the righteous go when they die to enjoy the rest of eternity.
Although it might not be as bad as hell, it sure does look like one.
While I was looking around, I finally caught a glimpse of what didn't look like copy-paste reality.
Not too far from where I was, but practically blending in to it's surroundings, I saw what looked like a valley. Though I wasn't sure, it at least looked different from everything else.
And to make it better, it was the exact opposite way from the darkness. I really didn't want to go there.
Without telling Uzzaran, I began walking towards it while thinking about that entire situation I was in.
Could it have been that I didn't make it to heaven? Maybe I died and I'm just lost in hell.
When I first came to this world, when I first appeared before the goddess, everything was white. I saw nothing like what I was currently seeing.
But wait, Clara said that gods stay in a specific spot of heaven. The heaven's domain. Could that have been it?
If so, then this really is heaven. Probably.
After some time, I finally got there. It really was a valley. My eyes widened in shock from what I saw inside of it.
It looked like black flames. No. I could feel it. It was mana. And it filled the entire valley. As far as I could see, from left to right. The end wasn't even in sight. All of it was covered in darkness.
"What is that?" Uzzaran asked.
"How am I supposed to know?"
It sounded like a blazing fire. But at the same time, like raging winds, and I felt none of those.
It made the whole thing look bottomless. And it just barely reached the top. The more I looked at it, the more I realized just how similar it looked to the darkness I saw earlier. The black and blue were like the clouds and lightning.
The more I saw, the more I was convinced that it wasn't heaven.
I got curious. The urge to know what it was overwhelmed me, and I slowly held out my hand to try and touch it. What happened next startled me.
Like an invisible layer of water, there was a ripple in thin air. It made me jump a little.
It must be a barrier. And it seems to run across the whole valley.
That was my conclusion from the fact that the ripple went across to the other side.
"Did your hand go through it or did you just touch it with the tip of your finger?"
"I'm not sure."
"Try doing it again."
This time, I confidently reached for it, wanting to know what would happen.
This time, my entire fist went through it. And the barrier had even more distortion.
I waited to see what would happen, but for a few seconds, there was nothing.
"Try focusing. There has to be something. Even if it's faint."
I tried a little harder. I moved my hand around hoping to attack least feel something. I threw all of my senses to it. Nothing.
"I don't feel any..."
At that moment, I felt a surge of massive amounts of mana. Very very familiar mana.
It kind of burnt a little, and it felt like every nerve in my hand just got violated.
I tried to pull it out. Of course it was stuck.
Then I noticed that the barrier was freezing, as if it really was made of water. And the ice was spreading all the way to my hand.
"You need to pull it out!"
"I can't!"
The rate at which the ice was spreading began increasing at a rapid pace.
"Hurry up!"
I used magic to try and destroy the barrier with a blast of energy. It didn't work, and now it was too late.
The barrier had now completely frozen up. And my hand was still inside it.
Before I could even think, the ice shattered all at once. The barrier disappeared.
I leaped away from it, but not too far so as to see what was going to happen next.
"What happened?"
"I felt something."
"What?"
My mind was too stunned to explain. I was literally sweating buckets. That mana. I don't know why, but it felt so familiar.
I was right. All of that darkness in the valley. It really was mana. There was so much of it. Almost endless.
What if I absorb it all? What would happen?
My curiousity got the better of me. I had to try. It should've been easier since there was no barrier. Right?
I walked up to it and crouched down with a slight hesitation. My hand was already in position.
"Absorb mana."
The black flames seemed to be reacting for a second. Then it all retracted away from me before my skill could have an effect.
"What? It didn't work."
Little did I know what was going to happen next.
"Look out!"
While I was still wondering how the skill didn't work, I hadn't noticed that the black flames had now increased to the point that it even cast a shadow.
It wasn't only the one in front of me, but all of it, in the entire valley. It looked like a wall that continuously rose.
Then, as if forming a sun, it all began to converge at one point. Right infront of me.
As it did so, dust and rocks flew everywhere from the force of, whatever was happening.
And once it was all done,
BOOM!
A large explosion occured, and it threw me away. Not only that, but even the valley began to crumble. A shockwave displaced rocks, sand and the little clouds there were in the sky.
"What's happening?!" Uzzaran was confused.
It took a while for the force of the blast to dissipate. And when it did, I could finally see properly.
The shadowy silhouette of a man.
He came from the centre of the blast. Then I noticed that all the dark mana in the valley disappeared. At that moment, I realized what it meant.
I must've unknowingly shown my anxiety, because he noticed it immediately.
"Why so cautious? Don't you recognize me?"
There was still a small amount of dust in the air, so he wasn't clearly visible.
"Who are you? What makes you think that I would know you?"
The dust began to clear. I could see him now.
The first thing I immediately noticed were his eyes.
Black eye balls, blue iris, and black pupils.
They looked like my left eye, only for him, it was the both of them.
Other than that, nothing else about him seemed at all familiar.
Not his black hair, not his mode of dressing, which typically just looked like a badass suit, the kind that a demon would wear.
Then I noticed something on his left ear.
"You really don't recognize me."
It was an earring, like mine.
Death.
"Even though I've been inside you for so long."
Could it be? No. That's impossible. It died. It couldn't be.
"Who are you?"
He slightly lowered his head.
"I'm pretty sure by now you have already put two in two together. But I guess proper introductions are still in order."
His manner of speech was weird, like an older version of what I'm used to.
"Greetings, heaven's favored. I am he whom you may know, as Black Death."