While Amelia was having fun with 'herself', and Karteira was fuming in her room about her own feelings, Orion was sleeping.

To be precise, he was having a nightmare.

~

Inside his dream.

"Where am I?"

He looked around the empty darkness.

'There's absolutely nothing. But what is this feeling? Like I shouldn't stay?'

Examining the surrounding, he noticed a speck of purple fumes.

"Fuck..."

Orion immediately understood what it was.

His left foot slowly moved behind him, and he was ready to run away from that purple haze.

'That's corruption. I have to avoid it.'

"Why leave so fast? Let's talk."

But just when he was about to flee, his legs and arms were untangled on the spot by purple vines. A voice he didn't recognize was emitted by the purple haze.

"And it talks. Awesome."

With the most bored expression on his face, Orion dismissed everything that was happening, hoping that it was really just a dream.

"It was so difficult to find you, you know? Tracing back the magic through space and all."

"What are you on about? What are you even? If you tell me that you are Corruption itself, you can leave."

"..."

That sentence seemingly didn't please the 'thing' in front of him.

At that, the haze began to take shape. An unstable and semitransparent form manifested.

Dark glowing eyes, sharp razor teeth, hands and feet deformed with large claws. Even though you could easily see through it, you could see its grotesque form.

Its legs were thin near the thighs, but larger, way larger at the calves. The arms were thin, but its shoulders were large, shaped like a ball.

The head had no hair, only three protruding spikes, arranged in a row from front to back in the middle of its skull.

"Would you stay this confident if I told you I was Miasma?"

The smile he displayed was everything but pleasant to see. It was deranged and creepy.

"And what would the Miasma, something that is half-dead, want to do with someone like me?"

'This situation is bad. I don't know where I am, and I don't know what this thing is. I'll just go along since I can't move.'

"Half-dead. You are right about that. I might be able to only manifest like this but my power is still going strong on this continent, isn't it?"

Miasma was partially broken. Tiohr-nam explained that the Miasma couldn't think clearly, but that seemed to be wrong.

"I'm not going to explain to you what happened to me after I lost against that... buffoon."

The word he spoke were venomous. Large amount of corrupted air left his mouth as he spoke.

"Just know that I never left. That's simple enough for you?"

Orion nodded. He didn't really want to exchange pleasantries with what was in front of him.

'Buffoon? If we're talking about the Miasma, then the one its speaking about is the Hero, Noah?'

'It's true that I don't know much about Noah and the Miasma's showdown.'

As Orion was thinking, the Miasma didn't bother to wait for his mind to return.

"I'll be frank with you, I'm pissed. You've stopped two of my plans already, and I'm not very pleased by that."

"You went for an important item closely related to me, do you think I would have watched as you snatched it away?"

"Alright, let's say that this one was inevitable."

Miasma shrugged its massive shoulders, and continued.

"But what about that lightning moron? I gave him more power, just so he could trample another city, and wreck havoc on the continent."

"Why did you interfere? Everything was going so well until you showed up."

Orion showed surprised at this.

"Do you really care that much about your plans?"

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

An angry smile appeared on Miasma's face, and pulsing veins grew next to his eyes.

"Of course I do. I've been trying to des-"

Miasma looked at Orion, then looked away for a split moment, before looking at Orion with a smile.

"Good one, you almost made me spill the beans. As a little show of good faith, I'll continue."

"I've been trying to destroy the factions for as long as I've been existing. Corrupting, killing, manipulating, everything works for me. As long as I get to see the other Remnants suffer, I'm good with it."

"That's petty, you know that?"

"Oh, shut up, will you. I never expected a vermin like you to understand my point. If I wanted that, I would be prostrating on the ground asking for your help."

He laugh maniacally at his own joke.

"Me, prostrating. That's a good one.

"Alright, answer my question now. Why did you interfere?"

Miasma face kept its disgraceful smile, but the vines keeping Orion in place tightened around his feet, showing that play time was over.

"What do you expect? Don't you have an idea already?"

"I don't, that's the reason why I bothered to question you myself. And I don't plan on leaving without knowing, since it was a pain to track you."

Orion gulped, thinking of a way to avoid speaking. He tried to manifest his elements multiple times, but they weren't responding. He couldn't even use his abilities currently.

'I have no choice I guess.'

*sigh*

Giving up on escaping without giving any information, Miasma watched as Orion sighed.

"I'm simply going around, killing the Apostles of Elliot."

"Why?"

The smile on Miasma's face faded away, replaced by a frown.

"You don't know much about what's happening behind the scenes, huh?"

The snort Orion gave bothered it greatly, but it chose to stay silent.

'No response. I thought I'd get some leads, but it's not that stupid.'

"Continue. Why bother?"

"They are a threat to the continent, and I have some personal problems to settle with each one of them."

"Personal problems?"

'Why does it care so much about what I do?'

Perturbed, Orion watched carefully Miasma. There was no changes in his expression currently.

"Vengeance. And I plan on taking down Elliot too."

Just then, Orion noticed a quick, almost unnoticeable emotion that disappeared as fast as it appeared. Surprise.

'Why did it react like this? What did I say that could surprise this being?'

"Hmmmm."

Miasma turned around, and touched its left temple. It was seemingly thinking of something.

"This will be fun, but."

"I really don't want to risk it."

It turned around with a terrifying smile.

'What's this smile? I have a bad feeling about it.'

Orion tried his best to free his feet from the vines.

"Don't struggle, it will be quick."

Miasma swiped his hand from left to right, releasing a large amount of corruption, that slowly approached Orion.

"I'm going to make you one of us."

"What?!"

Panic took over Orion.

'I can't move, I can't defend myself, and I can't call for help! What am I supposed to do now?'

But just when he thought that, his light and dark element appeared from his chest, and threw themselves at Miasma, cleaning the corruption at the same time.

"You have those?! Now I understand better! You are related to that trash!"

Miasma lost it slightly when it remembered Noah.

"Out of the way. I've already dealt with these a long time ago."

Miasma stepped forward and punched each spheres back to Orion. Its hands covered with corruption, it approached Orion, going to corrupt him personally.

'Damn it. Is it the end?'

Orion thought strongly of what was left behind. Amelia, Karteira, Tiohr-nam, Dramia and Drania, Kamala, and... his parents, Reon and Orianne.

But one last hope emerged in front of his eyes.

Miasma stopped in front of Orion and was about to engulf it in corruption, when his new element surged from within him, and blasted it away.

"What is this?!"

It touched it's belly, and noticed a hole that wasn't there before. Looking around, it tried to find the reason for this injury.

"I can't find it! Where is it?!"

And another blow happened, right where its neck was.

'I never thought it could be used like that.'

Orion glanced behind his left shoulder, and looked at the void sphere that was hiding behind him.

It was sending attacks at Miasma from behind Orion.

Looking back at Miasma, Orion noticed how weak it was.

'This might be why it tried to stay away. It's not complete, just like Tiohr-nam said.'

Watching Miasma slowly being destroyed by spatial rifts, Orion realized that the vines were weakening their grip, so without hesitation, he broke free.

"You... you will regret that."

Only the Miasma's voice was echoing inside the darkness, until the bad feeling Orion felt before disappeared.

The void element snuffled every bits of corruption in an instant, and returned inside Orion.

~

"Guuh!"

Orion woke instantly, grabbing his chest.

He immediately stood up from his bed and walked with haste toward his mirror.

Ripping the shirt off of him, he looked at the dark spot on his chest.

"That wasn't a dream."

Without looking further, he uses his recovering ability on himself and searched inside his body for the corruption.

'Found you, fucker! You won't stay in my body.'

Orion got as far as injure himself to remove it, as it was strongly merged with his lungs.

He forced the corruption out of his body, and spat a dark sludge that could fill a glass of water on the floor.

Erasing it from existence with light magic, he looked in himself again to find any remaining trace of corruption.

"Good, nothing remains. Damn it, it tried to assimilate me."

If before Orion had a small problem with the Miasma, now, it was personal too.

He healed his chest that was aching from ripping the corruption lump from his lungs.

"If it stayed, that would have most likely formed a core inside me. Good thing I woke up in time."

Orion walked back to his bed and noticed that it was soaked in sweat.

'I'll have to clean all of that, and also clean my body.'

The bed was soaked because Orion himself was sweating profusely.

'I didn't recover at all. It was supposed to be a relaxing nap, and look at what happened.'

'Let's take a shower, and think about what had happened.'

The shower it was. Orion picked up a change of clothes, and walked downstairs. He entered the changing room, and walked inside.

Under the cold shower, he repeated what had happened in his head.

"The Miasma, corruption, the Apostles. Light and Dark might not work against it, but the Void is."

"It isn't completely empowered yet, so this is not a priority, and even if it was, how am I supposed to fight it?"

"Could I trace its location with dad's ring?"

Cold droplets fell from his face to the floor.

'Ah! It feels comfortable.'

His body finally began to relax.

"Do I explain this to Amelia and Karteira?"

"I think I will. But more importantly, I have to speak to Tiohr-nam about that."

Orion turned around and let his back be cleansed with cold water.

"Three months remain before Elliot will free himself from the seal."

"And now the Miasma."

'This might be too much for me alone to deal with.'

The fact that Orion wasn't progressing much in training made him lose confidence in his fight against Elliot.

"Anyway, there's a lot to explain to the girls. And the fact that I will return alone to the fairy realm too."

With this little diverging plan, Orion was going to leave the girls for a day, while he talked with Tiohr-nam about what had happened.

'If someone can give me more information about a Remnant, it's another Remnant.'

After closing the water, Orion stepped outside the shower, and returned to the changing room.

"Ah..."

"Huh?"

At that moment, inside the men's changing room, Karteira stared at a naked Orion, holding his towel around his nape.