The Dragon’s Pond, as my sister called it… The Corruption’s Genesis, as the people of the world came to know it. I hadn’t been there ever since I ran away from that Evil God, leaving my family behind as I tried to survive. Many mages, great warriors, and powerful beings tried to go there; to stop the Corruption’s spread, but none of them came out of it the same way they went in.

Corrupted Calamities were all that remained of them. They were just as dangerous as the Corrupted Winds, as they all carried great power, and with their power, they managed to cause as much destruction as they could before being stopped. I was part of the few people that fought with them, and once nobody remained, I was the only one that could get rid of them.

Right now, The Dragon’s Pond remained on the other side of the world, since The Final Bastion was built as far away from it as it could be. I could fly in any direction if I wanted to get to it, but I would rather go back in the same way that I came here.

Once I fully recovered from absorbing the White Star Dragon’s power, I took to the sky. It was nighttime already, but I could clearly see the path that I needed to take. From here, I just saw a crimson desert that stretched into the horizon, with a few crumbling buildings in the way; ones built there by people that thought they would survive if they were closer to the Final Bastion.

Flying at high speeds could destroy things around me just by passing by, but in this ruined world, there was little that could still be destroyed, so I stretched my hand in the direction I wanted to go, gathered my power, and created the path for me to travel. A white light stretched from it and to where I wanted to go.

Once I felt the place where I wanted to land, I finally released my magic and I boomed with destructive speed in that direction. The world around me stretched, sceneries quickly passed by, and the white light of my power caused everything under me to be torn to pieces; from the red and decayed trees being uprooted, to the few remaining towns being razed to the ground, and even mountains that would crumble away and seas would part as I passed right over them.

In the blink of an eye, I was exactly at the place I wanted to be, and the white light surrounding me subsided. It was afternoon when I got here. This wasn’t The Dragon’s Pond exactly, but rather, my old hometown… the ruins of what it was. I wanted to walk down the path I took to run away; the same path I took with my sister so many years ago to go up to the lake.

From the skies, I gazed at the top of the mountain, where a permanent tornado of red clouds covered the place where the lake would be. I couldn’t see beyond it, but from the many years of trying to survive, we learned that the God that caused it had left our world soon after releasing his Corrupted Winds—likely to find another world to conquer in the same manner.

But there was still something there that I needed to get. So, after gazing at the place for a few moments, I lowered myself to the ground and to the gates of my old hometown.

They were destroyed and the walls had holes that were already crumbling down. Inside, there were broken down houses, paths full of barren sand that buried the few things people left when they were running away, and… the walking, mindless beasts of the ones that didn’t run away in time, roaming the roads while chanting the name of the Evil God.

“Xaaaarrrcccooooooossssss…” one of them blurted out, close to the gates.

I couldn’t tell who it was from the deformed face, but… the details of the armor gave it away. This armor was slightly wider than the ones being worn by the other mindless beasts, and it had a particular scratch on the side that its owner was never able to completely remove, regardless of how much he tried.

Seeing that caused memories of the past to flood my mind, and I closed my eyes… I remembered how my friends were laughing at him when he damaged the armor, since he was on the verge of tears from scratching the brand-new piece of equipment. Even I couldn’t hold in the laughter from the man’s silly act back then, at least, until my sister showed up with a furious glare that threatened to flatten everyone that was laughing.

She stood up proudly next to the nearly crying guard, claiming that he should be proud of scratching his armor, since that proved that he used it to protect others from dangers, and she even picked up the man and tried to encourage him to stand tall… But then, we told her that the reason for the scratch was that he simply tripped with his own feet after a cat jumped out of a box and scared him, causing him to fall and scratch the armor.

Estelle also tried her best to contain the laughter, but eventually let it loose as well; however, it was after standing up to him, that Grahm started befriending Estelle and even managing to get her to like him.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

But right now… the chubby man was dragging his feet around the gates of the town with a broken-down spear.

He noticed my presence, and roared like the mindless beast that he was, causing the other monsters around him to take notice of me and then to rush my way without any thought or plan.

They were fast; much faster than they ever were when we were young, since they were one of the first beings in our world that were turned over to Xarcos, causing them to accumulate more Corruption in their bodies than anything else.

And despite that, they were still not fast enough or strong enough to face me as I was.

I took one step forward, and in a blink, I was already past the gates of the town. The monsters—now behind me—that were rushing to my former position were cut in half and their bodies spread through the streets. My scythe was at my side, and all I did was half-turn my face to the fallen friends I hadn’t seen in years.

“I’m sorry,” I said. The same words I’ve been repeating more than anything lately. “I hope you can rest now.”

The noise caused by my coming here also caused the other monsters inside the town to react. From the rubble, the many crumbling alleys, and the buried buildings, mindless beasts all came out, shouting, roaring, and rushing my way.

The baker that sold the best cookies, now came with loud noises, scratching the air to attack me, only to be cut down in one swift move. The blacksmith, who at one point tried to sell me a sword so I could join the Royal Knights, was now throwing his weapons, tools, and even furniture in an attempt to wound me, but all it took was one simple fire spell to send everything around him up in an explosion of flames.

The town’s mayor, a woman with great beauty and power, flew up to the sky from her tower that watched over the town back then. Her home crumbled once she did, and the same woman from back then floated in the sky, looking down at me with a serious expression in her red irises. She would almost seem like she wasn’t Corrupted from the remaining delicate features of her face, the long red hair that fluttered in the wind, the curvy shape of her body, and the calm way she was floating… But the red skin was all I needed to know that it wasn’t the same woman.

She pointed a wooden staff my way, and from it, a complicated magic spell formed in the air. The runic language that my mother taught the people of the world formed in a red circle for only a couple of seconds, before a powerful beam of red magic was fired. Corrupted Magic.

I responded in kind by creating my own beam of magic; my mother’s magic, the one that she passed on to me from the shard she gifted me in her last moments. I had no need for language to use magic, for this was my power as well, so a beam of white, pure magic was fired to counter the one that was coming my way.

They crashed in the air for just a moment, since despite the power that the former mayor had, she couldn’t compete with mine; with the desire to kill a God.

Her beam was completely overwhelmed, and my beam easily pierced through her body. She didn’t scream in pain, didn’t smile, didn’t react, and with the same expression she showed before, she turned into nothing but white ash in the wind.

More mindless beasts tried to get to me, from knights and guards, to just children with hardly any power. I was done dealing with them, so after gathering more magic power inside my body, it glowed in a white light, and I released it right after, creating a shockwave of power that spread through the town, destroying buildings, sending sand flying, and causing the bodies of the monsters that were trying to get to me to explode in a mess of white particles.

I stood in the middle of the town’s destroyed buildings and swept my gaze around it. Nothing of what I remembered from back then remained… The same as everywhere else in this world.

I put away my weapon and continued walking down the destroyed streets. I reached another gate, and from there, I looked up at the mountain and the raging storm left behind by Xarcos. The mountain still had its trees, but they were all nothing more than red, decayed woods, completely missing the vibrant flowers and greenery that it used to have when I ran away from here.

After contemplating it for a while, I set out once more, with steady and slow steps up the path that I took with my sister the last time I was here.

As I was going up, I turned to look at the side. There was a large gash on one side of the mountain. It was created by my mother when she rushed from our home to go up the mountain and try to fight back the Evil God, just to fall prey to him. There were more signs of combat in the mountain, likely from the many people, beasts, and beings that tried to stop the storm, only to fail in the end.

There were corpses here and there of the knights that went to assess what was going on here so long ago. It seemed like they also fell prey to the Corruption and killed each other back then…

While I stopped to look at the knights, a golden glint from the side of my view caused me to look in that direction. It was deep inside the decayed woods, but it wasn’t hard to look at. I decided to make my way there.

“Ah…” I unwillingly let out when I got to it; a pang of pain coursing through my chest. “Oh, Dad…”

There was nothing more than bones in this place. It was a body torn to shreds from the lower part, with signs of a beast cutting him down. But this was definitely my father. He was dressed the same way he was the last time I saw him, and his skull was turned to look at the tiny golden locket he had in his hand; one that had a picture of my mother, and another of both me and my sister.

It seemed like… He never made it up the mountain…