Heath fell through the gray fog and saw something that he shouldn’t have.

A flashing kaleidoscope of colours that he had never seen before flashed in his vision. This was all he saw for a while. After a while, these colours faded and he appeared in a black void. There was nothing here. A wasteland, essentially.

He then witnessed the beginning of all creation. It wasn’t what he expected either. There was no big ray of light that suddenly brought about space and time.

No.

Floating in the void before him was a man who was unmistakably—God. He had a peaceful expression on his face. Crow’s feet appeared beside his eyes as he smiled upon Heath gently. But he wasn’t actually smiling at Heath.

Heath looked behind him and saw a world boom into existence. It expanded rapidly before stabilising into the shape of a round ball. At the center was a large planet of earth and hot chaos.

Rotating around the planet was a ball of gaseous fire.

Beautiful, Heath thought as he looked at what was obviously the Sun.

Heath proceeded to watch as time sped up. Day and night passed so quickly that the Sun had turned into a red halo. In the blink of an eye, a millennium would pass. Eventually, the primordial era came and went. The world became habitable.

Heath watched as life first bloomed. Grass covered the planet. Humans learned to use tools and tamed the first fire. Demons and spirits, looking for a place to call home, migrated through open portals.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Heath was curious and looked around, beyond the world. The stars…

They weren’t real. They were magical projections. They were here, but at the same time, they were somewhere else.

Heath suddenly erupted into laughter. He lost his mind. From henceforth, he decided, that he would no longer overestimate himself. Compared to what had created this world, he was nothing.

Spinning around in empty space, Heath, at one point, accidentally made eye contact with God.

When he looked at him, everything froze.

God asked, “Do you understand now, child?”

Heath was in so much awe that he didn’t answer for a while.

He eventually nodded. “I do.”

But then God faded away into nothing. Heath’s eyes widened in shock.

A white portal opened before him. Heath reasoned that it was the exit out of here. He floated forward but involuntarily stopped when a youth smoking from a wooden pipe exited from the portal.

The two briefly made eye contact. With a bored expression on his face, the youth silently raised his palm.

Heath raised an eyebrow.

Is he casting a spe—

The last thing Heath ever saw was an ocean of red.

***

The cemetery was quiet today.

The sun was setting, dying the world in a dream-like orange hue. Autumn leaves danced through the air and birds were chirping. Standing before a marble statue at the center of the cemetery was Gale.

He sighed as he read the gravestone inscribed at the foot of the statue.

‘Milo, Son of George’

‘Hero of Kirkstead’

Gale closed his eyes and remembered the lowest point in his life. His memories of that time were sparse and fuzzy at best. Almost eighty years had passed since that low. He was like a zombie back then.

But the one thing he could remember was an image of Milo with a smile on his face.

That small, unassuming boy pulled him out of hell. For that, he was eternally grateful. Apart from his family, he was one of the few people he cared for. He knew he wanted to visit Milo at a later point in time, but he never got around to it.

Only recently did he have the time to make a visit.

But now he was dead.

Gale felt horrible.

He had hoped that instead of becoming a [Tailor], Milo had instead chosen the [Farmer] class and put all his free points into vitality. Through that very method, a surprising amount of [Farmers] were able to live comfortably into their nineties and even well past their 100th.

But that wouldn’t have matter because apparently, according to the stories he had heard, Milo had killed a great wizard to save the village from extermination. That was why had earned the title of hero upon his gravestone.

Gale opened up his status.

[Level 125 Machine of War]

“In a few days, I’m going to challenge the mighty God of War himself for his place on the pantheon. Tis’ a fight to the death. If I win, I will use everything in my own power to find your reincarnated soul so that you can live in heaven with me. If I lose, then I don’t dare show my face to you in the afterlife.”

Gale hung his head in silence for a few minutes.

He left without looking back.