Armad was transported to another mysterious world. Unlike the previous white soil, everything around him, from the soil to the sky, was completely green. Even the sun was green. And there was a green notification waiting for him.

Welcome to the interworld dungeon.

Quest: conquer the dungeon.

Reward: transportation to the Fourth World.

A loud quack brought him back. He turned around to meet a green hawk, fully five meters long. Its beak was just a meter away from puncturing his chest.

Armad hurriedly summoned his soul sword and blocked the beak.

Bang.

A loud explosion arose, as if a metal had hit another metal.

Armad tried to withdraw the sword back but it was surprisingly stuck to the beak as if glued together by an invisible gum. He clenched his fist and punched the hawk. Instead of flesh and blood, he hit a stony wall. His fingers crumbled and blood splashed on the ground.

What exactly is going? Is this thing made of steel?

If that was all, Armad wouldn't have minded. What really baffled him was the next notification.

The dungeon inhabitant is absorbing your sword essence.

The first thing you learned while creating a sword technique was how to absorb sword essence. Every sword was formed from it. If the hawk were to deplete his sword essence then his sword would disappear. He pulled the sword again with all his might but it didn't budge.

As if that wasn't enough, he heard earthshaking tremors behind him.

He stood there for the next three seconds, debating whether to take his eyes off the hawk. The tremors became increasingly louder which forced him to turn around.

He saw the largest snake he'd ever imagined. It was three times his height with bright green eyes and a dark green skin, shining brightly under the sun. What surprised him was that the snake was running and sweating, its eyes filled with tears of desperation. It needed to run faster, it had to run faster, but it couldn't for it had reached its maximum speed.

Before Armad could digest what he just saw, hundreds of other beasts appeared behind the snake. He identified horned lions, even larger snakes, flying tigers, banshees and many more. They were all green and running.

There was a hundred meter column of green dust behind them.

Armad turned around to see the hawk frantically trying to remove its beak from his sword. Before he could react, the hawk had left a part of its beak on his sword and ran off.

The first snake he saw also flew past him without sparing him a glance.

Should he just run and follow the crowd or should he wait and see what was behind it? It was in this moment of indecision that the beasts flew past him, none of them spared him any glance.

He decided to run. But just before he did, he heard a turbulence, and he saw the thing chasing the beasts.

It was a towering flood of a pitch black sea, extending as far as his eyes could see in every direction, burning with a green flame that made him dizzy and thirsty by just looking at it. The black sea carried thousands of tides that could wash away the entire world. Armad didn't want to think about what would happen if he failed to escape.

It was definitely time to run.

Spell activated.

Lightning Flash: attain the speed of lightning for a second.

Cost: 10

Limitations: one minute interval

+20 agility

NB: attributes effect will remain as long as the spell is active.

He ran in the opposite direction. Within just a second, he caught up with the beasts ahead - or at least he thought he did, until he received another notification.

You have taken steps without reading the appropriate spells.

Penalty: you have been sent to the deepest parts of the dungeon.

"I have taken steps without reading the appropriate spells? Who said anything about that... "

Armad cursed internally as he remembered the spell paper he'd received from the guardian. What he didn't know was, as everything was happening, the spell paper was glowing.

His vision blurred and when it became clear again he was standing in the middle of a medium-sized room.

The floor was made of a transparent stone and there was no roof. He could see the same greenish sky and sun above. The wall facing him was green but the one behind him was yellow. The walls to his right and left were translucent. All the walls were made of square shaped bricks with no any door or window.

But what caught his attention the most was a stone altar at the centre of the room and the golden eagle on it.

Armad retrieved the spell paper in his pocket. There were several spells but only one was glowing.

Armad had learned how to read and write from his mother at a young age. As soon as he read the spell, the golden eagle on the stone altar creaked and its mouth opened. It spoke..

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No, it didn't. Armad thought.

He was confused. He heard a voice in his head but it wasn't like when the guardian talked to him. This time it was more or less like an inspiration: he just knew it.

Using the knowledge he'd just gained, he walked to the centre of the room and faced the green wall. He took three steps, with each step covering ten centimeters. Then he closed his eyes and took five steps more before he opened his eyes and read another spell from the paper in his hands. Then he spitted his saliva on the green wall.

After a few seconds, the green wall shook and shifted medially like a hinged door.

Armad entered the newly created entrance to appear in another space. A flash of light blinded him for several seconds. After it settled, he found himself in a bare land with no sign of life. The temperature was markedly higher than in any other part of the dungeon, and the feeling of emptiness was palpable. You could swear the area had been abandoned for a millennea.

Not far from him, he saw two small mountains and a well built city in between them.

Nothing was broken anywhere, and if not for the thick cobweb covering the gates, Armad would have thought the city was recently built.

Welcome to the fallen city of Bayajidda.

Enter the city and open the door to the Fourth World.

Finally! Armad thought. He would finally set foot on the Fourth World and start the real mission.

He reached out and carefully removed the cobweb covering the gates. Unlike what he'd expected, the gate was actually wide open. He just summoned his soul sword for insurance before he carefully slid inside.

His first step into the city was met with a terrible surprise that prevented him from taking any further step. He stopped there trembling and sweating profusely. For the first time, Armad desperately wanted to turn around and ran. In fact, he did turn around but he stopped. Not because he didn't want to run, but because he couldn't. Two mouths had opened in the ground beneath his feet and swallowed him up to the ankle.

He stood there with a pounding heart and a sweating face.

He saw a fleet of giants. Hundreds of them, arranged in rows, with each row having at least a hundred giants.

Giants were not real. They only appeared in stories his mom used to tell him. Why the hell was he seeing them? Not only that, these giants were alive with eyes wide open. If not for the cobweb covering their armors, he would have thought they were just setting out.

The only thing that gave him some relief was that none of the giants moved even after seeing him. They just stood there, holding their flashy swords and looking at the sky with an unyielding gaze.

Armad wouldn't have tried to run if the giants were the only problem, his main problem was a voice ringing in his head. The voice resembled that of his Djinn: terrifying and bone chilling, ancient but strong, loud and imposing... When it spoke, you felt the urge to bow down.

"I, AMRAIKUGYU SON OF BAYAJIDDA, SON OF HARÚNU, I SWEAR TO THE CREATOR OF KING WILBERFORCE I WILL NEVER STOP FIGHTING YOU.

"EVEN IF YOU USE THE LONGEVITY IN YOUR BLACK EYES TO PREVENT ME FROM WALKING THE EARTH, I WILL FIGHT YOU WHERE I STAND.

"EVEN IF YOU DESTROY MY MIND, SOUL AND BODY, I WILL STILL FIGHT YOU WITH MY WILL.

"URÚRÚ, YOU ARE THE CAUSE OF EVERY CALAMITY THAT HAS BEFALLEN MAN. I WILL... "

At this point, Armad fell on his knees, bleeding from his eyes, mouth and nose. His vision blurry and his consciousness failing.

Is it over already...? I can't die now.. my mom... I have to live. I have to...

He heard three more sentences and some incomplete words before he fell unconscious.

Almost at the same time that Armad lost consciousness, two Scorphants appeared near him.

Scorphants were scorpions with the size of an elephant and a stinger that was slightly larger than an adult elephant nose. They were magical creatures that can drain a mage's longevity by a simple touch. Not only that, they'd great physical strength and produced the most deadly poison known.

As with all magical creatures, Scorphants were intelligent and could communicate in their own language.

"Inj'pione, this one is a scion of House Wilberforce, should we take it to them?" One of the Scorphants asked the other.

The one addressed as Inj'pione swung his stinger sideways, apparently it was the equivalent of shaking a head. "Kuna'pione, have you forgotten what happened the last time we gave them a Wilberforce? We can't repeat the same mistake."

Inj'pione cut him off. "This is different. Last time we took someone who didn't withstand the voice. This one has withstood the voice, maybe it won't die like the others. Besides, we can't hold on to them forever, sooner or later, we have to give them to someone."

Kuna'pione swung his stinger up and down, then said, "I agree there is a chance, but humans are all fragile things, I can see this one breaking as well. I say we test him first."

Inj'pione hesitated. The time assigned for them to pass on the legacy had long passed. They still didn't find any worthy descendant.

After a short debate, they both disappeared.

What Armad didn't know was every day, that same voice would say the same thing ninety-nine times. After the ninety-ninth time, the sheer hatred in the voice would set the city on fire.

Even now, as soon as the voice stopped, fire blazed the city. The giants and the buildings weren't affected but Armad was. His clothes were the first to be affected, then the spell paper in his pocket gave a popping sound as it burned out and his skin melted. The entire area around him was engulfed in flames.

His clothes were almost gone, the spell paper that was supposed to be his guide was destroyed and his skin was literally on fire. If he was conscious, he would easily agree that this was the worst possible situation.

The fire burned for several hours before it stopped.

A few minutes later, Inj'pione and Kuna'pione returned to where they'd left Armad.

"I told you it isn't strong enough." Kuna'pione said, shifting his posterior abdomen uncomfortably.

"No, look closely." Inj'pione pointed at Armad's scarred remains. "It's burned out but it's still alive."

"EHMM.. It is alive...?"

"Yeah, it is. We should take it to them before it dies."

"Do you think they will choose this one?"

"I don't know. The book is unpredictable but the sword is a murderous soul. I can see her taking her time with it."

They both swung their stinger up and Inj'pione took Armad in his mouth as they teleported away.

They ran into the deepest parts of the dungeon until there was nothing left but emptiness. They exhausted the emptiness and travelled far beyond the imagination of any being.

They exited the dungeon and entered a Realm that was exclusively for spirits. There they crossed the boundary that had never been crossed and entered another abyss. Time flowed differently than in the seven worlds, and it was impossible to determine how long these two Scorphants had spent running.

At the end of the abyss, they reached a place where they couldn't cross. They allowed Armad to fly freely under gravity.

Armad flew for a long time. When he finally opened his eyes, he was standing in front of a... book, the size of a hand.

Armad felt an unnatural urge to grab the book. His Djinn wanted it, he wanted it. If he could just grab it, then all his problems would be gone. It was the cure of all ailments: his mom would immediately get well. It was the treasure that everyone craved for, it was the source of all power, it was the strength of all beings... He had to grab it.

He wasn't alone, the entire world was lying in wait to take the book away from him. He'd to take it before it was too late.

Armad reached out. Just an inch away, and his headband glowed and something inside him pulled him back.

"How dare you?" The book spoke. Armad didn't know how a book could speak but it did. In fact, he could clearly pick emotions in its voice. It was... aggrieved, it was resentful because his headband had glowed and pulled him back. It was..

"You are still calling us an 'IT'. We will devour you and your soul. It has been long since we taste something so enticing."

The book opened its pages and Armad saw bloody writings and suspicious whispers. The whispers drew him in, it was just like that time when he first tamed his Djinn.

Armad wanted the book even if it was covered in blood. He wanted it even if it would kill him.

He reached out again but the book transformed into a sword and slashed down at him. His entire body stiffened. Under the mightiness of the sword, nobody could lift a finger. Armad stood there, waiting for his apparent fate.

The sword slashed through him and his body exploded into a pool of blood and gore.