The Apocalypse

The World was once a place full of life. Intellectual beings such as humans, elves, dwarves, dragonkin, beastkind, mystics, and demons populated every corner of the Planet. It was the kind of World where people would use magic to aid their daily lives. A World where mana is of the utmost importance. A dazzling and beautiful place with history unlike anything anyone has seen in the vast empty space called Universe, protected by the mightiest Guardians in the form of beasts sent by the Gods.

…..

It was all in the past now.

Yes. The World had already ended, and it wasn’t any kind of easy end, either. It all started when ordinary wild life mutated into larger, more aggressive beasts that knew nothing but destruction and carnage. Next, the trees, plants, and flowers began to slowly wilt, thus, draining the World of its colors. Countless smaller earthquakes would occur nearly on a daily basis, until one day, a massive volcanic eruption brought a third of the World into complete destruction. That wasn’t yet the end. It was but the beginning of the suffering that was to follow. The remaining habitable lands on the Planet continued to be occupied by both people and animals. Nobody knew what was happening. Not even the greatest sages and scientists could figure out the cause of all the things that happened thus far, and it meant that nobody could fix what was broken.

Who knew something was broken? Well, if you were thinking that absolutely nothing was broken in a World that was constantly being devastated by disasters of untold scale, then you’d be insane. People kept living their lives normally despite the things that happened. After all, what else could they have done? Something was broken, and that something could not be discovered, and therefore, could not be fixed. If one stopped living normally, then their thoughts would begin to wander into the depths of confusion and paranoia, and soon, they’d go crazy waiting for the end to come. Nations, researchers, and sages continued to look for clues with dedication, but deep within everyone’s hearts, they knew the end was coming.

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It wasn’t long before some of the still-habitable lands started to show signs of weirdness. For example, a small patch of land, or perhaps a forest that survived the many disasters in the not-so-distant past, would begin to seemingly stop. To elaborate, certain coordinates in the World would come to a complete halt as if time didn't exist. Air was present but in a state which deemed it as if it never existed. Animals and people caught in the mysterious phenomenon would also stop moving as if they have been turned into lifeless stones. The sky, as colorless as the ashes, failed to receive the blessing of the Sun. Any who dared venture into these Chaos Zones ( as people would come to refer to them ) would not be affected by the phenomenon that initially caused the stoppage of time within a coordinate. Surprising is the fact that these brave adventurers actually managed to live within the Chaos Zones given the lack of oxygen. Someone who was within the perimeters of a Chaos Zone would neither get hungry nor fatigued. Death would only occur when one runs out of mana which didn’t regenerate inside a Chaos Zone.

However, even though a person could achieve a temporary sense of immortality within the Chaos Zones, it was not without its dangers. Creatures utterly unknown to the World would frequently appear within the Chaos Zones. Creatures whose colors take after the deepest depths of the abyss, or in other words, pitch black. So black that even the light of a thousand sun wouldn’t be able to penetrate the darkness. Creatures whose forms and shapes would range from something that looked harmless, to something that would seem as if it came straight from the profoundly deep ends of Hell. Sometimes, these creatures would have many eyes of different shapes and colors, which when looked at, would show the victim countless unsightly hallucinations. Other times, a creature that perpetually cries would emerge, causing brave adventurers to go insane with despair.

Again, that wasn’t the end, but the end was indeed nearing. Soon after, the Guardians of the World, those that were sent to this Planet by the Gods in order to protect it, lost their sanity one after another. Guardians in the form of mythical beasts capable of destroying the whole world within a single day if they were to cooperate with each other to go against the World one day started to rage across their respective territories.

At that point, the global population fell to just five percent of its original number. And as if it wasn’t enough, every single intelligent being met their demise when a massive…. No, the words “massive”, “colossal”, or “huge” don't even begin to explain how huge that monster was. Anyhow, a massively, colossally gigantic monster resembling a shark with countless tentacles protruding from all over its body ended what remained of the World at that time.

I say that the World had ended, but it wasn’t as if the World had completely disappeared. A large floating island at the far ends of the World miraculously survived. A land minimally impacted by the disasters that caused the fall of the World. The place that I, Zelhrius Nephren, have been protecting since the day I became a Godlike entity.

After the end of the World, I officially became the lone survivor of a Planet no longer fit to host life.

The thing is, I could have probably saved the World, but I chose not to do so for my own selfish reasons.