"Hah. Haha. Hahahaha!" Glenn chuckled, before bursting into laughter. He laughed that way for a few minutes, unable to stop himself.
"Oh man, phew, I managed to hurt my abs..." He raised his eyes and pointed a trembling finger with an equally shaky smile, "That...That was a funny joke. Haha..."
The young man then fell silent, staring at the Goddess with a crestfallen expression. The woman shook her head sadly, unable to say what she had to say. Glenn's head slowly bent forward as he looked at the sea of stars. He struggled, a minuscule opening separating his two lips.
"It's not a joke, right?" The young man whispered, unable to raise his head to discover the answer.
"No, it's not." The Goddess answered with a dry tone, her fingers crisping together. She sighed once again and clapped her hands. The scenery changed suddenly to a cozy lounge, with comfortable sofas and a modern table separating Glenn from Her.
The young man was hiding his face in his hands, breathing raggedly. He showed his face weakly, his throat dry.
"How is...how is this possible?"
The Goddess picked up a new cup of tea from nowhere and sipped it silently. She placed the cup back on the table and rubbed her forehead in concern.
"I'm sorry, but I can't tell you. I'm limited in what I can and can't say, and the fate of the Earth is one of those things that's restricted..." She conjured up a bowl of brown sugar, before taking a teaspoonful and stirring it into her cup.
"I see..." Glenn wasn't surprised. There was always some kind of similar plot in novels he had read, where gods were censored in what they could convey to humans and needed to present them riddles or something to jailbreak those censors.
"What can you tell me, then, Goddess?" He asked out of despair, dropping any honorifics or respect he had for the being. In his mind, his sister's face alongside his friends from Earth were flashing one after the other, disappearing like sand in the wind.
He'll never be able to return. Glenn could finally understand what Exan meant by that. If there were no place to return to, what would be the point of figuring out such a process?
"Glenn, if you're there, it's for a reason. And one of those is to find the anomalies like the one you just lost to, and get rid of them," The Goddess announced, her eyebrows creasing at Glenn's sight. She finished her cup of tea, before making it disappear.
"Because if you don't, the Limbo will disappear alongside Earth, never to be returned." Glenn's ears perked up when he heard that.
These anomalies are related to the disappearance of the Earth?
Then, if he could figure out what they were, and what their sources were, he would probably be able to find out where Earth disappeared to, right? The young man's sadness was little by little replaced by determination, feeling like he could see the goal he needed to work for.
"I'll add a little something since you didn't get anything when you entered this world. What would you call it, already? A cheat?" The Goddess stood up from her seat, Glenn following in her moves, "Well, that's not at the level of a cheat, but it's the basic requirement for you to recognize the anomalies. And I'll clear the Dead God's corruption alongside that, that should help you."
Wait, the Dead God's corruption? What's that?
"Oh, and don't forget to treat Diamanes well, I'm sure you don't want him to turn on you..." She concluded, clapping her hands together and disappearing in a cloud of golden dust. Glenn reached out with his hand.
"Wait, I still have questions! Who's the Dead God? And how do you know Diamanes?!?"
The Goddess laughed, a crystalline sound that cleared his mind of any problem.
"I'll pray for your success, child. Hopefully, it will be better than mine..."
The space suddenly warped, not unlike the teleportation to the Magi Brotherhood, but somehow more twisted and weirder. His eyes jerked open, and his lungs filled with the goo-like substance. A voice was screaming in his head with full power.
"FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, GLENNNNNNNNNNNNN WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!!!!!!!" Diamanes put all his strength into this cry, truly fearing for his host's life for the first time. Glenn's heart, which had remained frozen, suddenly began to beat steadily, but furiously. He felt like an engine revving up, becoming better, faster, harder, stronger.
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His Mana flared up, filled with endless strength. Through the black liquid he was drowning in, the young man twisted his right hand, catching the axe floating beside him with his left.
He imagined a fire that would consume all seas, a fire that would purify all evil, a fire fueled with the power of the Goddess he just met. A fire that would burn bright with the light of the Sun hanging in the sky, a Sun that was present in his Mana Heart, in his Magellanic Cloud.
The place where he twisted his right hand suddenly lit up with a golden flame that seemed like it would burn forever. The fire swallowed the black goo like a lit match would burn up gasoline. At the same time, he infused as much Mana as he could in his left hand, making the axe Half-Moon flame up with its dark-red color, devouring the dark liquid similarly.
With a strength he never believed he had, he roared like a beast as golden and dark-red fire mixed around him in a tornado of hungry flames.
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Tarana knew that it was over. She couldn't do anything against literal waves of deadly liquid, even less when she couldn't use her plant-controlling powers. Wilbur seemed to hold on by the sheer strength of his will, but his eyes were already droopy and he already was half swallowed by the will of the evil heart.
Glenn was their only hope, since, as scary as he was, he still succeeded in somehow pushing back the waves with that axe he found. But that hope disappeared when was swallowed down by the waves like they were about to. He and his dark-red flame were gone, leaving only the two as the target of the hungry river of goo.
Seeing a house-sized wave heading for them, Tarana gave one last glance at the heart, then at Wilbur, and closed her eyes in a desperate sigh.
"I don't want to die..." She blurted out while sniffling. Tears had begun flowing out at some point in time, but she couldn't tell when. She knew she would never go back to Balaria, that she would never see her mother or father again, nor her hated sisters, those pests.
Rampart, Wilbur's shield, suddenly crumbled on itself and disappeared in the darkness of the liquid. Upon this sight, the knight lost all hope, and fell backward in the goo, giving up this already lost fight. The gigantic wave fell on them, swallowing the two whole. She felt her vision go blurry as the liquid entered every pore of her body, freezing her down to her heart.
Her thoughts slowed down to a stop, and her life disappeared, swallowed by the darkness.
Until the light appeared. Not the red, ominous light that the heart was projecting, no, the warm, golden light that the sun would emit. It burned above the liquid that swallowed her and Wilbur, chasing the darkness away and igniting her frozen heart back on.
The black goo around her was burned away by a mix of golden and dark-red flames, the sea of darkness replaced by a sea of fire, a fire that burned away the evil. Weakly, she raised her head, coughing out the black goo in her lungs. And there she saw, who could only be named the Hand of the Devil, burning the goo away in a storm of flaming light like an apostle of the gods.
Glenn didn't die. And he was ready to fight that damned thing off.
"WOW!!! THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!!!" Diamanes cheered loudly when Glenn flared back to life. The young man's eyes were burning with flame-like determination.
Wait, no, his eyes were actually burning!
"Holy shit, your eyes are on fire!" The entity barked, unable to contain both his panic and excitement. On one hand, his host suddenly received a surge of godly power out of nowhere, on the other hand, he was literally on fire.
Glenn coughed the black goo out, his body surrounded by the golden and dark-red flames. 'My Mana feels limitless right now... Is it Her gift to me?'
The young man didn't think further. He had power in his hands, and he had to use it now. And that was exactly what he was going to do.
"Cough, cough..." Glenn wiped off the goo on his face and made the axe in his left-hand twirl. He threw a glance around, just in time to notice his teammates going under. Without a second of hesitation, he twisted his right hand again in their direction, summoning a path of golden flames that burned all the goo away.
Without stopping, he rushed to their sides, slashing at the waves with the flaming axe. He pulled Wilbur out first, since he was the one seemingly closest to death, and covered him with a layer of golden flames. The knight's pale face began to regain colors, and he started breathing again.
The young man repeated the operation with Tarana, before turning back toward the big, beating heart hanging in the heart at the center of the dark branches.
"This thing won't ever be done until I get rid of this shit, is that right?" The young man's voice was back to normal, and his throat healed from the injury that made it hard to talk previously.
"Absolutely. And guess what? I don't know whose power you're wielding, but it's exactly that thing's weakness!" Diamanes was ecstatic at the turn of events, answering positively to Glenn's questions.
The black waves of goo had stopped assaulting them, gathering into the shape of some kind of humanoid being the size of a building. On the surface of the liquid, countless faces screaming in pain were flowing there, witnesses to the horror of this abomination.
Glenn stepped forward before pushing as hard as he could on his legs, propelling himself at a high speed toward the gigantic goo creature. It had placed itself right between him and the evil heart. He then noticed in his rush that his left arm was glowing in a purple light strongly, enough to produce enough illumination to light the path.
"Wait, I'm not the one doing that!" Glenn didn't have time to ask Diamanes if the latter defended himself. The young man then squinted his eyes at the heart hidden behind the giant goo creature, understanding what the Goddess meant by cheat. He now had a radar in his left arm to find anomalies. Great, but not a matter to think of right now.
The goo creature swiped horizontally with its left arm, freezing it in dark ice sharp enough to cut steel itself.
Glenn aimed at the ground while charging his legs with Mana, creating a burst of golden light at the same time as he jumped, fueling his flight as he passed over the attack. He spun in the air as he landed on the arm, running up while slicing down with his flaming axe, leaving a scorched path of dark-red fire.
The goo monster tried to swat him down with its other hand but failed miserably as the young man slipped through its fingers. He arrived at the head of the creature and thrust his right hand forward, effectively creating a ray of pure golden flames that pierced right through the goo.
He passed through the hole he created, and using the falling body of the goo creature as a foothold, he jumped toward the heart, rising Half-Moon above his head with both hands, the weapon flaring up with practically dark flames. As he flew toward the heart, the young man was completely covered in golden flames that acted like the strongest armor, while his axe hacked down with the strength of giants.
Glenn even gave it a little customization of his, using a modified version of his Magical Weapon spell to create a giant blade entirely out of Mana around the axe. The Mana blade took on the property of the dark-red flames, effectively creating a dark-red, crescent cut that fell on the heart. Time itself seemed to slow down to a halt as the axe sliced through the heart like butter, cutting it in half.
In the center was a strange, green, evil pearl filled with pain and despair, a pearl he had already seen before. A cursed item that swallowed darkness to spit something even worse in exchange, an object that could make one mad by just looking inside it.
A Seed of Darkness.
But this time, it was smoldering and broken in half, never to be used again.
They survived.