I frowned and looked down at the people walking on the roads. “I won’t do that.”

He laughed in response. “Really, now? You didn’t seem to have any problems decimating my people just yesterday.”

“Those were demons, traitors, and evil doers.”

“Were they truly? ‘Cause at the end of the day, what you did spelled doom for everyone—good or evil.”

If what he’s said is true, and the… ‘people’ from his forces were just trying to stop me from handing the world over to the Holy Gods… then that means that… that all those killings I did…

I must make things right, but to kill like I was doing was something that I wasn't sure to do with what I know now.

He sighed after the few moments I took to think. “Well it doesn’t matter. You can also just train as you used to do back then.”

I hummed. I could do that, get power again and work on fixing what could be fixed but… Now that I have his powers… “Why would I do that? Wouldn’t I just be your ‘Hero’ as I was with the Holy Gods? I don’t want to be killed by you when I least expect it. Or… Is that what you want?”

“No, I want for nothing, care for nothing. I no longer exist. The only reason we’re having this conversation right now is because I hijacked a powerful energy amplifier that the people of this world use to communicate using the device in your hand, with what little remains of my will. I just wanted to clear up a few things with you before I disappear completely,” he said with a serious tone.

“Then… what do you suggest I should do?”

There was a moment of silence from Salrak. “Do as you please. You can forget about the life of a knight—of a hero—and live like any other powerless commoner. You may choose to be the hero that you once were again, regaining the life you used to live. Or you may even go ahead and try to destroy this world as well. All is up to you.”

Do as I please… that had been something that I had never considered in my life. It had always been at the service of the Holy Gods or the orders of powerful people that would sometimes speak for them; never been for what I wanted.

“However, a final warning before I go,” Salrak continued. “Those Seven will likely try to take what I denied from them, so one day they will find this world, and they will destroy it just the same. It could happen today, or it could happen well after you lived a happy life. So… do try to live the life that you want to live.”

I widened my eyes. “They’ll… be back…?”

“Yes… so be prepared to die… or to fight. Up to you.”

I looked down at the knife in my hand, then at the floor. I had caused this. If I didn’t blindly follow what the Holy Gods said, then perhaps our world would still be the same. I must prepare myself to not allow such a thing to happen again, but I didn’t know anything about this world, and I couldn’t blindly follow what Salrak said, so it would be better to first understand this world and then decide on what I should do.

“Well, time for me to go…” Salrak said, his voice turning a bit more distant with a weird buzz coming from the phone.

“Wait, what about this place? Whose is it?” I asked, turning around to look at the few things in the room, and the red marks on the floor.

“Oh,” Salrak exclaimed before laughing with a few buzzing sounds in between. “This was a poor soul’s home who had taken the ultimate decision to leave this world. I arranged with what little power I had left to put you in their place, so do try to take care of it.”

“Huh?! Ultimate decision?” I asked, afraid of what that could entail.

But Salrak just laughed. “Don’t mind that. Look for a small square card on the table with your name and picture on it. Try to remember the numbers on it—and don’t lose it. It’s important in this world for”—his voice cut for a moment—“know if we’ll talk to each other again so don’t lose the phone either or—”

There was another moment of silence, but this one was longer than the last one. “Salrak? Salrak!”

I heard more buzzing and his voice in between it, but I couldn’t understand much. “—use the bracelet for the system, and keep in—”

His voice completely faded after saying that bit about some ‘system’, leaving silence that was followed soon after by a low buzzing sound coming from the phone that repeated itself rhythmically. I looked at the artifact, and the painting on it had stopped changing numbers, replacing them instead with a message that read ‘Call ended’.

I didn’t quite understand what this meant, but while I was considering touching the painting, it suddenly stopped glowing, turning back again into the black mirror from before, reflecting the frown on my face back to me.

“Urgh…” I grunted as I turned and placed the black mirror phone on the table. I then returned to the window to look at this enormous city. “What should I do now?”

If I took Salrak’s words as true, then this meant that I had completely and utterly failed my mission as the Hero of the Holy Gods to protect the world, since it had been destroyed. However, that also meant that my mission had been a lie from the very beginning, and the one that destroyed it was me.

Thinking that that could’ve been the likely outcome, I clutched my head with the empty hand, looked down and sighed before I whispered to myself, repeating what I had been thinking but refused to say out loud. “I have to make things right.”

But how would I do that? Salrak said my Holy Powers were taken from me, something that I could feel in my body. There were two forces within me, as it had always been. One was the mana that all beings with the ability to use magic had. This one had always been strong in me since I was a child, which is likely the reason why the Holy Gods chose me as their Hero.

The other one used to be the holy power that the Gods bestowed upon me to fight against the Dark God. It had always felt warm, and yet, somehow it also used to feel foreign; as if the blood within my body belonged to someone else. But it was different for the power that replaced it—Salrak’s Darkness and Hellfire. This one felt like it belonged to me; like another arm, or hand.

I removed my hand and looked at my palm for a moment. I considered trying to use Salrak’s powers… but this had been my mortal enemy for many years, and I didn’t want to use his power—or the power of any God for that matter, so I’ll leave it alone for now.

I turned to look out the window again. “I guess… I should get to know this world.”

I couldn’t just go and be this world’s Hero like I did with mine. This could very well be a world not worth saving; it could be a world that’s already doomed… Or it could be a world that would be doomed if I tried to be its Hero, since Salrak said the Holy Gods were eventually going to come here, and doing so could summon them faster than the time they would've taken. I had been their vessel for a long time, after all.

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I shook my head before looking at the clear blue skies. “Those are just things that could be. I should go out and see what it really is.”

I looked around the small room. There really wasn’t much on it, so that card that Salrak mentioned wasn’t hard to find, since it was laying on top of the white table next to the strange book-like box.

“What the…” I murmured, carefully picking up the small card.

I looked as closely as I could into it, and I couldn’t help but wonder about the kind of artist that made it, since it had an impossibly detailed portrait of me with a white background, my hair on it was just the same as it was on the mirror, and my expression was as stoic as that of a holy knight. It must’ve been made with some form of magic, unknown to me and the people of our world.

Remembering what Salrak had said about a number, I looked at the other things on the card, and noticed several things. On top it said that this was a republic, something that I’ve only heard from the Beast and Elf Nations in our world. Under that it said that this was a ‘Personal Identification’. And right under that I saw the number that Salrak said I should remember, a ten digit number. Fortunately, I had a pretty good memory, and this number wasn’t too complicated.

“Huh?” I exclaimed as I saw my name written as well. “Althea… Sanctus Stultus…? Is this a joke?”

I didn’t have a surname. I had come from a nameless family that lived and worked on the fields. I had been offered a noble title many times by Kings, Queens, and all sorts of powerful people from all over my world, but I had never seen the need for such a thing. The people still only knew me by my name and some lavish titles like ‘Hero of the Holy Gods’, ‘The Holy Vessel’, or ‘The Holiest of Knights’.

But this kind of surname… it must’ve been something that Salrak did to spite me, even when he’s supposedly dead. Not like it mattered anyway, I wasn’t planning to use it.

Under that name, I saw my name written again, only that it looked like it was handwritten by myself, as if this small piece of art was created by me, which is something that I had never done.

Regardless, there wasn’t anything else to take notice of, so I turned it around and was stunned by the information on it. There I saw a birth date, a height in a measurement that I didn’t recognize, the drawing of a fingerprint, and some other strange numbers at the bottom under a black smear. Perhaps Salrak wanted me to remember all of these numbers as well. So I sat down on the chair next to the table and started repeating and looking over them again and again until I was certain that I wouldn’t forget them.

I put the card into one of the pockets of the pants and looked around the room. I had to go outside and explore, but I couldn’t just go out barefooted. I saw some footwear near the mattress so I decided to take them. They were bigger than my feet, but I didn’t have anything else, so I put them on. Luckily, they had some small ropes that I could use to ensure they wouldn’t fall off my feet.

Standing up, I realized that these were extremely comfortable, even when they weren’t made for my size. I looked down at them, amazed, since they felt almost as good as the greaves on the Holy Golden Armor. It was a shame about the size, but I could wear this for now on.

As I went for the other door in the room, I remembered that I still had the knife in my hand, so I stopped and looked at it for a moment, wondering if I should take it with me, or leave it here. Taking it with me could stir panic in the people that saw me walking around with a weapon, but leaving it here would mean I didn’t have a weapon to defend myself with.

I looked down at the floor as I considered what would be best, and noticed the large useless pocket that this shirt had. It was perfect to fit the knife in and quickly take it out in case of emergencies, so I shoved it in there.

“Hm,” I hummed as I inspected it. It was obvious that there was a knife in there, since the very weight of it would deform the pocket and show that I had something in there.

I shoved my hand and held the knife. It looked like I didn’t have anything besides my hand, so it would be better if I walked around like this, and hope that nobody asked me anything about it.

After making sure that the knife wouldn’t be easily seen, I finally went for the door. I took a deep breath before I opened it and looked outside. I saw a hall, with several other doors similar to this one, and nailed on top of them there were a few numbers. I turned to look at the door I opened to see the one it had.

“Eight zero eight…?” I whispered, not sure about what that number could possibly mean.

While I was distracted and looking at the door, someone else opened a door, causing me to quickly turn my attention to them, tightening my grip on the knife.

It was a middle aged lady, wearing a purple coat, some blue pants, and a bag on the side of her arm. She also noticed me and frowned slightly for a moment.

“Excuse me!” she called out to me, causing me to frown in response. “Are you related to the man that lives in that apartment?”

“What?” I replied, since I didn’t know any man or what an ‘apartment’ was.

“Never thought that man had such a beautiful girlfriend…” the lady mumbled as she narrowed her eyes to look at me from top to bottom. “She even comes out wearing his clothes.”

“Who are you?” I asked, readying myself for anything unusual that this lady could do.

“Oh sorry,” she replied before clearing her throat. “I am the current manager of the building, and the man living in that apartment is two months late in rent. I know people have their struggles, but these are not cheap apartments and we can’t be lenient for too long, so if you could get him to pay soon, then I’d be very grateful.”

I tilted my head to the side, my expression that of even more confusion. “I… don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“So you’re that kind of woman, huh,” she replied, shaking her head and pointing her finger at me. “There is no reason that a beautiful woman like you should be standing up like that for a person that can’t even—”

She was interrupted from her seemingly random tirade by a muffled melody that came out of her. I couldn’t allow this strange woman to get the first move on me, so I tightened my grip on the knife and prepared my posture to defend myself from whatever strange magic she was casting.

The woman turned to the bag she was carrying on her side, hastily opening and searching for something inside while the melody continued to play. A few seconds later, she pulled out a rectangle thing… It was a phone with a glowing painting no different than the one that I had used to talk to Salrak. I widened my eyes and took a couple of steps forward.

“Hello?” she said as she brought the phone to the side of her face. “No! What are you—” she paused for a moment, listening to whoever was talking on the other side, likely Salrak. So I prepared myself to snatch the phone from her. “No—listen John, I’m on my way out, so we’ll talk later, okay?”

‘John’? That wasn’t a name that Salrak would use, so I paused mid step as I frowned at the black mirror on the phone, which resembled almost exactly the one I left in the room—if not for the bright pink color that this one was wrapped in.

“Sorry about that,” the woman said as she turned to look at me while humming, as if trying to remember something. “So yeah, if you could pay the rent, then I would be grateful. I have to run now, so bye.”

Before I could even say anything or do anything, the woman closed the door of the room that she walked out of, and made her way to the end of the hall, to a closed gate made out of silvery plates. She pressed an engraving on the side of those gates, lighting up an inverted triangle symbol that turned off almost right away as the silvery gates opened to a very small empty room with a perfect mirror on the back.

She pointed her fingers at the side of those gates and they closed right after, leaving me stunned as I watched everything that just transpired. I snapped out of it and carefully walked to the silvery gates. They were a nearly perfect creation, as the metal—or whatever material they were made of—was as smooth as the best blades ever made.

I looked around the gate, and saw a glowing number on top of the gate, which was going down, from seven to six, and even lower. I couldn’t quite understand what that meant, and I felt tempted to press one of the two triangles on the side that the woman had pressed, but I didn’t know what could happen if I did so I just waited for a moment.

The number eventually reached one, but kept going, changing to a B1 and stopping there. I waited a while longer to see if anything else changed, but nothing did. I looked again at the triangles at the side, tempted again to press them, but shook my head, since it wasn’t the right time to try an artifact I didn’t understand.

I looked to the side at a set of stairs leading down before looking back at the silvery gates again, and I decided to leave them behind for now while I got a better understanding of this world as I started making my way down the stairs.