Maria struggled to her feet and stood up. She used [Fire] to illuminate her surroundings and upon closer inspection, she noticed that she had somehow fallen into a large underground tunnel.
“...This is manmade… what luck, I didn’t think I’d arrive at the secret passageway.”
She wanted to rest and tend to her burn wounds, but Maria had no time for that. The tunnel began to tremble and the shaking only continued to intensify. She didn’t know which way to go, but she reckoned that moving farther away from the tremors was the right direction.
“The tunnel might collapse. I have to get out of here.”
The tunnel was large enough that she didn’t have any problems spreading her wings and flying through it but unfortunately, her wings were badly injured and a few of her feathers had been burnt to a crisp, and just moving them even a little hurt a lot.
Maria stumbled in the direction opposite of where the tremors were coming from. She kept on walking and walking without knowing how much time passed before she felt that the tremors had completely stopped.
“I...I should be fine now.”
Maria slumped on the ground in relief before quickly tending to her wounds. She used [Heal] and [Cure] to fix her wings and the burnt patch of skin on her backside. Good thing she wasn’t streaming because Maria’s clothes had been badly damaged.
Thankfully, her custom-made outfit, or her skin, wasn’t permanently damaged. The broken changes only occurred following the durability of her equipped armor that had taken quite a bit of damage from the shockwave and the heatwave but once she changed out of it, her appearance returned back to its pristine image.
Her life had been saved thanks to her struggling, but she still had something else to worry about at the moment other than nearly dying just a few seconds ago.
“This is bad...I don’t know if those Higher Life Forms from the city even made it out alive and if they did die that wouldn’t do me any good. Since I didn’t kill them, it means that their souls weren’t offered to Death…”
Maria worried because, from the looks of things, the time limit of her quest was reaching the end. Meteors and debris from the planet’s moon were raining down on the planet, wiping away entire cities, leveling mountains, and drying up the waters that it struck.
“Ahhhh, stupid Death! How could you give me such an impossible quest?!”
Maria cursed at death for a bit before she stood up and started walking. She couldn’t forget the blistering heat from earlier and she felt like she might have developed a trauma for it.
Maria hugged her arms as her body trembled. This was just a game but it felt all too real for Maria. The feeling of her skin peeling off from the heat and being cooked along with the shockwave that struck her and broke her wings...this wasn’t something she would forget any time soon.
“...”
Maria clenched and unclenched her hands repeatedly, trying to calm herself down but it did little to prevent her from remembering the feeling of dread she felt earlier.
“I-I guess this is what they felt when they saw me coming…” Maria said with a depreciating look on her face.
She continued to walk down the tunnel and it didn’t take long before she saw a small fire in the distance. Maria then remembered that she had night vision so once she saw the light ahead of her, she didn’t hesitate to quickly extinguish the flame of her [Fire] spell.
“People…”
Maria counted around a dozen or so figures in the distance. They were standing so it was easy to spot and count their numbers. However, she did notice that there were also people sitting down.
Every living creature on the planet was her enemy so she reckoned that this group of people wasn’t any different and slowly took out her [Calamity].
“I hope you people are the Higher Life Forms...please, just let me finish my quest already. I wanna go home…”
Maria cautiously approached and made sure to stay hidden from sight.
*DING*
Quest objective found! The objectives will be briefly highlighted in red!
Maria noticed that every person that was sitting or standing was highlighted in red. This meant that everyone present in the dark underground tunnel was her target.
“Yes!”
Once the targets were confirmed, Maria didn’t hesitate and immediately fired an enhanced [Dark Ray] at the Higher Life Forms. The ones on guard duty quickly noticed the attack and signaled their comrades.
“Attack! We’re under attack!”
“Block it!”
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It was such a useless notion to do because once the [Dark Ray] struck one of the targets, it immediately exploded and engulfed the area with a dark dome of light.’
*DING*
Quest targets eliminated!
“Finally!”
Maria was happy that she finally completed the quest objective, however, she didn’t have the time to cheer because the fallout of her technique caused the entire tunnel to start shaking.
She had destroyed a large part of the entire structure so it was now starting to collapse on itself.
“No, no, no, no!”
Maria immediately gunned it and started running. She used [Haste] on herself and quickly dashed past the area that she struck with her spell.
“Dammit, I forgot I was underground! I should have just used [Fire] or [Terra[!”
Now, Maria was running away and not from a meteor falling on her head but from the tunnel that had started collapsing behind her.
“Out of the frying pan and into the fire! How come I’m so unlucky?!”
Since the start of the quest, everything leading up to her current predicament was all but a series of unfortunate events. She thought that this was probably karma from her recent genocide.
“I-I shouldn’t have done that, I really shouldn’t have done that! But they were all going to die anyway so why does it matter?!!”
Maria continued running through the tunnel until finally, she saw light.
“It’s the end?”
She flapped her wings and took off from the ground. The light was piercing and she could feel the heat hitting her face once she shot out of the tunnel. Behind her, the entire tunnel collapsed and buried whatever was still inside of it.
Maria quickly stopped in midair when she saw the sky burning with numerous meteors and space debris falling from the sky.
“...So this is an apocalypse, huh?”
She looked behind her and noticed that she had come out from the side of a mountain so she quickly flew up to its peak. Maria didn’t know why but even after completing her quest, Death still hadn’t come to take her away from this dying planet.
“Maybe I messed up somehow?”
Maria let out a defeated sigh and sat herself down after creating a chair from the dirt using [Terra]. She could see behind her in the distance, the mega-city―or what was left of it―had been destroyed with only a few structures still standing and melting from the aftermath of the meteor’s impact.
The meteor had devastated the city far beyond what Maria could do to it herself. The surrounding area also wasn’t spared as it too was impacted quite severely by the meteor’s touchdown.
Nearly everything behind the mountain had been burnt to a crisp and the area was still burning and dying. She could see some of the monsters and animals that had somehow made it out alive rushing in the direction of the mountain she was on, trying desperately to escape from the fires that were chasing them.
If Maria hadn’t been smart enough to dig underground as she did, she would have been among the casualties caused by the meteor.
The Higher Life Forms were almost lucky to make it out alive but Maria’s luck was even better since she managed to escape with her life intact and complete her quest objective at the same time.
The only problem now was that her quest didn’t seem like it was finished just yet because if it was completed, Maria wouldn’t still be here.
At this point, the planet’s destruction was close at hand so Maria decided to just give up and watch the end of the world on top of this lonely mountain.
“...thankfully this mountain isn’t a volcano…”
She tried to make a joke but it wasn’t amusing at all. This was all just a game but the atmosphere caused her to feel despair and fear well up from deep inside her body. It nearly caused her to cry but she held it in and firmly looked up at the burning planet.
“I did all of that for nothing… Death better give me an easier ascension quest next time or else I’ll put a boot up his ass…” Maria mumbled to herself.
The planet’s inhabitants weren’t difficult to deal with but mother nature itself was being a bitch and preventing her from completing her quest peacefully.
“The end of the world...it isn’t so bad…”
*DING*
System Notice: You have unlocked a legendary achievement: Witness of the End!
Your title(s): World Traveler & The Sinful One has been upgraded to: Harbinger of the World’s End & The Unlucky One
“Oh great...new titles…”
For witnessing the end of a world and hastening its collapse, you have received the title: Angel of the Apocalypse
“And another one…”
“...”
There were no more notifications after that. Maria had been hoping that there was one about her quest’s completion and the option of returning home from this wretched place. Unfortunately, no such notifications came.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with these titles? It’s not going to save me from dying!!!”
Maria let loose a frustrated shout but the only thing she got in reply was more meteors dropping onto the planet.
She waited for a while and finally saw the planet’s moon burning up in the sky as it finally reached its intended destination.
“Well...here it is. This would be a great way to end the video. Me dying and witnessing the apocalypse of some other world.”
Maria sighed and slumped on her chair.
“...”
Behind her, a black portal opened up and Death’s Incarnation stepped out. It looked around for a moment before seeing Maria who was slumped on an earthen throne, gazing straight up at the sky.
“My Child.”
“!”
Hearing the familiar words, Maria whipped her head around and saw the familiar Death’s Incarnation just floating behind her with a black portal nearby.
“You finally came!”
“My Child, it is time. You have completed your quest. It is now time to return.”
“Let’s go, let’s go! I thought I was going to die here!”
“No Champion of mine can or will die,” the Incarnation uttered.
“Yeah, yeah.”
Maria passed by the incarnation and quickly stepped through the portal, disappearing from the mountain peak.
Death looked back on the dying planet and waited right until the moon smashed into the ground.
“...”
It stepped through the portal just before the shockwave passed through the mountain peak. The mountain was obliterated and thankfully, Maria wasn’t there to witness it.