1 Chapter 1. The World where darkness rules

"Where am I?"

I rubbed my eyes and opened them, noticing the endless darkness around me. I stood up and wandered in a random direction. I walked. I walked. I walked in the knee-high water for a long time, couldn't find an exit to escape this endless darkness.

Suddenly a violet-colored light illuminated around 15 meters in front of me. I was overjoyed by the thought the source of the light might be an exit.

I run to it. But the sight of the source of the light was not an exit but a scythe-like weapon. I stared at the scythe, noticing words that were written on it.

"World where darkness rules." I said the phrase that was written on the scythe out loud.

Right after I said the phrase, the endless darkness around me disappeared as it had never been here, to begin with.

After the darkness disappeared, I turned my head and took a good look at the surroundings.

The place has had no roof nor walls. It had only a flat floor. Other than a floor, everything seemed to be an endless void where there is only nothingness.

But suddenly the floor below me disappeared making me fall. I fell. I was falling. And I was falling for almost half an hour before I saw another floor below me. I was going to crash to it at high speed as I was falling at high speed. I closed my eyes and readied myself for a crash.

***

But I never crashed. I woke up from that realistic dream and found myself in the forest.

The forest was oak-brown. I looked up to the sky. I was in awe of the size and majesty of the trees. They were hoary fortresses and stood proudly. The forest's smell was fresh and organic.

After appreciating the sight of the forest I noticed the area around me. The area around me was making my heart shiver. Unlike the beautiful forest, the area surrounded me had many fallen trees and destroyed ground. This place was like a black spot on precious white clothes.

But I didn't have time to think about what happened here and just wandered in a random direction.

I walked while listening to the orchestra of the birdsong and soothed by the gentle breezes.

***

It has already been a week since I woke up in the forest. I was still wandering in the majestic forest before I heard a crunching voice from behind followed by a loud growl.

I subconsciously looked back. It was a big bear. The bear was truly big, easily surpassing the polar bear. It was almost 3 meters high although it was on all four. Though it had mostly brown furs, the fur around the neck area was reddish.

It looked at me with its small black eyes with a hint of killing intent and bellowed out a fearsome roar.

As soon as this happened, shivers went through my spine, and my mind screamed a single word. RUN, this word was the only word that came to my mind after I heard that fearsome bellow.

I didn't think twice before running away from it. I run. I run while hearing the sound of the predator's feet coming closer little by little. Even though I run with all my might, it wasn't long after the bear caught up with me.

Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain on my right side and flew to the left. I flew around 3 meters before crashing the tree. Luckily or not, I hit the tree with me back.

"Puackk." I spit out a mouthful of blood and stood up with lots of struggle. I tried to run. But I couldn't. I had reached my limit.

While I was trying to run, the bear was slowly coming closer. It was coming closer not fearing its prey to run away. It knew its prey had no chance and with the last strike, the prey had almost died.

It wasn't long after I collapsed and sat on the ground, with my back leaned against the tree. I looked at the incoming bear.

Bear soon was in front of me ready for its next and last strike. It lifted its frontal leg and stroke down at high speed.

As I saw the incoming strike, a strange thought came to my mind. As the words came to my mind, I said them out loud and readied myself with the incoming slap.

"World where darkness rules."

I closed my eyes, clenched my teeth, and put both my hands on my right side, used all of my strength to strengthen the defense, ready to receive a deadly blow.

But the fatal blow never came. I opened my left eye to see why the blow was late, noticing the strange black shield between me and the bear. I didn't have time to figure out what the shield was as a bear attacked from the other side. Fortunately, this too had been blocked by the black shield. Luckily this time I managed to see where the shield was coming from. The shield was materializing out from the shadow below me.

Seeing its attacks had been blocked by the strange shields, the bear once again let out its fearsome roar once again. It's that only had a hint of killing intent was now fully enraged.

It attacked once again just to get blocked by the shield. After it's futile attack it barraged with a wave of slaps.

While the bear was slapping like crazy, I on the other hand was thinking about the shields. The shields were made out of the shadow and shadow was the first word that would come to one's mind when one thought about the darkness. And the sentence that was written on the scythe, which I said out loud had the word DARKNESS in it. This means this shadow controlling ability, more specifically the ability that manipulates darkness itself would be mine. No, it might be the ability of the scythe. Or not. Either way, that dream must have connections with this.

I thought for a while about my dream, the scythe and what can I do with this ability. I thought visualizing might be the way since I couldn't always talk to shadow.

After that, I looked at the bear. The bear was still slapping the shields, but shields didn't seem like took damage from its attacks.

I tried to visualize a rope like a thing that will restrict the bear's movement. Suddenly, a shadow below the bear materialized into tentacle-like things and wrapped itself around the bear's four limbs, core, and neck, and forced the bear to glue with the ground.

The bear who didn't understand what was happening looked at its so-called prey with the ferocious look in its little bead-like black eyes. But its eyes now had a hint of fear. He was afraid of the black things, not the man in front of him.

I looked at the bear and visualized a big sword I top the bear's reddish furred area which was its neck. Soon sword descended at high speed and detached the bear's head from its body completely.

"World where darkness rules, huh." I exclaimed while looking at the movement less corpse of the bear. I didn't feel sorry for it neither I felt guilty. Since if it wasn't it would have been me. Also, it was the unwritten rule of the world, strong survive, weak dies.