Center of the dead zone

I had been travelling with Alissa and her platoon of knights for a few hours. We barely came across any monsters as we kept going which worried everyone.

"You guys look worried."

"There should be a lot of monsters but there's none. Maybe someone killed a bunch of those monsters." Alissa answered.

"That is worrying." I sighed. I wasn't exactly physically tired but mentally, it was a different story. I wondered what kind of monster it would be but we noticed a woman all by herself sitting on a wooden log. She had fancy clothes on, like a fur-coat with what seemed like embroidery made of gold threads. She looked at our direction and softly smiled at us.

Her eyes stuck out the most because of her star-like pupils.

The knights got in formation.

"Identify yourself!"

"Me? Oh my! My deepest apologies. If that isn't princess Alissa." She stood up and slightly bowed. "I'm Sapphire. An ascendant."

"An ascendant?" A knight questioned but I charged at her mindlessly with murderous intent. Something just took over in the moment she introduced herself as an ascendant. Everything in this world, I hate now. That worthless king who summoned us, those friends and lovers who believed lies over me and those regulators who took me to other side and made me learn about the truth of this world and those Gods too. Everything... I want things to go back. I wish I could turn back time, maybe I could've done things differently. Maybe I would've relied on my friends a bit more... maybe I could've been less reserved. Maybe I could've been happier.

She easily kicked me away, sending me flying into the ground. It hurt so bad... I coughed up some blood and tried standing up but ended up fainting.

…

I woke up after however long. All alone in middle of the forest. Where are those knights and Alissa? Tch... they probably ditched me. Even the regulator was gone. I don't think Sapphire and Alissa would get along well whatsoever. They both know the truth yet they didn't react the same. While regulators wants to start anew in a literal sense, Alissa wants to renew the relationship between two sides. End result is the same: Peace.

Who cares?

I stood up and checked my status. I was almost at 10% HP so I needed to heal a lot. I never cared much about my healing magic so it would take a while before I'm ready to go, so I put on a shield and sat on the ground waiting for healing magic to finish its job.

I would've preferred to stay out of all of it but given my title, I can't exactly ignore it all. I should choose a side otherwise it would become an issue. Regulators want to destroy the entire world and erase the existence of gods and restart the world, both sides of the world hate each other and wants domination over the other, Alissa wants peace... corruption because of religion might make the war unpredictable. Gods never mentioned the existence of other side and only asked me to deal with human side of the world which now makes sense since gods gave humans their domination over other species. I can't rule out the possibility that those four won't descend from the heavens in case war does break lose.

Should I side with humans since I, too, am a human? But then again, the other side was wronged in past by those humans and gods... Regulators aren't siding with either since they want everyone to die.

I stood up and looked around the place. I decided to move around a bit and see where I am. If what Alissa told was true then there might be a way back from here. As I moved towards the center of the dead zone, stronger enemies started emerging but somehow lower in number. They were significantly stronger, around level 50, so I had to be careful. As I kept walking in an uncertain direction, enemies levels started going up which made me believe that I was on the right path at least. I avoided fighting most of the monsters to preserve my energy in case things went south with my classmates but then I was ambushed by a monster. It was a spider larger than a car bearing its fangs threatening me when it charged towards my using both of its forelimbs to breakthrough my shield and it managed to shatter the shield and stab me in my shoulders and tried biting into me when I was water lotus to thrust it away from me. It worked to a degree and I started running away in fear that I would die against this monster. It easily caught up to me and tried biting me but I activated my shield again. It couldn't do it this time maybe because it had exhausted itself? I didn't know but I had learned one fact: I can't outrun it. I have no option but to fight. It took some steps back and thrusted its legs into the ground to charge up some sort of attack. My instincts made me run as far away as I could and I barely dodged a geyser but made of electric current. It could've easily killed me instantly.

This monster is a electro magic user, so, I can't electrocute it like I did with the king of dead zone. I activated my shield and started healing myself while thinking about how to defeat it. There has to be some way, right?

It started charging towards me again but this time I jumped out of the way and it kept going in the same direction. So, once charging, it can't change its path at all.

I used earth magic to create a wall with spikes. My idea was to make it run into the wall and get impaled by all the spikes but my plan failed miserably when it charged into the wall but the spikes were unable to penetrate its skin.

It impaled the ground again and started charging its attack again when I noticed a glowing area in its body had become exposed. I created a spike and threw it on the spot making the spider fall down completely paralyzed. BINGO! That's the weak spot. I quickly towards it and started using fire magic to heat up the body. I kept checking its HP which so far had only gone from 11,729 to 9,871. I had to make the most use out of this time. Once the body was done heating up to the point where it had started giving off steam, I used water lotus to immediately lower the body temperature making its HP go down below 7,000. It stood up again but this time had 'Ferocity'.

Wait- what does- Before I could even process the situation, it had already stabbed me in the stomach. I quickly casted heal and pushed its limb out of me. I fell onto ground coughing up blood but I felt no pain. Maybe my body had gone numb or my brain had stopped processing pain in order to protect itself but I just laid there completely helpless and vulnerable.

Death won't do it... those gods won't let me die... I activated my shield and applied heal on it to allow my body some time to heal again.

New ability unlocked: Song of tempest.

Healing will do wind elemental damage every 2 seconds

New ability unlocked: Mirror of Honesty

The user can fly and will readily absorb the elemental energy of enemies adding benefits while using the ability.

Fire: Increases speed while in flight.

Water: Increases the range of magic attacks.

Wind: Decreases stamina consumption while in flight.

Ice: Increases attack and defense by 20% each.

Electro: Creates three balls of lighting that intersects oncoming projectiles

Nature: Continuously heals the user while in flight.

*At a time, only two of the abilities can be active and user has to land before changing the elements on the Mirror.

<Level: 40 reached!>

Somehow I gained a level. I stood up with better healing and smirked at the spider. I'm nowhere near as strong but if I can continuously use healing magic without consuming my stamina then why shouldn't I?

I relaxed my body and started hovering in the air while a round mirror appeared behind me. The mirror was split in half with each side having three spikes. It looked like it was made of corroded silver since it was more on black side in color but not entirely. I shot a normal nature magic up in the air to allow it to hit me. It did and one side of the mirror started glowing green. A ring appeared around me as well which seemed to be healing me but as the spider tried attacking me, the ring caused fire damage to the spider.

I was still not sure if I could win against it because of its speed but I could at least run away now.

I was about to fly away but it pounced at me causing me to fall back on ground. I created ice and water and hit myself with those weapons as I few up which increased my range and my stats simultaneously. I charged up a wind attack shot it at the spider making its HP go down by a whopping 2,921. I did another attack and it went down by same number meaning this was now my attack stat. I was at less than half the HP only a few minutes after it had almost killed me. Flight definitely is helping a lot, additionally, I was never too weak. It was the speed of this spider that had overwhelmed me on top of already being overwhelmed by this world and people.

Now I had a much clearer vision.

Die.

I raised my hand and created a massive cube using earth magic and dropped it only the spider. It somehow managed to escape but then I created yet another cube and tossed it at the spider with much greater velocity. The second blow did its job.

I kept flying in the same direction but after a few minutes I fell down. Maybe there is a limit to how long I can fly. I sighed and started walking when I reached a grassland with a single tree in the center. It shined deep rest with light emerging from it shooting upwards. As my eyes followed the trajectory of the light, it landed on the hole in the sky. It looked beautiful yet I felt a sense of doom as I saw the tear in the sky.

As I started walking towards the tree, a door appeared in front of me. Me being a naïve outlander, I entered the door and it closed shut behind me as I continued walking through dark hallway with light at the end. Once I entered the lit area, a voice echoed and it spoke: ent'r, thee, who is't abandon all.

I was standing in front of a staircase leading upwards. I think other side is on the end of the staircase.

How wrong I was. I had entered 'Assembly of the forbidden.'