Crash!

With nothing to soften my fall from the damned highest point that this entire city reached, my energy was simply too drained and my mind too confused to come up with any sort of action that would cushion my fall.

As my body crashed against the hard tiles of the stone floor of a foothold of the ancestral mountain, I could see the sharp bits of former tiles flying out in all directions as if my body turned into a peculiar shrapnel grenade.

Lying down on my back, I couldn't even be bothered with a huge wave of pain that blocked all my sensory tracks in my mind, still as confused as inspired by the events that I just saw happening when the end of the universe ended up giving birth to another one in my consciousness alone.

Was this entire world just a fraction of a higher being mind?

No, that wouldn't make any sense. While I was in the dying state back in the abyss of chaos, I was unable to even control the basic thing as the flow of time, despite how curious I was about all sorts of events that were happening inside the universe created in my mind.

Just the simple fact that I was brought to this word by an entity that proclaimed itself to be a God were enough to prove that either I was a failure of a God myself, or that being somehow managed to create a proper universe.

Thinking about this, I couldn't help but come back to the stuff that I already learned previously. If what I heard from the golem all the way back in the ancestral land of the first generation of refugees, or what I concluded from that new knowledge myself was true, then this world wasn't created by just a single god, but by an entire group that shared it between themselves as nothing but a grooming ground for their future slave warriors, fighting mindlessly for the cases of entities that didn't really care about them!

But while I couldn't help but immerse myself in my mental debate with my own self about the meaning of everything that I saw on the other side of the border of sanity, it wouldn't change the fact that after proclaiming that I was going to bring up the supremacy challenge up a notch, I ended up plummeting from the skies a few moments later and refusing to move!

Only after circulating the last bit of energy that remained within my core after my unconscious self burned it furiously in order to collect my consciousness back to its normal state, I felt my back-pain alleviating to a manageable degree.

It was at this moment that I realised that rather than everyone being simply dumbfounded and puzzled by the recent event, it was my perception of this world that changed!

As if everything slowed down, when I turned my head to the side, I could see how one of the random spectators of the challenge was tensing up his facial muscles, slowly pushing his lips open in order to let go a terrified scream or something.

Gnashing my teeth, I forced my body to move up. No matter what was going on around me, unless I would stand up, I had no means of even attempting to deal with it!

Millimetre by millimetre, my muscles forced my body to move, raising it from the huge pit that my fall created in formerly even ground. Yet even when I finally returned to a proper, standing position, the entire world around me seemed to move at just a fraction of the speed that it used to.

*Bonger, are you still with me, partner?*

The last time I stupidly put myself at the mercy of the abyss of chaos, Bonger had to shield my mind with its own health, paying the price of a few weeks of absence from my life only to heal back. Considering how short and even minuscule the first exposure of my mind to this lethal force was back then when compared to the recent events, I couldn't help but be worried.

"Somehow, I'm still in one piece. I gotta say, that was a wild ride! I can barely recognise who I have become after all those ages!"

Hearing my system response, I couldn't help but shrug as the wave of a bad premonition flooded my entire consciousness.

*Ages, what do you mean by ages? Don't tell me…*

As soon as I directed this mind message to Bonger, all the communication ended. With no means to do anything about my current situation, I had to just wait and hope that the apparent difference at which we perceived what was going on inside my head on the other side of the world's border wouldn't turn Bonger, my so far the most trusted ally in all my excursions, into a new enemy of sorts!

"Okay, I'm back."

Hearing this reply after what seemed like an eternity to me and looking at the speed of the change of expressions on all the faces of the crowd surrounding me, a fraction of a second for them, finally allowed me to calm myself down.

"In short words, your consciousness wasn't developed enough to sustain the burden of what happened. Due to how I'm a being made out of consciousness alone, I was capable of perceiving every single month like if it was a second while keeping the ability to slow the events to a real-time whenever I found something interesting… Speaking of which, I think you exhausted the number of curses that could go your way after all the wars and losses all sorts of beings experienced, Mister failure of a god!"

Even this casual poking holes at my self-esteem felt nice after this long period of uncertainty for me. Just like one wouldn't take friendly banter during a party for an insult, I was unable to consider Bonger's words as nothing but ironic nitpicking.

"As for your current state… just give me a moment."

As if something clicked, the reality suddenly regained its usual momentum. All at once, people started screaming, crying, some jumped away, some fallen to their knees. Amidst all the chaos that transpired when my body suddenly slammed against the ground raising a cloud of dust, only for everyone to see me standing as if nothing has happened when this fog of war cleared out, only Monica remained calm.

Yet just a single look at her face when I found her staring at me from a nearby elevated platform was enough to tell me that under this fake mask, she was just as stupified as everyone else.

"Everyone, calm down!"

Suddenly shouting, even I was surprised when just my voice was enough to bring this entire crowd back to their normal selves. Maybe killing all those fake ancestors of theirs buffed me with some kind of undefined aura that made them follow my orders? Yet no matter how diligently I scanned my own body or looked through my postal tool, I couldn't find anything that would confirm this guess!

"I have both bad and good news for you. Starting with the bad ones… The people that you considered to be your ancestors, your caretakers and helpers… Were in fact a bunch of strong cultivators send from the continent to control you and stop any of you from ever reaching a point where you could pose any threat to those fuckers on the continent!"

Despite shouting those words with the same tone and intention as before, this time my sentences didn't make the crowd react as I expected them to be. Maybe due to the bait of hope that I pushed at them when claiming that I had some good news as well, maybe due to fact that it was only in human nature no matter the world to wait for the entire news to finish before forming any real thought about their content.

"As for the good news…"

Sensing that this was my opportunity to make a great impression on everyone and at last, get my hands on those sweet sweet books and scrolls that would hopefully turn my wisdom visions even more wholesome, I made sure to bank on the opportunity. Only when this pause created enough tension to make me capable of pulling a knife and cutting the tensed air with it, did I finished my last sentence.

"I KILLED THEM ALL!"