The morning came before I even knew it. Well, assuming I could even call it a morning. Everything was still just as dark as before and the lack of shadows didn't change either. The only thing that did feel different was me. My fatigue was gone, but unfortunately, not the pain. All that running around non-stop made my legs feel the kilometers I'd put behind me.

I sat up on the mattress and stretched my back. Despite the questionable look of my "bed," it wasn't all that uncomfortable. At least I didn't wake up with a stiff neck. That would be a whole different problem. After a brief look around to remind me where exactly I am and what was happening, my eyes stopped on the makeshift splint on my finger. I didn't feel any pain, so I decided to take it off and see just how much damage I managed to accumulate during yesterday's training. To my surprise, however, my finger felt just fine. It wasn't bruised or swollen, and as far as I was able to tell, I could move it without any trouble. That did surprise me a little bit since I've never had an injury that would heal so perfectly over the night, but I was living in a remnant of the worlds I've created, along with several grim reapers as my neighbors. Anything could be possible here.

"It's your powers." I jumped when I heard a soft voice coming from behind me. That alone immediately sprung me onto my feet. I turned around. There, behind the mattress, was Uni, the massive worm-like Death whose insides were used as a storehouse, and who had the ability to be practically unseen, as long as nobody was specifically looking for him. That was also the reason I didn't notice him when I woke up. It still seemed rather strange though, given the fact that he was taking up quite a lot of space in the room. His slug-like body was practically squeezed into one of the corners.

"How long have you been standing there?!" I asked Uni and my voice jumped up a few tones.

"I was here the whole night," he answered with complete peace and tranquility, almost as if something like this was not weird in the slightest.

"What?! Why?!" I asked him, feeling a little bit disturbed by the lack of privacy.

"White asked me to look after you, just in case you would... Umm... You know, have bad dreams and such." I didn't trust him. Although it was quite hard to tell, due to his voice sounding as if somebody climbed into a massive metal bell and started talking there, there was something about his tone that made it seem like he wasn't telling me the whole truth. Did the Deaths have something they wanted to hide from me? Were they afraid of me? Well, answers to those questions were not important back then.

"Umm... alright. I am okay, as you can see."

"I know."

"So... shouldn't you go somewhere else?"

"Nah, I got nowhere else to be." At that point, our conversation pretty much ended. I didn't know what to say. After all, what kind of conversation topics can you use to break the ice between you and Death itself? The weather? There was no weather in this place to even begin with. His job? He lost that because of me. The situation was becoming more uncomfortable by the minute. Uni was just staring at me with unblinking eyes, not saying a single word himself.

*Say something, Eddie!

*It's an awkward silence. Oh boy, what do we do? What do we do?!

*Should I just excuse myself? Where to? Toilet? I don't know where those are.

*That would be so rude! You can't just walk away like that! He'd hate you!

*I can ask him for a direction to the bathroom! That would be good.

Before I even managed to take a breath and say something, Uni finally did it for me.

"I have been told to tell you that you should go to the center of the Council as soon as you feel like it. The bathroom is over there - the room on the left, without the roof in one of the corners. Get ready, and I'll wait outside." With those words, he disappeared into the ground, leaving behind only a tiny hole, which seemed too small to fit him, yet he somehow managed.

I headed off into the room Uni described. The moment I entered, I was rather surprised by the state it was in. What I found was a deep hole in the ground instead of the toilet and a well-known artifact from one of my worlds - the bottomless grail, working in place of a sink. Judging by the state this place was in, nobody used it in a long time. Maybe never at all. Yet, despite its terrible state, it had all I needed. I washed my face, arranged my hair into a shape that didn't look like the top of a freshly grown pineapple, and headed outside. Uni was already waiting for me. I waved at him, to which he responded with a wink, and we both headed back on the same road I took yesterday. I was slightly nervous about another meeting with the other Deaths. One could never know what to expect from them, plus I was sure that my "failure" during the training yesterday made them unhappy. The only question was how much.

Everyone was already waiting for us by the time we arrived, but it seemed that they were all busy with their own work, so our arrival went mostly unnoticed. The only one whose eyes we didn't manage to avoid was White.

"Eddie!" she shouted across the entire place and ran towards me. Only then did others lift their heads, but they still didn't seem to care too much. Some greeted me with a simple "sup" or "hey", or just nodded my way before returning to their business.

"Hi, Eddie! Did you sleep well? Oh! What about your finger? Is it alright? It sure looks like it." Immediately after her arrival, White was already showering me with words, but I was slowly getting used to that.

"Hi, White. Yeah, The bed was surprisingly soft, so I'm pretty well rested. And yeah, my finger... it seems fine for some reason. Almost as if I never fell in the first place. It's quite a miracle actually." As I responded, positivity filled my mind. It was hard to be pessimistic with a good sleep behind you and someone like White demanding your attention. She had that very special aura of happiness around her, which was rather contagious.

"Not a miracle, but a Divine Creativity. I think, that because you forgot about your injury, it healed itself overnight," Said a mysterious voice beside me. I looked to the side from where it was coming, and my eyes landed on Anci, who was now finally giving us his attention. Or... At least I think so. When it comes to the possessed dragon armor and a skull instead of a head, you can never know what exactly is he looking at. Both me and White gave him a confused look, caused mostly by his unsuspected addition to our conversation, rather than by what exactly he said. Still, the silent gaze probably gave him the wrong idea. "Sorry, I... didn't want to interrupt," he mumbled, turned around, and walked back to his table, on which he had prepared materials for the maintenance of the various weapons the Deaths used.

"Well, Anci could be right. What if you healed yourself? I'm not sure whether that's possible or not, or if somebody ever tried something like that before, but you're practically the god of this world, so you can do almost anything!"

"Don't boost his ego too much!" Another Death inserted themselves into our conversation. This time, it was Soul, who was carrying some boxes over to the middle area of the place. His human-like appearance was almost completely gone now. Right now, he looked more like an octopus made of black mist, supporting this large box sitting on his back. If he wasn't wearing his hood, I wouldn't even know where his face should be.

"We don't want him thinking he's all mighty and powerful, right? Look at me, dude. You are still mortal and not better than anyone. Remember that!" He tried to make the gesture that reminded me of that whole "I'm watching you" signal, where one points to his eyes with two fingers and then to the eyes of someone else, but thanks to his deformed appearance, it looked more like an alien who wants to call his home planet.

"Yeah, Soul is right. Even though I hate to admit it. You must still be careful when dealing with potential dangers, so don't let that whole new power get into your head, alright?" White lectured me.

"I won't, I promise. After all, it's not like I can use it in any meaningful way yet, so I wouldn't worry about that." Shortly after that, my mind went elsewhere. "So... what is everyone working on?" I asked, after noticing that the place seemed to be significantly busier than the day before.

"We are going on a mission. With you around, we can't waste any second waiting with our assault on Ifrit's base of operations," White explained to me.

"Hold on, we are going right now? But I'm not ready yet! And I don't even know who this Ifrit is!" The idea of facing the main villain so early on was immensely scary. After all, this wasn't fiction. The bad guy wouldn't just imprison me, explain his evil plan and then go mind his own business. No, he'd most definitely kill me on sight. I had to be ready for that, which at the time being, I most definitely wasn't.

"Don't worry, it's a bit more complicated than that." Another Death began explaining. It was the creepiest of them all - Beast and his blank white mask.

"Why don't you go for a walk White? I'll explain everything to him."

"Oh, okay. Take care, Eddie!" White smiled, waved at me, and left. I was alone with that creepy-looking Death. My eyes instinctively avoided me. Shivers ran all across my back, and I had to summon all my willpower to not twitch.

"Alright, here's the thing, we don't know how, but Ifrit's controlling flames around his base of operations, hidden in the depths of the city of Everstar. That place was the first one to be hit by the scorching flames of the apocalypse you unleashed. Somehow, the bastard of a wizard managed to use the flames to his advantage and formed a shield out of them around the entire city. If we were to just approach him, we'd get burned to crisp. Teleporting inside would also result in the same outcome. And since the fire is of a world-ending nature, it is refusing to disappear with just some normal countermeasures. Therefore, in order to take it down, we need a magical artifact. Something that can summon a lot of water or ice magic at once."

"Oh, there are lots of such items. I created various objects that could..."

"We know, and they won't work."

"Huh? Why not?"

"Because Ifrit knows about this weakness. He's been collecting these artifacts since the beginning pretty much. Right now, not a few remain. We only know of one, and maybe it is the last one even - a certain frost crystal. Even as we speak, Ifrit's people are moving in to find and retrieve it. Because of that, we cannot afford to wait."

This explanation did not ease my mind all that much. Maybe we weren't about to face the final villain yet, but his henchmen, should they be at least similarly strong as Marley, were terrifying on their own.

"So, where exactly is this frost crystal?"

"It's in Sunwalley. The exact location is unknown, so we have to be careful. Especially since we don't know if or where Ifrit's soldiers can be. Uni will go there first and scout the area for us. We'll search for it from the shadows, while you'll use your human-like appearance to blend in and look for it during the day, alright?" I nodded to confirm that I understand the instructions. Despite the clear plan and the Deaths watching my back, I still could not calm my racing heart.

Sunwalley was a little western town I wrote in one of my short novelettes a long time ago. What I hated about the place was the name. I misspelled it by accident and didn't notice it until my fans read it and started making fun of me. It was this very story that made me hire an editor, who'd help me find and correct any mistakes that might appear in my future texts. And even though the story wasn't so bad and it ended up being the lesson I needed, I still can't shake off the bitter feeling of that stupid mistake to this day.

Going to that place would definitely be dangerous, People who lived there were the most stereotypical scoundrels seen in most wild west movies. Everyone had a revolver and reflexes way faster than mine. One shot and I could be dead just like that. Alcohol was running through the place more than water, and the local law was pretty much non-existent, reduced only to a few mutually respected ground rules and recommendations. And this was a world where I was meant to survive.

...Wonderful.