“With the world in their hands, humans began to spread their glorious civility to barbarian peoples in exchange for natural resources and labor: they restructured inferior societies in a militaristic way, murdered their gods and transformed their corpses into batteries for the great metropolises, standardized language, art, architecture, magic and science.

  Despite their infinite compassion, however, many foreign barbarians proved unwilling to accept human civility and genius and rebelled.

  A species of unicellular beings that formed sapient amorphous colonies resisted the implementation of re-education laws for new generations, using the excuse that they all shared the same consciousness due to their reproduction via mitosis. They were, appropriately, evaporated, and their remains were transformed into grease for the lubrication of the machines that then operated inside their most sacred temples, extinct.

  Another species outrageously tried to trade their 'freedom' for knowledge of the Dome above our heads and the Ink beyond, as if civilization were a prison. As punishment, humans forced them into a eugenics plan, since their bodies were composed of beautiful crystals in order to grow only the most beautiful gems, and harvested the precious stones from their organs and bones.

  Yet another species possessed the secret of immortality, but selfishly refused to share it with their masters. Hundreds of billions had been invested in research into the eternal life that this species possessed, including even the power of resurrection, but no satisfactory results had been obtained. Even the 'saints' who resurrected their compatriots remained silent no matter what kind of torture was applied to them. It was then determined that it was impossible to use any form of primitive knowledge of these beings to achieve the goal of eternal life, and the courts held them accountable for the public expense of justice, their sentence being that the last member of the 'saints' capable of bringing people back to life would execute all eighty million members of his species with his own hands. Before the 'saint' was executed and his species officially declared extinct, he even had the audacity to say that all along he had been quite capable of making humans immortal like his compatriots, but his entire species refused to do so in order to rid the Sphere of the 'human evil', ridiculously.

  It is true, human empires found themselves in a Golden Age, their metropolises stretching vertically in towers so tall that the path of the sun had to be altered every day by powerful spells to prevent it from melting the structures, and the ancient war forts found themselves transformed into palaces so majestic that when the winds carried mere descriptions of such buildings to distant lands, mountains and valleys grew legs and exiled themselves, nature ashamed at now finding itself overshadowed by human architecture.

  However, the conquered nations also benefited: countries that were previously of little importance and population saw their entire territories turned into monocultures of black tea, or nutmeg, or ginger; lands of barbarians who dedicated themselves to seeking answers to questions that humans had long since answered, so they worked in more than five hundred thousand fashion accessory factories. And with the money they made from the work offered by humans, they never went hungry (with a few negligible exceptions), because they could buy food grown in still other colonies of the empire that supervised them.

  Indeed, a Golden Age, prosperous and peaceful for the entire sphere.

  But peace and prosperity were not enough for some. And in failing to realize this, humans made their one true mistake...

  They turned against each other.”

  - Excerpt from the book Comprehensive Guide to the History of álfheim, by Elarico Milemario Saudoso.

  ?

  — But-! — Vincente looked wary, looking between his friend and the Hero's group.

  — Trust me — Cruz, now wearing an angry lion mask, calmed him down. — Just carry the coffins to Haicard, he must have a plan for this situation too.

  — Hero...! — Mariah frowned, watching the masked Rogue and an ogre descend the stairs at the end of the tomb chamber, both with an iron coffin on each shoulder.

  — I know — Veronico discovered the location of the little rebel when he returned to Thaw Lake City and questioned the sailors who took his enemy to a place near another portal, and during the trip, wondering why the greatest enemies of all elves were heading to the heart of the Sangria Desert, with his friends he came to the conclusion that they planned to resurrect the Shadow Kings of old.

  The situation was so serious as it could be in the eyes of my champion. But he still hesitated to advance carelessly, after all, his Attributes had been reduced by almost 80%, a drop so drastic that Veronico had to give up part of his power to his friends so that they could accompany him.

  The ghosts, the storm, and the absurdly large mountains were effective in keeping the invaders out, but when I created that toy box, I also needed a method to discourage those inside from escaping, after all. And the one that proved most effective was taking back the power I lent them as they approached the borders of their tiny continent.

  — Let's deal with this side first, and then go after the others as quickly as possible! — Veronico decided as a precaution.

  — Oh? And are you even capable of that? — Cruz questioned, sweating coldly behind his mask.

  — Don't let yourselves be shaken! They're just trying to buy time! — Veronico finally got one of his assumptions right. — All together, let's go! — He jumped towards his opponent, leading the assault.

  “Vush!”, the Hero dodged a fist that missed his face by a hair's breadth, but which would undoubtedly have caused some damage if it had reached him.

  His response was swift and direct: he swung his holy sword at Cruz, but the Fallen Hero avoided the counterattack with equal smoothness.

  He couldn't respond so smoothly, however, to the subsequent sparkling snowy energy that emanated from the blade.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  — Tch — Cruz clicked his tongue, barely escaping the attack, his simple linen shirt cut off at the chest.

  — Up here, you idiot! — Landa plummeted from the ceiling he had been running headfirst onto, her stiletto daggers poised to pierce her enemy’s eyes.

  — Aura Geyser! — Cruz used a magical protection on himself, emanating a powerful wave of energy from his body that, as the name of the spell suggested, violently pushed the rogue away.

  — Glowing Serpent! — Saul produced a fiery serpent whose fire was unaffected by the effect of his opponent’s Skill.

  But a direct punch from the masked man was enough to completely destroy the creature, its skin not even touching the magical flames, just the wind moved by the attack being enough to extinguish the Spell.

  Honestly, I shouldn't have gotten used to those people shouting so much, announcing their attacks all the time.

  The matchup was far from one in which Cruz could relax, however.

  — Kugh! — Having almost lost the arm that had thrown the punch at Veronico's holy sword, the Fallen Hero was forced to retreat quickly, getting dangerously close to the spiral staircase that Vincente had not yet finished descending.

  And unfortunately for Cruz, the little rebel had already frustrated the Hero enough that he didn't hesitate to take advantage of any opening that was presented to him; due to his alien nature, he sensed that there was something wrong with his new Mission, and he suffered from a bad feeling that he couldn't shake. Ignorant of the fact that his discomfort was due to having his story derailed, he ground the air in front of him with his pure white weapon, forcing Cruz almost to the first step of the staircase.

  — Get behind me!

  A wave of black energy, shadow made physical, broke against a barrier of warm sunlight. Cruz had drawn his still-sheathed sword, and wielded it (albeit with its leather protection) for the first time in decades against the natural disaster that Veronico was bringing down upon him.

  — H-He's strong. If that dark energy hits us, I don't know if I'll be able to heal our wounds — Mariah kept the barrier standing.

  But the truth was that Cruz was already quite close to his limit, the old man no longer had as much magical stamina as he used to, and those displays were little more than bluffs that he could sustain for a few minutes: soon, the shadows seemed to evaporate, and everything they touched showed itself significantly deteriorated; the elven skeletons turned to dust, the metal coffins rusted into crumbling piles of orange, and even the statues and steps of the tomb cracked, fragmented, and lost their details.

  — ...Aren't you going to draw that sword? — Veronico questioned, full of suspicion.

  —That's enough to deal with brats like you — he lied.

  Veronico hesitated, asking himself a million relevant questions, but when he felt something tapping at his feet...

  — W-What's going on?! — Following with his eyes the liquid that had stained his boot, he noticed that the coffins that contained multiple generations of Shadow Kings were leaking blood from secret holes in the mouths and eyes of the creatures that decorated the beds of the dead.

  — I don't know, but it can't be something good — Saulo was right, Veronico knew.

  Blood was running down the railing at the feet of the statues that lined the staircase to the lower floor.

  — Let's finish off this Face once and for all! Don't mind me! — Veronico ordered. — Favor! — He conjured the same sacred light from his weapon over his entire body and shot towards the enemy that was impeding his progress.

  — Favor Defy — Cruz tried to conjure the same effect, but I made a slight modification to the name only, and the old man's body found itself covered in shadows.

  As the Hero and the Fallen Hero came within an arm's length of each other, their weapons moved in a blur before the eyes of those present, thrusting, slashing, and tearing at everything between and around their attackers: the heavy marble floor had been so badly cut that it had not only been reduced to powder, but the intense friction in such a short space of time had melted the rock and set the air ablaze.

  — Fearsome, Terrifying Storm! — Saul produced a storm cloud right over the duelists and, without hesitation, allowed his strongest attack to fall upon both swordsmen: he rained down electric arcs, each powerful enough to transmute the lead of the guardian statues of the staircase into gold, and he made thousands of them in mere seconds.

  Both Veronico and Cruz, however, just danced between one lightning bolt and another, avoiding each of the countless magical attacks without stopping brandishing their weapons for even a second.

  But there were even more members to the Heroic group:

  — Die! — Landa appeared behind Cruz in a cloud of smoke in the space between one lightning bolt and the next, and continued to stab him in the back hundreds of times with daggers bathed in sunlight. And there were still a dozen more copies of the Rogue surrounding the masked enemy doing exactly the same.

  The stiletto daggers might as well have been hitting concrete blocks, though, as the layer of shadows over Cruz's body absorbed most of the attacks.

  — Lion! — a voice echoed down the stairs and through the railings at the feet of the statues, and Cruz did not hesitate to charge his energy almost completely around his sheathed sword, and throw it against the ground.

  The resulting explosion not only pierced the floor all the way to the lower level, but threw the Heroic group off balance enough for Cruz to leap from rubble to rubble while still in freefall, and break through his attackers' offensive line.

  Veronico could chase the masked man ahead of his companions, but it was clear that whatever the Shadow King wanted to achieve had already been achieved, and he was reluctant to do so.

  — Are you guys okay? — my champion asked, landing. Confirming that he was, he hurried: — Let's go after him, then!

  They didn't have to run for long: after a series of statues representing the ancient deities of that continent, they reached the portal room designed by me, and came across a ring of molten metal moving quickly in circles, and framing a greenish, toxic landscape, somewhere in the distance.

  — HAICARD! — Veronico shouted to the little rebel who was staring at him from the other side of the portal, at the edge of a jade-colored rock canyon facing a sea of ??equally greenish magma. — Raagh! — He threw a projectile at his rival, but it was too late.

  The ring had lost its reddish shine and speed, and by the time the light projectile hit it, it was once again just a pile of molten metal leading nowhere.

  — Damn it! — Veronico stabbed his sword into the ground, gritting his teeth. He failed once again. It had been so many years since he had felt that way that unpleasant images from a past life crossed his mind. Echoes of the last things he had seen, felt, thought. Without an opponent in front of him, he fought with himself to keep his composure. — ...Where did they go, Saulo? Can you reactivate the portal?

  — N-Not this one. It used the blood of the Shadow Kings as fuel, it won't work without more of this — the wizard spoke the truth, but omitted a very important piece of information. The fact that the suspicions that had been growing in his heart had taken root, and these had thorns.

  At that point, there was already speculation about the death of Celestino, his master, throughout the continent, but the truth was that the old man had simply disappeared, and now Saulo found himself facing an opponent who knew how to operate divine portals, something that only he and his master should know how to do. He rejected the most logical conclusion.

  — Can you at least track them? — the Hero wanted to know.

  — A-Ah, yes, just a moment — Saulo pointed his hands at the still-hot metal. — They went... Down? Huh? A-A week's march straight underground?! The only thing I can imagine existing that deep would be Hell itself! — Saulo commented, intending to make an exaggerated comparison.

  But soon everyone realized that this was no exaggeration at all.

  ?

  “Veronico. The name of the new Shadow King, as well as his elven identity, has been leaked. Vigilantes have ravaged his village. There are no survivors.

  - Princess Criscina.”

  “...

  - Hero Veronico.”