Darkness

Darkness! Many worlds had been thrust into a sudden darkness.

The sun in the World of Gods was the core of many planes, and it was undoubtedly essential to the growth of many beings. Days after Leylin devoured it temperatures had plummeted down to 0 degrees in the various planes. The frigid cold seeped through the worlds, affecting the prime material plane greatest of all.

Without the radiance of the sun, life had entered a standstill. The gods lost a powerful source of energy, and were rendered unable to bring more worshippers into their divine kingdom. The survivors of the prime material plane would come to call this period the Dark Ages, a time ruled by death and solitude, famine and plague, a generation where all hope was lost.

Three days after the sun was devoured the prime material plane had turned into an icy hell. Large areas of growth withered within the month, dying without sunlight to nurture them. All food supplies were depleted by the year, as famine struck the world.

However, even the weakest and smallest of lives were astonishingly resilient. The creatures of the prime material plane were like cockroaches in the darkness, eking out an existence even as civilisation was replaced by savagery. Even the beloved humans turned into barbarians.

Year 5 of the Dark Ages, where Faulen Island had been located in the past.

A portal opened up from Baator, and Leylin’s figure stepped out. Although this was just a clone, the might of a being of law was still enough to shake the lands.

“It’s already become like this?” His mind scanned his family’s lands in but a moment. The pearl of the south was now filled with death, the grey limestone walls dusty and about to break. Skeletons littered the ground, with absolutely no traces of human life in the vicinity. Even other creatures were few and far between.

*Chirp!* Several black figures scrambled out of a pile of bones, blinking their large green eyes. Their pupils were like two jade flames in the darkness as they looked around and hurriedly left the area.

“Rats?” Leylin expressed kindness and gentility to such weak creatures that would never be able to harm him. If not, a tiny bit of his Magus radiation would kill all life here.

“Adaptation to the environment is necessary, huh?” Leylin recorded the figures of those rats in his A.I. Chip. They were ten times as large as they were before the Dark Ages, the fur changing colour from black to more grey as it grew thicker to keep them warm.

“The mutation is too fast… just a few years. Is this happening under the influence of the laws in the world? The Overgod is still unwilling to see the prime material plane perish just like that…” Leylin sighed.

Evolution normally required tens or even hundreds of thousands of years, determined by the natural environment of the creature. However, even though it was sleeping, the World Will could bring about such changes much faster, giving the inhabitants of the world a chance to adapt to their surroundings. As the rats scurried away, the change was now more evident than before.

“So the animals had their genetics adjusted to the environment… But the humans seem to be a little bit slower…” The island told Leylin enough to extrapolate to the current situation of the world. “The gods are paying more attention, it seems like they still want to migrate their worshippers…”

Leylin’s motive of devouring the sun wasn’t just to destroy the prime material plane. The World of Gods had a unique system of laws to it, in which the sun had played an extremely important part. Its loss was like a building losing its foundation, causing many mysterious changes like the shift of spacetime coordinates.

This affected the divine kingdoms as well. The gods fumbled to find the new coordinates of their divine kingdoms, unable to attend to the changes in the prime material plane. It had taken them years to regain their bearing, stabilising their own camps in the prime material plane before beginning to launch a counterattack.

Leylin’s clone came to the prime material plane under such circumstances, exploring the changes caused by the Dark Ages and the influence of the gods on the land.

“Desolate… Incomparably desolate…” The clone retracted all the radiance of its aura, looking just like a regular wizard as he made his way towards the continent.

Even the depths of the ocean had few creatures now. Even as the perpetrator, Leylin released a sigh as he saw these circumstances. Of course, there was a limit to his sympathy, it wasn’t like he’d make a different decision if the events played out the same way. The only good gods to the Magi were those who’d fallen, so they would take all measures to weaken their opponents.

……

The disorderly survivors in the mainland were unaware of the events in the southern seas, and even if they did they wouldn’t care one bit. Right now, they’d already grown completely numb to everything.

Surviving and fighting were their only concerns, civilisation forgotten as savagery took its place. The glory of the prime material plane was gone in a mere few years, onle leaving behind zombies in its wake.

“I’m going out!” Doron gripped the jacket and leather armour on his body. The dirty leather gave off a putrid stench, filled with traces of blood. However, despite the number of patches on it, he hugged his buffed jacket tightly, giving him a bit of warmth in the frigid cold.

“Come back safely!” a voice sounded from the short room behind him, a pair of beautiful eyes in the doorway. The eyes seemed to fill his body with vigour and strength, making him forget all regrets as he left the hut and strode forward.

The icy winds whistled, the walls of the city encased in a layer of ice that caused Doron’s memories to switch to his warm hut. However, the hunger he felt right now reminded him of something; it wasn’t just himself, the lady waiting for him back home would die of hunger if he couldn’t find anything.

“Damn it!” Doron cursed, clenching the only valuable item he owned, a gleaming sword, and walking forward.

He’d been living this life ever since the Dark Ages, thinking many times that this was only a nightmare. However, this nightmare was so long it caused him to weep.

He’d only found the secret of the bugs by chance back in that camp, being able to escape because he was at the edge of the mob. He’d conveniently helped himself to a dead paladin’s sword then, the same sword that was now his treasure.

However, all of his luck had been used up in his escape. There was still plenty of food. Even if crops couldn’t be grown anymore, they already had abundant harvests. He’d roamed through an empty village, using its resources to feed himself for over a month.

However, those days did not last. Food ran out, plague spread once more, and the bugs stole the lives of the people. He tried to join several mercenary groups, but he couldn’t last for more than a month. Either the plague or the hunger took them every time, leaving him alone behind. The bugs had gotten smarter as well, attacking the humans in groups.

What terrified him was that those green Lightkiller Bugs were the lowest life forms of the beasts. Their strength had grown continuously over the years, and Doron had met one the height of a two-storey building already. It seemed like a massive red bug that crunched a paladin in one of his parties into two pieces. Several close shaves with death later, Doron had settled himself in this area.

He looked around once more in caution. This place was a normal gathering point, seeming like an extremely large refugee camp, but there were specialities to it. The walls were extremely thick, and windows were small or nonexistent. Spears were laid around the circumference, making it look like a small fortress.

After the survivors had escaped from the first onslaught of the bugs, they had depended on these defences. Some of the huts even had bloodstains of the bugs on their roofs.

A distant warhorn sounded at this moment, and more warriors walked out of their rooms and converged into a large army. The atmosphere grew stifling, and all that could be heard was the cries of the women.

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