As he tried to gather energy in his hand, black particles began to converge in his palm. Issac could see these particles with his eyes; the only reason he could see them in the shadow was that these black particles had a Persian blue outer glow. They felt serene yet empty.

  The particles kept on converging into a blob which kept pulsating irregularly. He heard another notification but decided to ignore it since he needed all the focus he could muster. The blob kept on becoming bigger, and as it touched Issac’s skin, it felt slimier.

  The blob finally began to take shape as it grew to more than arm’s length. It had a long curved handle and an almost triangular blade on its head. The Night Blade had solidified into a fire axe. Issac clutched the handle and began panting. The skill was stable and didn’t show any signs of struggling. At least now he knew that this skill only consumed mana once and didn’t do so every second.

  He looked at the blade in his hand with a frown. He felt like Nyx was playing a prank on him by giving him a fire axe, and if so, he wasn’t laughing.

  “Well, it’s not like I can complain to her,” he grumbled to himself. He looked down at the axe again. Despite being pitch black with a blue outer glow like the mana particles it was made of, he could still vaguely feel the smooth wooden finish as though it was real. The axe was getting increasingly translucent by the second, so he just opened his hands, and the axe vanished. He did not want to hold that axe again. It filled his mind with unpleasant memories.

  But he immediately sighed afterward. Even if he didn’t want to, he’d still have to. In a situation like this, he had to use everything at his disposal. There was still danger running amuck in this forest. He wasn’t out of the woods just yet, quite literally.

  He remembered that he got a notification mid-conjuration. So, he turned his head to the screen floating in his periphery. The screen had only one line.

  “Abundance?” he looked around. He was sitting under a shadow, but that was enough to gather an abundance of dark mana. He sighed and decided, “I should really take a look at my blessing….”

  He pulled up his status screen and clicked on his blessing. Just like all the other times, a holographic screen with a wall of text floated in front of him.

  “What the fuck?” Issac exclaimed. This status screen had so many problems that he did not know where to begin. He read the screen again and tried to gather his thoughts.

  “This is Nyx talking to me? She must’ve left this message in her blessing. Alright, one by one, Issac. Let’s figure this out. One, she knew I was part-demon? Why didn’t she tell me? Two, since when did Goddesses use emoticons? Three, what the hell is True Dark? Four, why do these effects make it sound like I’m a vampire? Five, ‘unconcentrated Sunne’s Light’? What even is that? Sunlight? Then what’s the unconcentrated part about? Six, ‘what is beyond the world?’ How do I go about answering this…?”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Issac could feel his head hurt with these confusing questions. He decided to tackle them one by one and in order.

  “One, don’t know. Best guess would be she wanted me to escape before I fell to 『Malice』. And for that to happen, I had to be found out. And knowing me, if she had told me beforehand, I would’ve tried talking my way out.

  Two, probably one of the previous heroes taught the goddesses about emoticons? I mean, no one taught her directly since she hasn’t come face to face with anyone in centuries. So, Nyx probably learned it from her fellow gods.

  Three, I’ll get back to this one after six. Four, I probably am not a vampire. At least I don’t crave blood. Five, I remember Ray’s blessing of having something with Sunne. Are concentrated light rays related to his skills?

  Six, ‘what is beyond the world?’ Since she specifically said ‘otherworlder,’ I probably have to apply Earth logic. World, world, world, what is that used for? What is ‘our’ world? Is it our loved ones, experience, or a combination of both? It can’t be that. Those have nothing to do with the night. World, does she literally mean that? Then, Earth. And ‘beyond’ Earth is the solar system? Galaxy? Universe? No, what!?”

  Issac exhaled loudly and sat down in front of a nearby tree. He leaned his back on the trunk and kept thinking as he watched the sunset over the horizon.

  “It can’t have anything to do with planets. They have nothing to do with ‘night’ either. I mean, they have a day and night cycle, but I don’t think she means that. Let’s uh…cross out ‘universe’ from the list. It’s too big, and I have a guess she probably didn’t want me to figure out the universe. Then galaxies and solar systems? What do these have in common? They both house planets? Fuck off, Issac. Not planets again. Uh, they’re both in space. But what does that ha- Ahhh!”

  As soon as he thought of space and the image popped into his mind, everything clicked into place like a jigsaw puzzle. It was like a hot bath in a cold winter.

  “Space! No, it’s actually what space looks like. The night. It’s an endless expanse of darkness. She is the Goddess of ‘Eternal Night.’ And before the creation or just after the big bang, everything was dark. And everything that’s in space is enveloped by this darkness. Is that what True Dark is? Cool. How the fuck does that help me?”

  Issac growled in frustration. He got up, walked to the river, kneeled on the shore, and dunked his head into the river. After a few seconds, he pulled his head up with droplets of water scattering everywhere. He bent over so that the water didn’t fall on his clothes. He wiped and squeezed the water out of his hair. Now, with a wet and cool head, he could finally feel less annoyed at the number of questions to which he had no answer.

  He hoped that tomorrow would be better.

  Next Morning

  “I-Is that a bridge!?” Issac stared wide-eyed at the arching stone bridge in front of him. “Hahah! I knew sticking to the river was the right choice!” He ran over to the bridge made out of cobbled stone and thanked god.

  He crossed the bridge and was now on the other side of the river. In front of him was a trisection. The dirt road back probably led to the capital, which he didn’t want, and the remaining two roads led to the left and forward. He didn’t know his coordinates or which direction he was facing. But he doubted that those would do him any good since he already knew which direction was away from the capital.

  He looked around and finally found something. It was a wooden direction sign. There was a sign pointing towards each of the roads. The sign pointing toward the capital had ‘Auburn City,’ the one pointing to the left read ‘Genia Marquisate,’ and the one pointing away from the capital had ‘Serenate County.’

  “Alright, ‘Serenate County it is,” he didn’t need to contemplate much. With a little bit more hope in his heart, he started walking again. He could no longer hear the crunch of the twigs and grass under his feet. The dirt road was hard and very dusty. He was glad he was still wearing shoes.

  The roads had patches of grasses in a line in the middle of the road, with the rest being dirt. The middle was the only place where the carriage tires didn’t touch. So, the grass was able to grow unimpeded. Trees grew on either side of the road like a wall. Some of them had red and white markings, but Issac didn’t know what they signified.

  Soon, he saw something in the distance and rushed forward. Coming closer, the sight in front of him was terrible. Everything was ravaged. A carriage had toppled over with a hole in its side. Seven dead bodies with blood spilled everywhere. He could even see blade marks on the ground.

  “…what the hell happened here?”

  And it miraculously worked. I used the bucket tool after I was done tracing the line and it filled up the shape I wanted to. Thank fuck! So, you'd think that was the end of my problems.

  But it wasn't. I still had to give the silhouette his axe, make the axe have stars in it, color the silhouette like I did the background but with contrasting colors, and place the font in an eye-catching way(as if the entire background wasn't eye-catching to begin with). So, I began tackling them one by one. And you might be thinking, one of those tasks should come before the other and it does. But it didn't register for me.

  Free Transform to rotate it. I took that axe into the other file with the silhouette and put it in his hand. But wait, there's a problem, both of the silhouettes are black. It looks like the man is looking at the camera at an angle with the axe in his left hand instead of looking away from the camera with the axe in his right hand. Do you remember why I told you to keep in mind I silhouetted a man looking away at an angle? Yeah, this is why.

  Create Clipping Mask. The starry axe was complete. I put it in the guy's hand and went to color him as well.