“Damn it.”
The boy ran across the flat blanket of snow covering the mountaintop.
His footsteps disappeared beneath the powder as he pushed forward, his breath steady despite the exhaustion beginning to settle into his body.
“Why?”
He glanced behind himself.
“Why can’t they just let me rest?”
He continued running.
For nearly an entire day, the boy crossed the frozen mountains.
Eventually, even his ridiculous stamina reached its limit.
He stopped.
The boy lowered himself into the snow and gazed toward the sky.
Dark gray clouds moved slowly overhead.
They seemed almost motionless, drifting across the sky with a strange, oppressive stillness.
The boy stared at them.
Even the sky seemed depressed.
Perhaps it was fitting.
The remnants of the Sky God’s debris had been corrupted by the Creator—and eventually slain by his own father.
The boy sighed.
“Why did the world have to become this miserable?”
For several moments, there was nothing but silence.
Then one thought surfaced in his mind.
War.
War was natural.
It didn’t matter what people thought about war.
War embraces.
War had always been there.
War was eternal.
It was like an aggressive melody constantly reminding all of creation that it would never disappear.
Before mankind existed, war had already been waiting.
Waiting for everything.
Waiting for its ultimate return.
War was the ultimate game, awaiting its ultimate conclusion.
The stakes were everything.
The game was everything.
Even authority and justification became part of the conflict.
Seen from that perspective, war was the truest form of violence.
It was the testing of one strength against another.
And within that greater struggle, war became the ultimate game.
Like chess.
Because war was ultimately a forcing unity between beings.
The boy stared toward the horizon.
“War is God.”
The thought almost made him chuckle.
If war truly was God…
Then could war be the true god of everything?
Was war keeping everything alive while simultaneously destroying everything?
A perfect balance between creation and destruction.
The boy smiled faintly at the complexity of his own thoughts.
After several hours of rest, he finally stood.
He needed a new home.
And quickly.
A blizzard was approaching.
The boy knew what that meant.
Blizzards in this world weren’t merely natural disasters.
They attracted monsters.
The boy continued walking.
Eventually, his foot struck something beneath the snow.
He stopped.
Looking down, he noticed the outline of what appeared to be a book.
He crouched and picked it up.
For some reason, he had a strange feeling that this book contained something about the past.
Surprisingly, the book was completely untouched.
Not a single scratch marred its surface.
Complex shapes and patterns had been etched into its cover, while a smooth bronze layer covered the rest.
Mysterious runes shimmered across the surface with a dim, eerie light.
The boy had an idea.
He channeled a small amount of spirit energy into the book.
The runes immediately changed.
They rearranged themselves into a language he could understand.
The title appeared.
The Tales of Vrisha.
The boy tilted his head.
“Who the hell is Vrisha?”
He opened the first page.
Then, without stopping, he began walking again.
Vrisha Vanu.
The boy couldn’t understand everything written within the book.
But he understood one thing.
Vrisha was a god.
Or perhaps something greater.
A Great God.
This was the first book the boy had ever encountered that was specifically about a deity.
And Vrisha’s story was unlike anything he had heard before.
Vrisha hadn’t been born a god.
He had forced himself into godhood.
He hadn’t followed the conventional methods of ascension.
Perhaps he had simply willed himself into divinity.
Or perhaps sheer authority and dominance had been enough.
Whatever the method, the boy found it fascinating.
Yet one question remained.
What was Vrisha the god of?
The book described countless hardships throughout Vrisha’s impossibly long existence.
He endured trials that seemed beyond comprehension.
And eventually, he ascended into a Great God.
Then he revived the Mad Ones.
The Mad Ones were an ancient civilization that had completely embraced madness.
When Vrisha fought the King of the Upper Realm, Benevolence, his ascension to Great Godhood allowed him to dominate the Upper Realm.
But Vrisha’s madness was so powerful—
So fundamentally opposed to the order of creation—
That it somehow caused the Mad Ones to return as well.
They recognized Vrisha Vanu as their savior.
They praised him.
They worshipped him.
And then something even more extraordinary happened.
Other deities from the ancient past began to revive.
Vrisha’s ascension had been so powerful and so impactful that it caused a chain reaction throughout creation.
Some of the ancient Great Deities were forcibly revived.
The boy chuckled as he continued reading.
He couldn’t help but feel a slight admiration for Vrisha.
“I wonder if I can rise as high as him.”
He immediately dismissed the thought.
No.
He didn’t want to become Vrisha.
He simply wanted to become strong enough to protect himself from the horrors that kept finding him.
That was all.
The boy closed the bronze book.
He had already burned its appearance into his memory.
With his imagination and spirit energy, he could probably recreate it whenever he wanted.
He dropped the book into the snow.
Then he continued walking.
After traveling for some time, something appeared in the distance.
Ruins.
A devastated city stretched across the frozen landscape.
Yet something about it was strange.
The ruins seemed to be resisting the flow of time.
The buildings remained standing.
Barely.
Every structure was fractured and unstable, as though the slightest touch could cause the entire city to collapse.
The boy chuckled.
He walked closer.
Perhaps he’d finally found somewhere to stay.
He stepped into the ruins.
Immediately, the atmosphere changed.
Pale bones littered the ground.
A fractured skeleton hung from a rope.
Strange remains covered portions of the ruined buildings.
The entire place looked like something from a horror movie.
Whatever a movie was.
The boy grimaced as his eyes moved across the abnormalities.
Something felt wrong.
A strange instinct deep within him warned him that he wasn’t supposed to be here.
The boy ignored it.
He continued walking.
“I hope this place has more books.”
He paused.
“Actually, I was hoping this place had food.”
He sighed.
“I’ll have to go hunting again.”
Then another thought crossed his mind.
“Ugh…”
He scratched his head.
“I’m praying there are still fresh bodies here.
Maybe I’ll come across a dead woman’s body…”
He chuckled awkwardly.
“Hehehe.”
His attention suddenly shifted.
A figure lay motionless against a fractured wall.
Something about it immediately caught his eye.
The figure had a humanoid shape.
It was made entirely of wood.
And where its eyes should have been…
There was an eerie darkness.
The boy’s eyes widened.
“Wood people?”
He stared at it.
“But…”
His head tilted.
“Wasn’t it supposed to be little?”
The boy quickly walked past the dead wooden figure.
Then—
A familiar voice echoed directly inside his mind.
“Kid?”
The boy stopped.
His eyes widened.
The voice spoke again.
“Is that you?”