But on the soul level, I was really worn out. This fight with the dark energy of those creatures held a great toll over my soul, making me feel like I was empty and tired like never before.

I closed my eyes for long minutes, trying to regulate my breathing and feeling the fresh air once more breezing at my face. It felt refreshing this way, and slowly I started to regain my former strength.

Once I opened my eyes, the world all around looked much different than before. First the red beams that shone the entire world brightly and dyed it all red weren’t there.

Only the original dim world was here. Compared to the bright red world from before, this world looked gloomier and darker than ever.

“This…” and just as I stood up and leant over the edge of my chariot to stand erect, I saw something weird.

When the fight erupted, the ring shield I created was formed but it still surrounded the central zone. As the creatures came out from the eggs, they attacked fiercely, pushing my ring shield behind for almost one mile, creating lots of gaps in it.

But now? The ring shield was gone, and only a massive dome of shield appeared instead. It spanned to cover a large distance of almost twenty miles in all directions, making me feel puzzled about this.

“What… Just happened here?!!” I looked around before controlling my chariot to take a tour around.

The forces here were gone! The forces fighting in the central zone and outside my ring were nowhere to be seen.

The world looked so desolate, all silent and creepy in my eyes. “Did these beams kill everyone? Or did the creature kill them?” I was lost in thoughts while entering into my shield zone.

In there I saw a totally different world. There was no trace of any foreign race like I expected. I thought that my shield retaliated fast once the threatening creatures were gone, expanded fast and merged together to enclose over the forces in the central zone.

That meant I should see lots of forces in the shield. But all I saw was my forces, the remnants of the burnt down creatures with their gigantic bodies and limbs being torn to pieces, thrown everywhere without arrangement.

The fire I expected to see wasn’t present at all, not even a single pillar of smoke rose from anywhere here. It felt weird, really weird. In my eyes, it felt like a long time just passed here, letting the dust settle like this.

And to add more weirdness to this, I saw a few creatures standing erect like they were frozen in time.

They looked intact, nothing missing, not a single wound over their bodies… They looked fine to my eyes.

And around them, many of the much weaker exiles also stood in the same way.

All were surrounded with my forces, but not a single one of my boys was attacking them.

“What’s… Going on here?!!!” I stood in midair, over the back of my chariot, overseeing such an unbelievable scene.

The gods of your channel are all cheering for your safe return

Just as this moment, such a weird message popped up in front of my eyes.

“Safe return? Return from what?!!”

I stood in puzzlement while long rows of messages came from the gods following my channel.

And from these, I realised what happened here.

“Damn! An entire day? Is that for real?!!!”

The messages told me I went missing from this world for an entire apocalyptic day. According to them, I got surrounded by pitch darkness that engulfed me and took me away from here.

And the more important thing was that they couldn’t see where I was or what I was doing. So many asked about what happened, leaving me unable to answer any of that.

“Can you just brief me on what happened here? The last thing I recall is these red beams falling from the sky, and the big fight between the creatures and the allied races’ forces,” I had to fill in the missing gaps first.

Staying away for an entire day was something unexpected for me. That explained a lot indeed about what happened here. During this time, it was enough for all the forces to safely retreat, for my ring shield to amend itself and unite to form this dome then expand.

It was also long enough for the dust of this battle to settle. Yet I needed to know in detail what happened here. Also I needed to understand how few creatures stood still in such perfect shape, alongside those exiles.

But when I read their messages, I got disappointed fast. They didn’t give anything new outside of what I already guessed.

“Sigh, so you know nothing about these creatures and exiles here?” I pointed at these creatures and exiles, feeling more helpless here.

Yet the answer that came next exposed this mystery to my eyes, and it came from none other than my biggest helper in this battle.

They are in dormant state Sith’s voice echoed in my mind at this moment, making me abandon all the dejection and cheer up.

“Sith… My god, my benevolent god, thanks for all the help before,” it was an honest expression of my deepest gratitude for what he did.

If not for him, I’d end up dead for a long time now. If not for his timely advice, I would have missed a lot.

No problem, I’m just investing in your future, nothing more. Don’t think too much about it even when he said it this way, I still felt touched with what he did to me.

“What about them?” I knew talking more would be pointless. He wasn’t a normal god, and he had little time to spare for me.

The fact that he appeared here now meant there was one more thing left for me to do. Also that proved how high he valued me.

All of this were things I truly cherished and appreciated. Such a high god looking after me had its perks as well.