112 Message from God

Right below my feet lay the head of the man called the Interloper.

Or what I would like to call the head of a man.

In reality...

"You won't be seeing the last of me."

The head spat out a glob of blood, even while dethatched the interloper was as hateful as ever.

Feeling my eyes twitch with annoyance, I lifted my foot and imbued the ram rune with malaise before slamming it down.

Bursting the skull into a grand explosion of blood, fake blood, metal and other circuits.

Yeah.

The interloper was a machine all along.

And since 

But nevertheless, he was currently dead and is not a problem that I need to worry about anymore.

If anything, I shouldn't even worry much since I could just revive after death and as was proven just now I could defeat him.

All I needed to worry about was the dangerous monsters that the interloper would control.

Slightly disappointing that the Interloper couldn't do anything else besides some sword play and mind control, but what can you do?

Just kill him?

'Already been there done that.'

Moving away from the machine like corpse that ran on blood somehow, I turned to look at the devastation around me.

'But it's strange.'

The Silver knight which should've been an incredibly difficult barrier to cross was nowhere to be found.

In fact.

After the initial block by the spear, the silver knight didn't interfere at all.

Hell, the spear was still stuck in the ground from where it landed!

'...'

'I'll take that.'

Silently moving the spear into my inventory, the system screen suddenly popped up right in front of me.

'The hell?'

[Hi there Slade, hopefully you haven't missed me in the 147:12:57:19.89 seconds I haven't seen you :3]

'What the?' Reading the words on the screens several more times, I counted the numbers and realized the first three digits were days if the constantly fluctuating seconds numbers was of any help.

'So it's been that long? But yeah, God of Fun and games right?'

[Yep]

I quietly chuckled before moving off to some place else that was much more appealing then the carnage and blood shed all around me.

Not that the old house was any better, but it was a definite upgrade from the bloody carnage that was the battlefield.

And the fact that I wasn't in danger from blood fire is a definite plus.

'But anyways, I don't think I've seen you speak directly at me before, besides the initial talks when I was first dropped into this world, you basically stopped talking to me.'

The small emoticon that looked incredibly smug for a few moments quickly changed to a smiley face before accompanying the new block of text.

[It's not that I've stopped talking to you, it's just that-]

'It's just that what?'

The block of text shifted.

[Anyways, back to business.]

[Because of the last king of Sevallia, you have come into contact with a power that you shouldn't have come in contact with until you defeat the alchemist.]

'The Alchemist?'

[The Collector, but nevertheless, because of that guy you are ahead of schedule while simultaneously behind it.]

'What.'

[...Since you already came in contact with it I guess there is no use in hiding it anymore.]

[Basically, when you were just aimlessly wandering doing nothing but killing any enemies that entered your vision, I felt like you would've not even come in contact with some of the things you that you should've and let it pass by.]

'...That is true...'

[So I took matters into my own hands.]

'...' Blankly reading the text, a flash of remembrance flashed straight through my mind as I was reminded of the gigantic wyvern I had slain.

Wait that's not right.

Mulling over things for a bit, I recalled the event that had happened after it.

'Was that you?'

Recalling the gigantic tidal wave that was created by the incredibly large fin of a monster that I now had suspicions were a boss monster, my only reply from the screen was three dots.

[...]

'Damn.'

Feeling my slight reverence I had for a being quite literally called the God of Fun and Games slightly lower due to dying unfairly.

The reverence returned to a normal point on the bar graph when I recalled I wouldn't have progressed so quickly in the sync rate. 

'...But why is that I'm both ahead of schedule while being behind of schedule?'

[Well that's because at the end of the sync rate, you were supposed to have become the avatar of the malaise, right before it you were supposed to take the power of the Alchemist and become the Avatar of mana.]

[But now, the roles are reversed, you have become the avatar of the Malaise before becoming the avatar of Mana, so that's why your behind on scheudle.]

[In fact, you didn't know this since you didn't check the sync rate when it happened, but the system basically crashed.]

'Was that why I felt strange when fighting the Mama Tick?'

[No, that's just something that happens when you become an avatar.]

'...'

[Anyways, becoming the avatar of the malaise is dangerous to the current you.]

'Why?'

[Because of the suppressive effects of the malaise, only the avatar of mana can fully counter the effects of it, you haven't been able to feel mana flowing into your body for a while now haven't you?]

'Now that you talk about it...'

I closed my eyes and felt the insides of my body, hidden within my body, a toiling orange flame furiously burned with incredible power while more malaise filled up the metaphysical container within my body.

And even as the metaphysical container was filled, it was slowly but surely increasing in size as more malaise entered it.

But that wasn't what I was looking for.

Looking past the gigantic orange container that was slowly growing, I sent my gaze to the much smaller container for mana.

What I didn't expect however, was to find out that the mana container was within the malaise container.

Staring at the container within the orange mass of energy, the tiny blue droplet of mana within my body stayed stagnant and without movement.

As if bound by several chains

I glanced at the orange pool of malaise and compared it to the tiny droplet.

'...I think I see the problem, but why is it a problem.'

Removing my gaze from within me, at some moment in time, the words of text had shifted around and the smiling emoticon turned into the nerd glasses emoji.

[Well, since your enemy was controlling the malaise, they had not bothered to use the much weaker mana, but as you have exploited, the malaise is easily overwhelmed if a greater force comes at it]

[And in fact, coming alongside the greater power, lots of other side effects accompanying it.]

[You already know that the malaise is mostly responsible for about 100% of the monsters on the island right?]

'...'

When taking that into account, I realized that was indeed the case.

From the small experiment with the plants that had created the fly trap abomination hungry for flesh, to the much larger creatures such as the small inferno spirit that I had created.

I had already come into the knowledge that the malaise was able to create monsters, it was a surprise that the malaise was able to suppress mana however.

But nevertheless, making monsters whenever a certain amount of malaise comes into contact with something was an incredibly bad side effect.

When trying to manipulate the plants to subdue someone with mana, that situation would suddenly change when malaise was put into the mix.

In which case the chosen targets would have to pray and run, pray to God that they wouldn't be eaten, and run so that the ones besides them would be eaten first.

Can't exactly be killed if someone else is killed first can you?

Rather flawed logic I know, but it did make a modicum of sense when considering that all the monsters stronger than their normal brethren were made out of the malaise and were as thus much more murderous.

It actually made sense now that all the monsters I encountered were stronger than the usual, it seemed the malaise unconsciously leaking out of my body did it.

If anything, I should've thanked the lord that the [Creepers] didn't explode in my face when I ran away from their distinct hissing noise.

On that note what the hell was I supposed to do to stop the malaise?

I couldn't exactly not use malaise and use mana since the malaise was stopping me from accessing my mana in the first place.

And since I was basically empty on mana and the malaise was growing larger by the moment, it was basically like a reenactment of David and Goliath.

Except David didn't have God or a sling on his side and Goliath was growing larger by the minute.

[It's really simple Slade, I just need to intervene]

And lo and behold, while I was mulling over the sudden problem, a solution came out of a source I should've expected it to come from.

+++

Tree