Standing before the stone demon, conjured by Mo Fan through a pact of blood and stone, I knew this was the end.
My Healing Starlight Galaxy was completely drained. It was a pity I never managed to break through to the Super Level in that element, but what was done was done. The Starlight Cosmos of the Light element lay equally exhausted, while the Spirit Cosmos retained a mere tenth of its energy – useless against a stone golem. The remnants of my Space and Time Starlight Universes could easily obliterate the beast, but to what end? I could not kill Mo Fan, not with Mu Bai and Azalea lurking behind him like a pair of cursed ravens. No, I would channel every last drop of my remaining magic into my own crazy scheme. What did I have left to lose anyway? Humanity was all but wiped out, and the cycle had repeated itself.
How on earth had I ended up in this mess? Casting my mind back over this life, I remembered waking up as a six-year-old orphan named Su Yutao in Bo City. It had not taken me long to realize I was reincarnated inside the world of Versatile Mage, a popular Chinese web novel I had read only once – a lapse in attention I had regretted a thousand times over in this lifetime.
After trying to summon a system in a thousand and one different ways, I was forced to accept that either my cheat code was severely delayed, or it simply did not exist. I decided to play it safe and make friends with the main character. In a world where a total bloodbath with sea monsters and hordes of the undead would erupt twenty-one years later – where China, the second most populous country on earth, would be reduced to a mere five besieged cities – going solo was never an option. By staying close to the protagonist, even if I failed to become a mage, I might at least secure a relatively safe haven in one of those strongholds.
And so I kept running over from the orphanage to play with Mo Fan, who happened to be my age. Every moment I could spare from our games was spent at the library, and by sixteen I managed to pass the entrance exams for Tian Lan Magic High, placing second. Even back then, Mu Bai was showing early signs of his prodigal genius. Everything unfolded according to the original plot: Mo Fan received his Dragon Pendant from the school guard, failed his initial exam due to his soul fusion, and his father sold their house just to get him in through the back door. During the Awakening ceremony, I was second in line for our class and awakened the Light element. Naturally, Mu Bai and his little minion immediately made a mockery of me, suggesting I go jump off the roof. What a total bastard he had been in his youth.
For three years, I cultivated relentlessly. With the Light element, my combat capabilities were nothing to boast about. During the Bo City disaster, I stayed by Xinxia's side and carried her all the way to the safe zone in my arms. Grateful for that, Mo Fan shared the energy of the Holy Spring from his pendant, helping me break through to the Intermediate Level. When I awakened my second element, it turned out to be Spirit – finally giving me a way to attack. Later on, Zhao Manyan gave me my Light Spirit Seed as a reward for my contribution against the scaly demons.
I reached the Advanced Level during the World College Tournament while serving on the defense team, which was when my true cheat finally unveiled itself: I awakened the Time element.
My breakthrough to the Super Level came alongside Mu Bai's after the ordeal at Cheops' pyramid, granting me the Space element. I attained the Forbidden Level in Time, and subsequently in Space, right after the Battle of Shanghai, awakening Healing in the process. After all those endless battles – fighting off sea monsters, undead armies, demons, titans, archangels, rogue mages, and countless other foes – I genuinely thought I could finally take a breath and study my divine gifts within the Forbidden Realms of Time and Space. But then came something the original story had never foretold, something terrifyingly logical that I had somehow completely overlooked: Mo Fan was taken over by the Dark King.
In hindsight, it made perfect sense. Mo Fan's body was riddled with dark elements, dark substances, the Demon Element, the Blessing of the Dark King, a soul bond with Azalea – a twelve-winged fallen angel – and a contract with Alpasa, a direct descendant of the very first cursed creature created by the Dark King. To top it all off, one of his spiritual incarnations, a piece of his very soul, was sealed in the Dark Plane. You could hardly gather a more comprehensive bingo card of doom.
In the end, Mo Fan became one of the four rulers of the Dark Plane, though in truth he was merely a puppet for the Dark King. This allowed the Dark King to seize control of fifty percent of the Dark Plane, exponentially increasing his power after merging with Mo Fan. Whether he could crush his rivals remained uncertain, as they would surely unite against him. But before the war of the dark deities could truly ignite, a cycle began in the mortal realm. What kind of cycle? A harvest cycle, strikingly similar to the plot of Mass Effect. Except instead of all advanced alien races being wiped out, it was humanity being exterminated by the empires of sea monsters, with the generous assistance of a still-demigod Mo Fan.
As I came to learn, this was far from the first time such a cycle had occurred. In the previous cycle, the Totems were created to help humanity regain its footing faster in the next era. They were an intricate fusion of necromancy, spirit, summoning, and various other elements depending on the specific Totem. I had no idea what triggered the destruction of humanity in other cycles, but in this one and the last, the catalyst had been Fusion Magic.
In the previous cycle, it was used to seal the Nazca Emperor, one of the supreme beings of that age. In this cycle, Fusion Magic was used to push back one of the principal ocean emperors, albeit with the crucial aid of the ancient Totems.
A sudden shadow fell over me as the stone demon raised its massive arm, cutting short my dying monologue. Well, then. It was time to put my desperate gamble into motion, or there would be no later.
The specialized gloves designed to facilitate Fusion Magic flared with brilliant light upon my hands. I began channeling the lingering energy of my Time, Space, and Spirit elements, burning my very soul to push my still-unfathomed divine gifts to their absolute limit.
A fraction of a second after the spell was cast, the colossal stone hand crashed down, crushing Su Yutao's body into the dirt and ending his journey in this world. Or did it?