Calamity Upon This World

"Shit, it hurts," William said as he tried to stand up.

Right now, the whole body is in extreme pain due to excessive use of spirit energy.

(William you  good?) Wiz asked.

'Ye-yea'

~cough~

Blood came out as William tried to speak.

His internal organs were a mess; if he didn't do something soon, his body would collapse.

Unfortunately, William was out of his life bombs, and the low-level healing potions that he had wouldn't have much of an effect on his condition.

However, he was currently surrounded by hundreds of dead bodies, which by extension means hundreds of life bombs.

With a lot of struggle, he raised his hand and multiple tiny purple balls formed on his hand before flying off towards the corpses, and he kept producing these balls and sending them flying till all the corpses were encapsulated in a purple shell.

Williams life bomb was  an ability he had obtained at the same time as he had awakened, which was back when he was born.

These life bombs had two effects: one was to allow him to summon hounds, which his aspect called chaos soldiers; till now, he didn't know why they were called that, but he didn't pay much attention to them.

And second, most importantly, it allowed him to heal himself by using the life force he had absorbed.

This life force, however, was quite hard to collect, as this ability didn't really work on living beings.

Or more specifically, while it did work on living beings, but only if they consented to letting him steal their lifeforce. Or were incapable of forming thoughts and resisting, and obviously no one will willingly do that, so yeah, in a way, it was almost impossible to use this ability on living beings.

Which is why William uses it on enemies he kills.

One might question: How can dead people have life force?

The answer to that is simple: all living beings are born with a life force that determines how long they will live until they die of old age.

And by killing someone, William is artificially ending their life, leaving the remainder of their natural life force as residual inside the body. After a bit of testing, William learned that it takes roughly 20 minutes before this life force starts to dissipate.

But he was getting sidetracked, and after a few minutes, hundreds of life bombs flew towards him.

As they approached him, 4–5 of them were quickly devoured by William as he consumed the life force in liquid form, almost like a vampire drinking blood.

After a few seconds, the life force did its magic as Williams body started to heal at a rapid, visible pace, and before long, he jumped back up and moved his body, pleased to have his body back to normal.

"Phew, this is better."

After a bit more moving around, he quickly channelled mana into the identity-changing artifact, causing his body to once again grow taller, his muscles to get defined, and his eyes and hair to change back to black.

He didn't bother to put on his second mask because he didn't feel like it and also because he might scare away the little girl downstairs with it.

As William channelled dark slime to repair his clothes, he made a mental note not to use spirit energy for a while, as his body still hadn't properly recovered from using it.

Which means he couldn't use the power of his spirits for a while, but it should be fine; he had already defeated the last and strongest enemy here.

But still, just to be sure, William used [mana sense] to ensure he wasn't about to get caught off guard again.

After not sensing anything unusual aside from the weak presence of the girl downstairs, he breathed a sigh of relief, knowing he hadn't accidentally jinxed it.

Now at last, he could go down and easily rescue the girl and be done with it.

**

As William made his way down the stairs, he noticed how dark it was, but it didn't affect him. Thanks to his [Shadow Sense], he didn't bother to use fire magic to light the path.

After a little bit of walking, he finally arrived at what, strangely enough, seemed to be a luxurious room.

In the centre was a large, king-sized bed and a golden chandelier on the roof.

But that wasn't what caught Williams attention; it was the two corpses on the ground.

One belonged to an adult male, and the other to a female.

After flipping the bodies, he saw that both of them had a large cut on their chests.

The cut looked quite rough and big, probably made by a big blade, and after taking a closer look at the man, he found him to look similar to the description of Mox that Reat had told him about.

After this realisation, it was easy to put 2 and 2 together and assume that the aura master he had killed earlier had killed him.

William didn't know why he had done it, and honestly, he didn't care, so he just placed the corpses inside his shadow world and cleaned the blood using water magic to wash it away.

After all, it wasn't appropriate for a little girl to see such a gruesome scene.

With the place now rid of the gruesome scene, William made his way towards the tiny cage at the corner.

And once he was close enough to see the little girl curled inside with her eyes and feet tapering and all her limbs restrained using a mana-sealing cuff,.

William felt pity for the little girl.

'Poor girl, she didn't deserve this,' he thought as he ripped out the top of the metal cage with his bare hands after enhancing them with mana.

As he took out the girl and laid her on the bed, he removed her tape and broke the cuffs on her limbs, finally freeing her.

But she still seemed unconscious. Seeing this, William got a bit worried, but after checking her pulse, he was reassured that she was still alive.

After checking her condition, he took out a health potion and fed it to her, as it also doubled as a stamina/rejuvenation potion.

And thankfully, it seemed to work as her eyes started to move.

'Phew, it seems it all worked out in the end,' he thought with a smile as he prepared to comfort the girl and take her to her parents.

However, what William didn't know yet was that things in fact did not turn out 'fine' and he was about to learn this in the worst way imaginable.