Horatio showed a sinister smile. "Good choice."
"Hey, when you smile like that, it makes me second-guess my decision," Kyle said with a bit of annoyance.
"No, it doesn't," Horatio added with a chuckle.
Kyle just rolled his eyes. "So, what happens now?"
"You will make me the Overseer," Horatio said. "After that, you will ascend."
"And get killed?" Kyle asked with a raised brow.
"No, someone from our camp will intervene. You will not go to the normal Ascension Portal."
"Okay," Kyle answered, "and how do they know that they should interfere in my Ascension? Are you in contact with your people?"
"I've marked you," Horatio said.
Kyle blinked a couple of times in surprise. "I didn't notice that. When did you do that?"
"When I kneeled down beside you," Horatio said with a smirk.
'Brah, that was minutes ago! I didn't even accept the deal at that point!' Kyle thought.
"Well, okay then," Kyle said. "Horatio, do you want to be the Overseer?"
"I swear that I will protect the world and become its Overseer," Horatio said with a devious smile.
At that point, Kyle felt the world changing.
It was like some kind of connection left him.
In a way, he felt like the world had become even more alien.
At the same time, he also felt how his Ether weighed on the world again, suppressing the Space and Time Ether.
The next moment, light gathered around Kyle, just like back when he had just advanced.
"Well, okay then. Bye, I guess," Kyle said with a shrug.
"Maybe we'll see each other again," Horatio said.
"Maybe?" Kyle asked, but he couldn't even hear his own voice anymore. It was like his voice could no longer interact with the Ether around him.
The last thing Kyle saw before his vision was blinded by light was Horatio's smirk.
This really didn't fill him with confidence.
'You know, if he scammed me, there would be nothing I could do,' Kyle thought.
'That would suck real bad!'
The next moment, Kyle felt the Ether around him becoming more powerful and chaotic, and he felt some sense of vertigo.
It was like he was rapidly accelerating.
'Kinda like riding a plane,' he thought.
Meanwhile, Horatio watched as the light vanished.
Kyle was nowhere to be seen.
Horatio just chuckled dryly. "Oh, Kyle, Kyle. You're lucky I like you."
Then, Horatio focused on the world.
When he felt his intimate connection to the world, his smile widened.
It was like a baby elephant happily acknowledging a male lion as a father. After just looking around for a couple of seconds, Horatio moved deeper into the ground.
He easily entered the Yin-Wind stream and passed through it.
Eventually, he reached the bottom of the world.
Inside the black stream of Yin-Wind, a floor of silver stretched as far as the eye could see.
Horatio landed on the silver floor and stopped.
If Horatio had been Kyle, more swords would have formed around the floor.
After all, the world had learned that Kyle could and would hurt it.
But this was Horatio.
This was not the evil, old Overseer.
"No worries," Horatio said with a smile as he petted the floor. "I'm not going to hurt you."
After petting the World Bottom for a while, Horatio left again.
He reached the surface again and looked around.
"And so, it ends," he said with a chuckle.
The world, with its limited intelligence, didn't realize that its fate had already been sealed.
Now, Horatio just needed to wait.
When he had petted the world, he had marked it, but this mark was very different from the mark he had given Kyle.
Horatio looked down.
His Ether Sense didn't pick up anything strange, but his other senses did.
His other senses told him that something of incredible power was growing near the bottom of the world.
A black dot on the World Floor had appeared, and it was growing bigger by the second.
If anybody else looked at the location of the dot, they wouldn't be able to see or sense it.
After all, the dot was not made of Ether but of something different.
About a minute later, the dot became over ten meters wide.
Even more, its speed of expansion was increasing.
A minute later, it was already a kilometer wide.
Another minute later, and it was a hundred kilometers wide.
Eventually, it covered the entire World Floor.
That was when it stopped growing.
Horatio looked at all the people living in this world with a dark smirk.
This had been the world he had been born into.
The Cult of Final Fate had killed his family when he had just been two years old and forced him to join them.
In the beginning, he had hated the Cult, but the more time he spent in it, the nicer it seemed.
Yet, this was still his homeworld.
But that didn't matter.
Destroying his homeworld was to him like getting rid of his baby teeth.
He had to get rid of the weak parts to make way for the strong parts.
After looking at the world one last time, Horatio went back to the World Floor and touched it. His hand passed through the World Floor, and he just waited.
Some minutes later, he felt like someone had grabbed his hand.
Then, Horatio sank into the World Floor while chuckling.
His body passed through the World Floor, and he came face-to-face with a familiar face.
He had seen this face many times before.
There was a statue of this person in the headquarters of the Cult of Final Fate in this world.
The Harbinger.
Or, one of the Harbingers.
After all, Harbinger was just a title.
A Harbinger was someone who could survive and travel through the void between worlds.
He was several Realms higher than Kyle or Horatio.
"What's your name?" the Harbinger asked, his threatening yellow eyes focused on Horatio.
"Horatio," Horatio answered.
"Good work, Horatio," the Harbinger said. "Your duty as a Virus ends. You have proven yourself capable."
"Now, watch."
Horatio turned around and saw a gigantic black ball.
If he had been here just a couple of minutes ago, he would have seen a silver ball.
"This is your doing," the Harbinger said. "Since you infected this world, you also get to finish it. I will protect you from the damage."
Horatio had infected the world with a kind of power that could rapidly contaminate the Ether inside the World Barrier.
As long as nobody manually cleansed it, it would just keep corroding more and more.
It was like lighting a tree inside a forest on fire. With time, more and more trees would catch fire.
The entire World Barrier had been corroded, and it had been turned into an explosive.
Horatio smiled maliciously.
Then, he held his right arm forward…
And snapped his fingers.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
Horatio's vision was filled with nothing but fire.
Unending streams of fire washed past him for over an entire minute.
Eventually, the fire vanished, and Horatio could only see a black void with scattered silver balls.
The black ball in front of them was no more.
Horatio just chuckled.
"I'll bring you to one of our outposts," the Harbinger said.
"And there, you may choose your reward."
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