Chaos everywhere

Demon slaying is not fun. If you think that you would look dashing like a hero in a movie, you would be wrong. Because Ajay looked like a beggar to Dhvani. She really liked the way things progressed. Who doesn't want to live their favorite game, right? She wanted to go there in person actually.

It was all before she really saw the battlefield. The demons were just black masses with human features. It was like someone used clay to make a humanoid figure. They had no particular features but they did have ink-like fog wrapped as a body structure.

Because Dhir wanted to see how Ajay could perform, he was sent to deal with first-level demons. It is said that first-level demons are newly born. They have no mind of their own. They were just like one smartphone among the ones produced in a factory in mass production.

Ajay had scruples killing them. Because he did not want to slaughter without knowing if they were condemned to that fate. But when he knew that these demons were just fabrications of Evil fog, he was stunned. The world they had teleported into was magical. And the evil side was a creature called Fog.

Essentially, the Fog was entity-less and had the power to make many puppets with its abilities. And each puppet would grow in power as it became older. No one knew why it was so but everyone just wanted to kill the puppets or the so-called demons. It wasn't bizarre so Ajay could understand their motivation.

But the thing which puzzled both Ajay and Dhvani was how they didn't manage to find more information about this Fog. Didn't anyone consider that knowing the enemy is required while fighting a war? Dhir apparently didn't know much about this stuff.

Dhvani felt bad for the system's sudden annual repair. So she used her authority and issued a System Task.

[System Task: Kill 10000 demons]

[Reward: 100 system coins]

Anyway, she could earn system coins with Ajay with this task. She didn't understand how the overall system judged tasks. If it found that she was using authority to cheat, how would it react? She didn't want to cheat but still what ifs always haunt her. She decided to wait for her level to increase. Maybe her perception of the system would increase and she will be relieved from this kind of trouble.

Ajay clicked accept at the transparent screen hovering before him. He found that the system rewards were coins and he liked it very much. His fellow soldiers thought he had some kind of pre-fight ritual so they didn't think his actions were out of place and weird. Then the fight officially started.

The demons moved like a gust of wind. Maybe they were like that. Ajay stayed still for a second before using his magic to pinpoint his near demons and started to drag them into a space vacuum. His space power really came in handy in situations like these.

His first demon was deformed. The demon looked like a molten wax candle, a very ugly one at that. Ajay looked at his weapon of choice. When Dhir took him to the weapon's chamber, he was struck with the number of choices. He wanted swords but swords weren't helpful to him in the war. So he finally picked up a staff lying in a corner. The staff was made of some kind of metal native to this world. But it was still corroded at its ends. But Ajay still liked it. It was light, flexible, and most importantly, suitable for him.

He liked this staff so much that he spun it and the black mass instantly got divided. He gently guided the mass towards another space vacuum for storage. His splitting of the dark mass counted as kill. So he instantly got 4 kills. It just felt like playing a game.

So he enthusiastically started killing the demons and his kill rate kept increasing. He felt like becoming an MVP so he was even more excited. All the fellow soldiers looked at his actions and didn't understand why a rookie soldier was acting this way. As long as he didn't delay the cause, they just turned a blind eye toward him.

The fight went on from morning to night. The sky turned red again and it was paused. Dhir came for Ajay and he didn't notice another space vacuum that had demons split in it. Dhir was impressed by Ajay's performance. Whereas Dhvani was not. Because Ajay performed more tricks with his staff than killing. She thought he would at least kill a thousand demons with his opening rate. But he killed nearly a hundred demons and she was very dissatisfied. She understood that he wouldn't leave till he found the real reason for war here and that would take ages at this rate.

She did not know why they were teleported here but she knew that she couldn't turn and leave after seeing this place. They had to help but that did not mean she wanted to stay here. They didn't complete the Main System Task yet and at present, the communication link wasn't functioning and only emergency system functions were active. She hoped for the repair to speed up because she needed help. Wars weren't fun even if they had a system buff. And they were stranded in an unknown world to top everything.

"You can get promoted if you perform like this every day."

Ajay nodded at Dhir and feigned weakness to go to his room. He had to perform experiments on the black mass he collected. He had never used two space vacuums at once but his study in the system mall had reaped its benefits. His magic was at its peak and difficult spells were turned easy.

["Host, if the system is repaired, can I start the teleport function at once?"]

She knew the answer but she hoped for the opposite answer.

"No. I am very interested in this place. I feel like this would be helpful for my magic practice."

["What about Main System Task?"]

"Do we have a time limit on that?"

["No."]

"Then, we can leave after some time, right? I can take my vacation here and learn something new."

Dhvani felt that he probably did not understand the meaning of a vacation. She would have felt okay if he said that he stayed here for learning. But vacation, it wasn't in any way.

She wanted to bang her head into the walls but then again, why should she hurt herself when she could hurt the culprit?

["Host, then what if you are stuck here because you cannot find the reason for the Fog?"]

Ajay should have noticed that the system was asking him a question that wasn't normally in the scope of a programmed machine. But like always, he stayed oblivious.

"Why would that happen?"

["You are here for a vacation but also for magic learning. Whay=t if you never complete learning?"]

"Then you can take me back."

So she would become the bad guy here. As expected from Ajay, he threw the responsibility on her. What else could she do? She accepted it. She wrote this in her small notebook to take revenge later.

Ajay quickly ate the food obtained from the system. Dhvani had put food enough for one year in the system space. She just wished that the food will outlast their stay here.

Ajay released the constraints on the space vacuum and found the black mass was slowly regrouping and forming many new humanoids. He was struck by a sudden realization. If the black mass could regroup later then what was the meaning of everyone's demon-slaying? Well, except for making cool poses and increasing experience points.

He finally understood why this war never ended. The Evil Fog was very smart. Its power never emptied and demons never died. Simple. The fog was just a never-ending supply of paper. And it made endless paper flowers. Even if the flowers died, new flowers formed from the paper waste. This made him fear the Fog. Such high-level consciousness was targeting this world.

Dhvani never interfered in his experiments so she did not find his discovery. She was still hung up on her thoughts. She just felt wrong here. Even though she did not go out, she felt the weirdness after she saw the demons. So she wanted to leave this place quickly. But no one listened to her. She understood that they couldn't leave without doing their best to help this world. This was always the case for saving the world. She knew that only a selected few could do it. But others should also do their best to save the world, right? In some things, few people are sacrificed as if they are only responsible for the world. Even if only they could do the task, why are other people completely ignorant?

Every life is precious, right? She would not allow Ajay to get some hero complex and do such mistakes. So she decided to keep an eye on him. Sometimes her system abilities had no use. She couldn't use them all at the same time. She did not completely integrate with the system yet. Her soul wasn't the master here yet. She was waiting for the level to increase to check her assumptions.

"System, scan the space quickly!"

Ajay's voice brought her out of her musings.

She scanned the black mass thoroughly. Scanning only took 10 seconds and she got a detailed report. She quickly relayed it to Ajay without peeking.

She couldn't be sneaky for host-asked functions.

Ajay looked at the energy data and quickly read the report.

The black mass was actually a form of energy that was unknown to the system parameters. But it could be analyzed as Chaos. Chaos requires stability to thrive. So the Evil Fog was actually Chaos. As long as there is balance, there will be an imbalance. Because without imbalance how would balance work? So Chaos was here.

The Chaos fed on the world and gradually grow. Ajay didn't feel anything wrong in this matter. Stability and Chaos check and cancel each other out. But the war was something dangerous. The balance wasn't winning and Chaos wasn't losing. Ajay feared that Chaos had the upper hand here. But why was that happening?

If there was a balance between Stability and Chaos, the black mass wouldn't have regrouped. It should have vanished into nothingness but it did not. It reformed into demons, so Chaos had the faint upper hand in the war. It wouldn't affect the present but the future would be in jeopardy.

As Chaos increases its power and holds onto the world, the world would slowly be ushered into the era of darkness. There would only be death and suffocation left here. Like a nightmare, every being will be damned. This was the only reason balance is needed in any world. The way of the world is precisely this balance.

Ajay didn't know what was exactly happening but he only understood that this should be stopped at any cost. The whole world was in danger at this moment. Time waited for no one. So he had to rush into things now.

He quickly looked for Lord Dhir.

"Lord, I have something to report."

Dhir was looking at war reports so he was immediately classified as leisurely by Dhvani. She wanted to know why Ajay was in such a hurry. She didn't have Ajay's senses so she did not understand the balance. If she had continued her magic practice and raised her soul power she would also find it. She found the bad feeling intuitively anyway.

"Take a seat," Dhir answered putting the reports back on the table.

"I think The Evil Fog is actually winning this war."

Dhir shouldn't have expected that because his expression quickly changed from shock to disbelief. Before he managed to calm himself, Ajay quickly replied as if peeling a band-aid in an instant. Because his inference could very well mean death. He tried to say in a very gentle manner which meant we are doomed.

"The Evil Fog is contaminating the world at a very fast rate and the apocalypse will be soon upon us."