[Light realm, year 12.021 of the common calendar]

A small ball of pure light the size of a fist hovered in the air as a palid hand gently touched it and removed a small piece of black-purple energy from the sphere and tossed it away.

The owner of the hand was an Elf in appearance, with pointed ears and two wood-like horns coming from the middle of his head, his hair was pure gold that almost shone as bright as the sphere of light that hovered in front of him. His eyes were the same color his hairs were and shone with the same intensity, maybe even more.

The man stared intensively at the sphere, looking for more of those energies that he had found so many of already. Eventually he found two more black-purple dots in the middle of the pure white light.

"I suppose the reason there's so much void energy leaking inside is because of you, Zwriniz. Am I right?" The man asked while there was nobody with him in the empty room.

After a few seconds of silence, a part of the room began to distort and a black lion with a lush green mane and emerald colored eyes appeared. The lion laughed as he walked closer to the man and the sphere of light.

“Not as quite, you can blame Theo for this… We’ll, you can blame him eventually” The lion laughed as he put his paw on the man’s shoulder. “But, yes, this ones are, will be and were my fault”

“Why does things have to be so… complicated with you?” with a sigh, he continued. “Now, i know you came here for a reason, probably in the same line as the three other times you’ve been here”

“Oh, c’mon. It’s not like I asked you to distort your divinity, Luminos” The lion teased Luminos, the God of Light.

“Oh? let’s see… the first time you’ve been here you asked me to send a divine message to my believers that they should begin wars in my name. Now they see me as some kind of battle god” He said.

“Well, it’s not that ba-...” Zwriniz tried to talk but was interrupted.

“The second time you’ve been here you asked me to give the mortals a spell wrapped in my divinity to seal the Demons Lords with [Ultimate Skills] from the deadly sins series. Now three Demon Lords were killed and a fourth one has all her power sealed” He said, as his voice began to transmit his anger.

“Yes, it really is a problem having some mortal powerhouses being killed, but-...” The lion was interrupted again.

“And the last time you asked me to turn my, now raging, followers, thanks to you, towards the followers of Theo. Do you know how hard it is to keep the equilibrium of the universe? I don’t think you do, as you have literally yourself from the past and yourself from the future to keep the balance of the timeline intact, as well some help from Theo himself as space and time are close together. So now tell me, God of Time Zwriniz, what do you want now?” The angry God almost shouted towards the other God who just stood there, receiving all his words full of anger.

“I…” The lion God was at a loss for words. “I just wanted to thank you…”

The Elf God glared at the lion God.

“All the things I've asked you to do, weren't because I wanted you to do, far from that, they were things I needed you to do… because you already had done them. Do you think just because I exist in the past, present and future at the same time I have an easier time keeping the equilibrium? We are approaching a knot in time so big that I needed to make sure everything goes exactly as they were supposed to go. Right now there are two different timelines existing over each other, both trying to win over the other. Do you still think I have an easy job? let me ask you, what would you do if one day a second light domain under your control came to be so tangled and messed up you literally can’t untangle it without destroying both of them and bringing the entire universe back to the dawn of time?!” The lion shouted, leaving Luminos agap.

After a period of silence Zwriniz spoke again.

“I’m going to visit Theo… I… I still have work to do” The lion disappeared as if he was never there in the first place. He knew he would have this discussion with Luminos, and he knew what it would result, but he still needed to do it as he couldn’t risk breaking the flow of time, even for the other Greater Gods. He hated that he couldn’t do anything to change the timeline without the entire universe collapsing after the Genesis Seal had been put in place by the System.

---

[Hutopia, Year 12.021 of the common calendar]

The woman who dropped to the ground from somewhere near the ceiling managed to land graciously as if she had done this many times before.

I looked at her and what I saw was the definition of beauty.  She had long red hair and dark skin, her eyes were dark brown and her frame was somewhat muscular from working with heavy stuff by the looks of it.

"Wow" was the only thing I could muster when I saw her.

Jana was going to say something to Osgood when she heard me and froze. She then turned her head in my direction.

"Did you… not, that's impossible, but… did you talk?" Jana asked.

"I did…?" I said.

She bolted at me in the next moment and lifted me up. I'm the air at the same height as her face.

"When the chief said someone was interested in my work, was it you?"

I nodded.

"That's amazing!" She said.

She put me on the ground, turned towards Osgood and waved him away.

"After you show him around, would you mind–" Osgood began but was interrupted mid-sentence by Jana who refused.

"No, I won't go. Now shoo. Shoo" She said, shooing him away.

It looked like he was going to say something else but gave up and left. Before he was completely gone he turned my way and said.

"If you wish to participate in our feast you just need to ask. We'll gladly accept you" he said before exiting the building and leaving for the feast.

"Now that he's finally away I can finally show you around without him interrupting me" She said.

"He didn't seem that bad" I said as I looked at the closed door of the building after Osgood left and closed it.

"He's just behaving nice because you are here. By the way, you are a Dragon, right? The drawings I saw from the old sage's books always depicted Dragons as giant killing machines, super powerful and stuff. But you're...tiny" Jana said.

Her comment hurt a little, it didn't hurt more because, one, I'm transformed into a smaller version, kinda off, of myself and, two, I literally have been alive for two weeks now, of course I'm small, even my status screen shows I'm a baby. But it still hurts nonetheless.

"I guess…? I've never seen another Dragon before, just one Wyvern" I said.

"Eh, it doesn't matter. I was just asking because I was curious. Now, you were interested in my work?" She said, her eyes shining with the opportunity to brag about her accomplishments.

"Yeah, I was wondering how you manage to pump water and probably sewage through those pipes" I asked, curious to how they manage to accomplish this without pumps, filtration systems and other machines.

"We use magic!" She excitedly said.

I swear I heard my hope shattering into a million pieces. I knew it was coming in a world where magic does exist, but I didn't think it would be so… so in your face, you know?

"And… How exactly do you use magic for it?" I asked.

"Oh, I see what you're asking now. Here, let me show you" Jana said as she walked to a small door on the side and opened it, revealing a set of stairs.

She just began walking down the stairs, not waiting for me. I got closer to the door and was able to see the stairs weren't that long, just a couple dozen steps to another door down the stairs. I walked down the stairs as Jana opened the other door.

"You might want to close your nose, it really stinks" She said as she walked in.

I didn't have a second to process what she said when a rotten smell assaulted my nostrils and almost made me throw up on the spot, but I pushed through the smell and walked in.

Past that door wasn't another room, but rather a cave with a medium underground lake. A pipe coming from the lake and entering a hole in the wall next to the door I just passed, and in the other side another pipe coming from the wall, but instead of going to the lake like the other one, this one goes to a set of seven boiler-like tanks, all connected between themselves and back to the lake.

"I keep both doors shut because of the smell. I have a few deodorant circuits hidden around but they can't keep up with the demand" Jana said, pointing towards several places on the walls and floor where a Faint glowing pattern could be seen.

"What is all of this? And what the heck is this smell?" I asked. I could feel my stomach wanting to throw its contents away, but I pushed that back down with will power only, I couldn't just throw up like this.

"Oh, you know… poop" She said.

"What?" I blinked a few times.

"Let me explain. This lake here is the source of all the water we use in the village. The pipe in there has a water flow spell written on it, making it suck up the water and push it through my pipe system, going aaaaal the way to the village and the mine” Jana said, pointing her finger to the pipe and running alongside it near the stairs. “Then after it was used, the water comes all the way from the village tooooooo here” She said, again, pointing to the piping and running to the water tanks. “Here we let all the sediment fall down. After that we pump the water to these six tanks, each with a cleaning spell to collect all the… you know… poop to a little tray where we can then use it for other things, like the farm. After AAAALL of that, the water finally comes back into the lake to be reused. Of course, the exit pipe has another spell in it that kills all the bacteria that might come with the water. Easy, ain’t it?” She said happily that someone was interested in her work.

“I…” I was at a loss for words. “I… regret asking. I really didn’t need to know you casually collect all your shit and then use the same water it was in. I think I was more interested in the more “magical” part of the entire system” I said with a grim smile.

“Ohhh. That makes more sense, actually. Well, if i say i don’t want to see a dragon using magic i would be lying, so if you follow me to my workshop i can show you all the magic circuits you need to run my system. You could even build one with them!” she said as she walked out from this stinky cave.

We walked up the stairs, finally leaving all that putrid smell behind as the sweet smell of fresh air hit me. I almost teared up from that.

She took me to another room inside the building. Inside there was a wood desk near the wall filled with what [Appraisal] and [Knowledge Library] told me were leather paper and a pencil with an ink from a creature called Inklig, whatever that was. on the other side of the room were two cabinets with three drawers each.

Jana opened one of the drawers and took a heavy-looking book from inside, moved it above the desk and dropped it with a loud thud. The desk creaked under the weight of that book.

“Here I have all the blueprints for the circuits… Oh yeah, I forgot. What do you know about magic circuits?” She asked me like that was a dumb question.

“Actually… Nothing yet” I honestly said.

“What? Nothing? really? Oh, well… in that case, we need to bring you to the old sage. He was the one who taught me what magic circuits are and how to use them. Let 's go!” she happily said as she opened the door and walked away.

I stared at her for a few seconds, as she didn’t even wait for me to get the information from [Knowledge Library] before setting off to see that guy… Well, looks like I'll be able to see Amity soon.

I began walking behind her as we left the building behind and walked in the direction of the mountains.