"Are you ready to face your fears?"

"Umm... Do I need to?"

Yule was stammering when he answered the beautiful girl in front of her. The girl in front of him had a long black hair draped in a violet dress.

On her head, she was wearing a diadem, while her arms were covered by bracelets with shining jewels embedded on them.

Hypnotized by the beauty before him, Yule was wondering also how he ended up in this dark place. He and this beautiful girl were only in this dark area.

Alone with her in this empty space.

The girl suddenly stepped closer to Yule and grabbed his right hand.

"Fear makes you human. And your humanity is the one thing I need right now."

Then out of the blue, shards started dropping around this dark empty area.

"What's happening?" Yule started stepping back when he noticed the shards were dropping around him.

He scanned the area around, but he couldn't find where the shards coming from.

The girl inched closer again to him. And, her jewels on her bracelets started glowing.

"Yule. Will you be the hero that my world need right now?"

"I-I don't know what's happening! But if you need a hero, then I'm telling you. I'm not hero material."

The beautiful girl smiled and held her face. "Then you're the kind of hero that we need."

Then everything went black.

*****

DZZZZZT!

Yule woke up from the sound of his alarm clock. His body was sweating. He immediately rose from his bed and looked at the mirror beside his cabinet.

There was a telltale sign of sweat on his shirt. To calm his nerves, Yule breathed deeply and released it one huge sigh.

"Yule! Wake up already! You're gonna be late from school." His mom shouted from downstairs.

"Coming down!"

Yule started pulling his school uniform from his cabinet and went to the shower.

After his preparations, he quickly grabbed a bite for his breakfast and waved to his mother and younger sister.

While walking to school, someone suddenly grabbed his shoulder.

"Hey, Yule! Have you read the latest chapter from the Draconian web novel?"

The guy who grabbed Yule is his best friend in high school, Neil Gomez.

Neil is a geeky guy who loves to read comics, manga, light novels and web novels just like Yule. That was why they clicked when they first meet during their freshman year.

"Sorry man, but I stayed late night last night, studying for our Third Quarter Exam."

"But our exam is next week?"

"I know. But I just want to prepare in advance, so I won't be loaded next week."

"God, Yule Azul! You're still stiff. You do know that our Senior Year is still next year, right? So, we, juniors still have a lot of time to slack off."

"Well, someone has to be serious between the two of us."

Neil started laughing which made Yule laughed too. Then suddenly, everything went slow for Yule.

As the laughter and actions of Neil started from slow motion to still. Yule looked around, and the surroundings just froze.

"The hell-"

Then a magic circle appeared from where he was standing. Suddenly his vision was filled by a blinding white light.

*****

After the white light vanished, Yule suddenly fell on unknown ground.

He opened his eyes and rolled on his back. Upon looking at the clouds above, he was surprised to see that the sky was painted in red color. He immediately pulled himself up and looked at scanned the area.

He gasped at what he saw.

He was in the middle of a dry and barren land. Yule was greeted by the amount of destruction around him.

Tall buildings collapsed on the ground.

Pave roads had been wrecked or smashed by heavy objects.

Cars were smashed on the side roads.

There was no life around except for him.

"W-What happened here?!"

Yule started running, looking for any sign of life. He saw some rustic road signs, indicating that he was still around Metro Manila. But a different kind of Metro Manila from where he used to know.

He was just laughing with his best friend, and the next thing he knew it looked like the country just came from a war.

While roaming around the area, he started to feel that the ground was shaking followed by a heavy stomping sound.

He hurriedly headed to the area where the noise was coming from, as he believed that any sound is an indication of a sign of life.

He hoped.

When he arrived at the plaza, he found the source and gasped at the sight.

The stomping noise was from a towering monster where Yule almost pissed on his pants.

He stepped back from his footing, but then his foot stumbled from a can littered on the ground. And he fell on his knees creating noise as his buttocks smacked the ground.

Surprised by it, the eight-foot creature stopped stomping and nudged its head on Yule's direction. The monster found its new target.

The creature looked like a crossbreed between a wild boar and a bull. It was a bipedal creature with a wild boar head and two tusks jutting from its mouth. And two visible horns erected near from its ear. The whole body was covered by black fur.

"What the hell?" Yule started crawling backward, frightened at the sight of the creature.

The monster heavily stomped the ground and moved to its new target.

Yule began to cry and continuously crawled backward as he saw the monster was inching closer to him.

When the monster moved away toward him, Yule found what the creature was stomping on that area.

It was stomping on a human body or what it was supposed to be. Now, chunks of meat were splattered on the ground.

Yule shrieked at the carnage.

"I just want to go back!" Yule shouted.

The monster halted his movements and began to curl its body. It was preparing to jump from his position to Yule's, planning to splatter him also.

When the monster was about to jump towards him, Yule immediately shut his eyes, giving up on escaping the monster. He was praying to all the gods to make it painless when the monster attacks him.

The monster flared its nostrils, then hurled its body in the air.

But the monster was blocked by another creature in mid-air. The wild boar-bull hybrid creature was thrown away to a nearby wrecked building. The building groaned when the monster's body crashed the remaining cemented walls.

While waiting for his impending doom, Yule slightly opened his eyes and was left gaping when a white creature headbutted its head against the monster's body.

Then, that white creature landed gracefully on the ground near to Yule's position.

He eventually noticed that the white creature was a white stag, crowned with long horns on its head. On its back, a human head popped out. There was a girl on the back of the white stag.

The girl looked at Yule with examining eyes and stepped down from the white stag. He observed that the mystery girl was wearing a white long sleeve uniform and checkered short skirt.

"Surprise to see a mundane human here." The girl said to Yule. Then, she held her right hand in the air. "Zura! Weaponize!"

The white stag glowed brightly and turned into a ball of light. The light molded to a bow and landed on her hand.

"Now let's start slaying." The girl turned her body and faced the collapsed form of the monster. She quickly raised her arms and aimed the bow at her target. "You will be the fifth aswang I will be slaying today."