Now, sitting back on his bed, William finally said something.
"What is wrong with him?"
After all that time spent together, William was starting to consider Zephyr his friend; after all, they both practically talked daily.
The duel request came as a surprise to him, but he still accepted it, not thinking much of it. However, now that the duel was done, William had a feeling he wouldn't forget this duel for a very long time.
William expected Zephyr to once again use that divine smite he used last time since it seemed to be his strongest attack, so he devised a counter to it by turning incorporeal by using [shadow step] before attacking him with his strongest move right after Zephyr used his smite attack.
However, what happened completely blew all his expectations out of the window. William had a feeling that Zephyr had stopped time.
It may sound absurd for a 10-year-old to be able to stop time, but it's the only logical conclusion after what just happened.
Zephyr had once mentioned to him how he had time element affinity, but William didn't think much of it, considering it to be like his chaos element, aka an element too strong to properly master for a kid.
In this world, there are three types of elements, the first being the basic type,which includes fire, water, wind, and earth.
Deviant, which includes the vast majority of the world's elements like steel, poison, light, darkness, ice, and lightning.
And last but not least, conceptual elements are basically elements that infringe on the territory of concepts such as time, space, gravity, life, death, or William's very own chaos element.
The system just shows concept elements in the Deviant category, but they couldn't be more different, as in order to use conceptual elements, you need to fully understand a concept, and mastering even a single basic spell of such elements takes multiple years of practice.
Even William, with all his mana-related skills as well as his [Progenitor] title, wasn't able to learn even a single chaos element spell.
So to see someone the same age as him with supposedly similar talents casually using a conceptual element really made him rethink a lot of things.
Especially his own mentality regarding this second life.
In this second life, initially he wanted to reach the apex of magic and only focus on magic, but that quickly changed with him living here.
He came to really love his new parents and wanted to spend time with them. Initially, he wanted to become strong enough to protect them.
But he quickly realised just how flawed his thinking was. Both Rex and Myra were power houses that didn't need his protection; after all, both of them were born commoners, but they managed to rise to the status of count and countess through their pure strength and talent.
So why would such people need his protection?
William just wanted to enjoy the things he was never able to in his past life while cultivating his magic and swordsmanship on the sidelines.
Eventually he would inherit Rex's position as a count, and he could live happily for 200–300 years, as it's possible for humans to extend their lifespan with magic, and eventually he would ascend to godhood.
This was Williams plan for his second life; according to his knowledge, the world has been in an era of peace for thousands of years, with no reason for a war to break out in the future.
So in such a peaceful world, mindlessly chasing strength instead of enjoying his new-found life sounds stupid.
William had everything he ever wanted in his past life: a loving family, friends whose company he enjoys, wealth, status, strength, and even magic. What more can he even ask for?
And yet here was Zephyr, challenging all the beliefs he had developed over the past two years and proclaiming his death.
How could someone like him even die out of nowhere? It just sounds like a desperate attempt by Zephyr to make him go to the neutral continent, and yet for some reason he couldn't ignore him.
He kept on thinking, What if Zephyr was right? What if he really does die without having accomplished anything in his second chance at life?
No, that can't be possible, right? He can't die, not like this. He needed to at least live for hundreds of years to enjoy the life he got after so many hardships.
While William was having a mental breakdown, a deafeningly loud divine thunderclap was played inside the minds of every single person in the universe.
A new divine human had been born, the second one in this generation, and the universe had already given its congratulations to the newcomer.
Right now, the whole world is in a state of chaos. Even one divine human was enough to change the world, but now there were two of them.
Only God knows what kind of consequences that would cause.
However, contrary to the state of events in the world right now, inside the mind of a young boy, there was only peace and silence.
Before he got up from the ground, recovering from his initial shock
"Hahahha, I'm such an idiot."
"Why did I ever believe I could live a life of comfort and safety?"
"My life has never been that simple, but fine, I'll stop complaining too now," William said in a self-deprecating manner as he once again entered the world of memoirs.
He was once again greeted by a sight of pure gold, but he didn't pay attention to it anymore, instead setting his eyes on the humongous, luxurious castle in front.
William walked with a carefree expression, completely forgetting about everything that happened here a few minutes ago.
Before finally reaching the throne room to greet William, over there was Zephyr sitting on his throne with an annoyed expression plastered all over his face as he eyed William.
"Didn't I already tell you to not co-" However, before Zephyr could complete his sentence and kick William out again, he felt an overwhelming impact on his face.
BOOOOMMM
A loud, ear-defeaning noise was created as Zephyr crashed into a wall nearby.
"What do you think you're doing?" Zephyr exclaimed, shocked at the sudden turn of events.
"Do you think your enemy will wait for you to charge your strongest attack? This isn't some anime," William said back in an amused tone, quoting Zephyr's own words against him.
Right now, Zephyr was the angriest he had ever been over the course of the 10 years he had been alive, and he planned on making William pay for it.
"(Time sto-) Just as Zephyr was about to cast his trusty spell, his abdomen was impaled by a giant ice spear that came out of nowhere, sending him flying.
'Spirits' he thought, but due to him being too focused on William, he failed to notice the ice spirit, which caught him by surprise.
'It doesn't matter; I just need to activate time stop.' However, just as he was about to activate time stop mid-air, he was engulfed in a gigantic firestorm, burning him to a crisp.
It should be noted that while he has some memories of his future self ,his current skill set, personality, and experience were set to match William's due to which he was caught off guard.
But it doesn't matter; despite being burned to a crisp, once the fire subsided, he instantly healed himself.
Zephyr possessed an overpowered healing skill, allowing him to basically be immortal as long as he didn't die.
Zephyr once again stood, his clothes torn and his hair and face a mess, but he was unharmed.
"What do you think you're doing?" Zephyr asked as he eyed William dangerously.
"I'm just testing if you have the power to back up the words you said earlier," William retorted.
"You dare test a god?" Zephyr asked, his anger evident in his tone.
"I do," William shot back with a slight chuckle as soon as his whole aura changed.