The sky was no longer merely dark—it was a crushing weight, as though the entire world had chosen this single moment to collapse. Below, the ground had vanished beneath an ocean of corpses, each one a drowned story told only in blood. Millions of dragons blotted out what remained of the light, their wings vast enough to swallow cities, yet the old arrogance had drained from their eyes. What remained was a cold, centuries-old fury.
Among them stood elves with drawn bows, titans like living mountains, undead emperors whose faces were nothing but polished bone, void-beasts woven from darkness itself, and ancient machines that still ticked and whirred as if life lingered in their gears. Divine and demonic beings fought side by side—angels whose wings now sprouted devils' horns, every species fused into one. They had come for a single purpose: to kill one man.
He stood alone, wounded, blood running freely down his legs and pooling at his feet. But in his eyes there was no rage, no fear—only exhaustion, the look of someone who had already seen everything and was simply waiting for the end.
A quiet thought surfaced in his mind: They have all come to kill me, but death claims only the body. The mind endures forever.
The philosophical question hung unspoken between him and the army: What is death—an ending, or a new beginning?
He regarded the encirclement as if it were merely a final conversation.
A divine being raised its voice, the sound tearing through the heavens. "He is our enemy."
The man said nothing. His silence only fed their anger, answering without words.
Then he spoke, calm, each syllable an arrow loosed with perfect precision.
"You all say 'our' so easily."
No one moved. The word echoed inside them.
He paused, letting it settle, then continued. "Our race. Our faith. Our city. Our country."
The silence stretched. In his mind: These words prick their egos like a small cut that bleeds slowly.
"Our god. Our heaven. Our hell."
His voice was flat now, but the question beneath it was sharp. "Tell me the truth—how much of any of it did you actually choose?"
He looked into their eyes. It was manipulation, yes—questioning their beliefs without ever raising a fist. In his thoughts: People take pride in their identity, but identity is only an accident.
"You don't take pride in yourselves," he said. "You take pride in the labels you were handed."
He lifted a blood-soaked hand. "Being born on this soil wasn't your decision. Breathing beneath this sky wasn't your accomplishment."
A demon snarled, but he pressed on. "You didn't write the laws. You didn't design the systems. You didn't even choose your own species."
He lowered his head slightly, as though remembering. "You were simply born. Through random chance. And you turned that chance into your entire identity."
"You say, 'We won this war. We built this world.'"
A faint, cold glint appeared in his eyes. "Who is 'we'? You? Or the ones who died a thousand years before you were born?"
He took one step forward. "You are nothing in your own lifetimes. So you inflate the place you happened to occupy."
An angel raised its sword, but he did not stop. "You say, 'I am on this side, therefore I am right.'"
He spat blood onto the ground. "Had you been born just a few miles the other way, you would be the enemy on the opposite side."
His voice remained perfectly level. "No one arranged it—not god, not devil."
"It is only fate." But what you do after fate deals its hand—that choice is yours alone.
The words struck home, a truth they had always known but refused to accept. In his mind: These are not mere words. They are weapons, meant to fracture their unity.
He continued speaking, and with every sentence he quietly triggered the geo-atomic charges buried across the battlefield—silent switches pressed without anyone noticing.
Then they attacked.
Dragons breathed rivers of fire. Angels loosed volleys of burning arrows. Demons hurled curses that rotted the air itself. The world began to break in slow motion: the earth split open, the sky fell in shards, corpses rose into the air like leaves in a storm.
The man allowed himself a small, satisfied smile.
In his mind, he whispered: This is as far as I got in this life. Out of the hundred lives I wished for, only one remains.
A memory flashed—his very first life.
That world had been simple, like ours: no powers, no magic, only people and the choices they made. He had been a gentle boy, born into a home with little money but much love. He understood others instinctively—their pain, their joy. Helping came naturally to him: lending notes to a classmate, assisting his mother at home, walking elderly neighbors across busy streets. To him, kindness was as effortless as water flowing downhill.
But slowly he learned: kindness itself was the problem. The kind are always left behind, because the world uses them. One day he helped a boy at school, only for that boy to betray him and shift the blame. He began to think: Good and evil are just names society invented. Evil takes; good gives.
Gradually he changed. He acted only for himself, for his own benefit. Yet before he died, he wanted to secure a good life for his family so that he would never carry regret. He turned that ordinary world into his playground. He became its richest, most powerful, most brilliant mind—surpassing even the grandest historical figures, achieving what conquerors and tyrants could only dream of. He unified the entire world and pushed civilization far beyond its limits. How he did it would be told later, piece by piece, as fragments of his past surfaced.
The scene shifted.
He stood before a god cloaked in darkness so complete that even light refused to touch it.
The god laughed, a sound like grinding void. "A world with no limits at all. Hah—do you wish to become a god yourself? Entertain me for ninety-eight lives, and I will send you to that very world."
His eyes snapped open in a frail, useless body—neither strong enough to stand nor weak enough to die quietly. Pain throbbed through every limb.
In his mind, he cursed: You bastard. You dumped me into this worthless shell.
Then, quieter: Fine. What's done is done. This is my final life—and it's going to be the most entertaining one yet.