Unknown Time - Unknown Season : Unknown Location

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  'What is death?'

  Being someone whose life was constantly balanced on the edge of a blade, it was something I likely should have known better than anyone else.

  However, the moment I finally experienced it, it felt unbelievably foreign...

  Even though I had stared into its eyes for hundreds of years as it waited for me to slip up, I felt like I understood even less than most...

  But it all had to do with my power.

  In the early days of my adventuring, death held his blade at my throat, waiting for me to inevitably make the final mistake, but after a certain point, it felt like he stopped keeping his eyes on me. After a certain point, I got so strong that nothing inside the bounds of the system could kill me, and death's gaze finally turned away from me.

  For some time, I believed escaping death to be my final goal.

  And it was...

  However, the moment 'getting stronger' stopped being my motive, and I started looking elsewhere to find a reason to continue living.. there was nothing.

  And by the time I finally recognized that, death was no longer an option.

  So, without any choice, I continued forward, exploring countless worlds while doing everything I could to try and create a motive.. to try and find a purpose for my existence.

  But no matter how many worlds I escaped to, there was nothing.

  That was until I finally reached them all.. and returned to Earth.

  After stepping foot there, my curiosity, along with many other emotions I thought I'd lost started returning, even if just as small embers. Feeling excitement, curiosity, anxiety, and worry felt oddly new.. and refreshing...

  And before I knew it, I had growing desires again...

  I wanted to explore, study the world of magic, better understand the system, and meet the many people of Earth.

  But most of all, I once again had the desire for strength. After my system wiped, I finally had a peak I could climb to, and after meeting the blind administrator of the Central Server, that peak grew even taller.

  However, even as my invincibility seemed to waver, I never looked death in the eyes as I used to.

  Even though I had lost nearly everything, death still wasn't even a possibility in my mind. I knew higher powers could 'kill' me but I knew I could never really die...

  Death had given up on me after all.

  But as I stared up at the old draconic god as the world was engulfed in light, I finally understood. Death had never actually moved his knife away from my neck...

  He simply moved behind me... -Ah...-

  It was beyond what the word naive could do justice, to believe I was invincible while wielding a power I didn't understand... A power that was never truly mine.

  Even when that reality was shown to me, and I was shown higher skies after returning to Earth, I didn't understand it... The System was simply an enigma I took for granted.

  That was at least until death's blade finally passed through my neck.

  *FLASH* As I stared into the final instant of blinding light my eyes could register before they were atomized, my mind was clear.

  Arrogance, desire, and power... In that instant, it all vanished. The body I believed I had cultivated.. the mind I believed I had trained.. and the endless ocean of mana I believed I had accumulated.. gone in the blink of an eye.

  Just as the system had granted me everything.. in death, it took it all away...

  I had nothing left... Only a listless consciousness floating in infinity.

  But somehow, even without a physical mind, a small piece of thought remained.. just enough to think and sense the passage of time...

  -Hah...- Just thinking about it made me want to laugh.. but I couldn't muster it. -So that's how it finally happens, huh...- Seemingly unable to feel happiness, sadness, or even regret, my mind just floated with an unbelievably freeing sensation seemingly wanting to cultivate a feeling of acceptance.

  Even as time continued to tick by, and the final white image I saw before my death blended and morphed into a space I found myself floating in, nothing changed.

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  But that growing acceptance wasn't something I could accept.

  -Why.. aren't I upset...- After so long, I finally found what I was looking for, a purpose to my life, and a reason to live, yet right afterward, it was snatched from my grasp before I could even think of resisting.

  However, I eventually came to realize that it was all thanks to that grasp not being mine, and only after being stripped of everything did I finally notice.

  It wasn't just that grasp either.. the more time I had to think, the more I understood that nothing I knew to have was truly mine...

  But rather than being swallowed by darkness and sinking into despair afterward, the space my mind constructed around me grew sharper, showing fluctuating ebbs and flows, and before long, I found a single ember at the center of it all.. a desire to live a life where my body, mind, and power were truly mine, not granted by another.

  And that desire was the ember that lit my soul ablaze.

  *VWOOM* As my memories continued to replay, passing through years as if I was floating down the river of time, that ember grew like the core of a star, and the chaotic space around me started becoming uniform, turning to follow a larger current.

  With every passing moment, the space around me grew more vivid, returning vibrance to desires I only knew as a child before I managed to 'see' the shape of something, and faintly 'feel' the flow of energy within the sea of white around it.

  -That's.. me...- It was my soul, a thick, unformed white cloud flowing around a solid sphere...

  The only thing that was truly mine...

  Suddenly recalling memories of using my aura to 'see' the inside of my old body, the cloud began shifting, forming a body, arms, and hands...

  Ones I could control.

  Going wide-eyed as I watched my hand rotate, open, and close, the inevitability of needing to accept my death was absorbed by desire, and the suppressed flame in the depths of my soul roared. -I.. have a chance..!-

  Feeling my mind accelerate as I turned my attention to the surrounding, swirling energy, theories started ripping through my mind. I didn't know where to even begin.

  However, after watching the vortex for some time, trying to learn what was making it spin, I felt something subtle. Whenever I moved, the flow of the energy would warp, and I could feel a faint shift in the constant tug on my soul.

  Wanting to try and figure out what it was, I started moving more, learning I could use my mind to float around as simply as moving a limb, and before long, I found that it was the swirling energy tugging on me, trying to drag my soul with the rapids.

  -What if I...- Slowly reaching out, I stuck the tips of my fingers into the swirling energy flowing like a river before a gut-wrenching, searing pain ripped through me and a series of familiar, long back tendrils formed. -ACK!- Instantly ripping my hand out, the tendrils were sucked back into my hand, rapidly weaving through my body before settling and swirling around the solid sphere in my abdomen.

  -What the hell was that...- Rushing to try and calm my nerves, I tried to look at the mass of tendrils with my aura-projection-like vision, and while so detailed it wracked my brain, after taking a step back, I found it oddly familiar. -Is this.. the same stuff I see in monsters..?-

  They were black strings, almost like webbing. -My body had a lot of this stuff in it when I was alive too... Should I try making more of it..?-

  Looking back at the wall of energy, trying to think of how to make it not hurt, the image my 'aura' projected in my mind when I touched it showed a constant stream of particles I assumed were mana, slamming into my hand and tearing through it while rapidly shrinking and forming the black tendrils. -Maybe.. it caused pain because the mana was tearing through my hand..?-

  Deciding to focus and attempt to swirl the cloud composing my body at the same speed, hoping it wouldn't tear so aggressively, I reached out toward the wall again, spinning the energy in my palm while watching the mana bend in toward it.

  However, even though I was moving as carefully as possible, the moment my hand and the wall of energy met, my human-shaped body lost its form, and the vortex collapsed on me, compressing nearly completely on the core at the center of my body. -HUEK!-

  Almost immediately, black strings blew out from my body, reaching into the surrounding rapids of mana before starting to grow and spread, collecting more and more dark strings from the surroundings while expanding into a colossal web spanning far farther than I could perceive.

  But those strings were the least of my worries. -HOLY FFFFUCK THIS HURTS!- Feeling my consciousness wavering from the pain alone, my soul rumbled and churned, feeling like it was being ruthlessly shredded while tendrils of mana, my body, and the black strings were all woven together at the center of everything.

  I was reconstructing myself.

  As time passed and the connections between everything grew stronger, some familiar senses started returning, the image of a normal aura in my mind and the sensation of a reserve.

  However, while I could access it, it was growing too rapidly to control, so I continued to let it rampage...

  And time ticked by...

  However, as it passed, I started raising other questions.

  Reconstructing an entire body wouldn't be as simple as collecting 'strings' and mana. Even if I just wanted to have an organic 'shell', I'd have to figure out how to construct it with just mana at my disposal.

  Within the surrounding mana vortex, there was a substantial amount of organic matter, albeit fragmented, and as I absorbed more of the mana, it collected around my core.

  In that place I could use the tiny amount of mana leaking from my reserve to inspect it all and see individual atomic compositions, counting not just protons and neutrons, but also electrons.

  So, after an unknown amount of time passed, I had an idea. -Like I did with Bella... What if I just introduced a bunch of genetic material to my mana core..?-

  Thinking back to how I saw Bella turning the flesh I fed her into her own, I had an idea to replicate the fragmented cells around my reserve and essentially hope my reserve could make use of it like an elixir.

  However.. that was considerably easier said than done...

  And while at times, time itself seemed to waver and fluctuate...

  It never stopped moving forward...

  But I couldn't let myself stop.

  I wasn't finished.

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