To be honest, I’ve long lost count of my own deaths. What’s even sadder—I have no clue how many more times I’m doomed to meet the bony bastard again. Who am I, and what the hell did I do to deserve this? Somewhere in the dusty corners of my mind, scraps of a first life still linger, but after countless rebirths, I’ve lost every memory of who I was. So no, I’m not finding the answer to that anytime soon.

  I must’ve been a bastard. Some wretched, vile scum—why else would I be caught in this cursed carousel of death? That’s the only explanation that fits. I wish I knew the real reason. But one thing is painfully, undeniably clear: God has abandoned me. And no matter how many times I prayed, begged, cried for salvation—it was useless. Not once did I get so much as a flicker of hope from the divine.

  So I came to a bitter conclusion: no one is coming to save me. No one ever will. All I have… is me.

  I’ve passed through thousands—no, tens of thousands—of worlds. But I never stayed more than a day in any of them. Death was always there. Breathing down my neck. Watching. Waiting.

  Today was no different. I was reborn again. For a split second, I thought I’d become a bird. Wouldn’t have been the first time, so no reason to get excited. Death always finds a way to get me, even in the sky. Planes, slingshots, storms, hawks, you name it. But this time was simpler. I was in the air—but I wasn’t the bird. I was the pathetic, frail lamb clutched in an eagle’s talons. It soared to the cliffs, then tore its claws from beneath my ribs and dropped me like garbage. First impact didn’t kill me, so I got to savor every hellish second of my body bouncing off the rocks below.

  That’s that. Time to roll into the next life—if you can even call this living.

  A lab. Old. Dusty. Reeking of rot. In the name of “science,” they slowly lowered me into some foul-smelling green sludge. You ever see what happens to cotton candy in water? That’s what was happening to me. My skin, my muscles, my blood and bones—they all melted, turning into a wet, oozing slop.

  I died from the pain before it even reached my knees. Lucky me, I wanted to shout—but the body I was in didn’t let me speak. I was just a fetus. In the womb.

  “Mom, mom! You’ll protect me, right?”

  Ha! Good one. We both know how this ends. Ah, here they come—those all-too-familiar steel hooks, tearing apart my half-formed body like it’s trash. Ninth abortion this month. Guess Death’s running out of ideas?

  The worst part? I couldn’t even go insane to escape the pain. I was nothing more than pure, raw conciseness. Every new life? A brand-new nightmare. The pain always felt fresh. No matter how much I begged for numbness, it never came. And things only got worse when I ended up in the body of a creature with a high pain threshold. Like, say... a crayfish.

  To the bastards who claimed crustaceans don’t feel pain—screw you. Seriously. Though, to be fair, different worlds, different biology. I do know this: being boiled alive as a crayfish hurts a hell of a lot more than being a dog in the same pot. Yep. Been there too. Chihuahua, if you’re curious. Barely had any meat on me, but hey—not like that ever mattered.

  Still, nothing—nothing—compares to the time I was reborn as a tree. Not a treant. Not some magical spirit. Just... a damn tree. And the local villagers? They had this brilliant game: who can chop down an oak the fastest? Don’t know how the others did, but my moron took twenty-two hours to finish the job.

  So yeah. That’s how I “live.” Not once in all this time did fate toss me a bone. Not a single “fight and survive” moment. I usually show up just before death. When it’s already too late. A dying old man choking on the wrong pill. A fly stuck in a web, just as the hairy bastard of a spider moves in. A monster about to get butchered by a bunch of knights in shiny armor. Ogre? Orc? Hell if I know. I gained a body the moment cold steel sliced across my throat.

  And yet... and yet... maybe I’m messed up, but I do see a silver lining. Those poor souls, the ones who were supposed to suffer—they didn’t. Because I took their place.

  So maybe I’m not that bad, huh? Maybe I’m even a good guy! Suffering for other people’s sins—just like the Almighty Himself! Maybe it’s finally ti—

  ...Okay, okay. That was a pathetic attempt to kiss up to the Higher Powers. As usual. Screw the idiots I keep replacing! If some damn geezer can’t swallow his pill right, why the hell do I have to suffer on the floor, gasping uselessly for even a shred of air?!

  Another body. Great. Who the hell am I now? Some tiny creature being hunted. Men with rifles. Dogs barking at my heels. Should I even bother running? Maybe I should just stop. Die. Reboot. Repeat. Over and over until the last living thing in the last rotten world finally dies.

  Truth is, I’ve only kept going out of habit. But if I’m honest? I don’t give a damn anymore. There’s no happy ending for me. Denying that would be beyond stupid.

  Only oblivion can save me from this joke of an existence.

  While I was thinking that, a bullet blew out the organ doing the thinking.

  Didn’t even get a moment to breathe. Invisible force yanked my soul back into the meat grinder and shoved me into yet another body.

  The darkness faded fast. Light stabbed through my eyelids. A warm breeze slid over my skin, rustling the grass. Above me, a sky of endless blue—brushed with clouds like lazy strokes of white paint.

  Not a bad start. Except... why can’t I breathe? What’s that burning pain in my neck?

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Then I looked down.

  Oh.

  I was hanging.

  No. Not hanging out at some swanky party with two beauties on my arm—but by the neck.

  Everything started to blur as the curtain of black came down again.

  A-a-a-a-aand cut! I died.

  What now? Hopefully a quick death. I’m not in the mood for another slow crawl toward the inevitable.

  Bright light again. You won’t believe this—but I was still hanging. Still the same damn tree. First time this has happened. If I come back as a third hanged man in a row, that’s a full-blown jackpot.

  Kind of excited. Crap. Am I... a gambling addict? Huh. Learn something new every day.

  ******

  Looks like the system’s glitched. Thirty-seven rebirths in a row—and always the same damn noose. But the weirdest part? The scene never changed. I won’t play dumb. Let’s be real—somehow, I kept coming back to the same body.

  I thought it might be a time loop. But the changing light proved otherwise. Days passed. Nights fell.

  So I reached a weird-ass conclusion: this body is immortal. Ironic, isn’t it?

  Or maybe this is just Death’s new game. She got bored and decided to mess with me in a new way. Either way, I wasn’t playing along. The second I start believing I’ve got a chance—it’ll all crash down again. It always does. I’m done getting my hopes up.

  So what now? Just hang here forever?

  Eventually, I decided I had to break out of this noose. Not easy. Every time I came back, I tugged on the rope, hoping to snap the branch. That bastard wouldn’t budge.

  To give myself more time before suffocating, I figured it was time to feed the starving beast. I mean my brain—assuming I still have one, because my attempts to saturate it with oxygen cast serious doubt on that fact. Long story short, with my fingers, I poked a hole in my throat a few times, hoping it would let me breathe. Maybe I was aiming in the wrong spot, or maybe it’s just impossible—who knows—but in the end, these efforts didn’t turn out well.

  I died. Again. And all the wounds healed, erasing every trace of my low IQ. A happy ending, right? Except....

  My sweet, dripping blood attracted some unwanted company.

  ******

  Guess who showed up in this world first? If you read the synopsis, you already know. For everyone else—enjoy the reveal: zombies.

  They came from a nearby village. Gaunt medieval peasants in torn linen shirts and rough trousers, eaten away by time. Their skin was a sickly greenish-gray, patchy and bloated, rotting like moldy bread. Worms and flies crawled in the holes where flesh used to be. Their eyes were milky and lifeless. Faces tight with deep cracks and wrinkles. Gaping wounds revealed tendons and bones. Their teeth were jagged, blackened nubs. And from their cracked lips, thin strings of dark, nearly black saliva drooled.

  The eager one went first. He bit my toes. The rest joined the buffet. The pain blurred my vision, so I couldn’t count exactly—but there were at least twenty of those foot-fetish freaks. They grabbed at me with rotting stumps, clawing for more. Once they finished my feet, they moved up to my calves.

  For the first time, I saw my body regenerate. Flesh bubbling back over bone. Nerves reforming. Blood pulsing through fresh veins.

  And when the feet were back in premium shape? The undead went back to work.

  No matter how much I thrashed, they overwhelmed me. Only death could free me from their grip.

  But on my eighty-fifth resurrection, something changed. I woke up on cold ground.

  The noose was still hanging above. Which meant... they pulled so hard, they tore off my damn head. Not surprising. More and more zombies were showing up every day. Word had spread. The freaks were gathering from every village around.

  I was so exhausted that even the worst pain didn’t faze me anymore. I still screamed, sure—kicking, writhing, shrieking like hell—but inside? I was calm.

  Until I saw the female zombies.

  And damn... they were into me.

  That look in their eyes—distant, empty... and burning hot. Lips bitten. Drool trailing. Ladies! One at a time, please! I’ve only got two hands—wait, scratch that, one hand. One tongue. Lower body? Not sure what’s left. Hard to see past the dudes slurping up my intestines like spaghetti Bolognese.

  My neurons have been activated.

  Mmm, enjoying the neck? Go ahead, kiss i—ow! Did you just bite me?! You stupid corpse!

  What the hell am I gonna tell my mom about that hickey?

  Oh, so you think a high-neck sweater will be enough? Ah, no—you’re not saying shit, just 'blargh-ugh-ahh'. Hey! HEY! At least don’t eat my damn tongue! Don’t care if you love me! If you stop at the cheeks, I might still kinda forgive you. But if you steal my first kiss, I’ll burn every last bridge between us!

  Let's be real—she totally stole my first kiss. Luckily, I was already pushing up daisies by then, so it damn well doesn't count.

  Alright, jokes aside—my situation isn’t exactly great. No, scratch that, I’ve been deep in the shit for a while now, but this? This is next-level darkness. Every time I come back, I feel… incomplete. Like, literally missing half my body. Without arms, there’s not much I can do.

  And then, in my messed-up head, a brilliant idea was born. To make them stop eating me, every single one of them had to get a taste of me! Their bodies are rotten and frail. They mindlessly chomp on raw meat, occasionally hitting bone. Soon enough, every one of them would lose their teeth. I still had to deal with the crowd pinning me down, but that was the least of my worries now.

  So eat me up, friends! Eat me up!

  ******

  The plan worked. The only thing I didn’t expect was how long it’d take. I had to be their all-you-can-eat buffet for a little over a week. Then I moved on to phase two: "an eye for an eye." I started eating them back. Mostly the stubborn ones. I bashed skulls with my forehead, then scooped out the brains like soup. By the third meal, I figured out I didn’t have to swallow—just spit the rotten mush out. That was enough to kill them.

  Once the crowd started thinning, I came back with more and more muscle. No more headbutts that knocked me out cold. Now? Now I could throw punches. Sure, I broke my hands a lot—but compared to everything else?

  That pain was a gift.

  ******

  I only managed to claw my way to full freedom by the end of the second week. Classic me—I was braced for another cruel twist. A surprise meteor, endless lightning strikes hammering the same spot, or some other bullshit that’d put me down for good.

  But everything was... fine. Relatively fine. After finishing off the last of the zombies, I finally sucked in a deep breath. The godawful stench hit me like a brick, triggering my gag reflex—but with nothing left in my gut, all I did was cough violently.

  And that, more or less, was how my grand adventure in this new world kicked off. Now all that’s left is figuring out what the hell this world even is. Not that I actually believe I’ll last long in it anyway.