Alex

  Alex stood in the ruins of a destroyed plaza, having chased the sounds of battle to witness the dead corpse of a powerful beast and the man that killed it.

  “Get close to me, and keep your eyes on him.” He called to Liora and Osric. “If and when he moves, follow my lead.”

  The man stood at the highest point of the kill, balanced without effort, watching them approach in a way that suggested he had been waiting for some time, with one foot settled on the creature’s skull like it was nothing more than a platform. He didn’t look like a warrior. No armor or visible blade, just a long coat settling around his frame—hanging loose, dark fabric lined with dust, torn in places but not from battle—just from wear, movement, and time.

  And in his hand, a weapon that didn’t belong here.

  Small, metallic, with a long barrel—crafted for precision, designed for killing.

  Alex recognized it, even beneath the etched runes that covered its barrel.

  A gun.

  ***

  Magnus Thorne — Summoned Hero

  Back in his home world of Varnhold, the air only stank of old gunpowder and bad decisions. Blood soaked into cobblestone streets like the city itself had given up on being anything other than a battleground. Somewhere in the distance, something exploded—probably a noble’s carriage, given the shrieking.

  Magnus Thorne had adjusted his coat, flicked a smear of someone else’s blood from his sleeve, and stepped over what was left of a man who’d thought dueling him was a good idea. A choir of dying men groaned in the alleys, their limbs twisted by gunfire and hexes.

  It wasn’t the first time.

  Wouldn’t be the last.

  Because he had already figured out how kill todays enemies before they killed him… again.

  [Name: Magnus Thorne

  Level: 702

  Race: Forsaken - Rank D

  Primary Class: Temporal Gunman

  Sub-class: Epoch Looper

  Strength: 2,614

  Dexterity: 5,902

  Endurance: 2,188

  Intelligence: 4,487

  Wisdom: 2,656

  Feats: Unbroken Cycle, The Bane of Reckless Men, Paradox Walker, [Expand…]

  Active Skills: Hollowshot Execution, Thousandfold Gambit, Gunpowder and Ghosts, Temporal Burst, Subdimension Arsenal,

  Passive Skills: Unerring Violence, Spiteborne Aim, The Repeating Trigger, Temporal Physique, Vault of Lives,

  Dao: Dao of Time - 0.27%

  Unassigned stat points: 212]

  The city guards were already closing in, shouting something about treason, dueling laws, and the nerve to be standing over a dead man without at least pretending to be remorseful. Magnus sighed, checked his arcane revolvers and enchanted rifles, and debated whether today was a good day to start a full-scale riot.

  Then he shot the nearest one through the chest and decided the answer was yes. Ever since he’d discovered he could trade the lives of others to add lives to his own, Magnus hadn’t stopped killing.

  The rest went about as expected—gunfire, screaming, a short-lived attempt at negotiation that ended with a lieutenant trying to stab him in the eye, and Magnus breaking his jaw with the barrel of his pistol. He vaulted a fruit cart, used it as cover to reload, and shot the next poor bastard through the throat before he could finish screaming “In the name of the Crown—”

  Magnus never cared much for crowns. He liked power, sure, but the kind that didn’t require dressing like an overgrown peacock and giving speeches about duty. He had built his reputation on something simpler—being a goddamn problem.

  And that problem had gotten significantly bigger when he figured out how to break time.

  The first time had been an accident. He’d been in a duel that had gotten out of hand—which was to say, he had antagonized a noble’s entire retinue, stolen their finest whiskey, and then found himself facing six men with enchanted blades—He fired, missed, blinked—and suddenly he was standing behind them.

  Magnus had spent five seconds being confused, another five taking advantage of the situation, and the next several years figuring out how to do it on purpose.

  From there, it was simple. He climbed through the ranks of power like a man picking a fight with the concept of hierarchy itself. He robbed warlords, assassinated inquisitors, and set entire royal bloodlines on fire because he found them annoying.

  His enemies got smarter. He got worse.

  When they hired mages, he shot their skulls apart before they finished incantations. When they built steel-plated monstrosities to fight him, his skills rewrote his ammunition to blast through reinforced metal. When they put entire armies in front of him, he went back to the night before their march and poisoned their rations.

  There wasn’t a single rule he followed. Not a battle fought with any sense of fairness. He was a man designed entirely for the chaos of war and the exchange of lives, and he loved it.

  The world adapted. They started sending things that shouldn’t exist after him. Creatures wrapped in time-lost armor. Ancient horrors bound in forgotten language. They had claws that cut through steel, fangs that dripped with curses older than civilization.

  Magnus shot them anyway.

  He had the advantage of knowing how things ended. Every fight was a script he could rewrite, a play where he got to rearrange the actors until the finale suited him.

  And eventually, that meant becoming untouchable.

  Every life was his to trade, and Magnus had plenty of lives.

  The streets spoke his name in huddles tones, not out of reverence, but because those who spoke too loudly tended to stop existing. Kings learned to pay him off rather than hunt him down. The Grand Arcanum gave up on trying to imprison him and started pretending he didn’t exist.

  And Magnus?

  He got bored.

  He had burned the world, reshaped it, toyed with it like an amusement he had outgrown. He had killed every enemy worth killing, and a few random bystanders too, he’d erased every power worth stealing, walked through every battlefield worth fighting on.

  So when the Rift split the sky open over Varnhold, dripping void-light onto the city below and pulling him from the ground, he grinned.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “Finally,” he muttered, holstering his guns. “Something interesting.”

  The Rift didn’t speak. It didn’t need to. The air shuddered, the kind of shift that meant something beyond reason had taken notice. It reached with more than hands— with something older and vast, something that had no right to exist inside time.

  Magnus let it take him.

  Because whatever was waiting on the other side?

  It had no idea what it had just invited into its world.

  “Time to ruin their lives.”

  ***

  Magnus had seen a lot of cities in his time—some grand, some wretched, most of them varying shades of bloodstained—but nothing quite like the gilded corpse of the city that had summoned him from his home-world and bartered for his service, though he couldn’t remember how much he was promised. He had been planning to shoot everyone in sight once he got his bearings, [But somehow, they had delayed the inevitable, securing his services temporarily.] The richest city he’d ever stepped foot in, and somehow also the dumbest.

  No smoke. No industry. No filth-streaked streets filled with the smell of black powder and desperation. Just pristine marble, gold-inlaid gates, and a population so detached from reality that they thought men in shining breastplates could replace firearms.

  Could you believe that?

  They called it civilization. Magnus called it the place he spent days not shooting anyone while waiting for a mission to start. He had been pulled out of his world, thrown across existence, and dumped into Serra because some grossly misinformed idiot thought he was the answer to the problem involving the overpowered children of its mad blood god destroying what was left of the world and taking everyone with them.

  Not that he gave a shit—about Serra, the crown, the other heroes, the nobles, or the demigods strutting around like they owned the place. [He was here to do a job], and the crown had just been the holding pen before the nobles finally shoved him toward something worth killing.

  And that something?

  Seratheis. The lost city, the alleged "Final Legacy of the God of Creation," the reason half a dozen of the most overpowered freaks ever summoned were getting paid enough to pretend to care.

  They’d dropped into the Frontier outskirts first. The part where people still technically belonged. The part that wasn’t so far gone that the world itself tried to rewrite you into something more efficient.

  The problem was, even the safe zone was trying to kill them.

  Harpies that spoke with stolen voices. Bloodslimes that bled for you just to see if you’d react. Some colossal asshole named Rythe who genuinely thought regenerating faster than anyone could put swords in his skull counted as a strategy.

  It didn’t.

  They’d lost a few along the way. Heroes who should’ve been smarter. Hunters who should’ve been faster. One armored hunter who had lasted long enough to make Magnus almost respect him before the poor bastard was swept away at the molecular level by something that called itself the Mistplanes.

  The nobles were spectators with bodyguards. They gave speeches, planned contingencies, discussed strategy like Seratheis cared. The hunter in segmented plate had put in actual work. Harpies dropped first, then the bloodslime. That giant berserker Rythe had been a particularly stubborn flavour of bastard, regenerating just fast enough to make things annoying. The hunter had put an end to that before he disappeared. At least he’d put on a good show.

  Now, Magnus was in the abandoned City of an actual god.

  [Dynamic Quest Updated!]

  [Dynamic Quest - ‘Legacy of the God of Creation’:

  The First God’s purpose was the pursuit of perfection through endless creation, and in his absence, Seratheis continues this process…]

  [Quest Rewards and reward volume dependent on contribution.]

  Magnus barely skimmed it. The whole thing could’ve just read "Try not to get turned into a fucking concept." The city itself wasn’t dead like the one who’d created it—it was alive in ways nothing should be. Buildings grew rather than decayed. Beasts optimized. Even the air felt like it was thinking.

  Which was fine. Magnus had been breaking rules for centuries. Hell, he’d burned cities to the ground before, what was one more?

  The other heroes were somewhere, probably trying to play this like it was a strategic siege instead of an elaborate suicide attempt with prizes. Magnus, meanwhile, had gone ahead. He worked much better alone.

  The last thing he needed was some noble ‘Hero’ agonising over the ethics and dragging him down. He had killed thousands, millions maybe? Trading their lives and their time so the system could grant him more loops. What was one or two more?

  ***

  The lost Frontier city of ‘Seratheis’ had processed intruders like raw material—measured, broken down, and rebuilt with improvements. Magnus had stepped inside, died, died again, died creatively, and then made it everyone else’s problem to replenish his loops.

  The first step inside, and the city had already started the process of trying to change him. Even now, he could feel it. It measured him, tested him, found weaknesses, and made adjustments. He’d set a checkpoint before he entered, and until he was sure he liked the changes or could cure them, he would not be altering it.

  The dead God’s city ran like an unpaid apprenticeship for murderers. Sink or swim, adapt or get used to being a pile of creatively disassembled organs. The whole place ran on trial and error, emphasis on the error, and the creatures inside were violent and ambitious. Some mimicked voices, faces, habits— they had killed him the first few times until he figured out how to kill them first; they were people, right up until they weren’t. Others creatures rewrote themselves on the fly, stealing better ideas every time something bled too slow or died too fast.

  A few monsters learned by watching, some by killing, most by fighting, and a handful by stealing the best parts of whatever they ate. Every fight was a job interview, and Magnus had been getting repeat invitations.

  But that snake had been a bastard to kill. First loop, it squeezed like an uncle testing your grip strength. Second, it knew where he’d move before he did. Third, it figured jaws were inefficient and decided to open one mid-constriction anyway. Fourth? It stopped pretending it needed organs and just absorbed him. It felt like it was trying to eat his soul, he’d had to reset himself then, on principle.

  Four loops. Then he shot first. No more snake.

  He’d gotten bored and started hunting the weaker hunters to replenish his loops. Easy kills. They hadn’t given much experience, thanks to his penalties, but a few of them had died funny.

  “Worth it,” he muttered with mild satisfaction.

  And now?

  Nothing was happening. That was the problem. Magnus had been standing there, waiting for something to catch his interest, entertain him, do anything worth remembering. Another unique mister, perhaps. Instead, he was watching a giant snake die. That wasn’t enough. It wasn’t anything. He pulled the trigger, fired a second time because he felt like it, fired a third because three felt like the right number. That was better.

  Then his target arrived. The armoured hunter.

  The guy wore segmented dark full plate, wielded a sword of a similar hue and had managed to piss off the nobles and the crown in five minutes. His days were numbered. Whoever killed him would be doing the guy a favour.

  Then a thought showed up in Magnus’s mind, made itself comfortable, and started kicking its feet up on the furniture. What would happen if he fired at the guy every hero had been ordered to kill? Would the armor hold up? Would the guy drop fast? Would he make a sound? Would it be funny? The kind of question that only had one good way to get answered. So Magnus answered it.

  He raised his arm, aimed, then he pulled the trigger.

  ***

  Alex

  For Alex, the shot came first.

  He had blinked, and when his eye opened, a bullet blazing bright with mana, was inches from piercing the eye beneath his helm. A crack of thunder, a gleam of polished steel, and a bullet was flying at his head before the stranger had even fully materialized in his vision.

  Mana surged as Alex moved instantly. The round missed, whistling past his ear, perfectly calculated to fail.

  “Ah,” the stranger said, watching the bullet sink into the wall behind Alex. “Missed.”

  Phoenix Cascade.

  Panels erupted, launching Alex like a comet. His sword hovered between them, weightless in his hand, cutting through empty space where the stranger had been. He adjusted, blade reversing mid-motion, the second strike already underway before the first had even finished.

  The man was gone.

  He hadn’t dodged. Alex had felt him move before the attack had even existed, sidestepping an outcome already played out.

  Liora moved in response without hesitation or pause—just momentum. Her halberd sang, cutting through the air as she lunged forward, body low, twisting into the swing. A clean execution without wasted movements or blind spots.

  Alex noticed how the man watched her with mild interest.

  The stranger’s head tilted one degree, and Liora’s halberd missed. She landed, spun, reversed the grip. Another swing—he was already moving, walking away from her assault, shifting just enough to put himself where her halberd’s long blade wouldn’t be.

  Does he have a sensory skill like mine? A domain? No— that can’t be it… he’s moving before things happen, Alex turned his blade and shot forward, still thinking. It might be some kind if precognition, he decided.

  Osric’s bowstring thrummed. A low, deep vibration, like the start of a storm.

  The man’s revolver tilted mid-step. The arrow missed before it was even fired.

  His smile widened. “You know what? I think I like you people.”

  Liora exhaled, adjusting her stance. “I don’t like him.”

  “Right?” the man said, stepping exactly out of Alex’s next strike range. “I’m awful.”

  Alex didn’t speak. Didn’t waste the breath.

  He moved. A single step. The start of a charge.

  The man’s revolver had already fired.

  Alex’s blade blurred. The bullet split in two.

  Liora came in from behind. Osric fired before she landed. The stranger turned, more aligning than dodging. His body moved like he had already seen this play out a thousand times, adjusting to the only outcome where he wasn’t dead.

  Alex joined them.

  Phoenix Cascade. Sovereign Executioner. Pierce Reality. All-Knowing Cut.

  A storm of weapons and lightning crashed into the strange man, sending a spray of stone and dust scattering.

  Liora’s halberd missed.

  Osric’s arrow buried itself into the past.

  And Alex’s blade clipped the man’s hair and carved through his coat, destroying the fabric and causing the man’s hidden weaponry to clatter to the ground, disarming him.

  But the man stood, untouched, exactly where he needed to be.

  “Alright,” the stranger exhaled. “Big guy shoots. Halberd girl swings. Sword-god over here is—” he gestured at Alex, voice bright, “—a nightmare. You’ve killed me so many times I’m starting to think you’re cheating too.”

  Alex tilted his head. That was a weird thing to say. “You’ve fought me before.”

  The man grinned. “A lot.”

  The is up and running. So if you like, you can read ahead there!