Alex

  “Alright,” The stranger exhaled, spinning the cylinder of his revolver. “Time to die.”

  They clashed—blades against bullets, movement against foresight, skill against certainty. Alex struck high, Osric shot fast, and Liora cut low. The man sidestepped, returned fire. Alex ducked, sword sweeping his leg. The man vaulted over him, flipping mid-air, pulling the trigger before he landed.

  A gun built for magic, something Alex had never expected to see from a world he’d never visited, held by a man fast enough to match him without effort. Speed alone would have been a problem, but movement skills kept the gap from growing wider. That advantage would hold, but the weapon changed everything. Range, speed, precision—everything pointed toward a fight that would never favor close combat, and Alex was a close combat specialist. He needed to control space, take that weapon out of the equation, force the fight into something that played to his strengths instead of the man’s.

  “He said he’s fought you many times?” Osric questioned as a surge of ambient mana pulled Alex out of the path of the enchanted bullet, a streak of light that punched through a wall behind the three and didn’t stop, tearing through a series of buildings in the distance.

  “I’ve never even seen him before.” Alex responded, processing the strangers words.

  Liora landed and twisted her halberd, resetting her stance. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Right?” the stranger sighed. “It’s Magnus, by the way. And you’ve said that before.”

  The man pulled a rifle free from a distortion in space, its barrel wrapped in orbiting runes that flared as the trigger clicked. The air warped around the barrel, light dragging in quick, bending spirals before—A split-second burst, and two shots tore through the space between them—too fast, too clean, streaks of burning light punching into Liora’s chest and Osric’s shoulder before they could react. The impact hit hard, burning through fabric, drilling into flesh—Osric’s shoulder snapped back, Liora’s chest locked mid-motion, their bodies seizing in place. Their limbs snapping rigid like marionettes. The rifle hummed, the runes circling tighter as if feeding off the hit. The man exhaled, rolling his shoulder. “Hex-rifle,” he muttered, watching them lock in place. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”

  Then he pointed at Alex. “I just need to kill THAT GUY.” He blurred backwards unnaturally, creating distance as he pointed. “I don’t feel like killing you two yet; halberd girl and Old timer— Just the Sword Guy— those undead nobles want him dead, though we’re beyond that at this point, and killing you two always makes this so much more… difficult,”

  What does he mean by that? “Doesn’t matter,” Alex muttered. He just needed to end this.

  Phoenix Cascade. Panels erupted in sequence as Alex lunged, a streak against the backdrop.

  The man fired before he moved. Five times. The bullets moving faster than he did. Alex slashed through two and dodged three, triggering devastating explosions that he actually felt impact against his undead revenant soul, reducing its durability by a fifth as his passive, Thanatos’s Sovereign transferred the damage.

  “Why is your ‘Endurance’ so high?,” the man called as he released another shot, aimed at the slits in Alex’s helmet. “You’re supposed to be a swordsman!”

  Alex stepped forward, blade already moving. “shut up,” he responded coldly, mentally processing the challenge the stranger presented.

  The man clearly had a predictive skill of some kind, maybe it was the core of his class.

  Foresight shaped the entire battle. Reaction had limits, instinct had gaps, and calculation required adjustments. The stranger acted with predetermined certainty, movements refined without hesitation or correction but anticipation. Every choice played out as if confirmed beforehand. A skill like that placed him outside the flow of battle—observing rather than reacting.

  He had mentioned having fought Alex many times, perhaps his skill or class was more than mere prediction? Maybe it allowed him to perfectly experience future battles through simulation?

  After all, the system had knowledge of everyone it possessed’s capabilities—If the skill was mythical rank or greater, it wouldn’t be impossible. But that seemed unlikely to be what he was experiencing. Simulation still left room for error and unpredictability— mistakes— but this stranger made no mistakes. His movements had precision beyond practice. Too refined, too seamless, actions falling into place as if tested in advance. It was as though he had constructed every possibility before the fight even began. That meant every decision had already played out. Every variation had been tested.

  Whatever it was didn’t matter—what mattered was that somehow the man could see the future.

  Foresight, simulation, prediction—it all led to the same result. Every action confirmed before it existed. Every mistake accounted for before it formed. The advantage had settled before the first move.

  So how do you beat someone that knows every move you make before you’ve even thought of making it?

  The answer was overwhelming power. An attack beyond escape, beyond experience, and beyond survival. It would have to be something that erased options, something that swallowed up every possibility before choice even existed. A collapse, an inevitability—an attack so vast, so final, that experience changed nothing. He could experience it a thousand times, a million, and every path would lead to the same end. Something unstoppable—like the sky caving in, and like the sun crashing into the earth.

  The cycle had to be broken before it settled into place.

  Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t use Mana Burn. His pathways where burnt out, and without taking the time to repair them, he would have no access to his Qi techniques. Mana Burn’s cool-down would significantly weaken him.

  Alex summoned hundreds of mana construct swords at once, sending them crashing toward the man in an overwhelming wave. At the same time, Sovereign Executioner appeared, its blade striking from another angle as his domain pierced reality to link space, connecting Alex’s own sword to the attack. All-Knowing Cut surged through his blade, lightning bursting from the edge as it shot toward the man. The man moved in the perfect, impossible way, evading every attack by the smallest margins, moving in the exact way needed, slipping past the storm of swords, stepping just beyond the executioner’s reach, shifting through the linked space before the lightning could touch him. As the last blade missed by a hair’s breadth, he let out a slow breath, “I’ve fought you so many times,” he murmured, dusting off his sleeve. “And somehow, you still think this part is going to change.”

  “Every time, it’s the same,” he muttered, tilting his head. “You pull a different approach, a different trick, a new butterfly, but in the end… I always get a little closer to killing you. It won’t be long until you’re finally dead. I’m immortal. I only need to win once. You don’t stand a chance.”

  Alex processed his words.

  The strangers words implied something more than foresight. Immortality. He said he only needed to win once, and that Alex had killed him before. Like holding back a tide from inevitability swallowing you whole. The implications tugged at the edge of logic, a faint concept in the back of Alex’s mind from earth. If the system allowed the man to survive death,

  Then Alex simply needed to remove the system, or perhaps permanently damage the man’s soul.

  Duel of corruption could possibly end the stranger once and for all, but given the fact that he would likely see it coming and was still here, that wasn’t guaranteed. Alex would use it if he found himself without a choice, but the skill would also strip Alex’s classes and skills, too. A less desirable option.

  What he needed was something unpredictably powerful—something beyond his current skill set.

  Alex stepped in, sword cutting for the man’s throat. A gunshot split the air. He tilted his head, the bullet missing by millimetres as his blade carved forward. The man twisted, dodging by a hair, his weapon snapping up again as the space between them grew.

  He landed, watching Alex with an easy smile. “Every time, it’s a new skill. How many do you even have? You gonna do that freaky self-destruct move where we both die? What’s the point of winning if you don’t live? Gonna summon a giant sword again? Strip me of my classes and skills?" He shook his head as though entertained. "That won’t work, you know. Your little trick reset my checkpoint, freed me of the brainwashing a few deaths ago, but you’re still going to die.”

  An angry vein bulged as the man clenched his jaw. “Everyone is,” he said.

  The man was irrational. Instead of being grateful to Alex for removing the crown’s mental control, he simply added him to the list of people he needed to kill.

  He stood there, smiling, untouched, and unfazed, already knowing every move Alex had yet to make. This was the wall in front of him now. If he didn’t end this here, he would only face him again, stronger, more prepared, more impossible to kill.

  Alex was at a disadvantage.

  The battle reminded him of how the little demon had countered Jin. Jin had displayed an ability very similar to what the stranger had, which was another question for another time. But when Jin had fought the Little Demon of winding bloods, the demonic cultivator had countered by surrounding Jin from all sides, forcing him into a position where escape was simply impossible. Alex had to merge his skills to do the same, not layering effects on top of one another like he had been doing up until now, but combining them in a way that created something similar.

  His Domain had gained the ability to let him splice dimensions together for a fraction of a second, linking different spatial areas. Sovereign Executioner summoned an executioner, a ceremonial blade wielder, from a crack in reality to strike from any point he chose. NetherForged tied his armor and weapons to strange, maddening an unpredictable, non-dimensional forces, allowing them to extend beyond both the systems understanding and normal constraints. Adaptive Flow Engineering let him see the inefficiencies in energy and restructure them, creating more optimal paths for skills, techniques, and internal circulation. Internal Energy Refinement allowed him to burn away imperfections, permanently increasing the strength and efficiency of his energy, making all of his techniques more powerful over time. Abyssal Body heightened his awareness and control over non-dimensional forces, allowing him to withstand and manipulate NetherForged’s chaotic nature.

  This was the foundation. He had to forge something from them. A single new ability. One that was unstoppable.

  Sovereign Executioner. Adaptive Flow Engineering. Internal Energy Refinement. Netherforged.

  Alex acted, his mind assembling the pieces, triggering his domains reality piercing capabilities as the final piece. A thin fracture split open, unstable, thrumming with tension. His domain fed him everything—the vibration of torn space pressing against itself, the pull of mana collapsing inward, the raw pressure straining against the crack’s edges. He pushed Sovereign Executioner forward. It met resistance, crushed against the too-narrow gap. Reality buckled. The construct crumpled, splitting apart as the fracture shattered. Dimensional shards sliced outward, severing space into jagged, overlapping edges. NetherForged bled into the fragments, twisting them as eldritch forces latched onto each severed piece. The executioner did not vanish—it unraveled, stretched through the broken rifts, pulled into many places at once. The weight of the distortion pressed against Alex’s awareness, shifting like torn threads in an unraveling weave. Adaptive Flow Engineering stabilised the chaos, guiding the scattered pieces into alignment. Internal Energy Refinement burned away resistance, amplifying the severance, locking the executioner’s fragmented presence into the structure of the split space.

  The shattered plaza trembled. Stone pulled apart in sharp, angular cuts, debris floating for a moment before collapsing into unnatural gravity. Windows cracked outward from buildings that no longer had their full foundations, glass twisting into spirals midair before raining down in glistening arcs. The ground itself rippled in uneven waves, fractures spreading in all directions, the broken world mirroring the attack itself—a severance of stability, a collapse of what should be.

  Then, all at once, rifts surrounded the opponent as though they had been tracking him—thin at first, just slivers of nothing slicing through air and stone, their edges seething with a lightless sheen. But in an instant they grew, splitting wider, jagged wounds spreading across the ruins, swallowing pieces of the world as they unfolded into something deeper than void.

  From within them, they emerged.

  Not one, not many—all at once.

  They burst through the fractures, their forms erupting into the world through angles that should not exist. Their bodies did not move through space—they broke into it, spilling from the rifts in overlapping, disjointed movements, their edges trailing afterimages that should have faded but didn’t.

  Alex saw it in a moment of frozen time.

  Their forms were elongated, stretched, thin but massive, coiling through the gaps in reality like serpents made of ink and void. What should have been hoods draped over them, but the fabric did not rest—it bled into the spaces around them, shifting, unraveling at the edges like something neither solid nor intangible. Bladed arms bent at wrong angles, their fingers stretching and splitting mid-motion, but each grasped a sword—long, thin, and ceremonial, the metal reflecting nothing, absorbing the space it cut through. Their heads snapped into shapes that suggested something human before contorting into something else, hoods swallowing the shifting forms beneath. Mouths without features gaped across torsos, across limbs, some grinning, some gnashing, some simply open like wounds cut into fabric.

  And in that instant, they struck.

  Blades fell from every direction at once. The executioners exploded from rifts clinging to the sky and surrounding the man from all sides, figures erupted from voids beneath shattered stone, lanced sideways from space torn apart at the edges of the ruins. The moment their presence became real, the moment their blades touched air, severance followed.

  Then the plaza gave way.

  The force of the attack caved the battlefield inward, stone slabs flipping and crashing down in violent bursts, entire sections of the ground pulled apart as if something massive had slammed into it from every angle at once. Buildings groaned and twisted, their steel frames bending before snapping under pressure, glass rupturing into streaks of flying shrapnel before the structures collapsed into dust. Smoke and debris surged outward in a blinding wave, the weight of the strike bearing down like a sky-wide hammer, pounding the ruins into further devastation.

  [System Message: Skill consolidation detected]

  [Initiating Skill consolidation protocol…]

  [Skill: Netherforged removed!]

  [Skill: Sovereign Executioner removed!]

  [System Alert: Skill consolidation has been influenced by your class]

  [Consolidating Skill Masteries…]

  [Completed]

  [Additional Skill Masteries gained!]

  [Abyssal Body - Mastery: 0 > 5%]

  [A ranked Skill - Abyssal Swordsmen (Active) gained!]

  [Abyssal Swordsmen (Active) - You have been altered by the flesh of a non-dimensional entity, and a fraction of its nature permeates your being, allowing this skill to exist. Through the use of spatial tears, mana constructs, dimensional, and non-dimensional manipulation, the User creates a sphere of multiple dimensional rifts linking many distant dimensions together to encase a single target from all sides. The skill summons many robed swordsmen to strike at the target a single time, triggering the forced banishment of any summoned beings and dimensional ruptures. This skill summons mana constructs and transforms all summons into a living, breathing extension of the realm they are summoned from, fused with non-dimensional energy. Due to lack of system data on non-dimensional beings, user caution is advised.]

  His domains latest ability let him splice space together for a fraction of a second, linking different spatial areas. Sovereign Executioner split dimensions to summon a mana executioner, a ceremonial blade wielder, from a crack in reality to strike from any point he chose. NetherForged tied his armor and weapons to strange, non-dimensional forces, allowing them to extend beyond normal constraints. Adaptive Flow Engineering let him see the inefficiencies in energy and restructure them, creating more optimal paths for skills, techniques, and internal circulation. Internal Energy Refinement allowed him to burn away imperfections, permanently increasing the strength and efficiency of his energy, making all of his techniques more powerful over time. Abyssal Body heightened his awareness and control over non-dimensional forces, allowing him to manipulate NetherForged’s chaotic nature.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  This was the foundation. He had to forge something from them. A single new ability. One that was unstoppable.

  He exhaled, his mind assembling the pieces. Abyssal Swordsmen. He had fused his domains spatial splicing, NetherForged’s unknown dimensional nature, and Sovereign Executioner’s summoned entity’s single strike, then amplified it using his energy control and perfecting skills to eliminate inefficiencies and make the result permanent.

  Instead of summoning a single executioner, he had summoned many. But not separately. Not as individual entities. Instead, he had layered the dimensional fractures together, creating a collapsed network of rifts that surrounded the opponent in a sphere with no escape. The executioners would not attack from one direction. They would emerge simultaneously from every spatial point—and in that moment, space itself would collapse inward.

  The severance would not be a sequence of slashes, but a singular event, with every strike occurring at the same time from every possible location. The enemy could see it coming. They could predict every movement, anticipate every executioner. And it wouldn’t matter.

  The eldritch nature of NetherForged and the temporary nature of Sovereign Executioner had been essential, it ensured that the executioners would not move predictably and that they would not exist beyond a single strike. Netherforged had been uncontrollable. The skill did not follow the logic of this world, and according to the system, any other. They did not emerge from one plane of existence, nor did they swing in a way that adhered to normal physics. Each one was an aberration, a swordsman unbound by time, space, or linear causality, stepping through non-dimensional rifts with ceremonial blades. Their existence lasted only one moment, but that moment was absolute.

  Even if his opponent somehow tried to interfere, Adaptive Flow Engineering ensured there was barely anything inefficient to disrupt. Every fragment of energy would be optimized, every spatial mana structure refined in real-time. Internal Energy Refinement further amplified the effect, ensuring that each successive use became more potent, more explosive, more refined. Even if, somehow, an escape was possible now, it would not be possible next time.

  Alex’s breath came slow and measured, mana still coiling through his body, heat burning at his fingertips as the dimensional rifts collapsed behind him. The battlefield had been carved into something unrecognizable—fractures still spread through shattered stone, structures that had once stood at the plaza’s edge now reduced to warped debris. The attack had landed. There was no question of that. The space where Magnus had stood had been erased, his existence ripped apart from every possible angle.

  And yet—

  Alex remained still, watching, waiting, searching. There was no body. No corpse, no remains, nothing tangible to confirm the Hex-gunman was dead.

  His eyes flitted across the devastation. It wasn’t possible for him to have escaped the attack. It had struck from every direction at once. No gaps, no blind spots, no paths that led to survival. But…

  Alex exhaled slowly.

  There was no notification.

  The system had not acknowledged a kill.

  He’s still alive.

  Somewhere. Hidden. Out of sight, but not gone.

  Alex's grip tightened around his sword, still scanning the battlefield. If the strange gunman was anywhere nearby, Alex should have been able to sense him. Even the distortions left by his movement skill would have lingered, traces of his presence woven into the remains of the fight.

  But there was nothing.

  The weight of awareness pressed against him—the man had survived, and he was still a problem.

  One that needed to be handled before he returned.

  Alex had reached further than before, pushed past what should have been the threshold, yet the gap remained. He had stepped forward only to find that the path didn’t end—it stretched further, revealing something beyond him, something that would not break.

  He had made great gains, growth through victory, yet victory had not been the end— only the beginning. The moment one battle ended, this one had already begun, dragging him into something he had no answer for. Standing here, blade in hand, the distance between them did not shrink. It widened.

  But that was fine. Alex had been here before.

  The guns… His clothing, and the ‘Hex-Rifle,’ they were all way too advanced for this world, Alex recalled, the memory painting the stranger as a fellow summoned hero.

  That explained his high dexterity. Without the boost of his domain enhancing and controlling Alex’s movements, the man would have completely outstripped him in speed.

  The Crown had brainwashed Magnus through the system itself. But if his words were to be believed, the man had broken free through Duel of Corruption. His own will or effort had played no part in it, whether intentional or not—Alex had freed him.

  Magnus had confirmed it—Duel of Corruption had affected him in a past version of events. A loop. And one only the stranger remembered. That skill had severed the system’s hold, breaking the control the Crown had placed over him. Instead of turning his rage against only them, instead of destroying only the ones responsible, he had placed Alex alongside them as another target.

  His mind had stopped following rational patterns.

  His choices didn’t follow a pattern rooted in reason. The class or skill the system gave him had warped him wholly, twisting his sense of cause and effect. He had died too many times. He had seen too many versions of events. His mind followed a path that defied linearity—skipping across timelines only he could recall, making choices based on an entire history outside Alex’s reach.

  And that history had led him here.

  The man existed as a walking problem. A threat who carried knowledge Alex lacked. A man who experienced outcomes Alex had never lived through. And worse—he had time. Every loss set up a future victory. Every failure rewrote the path toward success. He only needed to win once.

  And now, the numbers of people Alex would need to beat in this world had grown.

  The Crown had already demonstrated its ability to control them. Others had held the same potential. What about the nobles of House Dreymoore? The other heroes still loyal to the Crown? All of them were enemies.

  Alex would need to overcome them all.

  This fight had existed beyond a single battle. A war had already begun. The gun hero had vanished. The system had provided no confirmation of his death. His continued survival had ensured he remained a problem—one Alex had to eliminate before it escalated further.

  There would be no walking away from this. Not now, not later. If Alex didn’t find a way to kill the man permanently, the man would only return more prepared. If this wasn’t the end, then the next step would only be the same fight, waiting for him again.

  This was the new reality. His progress had created a stronger opponent. One who had already learned him inside and out. The cycle didn’t stop. Every battle just raised the bar for the next one.

  And right now, he had to completely crush it before it became something much more.

  But that was fine, it was what Alex had signed up for.

  I’ll need to raise my Dao progress, that’s what I’ll have to use to strip him of his ‘immortality’, one way or the other, Alex decided.

  Alex turned, stepping toward the collapsed forms of Liora and Osric. Their bodies remained frozen where they had fallen, rigid and locked in place, breaths short and uneven, muscles tensed beneath the weight of something foreign.

  The gunman’s bullets.

  Alex knelt, pressing his palm against Osric’s shoulder, feeling the hum of external mana running through his system. It wasn’t just a wound. It had latched onto him. Feeding. A parasitic construct designed to drain and immobilize.

  Alex focused, shifting his own mana outward, wrapping around the corruption like a blade severing a tether. He stripped it from Osric’s body, dispersing the foreign energy strand by strand until it lost its hold and collapsed entirely.

  Osric inhaled sharply, body jerking as the last remnants of the bullet’s effect dissolved. He let out a harsh breath, flexing his fingers, testing movement before pushing himself up onto one elbow.

  “Was that—” He coughed. “That was—”

  Alex was already turning to Liora.

  The effect had settled deeper in her system. More entangled, threading through her veins like barbed wire, sinking into the pathways that sustained her. He pressed a hand to her chestplate, feeling the rhythmic pull of energy as the bullet’s curse continued to siphon.

  He severed it.

  The foreign mana unraveled, burning away beneath his touch, dissipating into nothing. The second it was gone, Liora gasped, inhaling sharply as her body unlocked from its frozen state.

  Her hands clenched reflexively, limbs shaking as the tension finally released.

  Alex pulled back.

  Liora pushed herself upright, rolling her shoulders, shifting her grip on her halberd as though ready to launch herself back into the fight. But her gaze flicked around the battlefield, her brow furrowing.

  “…Where is he?”

  Alex didn’t answer immediately.

  Because he didn’t know.

  ***

  Magnus Thorne — Summoned Hero

  The S-grade teleportation relic burned hot against his palm, ancient circuits flaring to life for the last time. Energy surged—light bending inward, space folding. Magnus clenched his teeth. He hated using these.

  The relic shattered. His body warped.

  Magnus’s body reappeared mid-collapse, slamming into broken stone with a force that sent cracks spidering outward. He landed hard, skidding backward, his coat shredded from the sheer velocity of the force that had torn him free from that attack. An S-grade teleportation relic disintegrated between his fingers—a priceless Hex-Tech artifact from his homeworld. Dust and debris scattered as he came to a stop, boots carving deep into the rubble.

  He didn’t need to look to know something was wrong.

  His arm was gone.

  It wasn’t just severed—it had been taken. The wound at his shoulder didn’t bleed the way it should have. Instead, something crawled through the exposed flesh, tendrils of blackened, shifting matter spiraling outward, expanding with slow, creeping intent. It clung to him, anchored inside him, threading deep into nerves that should have been dead.

  His fingers twitched. Fingers that didn’t exist anymore.

  A sensation ran through him—not pain, not absence, something else. The awareness of something foreign, something older than time itself, something that was not bound to loops, checkpoints, or resets.

  He exhaled sharply.

  This was new.

  The plaza had been obliterated. The attack had collapsed the battlefield itself, folding it inward, breaking reality into something barely holding together. His escape wasn’t intentional. The moment those things stepped through the fractures, his instincts had screamed at him—move, leave, do not engage.

  The damage had already been done.

  Slowly, he lifted his remaining hand, rolling his wrist, feeling the pull of his own body against what was left. The eldritch material responded, not separate from him but a part of him now, as if the executioners had left a mark that couldn't be undone.

  And Magnus—Magnus fucking Thorne—laughed.

  Not a broken laugh. Not forced. Not a joke to cover pain. A real one.

  “Well,” he muttered, flexing the not-arm, feeling the creeping void sink further into him, “that’s a problem.”

  His voice wasn’t shaken. He took a breath, steady, testing his balance, shifting his weight like nothing had changed.

  Then he thought of Alex.

  And he grinned.

  “In all my loops,” he exhaled, rolling his shoulder, “you have never done that.”

  That was the truth. He had seen every variation, every attack, every last attempt Alex had thrown at him—but never this.

  Never something he couldn’t rewrite.

  His revolver was still steady in his hand. His body was damaged—but alive. The eldritch influence spread, creeping past the stump, moving like something living, adapting to him, learning him.

  His memories threaded together like a tangled noose, tightening, pulling, wrapping over themselves in loops that shouldn’t have been there. Outcomes he hadn’t even lived through yet.

  That’s not how it’s supposed to work.

  A whisper curled through his thoughts, something too deep, too old, too not his. Not time, not logic, not the cold, clean certainty of cause and effect—just hunger.

  Oh, Magnus thought, oddly calm. I might be losing it.

  Magnus’s sight was flawless—the trained precision of a sharpshooter, honed over lifetimes of battle, centuries of blood and war. With distance, with clarity of a mind freed from the crowns shackles, he had seen it.

  The face beneath the helmet.

  The missing hero.

  The thirtieth hero.

  The one who had vanished on the first day, slipping away before the king could tighten their leashes, before the empire’s chains could snap into place. The only one of them who had escaped.

  And now?

  The man had done something that shouldn’t have been possible.

  Magnus flexed his fingers, feeling the absence of his arm—the place where his body should have ended but didn’t. The creeping tendrils of something wrong curled at the severed edge, shifting, twisting, slowly integrating into what remained. The city’s mana had already begun its work, claiming him, molding him, remaking him into something else.

  Because of the armor-wearing son of a bitch.

  His checkpoint was gone. The last reset, the last perfect save-point, erased. His loops had been forcibly severed by whatever system-breaking trick the swordsman had pulled. No matter what happened next, no matter how many times he should have been able to rewrite the script—

  He was locked in now.

  He couldn’t reset. He couldn’t undo. He couldn’t escape the changes that had already started sinking into his bones, into his blood, into the fabric of his existence.

  And that was fine.

  Magnus had always adapted.

  The city’s mana would twist him, change him, refine him—but he would make it his. He would push it, master it, evolve into something beyond even this place’s understanding. He knew exactly what to do, and he would do it the same way he had always done—

  With fire.

  The heroes would die. The nobles would die. The Crown would crumble, that thing in the centre of this place would crumble, and this entire world would burn.

  And it would start with the armored bastard who did this to him.

  Alex.

  Magnus exhaled, tilting his head.

  He hardly ever felt like this.

  Not against the Arcane Inquisitors who thought surprise meant survival. Not against the mages who thought their spells were faster than bullets. Not against the kings who begged for mercy and higher beings who mistook him for something lesser.

  His mind was made up.

  He knew exactly what to use. How to do it.

  Every single person in this city was going to die. Quickly. Slowly.

  Magnus hadn't needed to use his ace in a long time. Hadn’t found anyone worth using it on.

  But that was before. Before this city. Before the system tried leashing him. Before the armoured swordsman reset his checkpoint with eldritch annoyances. Before this perfecting mana slithered through his bones.

  Just like he did in his home world, he was going to burn everything to the ground.

  His grip on reality had already slipped, his mind pulling new plans from the wreckage, rearranging the next steps with the calm certainty of a man who had done this before.

  Because he had.

  And like every other time, he was going to win, and entire cities were going to die.

  This world just didn’t know it yet.

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