"It's been a while since I've seen soone like that… The last one must have been "@!&#$!@$'." The voice didn't echo in the air. It tore straight through Strax's mind.
And suddenly, the world fell apart.
No sound. No transition. No pain.
Just white.
Absolute white—not light, but an absence of color, of matter, of direction. As if the universe had been wiped clean, erased… reset.
When Strax blinked, sothing changed.
The white gave way, revealing a new world.
But not a place he knew.
Not even a place he could know.
They were billions of light-years away from his reality. A fold of existence hidden beyond mortal logic.
Before him, amidst a path paved with black stones and golden moss, stood a man.
A man unlike anything he had ever seen. His body, His presence, and His existence were different.
He was tall, with the body of a warrior and the posture of a monarch. His crimson hair flowed like a river of liquid fire, reaching halfway down his back, with strands that seed alive in the nonexistent wind. Two ebony horns rose from his head, curving like the antlers of a demonic emperor. His eyes… were pools of burning blood—a red that did not reflect light but devoured it.
He wore a kimono of dark red silk, where golden dragons were carved, not sewn—as if alive and asleep in the fabric, their scales seed to whisper with each step.
Strax remained alert. The energy he felt from him… was too dense. Hot and cold at the sa ti. Worse than the Spirit King.
"Who are you?" he asked, instinctively preparing himself for a confrontation.
But the man just smiled, hiding his hands behind his back, walking as if he were strolling through an ancient garden.
"Who cares?" he replied, as if the answer were irrelevant. "You caused a big problem, you know?"
Strax frowned in confusion.
The air there slled of cherry blossom and incense. Like the scent of a spring that reminded him of an ancient world.
"Initially, we... the Demon Dragons... have a little problem with the world." The man continued, smiling as if sharing a forbidden secret. "We are negations created by Absolute Chaos. We are anomalies. And you, Strax... are an anomaly too."
His laugh was low and drawn out. And, strangely, it carried compassion.
Strax followed him—on pure impulse. Each step they took caused the cherry trees around them to bloom in silent bursts, petals falling like enchanted snow to the ground.
"Sa problem?" Strax asked, keeping his eyes fixed on him.
The man stopped, turned slowly, and looked at him with almost divine depth.
"Don't you think it's curious?" he said. "So many skills. So many powers. And you barely use them. Why?"
Strax froze.
Because it was true.
The system had been there forever. A sea of skills, titles, buffs… But he rarely used anything beyond the basics. Almost as if he forgot.
"That… doesn't make sense…" he muttered.
"Of course it does." The man sighed. "Another Administrator Test world… That complicates things." He glanced up at the sky.
Those words… ant nothing to Strax. But they sounded important.
"What are you talking about?" Strax insisted.
But the man shook his head, smiling with so regret.
"You're not ready for that yet. It's going to take ti. Years, maybe." He shrugged. "From what I can see, you're under twenty. You're still figuring it out. Reincarnated beings are always a bit… unstable."
Strax's eyes widened.
"You—"
"I'm a reincarnated too," the man added, as if that explained everything. "It happens more often than you think. And trust , you're not the only one in your world."
Strax felt the ground beneath his feet… alive
"Why am I here?" Strax asked, his tone tense, his eyes alert. He kept his guard up—his body ready to react, even in this unreal space.
The man in front of him turned slowly, his red eyes staring at him with a strange mix of tiredness and boredom.
It wasn't the exhaustion of soone who's run too much.
It was the exhaustion of soone who's lived too much.
"Man… You really are persistent, huh?" He said, arching an eyebrow with a bored sigh. "Let guess… You ca from the United States? You sound like one of them. Straightforward, stubborn, and with a hero mania."
Strax didn't answer. He just narrowed his eyes, evaluating him more carefully.
"Relax," the man said, raising his hands as if he didn't want to fight. "I was from the US too. In one of my lives. In fact… I was a girl there. Living is an interesting experience when you get to do it more than once."
He spoke so casually that it seed like he was comnting on the weather.
"Are you going to tell where I am?" Strax insisted. Still cautious. Still trying to figure out if this was a dream, a trap, or a hallucination caused by pain.
The man smirked, as if he had heard the question for the thousandth ti.
"You're in my sector," he said, as if it were sothing obvious. "I don't know exactly how far away… billions of light-years from your current plane? Sothing like that. But technically, only your mind is here. Your body… is being treated."
Strax's eyes widened in surprise.
"Treated? Why?"
"Because you were about to explode," he replied, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. "Literally. Your soul was overflowing with too much power, too much emotion. A natural reaction, considering everything that happened to those won. But… the chances of you killing them in the process were extrely high."
He looked up at the sky—an impossible sky, tinted with soft red and constellations that moved like serpents of light.
"So… I intervened."
His voice changed. It grew a little heavier. Darker.
"I know what it's like to lose all your wives… in a single instant." He paused for a mont. His eyes were distant. His smile faded. "I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. So… I thought maybe it was ti to do sothing. A little deviation from the script."
Strax fell silent. Sothing about the man—about the pain he carried behind his playful tone—resonated within him.
They arrived at the temple's entrance.
A colossal shrine, built of red columns carved with runes in forgotten languages. Golden gates rose like the teeth of a sacred beast, guarding ancient secrets. At the top, lanterns floated unlit, spreading a soft, blue light that danced among the eternal cherry trees.
The air there was thick. Almost sacred.
"Co in," the man said, nodding. "I'm not finished with you yet."
Strax hesitated for a second… and then took the first step.
Strax stepped through the temple gates, feeling the ground vibrate beneath his bare feet. It was like walking on the spine of sothing alive, ancient, whispering in forgotten languages just by being there.
Inside, the air was too quiet. There was no sound of wind, no footsteps, not even the sound of his own breathing. But there was weight. An immaterial weight—as if ti had a thickness and the world was about to bend.
The man walked ahead, his hands clasped behind his back, his crimson kimono rippling like liquid flas. With each step, cherry blossom petals fell from nowhere—as if the temple, in his honor, was crying flowers. . .
"I went through this in my first life, you know?" the man said, without turning around. "I was a human who ascended to a dragon. Reincarnated, like you. Family? I had. Wives? A few wives, but they were all killed by soone I trusted. One by one. I saw. I heard. I scread. And when I finally lost everything…"
He stopped.
The temple shook slightly. The hanging lanterns hissed, as if feeling the weight of mory.
"…I broke. And beca sothing that shouldn't exist. Reincarnated eons after eons."
Strax clenched his fists. "You… beca a dragon?"
The man gave a short, almost humorless laugh. Then he turned, finally facing Strax with a tired but sincere smile.
"Sothing more than that."
He took a step closer. Then another.
"I am the first Demonic Dragon… or, as so prefer to call it…"
He raised one of his hands, snapping his fingers. Behind him, a holographic image appeared in the air: a colossal dragon, black as a hole in reality, with eyes that burned like red galaxies.
"…the First Dragon God. Or sothing like that. People lost their minds with titles after a few million years."
Strax stared at him, speechless for a mont. That… didn't make sense. And, at the sa ti, it made perfect sense. The energy he felt from that man was old. Not in ti. But in essence. Like the initial breath of a reality.
"They call things you couldn't even pronounce. So love . Others hate . One or two have tried to seal ."
He shrugged. "None of them have succeeded."
Strax was still trying to comprehend what that ant. The doubt was clear in his eyes.
"So… why help ?" he asked, finally. "You said you lost everything… but still… why ?"
The man smiled softer now. There was sothing genuine there. An echo of rare empathy.
"Because we are the sa." He pointed to Strax's chest. "Not literally. But I was. And no one helped back then… I died in that life, and the cycle sent back to life over and over again. I relieved them, did what I needed to, dominated sectors, etc."
He took a deep breath, as if he were reliving a thousand lives in a second.
"And deep down, I still care. Not about the world—not anymore. But what about the rare few who try to protect sothing? About the fools who love too much. Who gives too much. Who lose too much."
He turned, walking to the center of the temple, where a circular platform floated on a spiral of living energy.
"Now, Strax… The question is no longer who am I. The question is, who will you choose to be after this?"
The entire temple glowed. The walls crumbled into fragnts of light.
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