"It’s been thirty years..."
The words left my lips in a whisper, barely louder than the wind. My greatsword’s tip rested against the scorched earth, the only thing keeping upright. Blood dripped from the gash on my forehead, crawling down the bridge of my nose and blurring my right eye—not bad enough to matter, but enough to be annoying.
"Thirty years of fighting. Thirty years of trials, and walking alongside death."
The being before wasn’t faring much better.
An eyeball. A giant eyeball, roughly a hundred ters across—so absurdly, grotesquely massive that it would have been almost comical under different circumstances. It looked like sothing a stray cat had coughed up and left to rot; tattered and ragged at its edges, its surface slick with wounds that still wept.
But its power was not sothing to laugh at. I couldn’t afford to give it ti to recover.
Move.
"UGH!"
Driving strength into my arms—bones already cracked, tendons already frayed—I wrenched my blade off the ground and raised it high. I kicked off the earth with everything I had left, an explosion of dust and ash erupting in my wake. I crossed the distance to the center of that colossal eye in less than a heartbeat.
"HAAAAH!"
Every last scrap of mana I could muster, poured into every buff my body could barely sustain. One final strike, built from thirty years of surviving things that should have killed .
"HEAVEN SPLITTER!"
The kind of sword slash that could carve through space itself—through the sky, through anything.
The monster released a sound that wasn’t quite a roar and wasn’t quite a scream. Sothing in between. Sothing grieving. Its colossal form split cleanly down the middle, both halves drifting apart and tumbling slowly, like two mountains finally giving up on standing.
I didn’t lower my guard.
Earlier, even after taking wounds that should have ended it a dozen tis over, the thing had stitched itself back together as if death were rely a suggestion. Fully regenerated, each ti, as though mocking the very concept of a fatal blow.
This ti, it might do the sa.
...For the 188th ti.
"..."
But nothing ca.
Silence spread across the field—a silence so complete it almost had a texture to it. No trembling ground. No gurgling regeneration. No slow reopening of that enormous, hateful eye.
Only when the notification appeared—the one I had spent thirty years quietly, desperately hoping to see—did I finally allow the tension to bleed out of my body.
[Congratulations WhiteGod! You have defeated the Beast Lord: Infinite Gazer!]
[You gained experience points. You have leveled up.]
[You have reached max level. Level 65,535]
[Achievent title received: Hero, Sole Survivor, Gods’ Favorite, Conqueror]
[You have cleared the ga, Heaven’s Path.]
[The gods bless you.]
A cascade of hollow notifications blinked into existence before my eyes.
I thought my lips had curled into sothing resembling a smile, though I couldn’t say for certain. My body had gone numb a while ago.
"Urk..."
With a sound like a felled tree, I dropped onto my back.
My old partner—my black sword, Gray Destroyer—clanked against the ground beside . And as if it had been patiently waiting for exactly this mont, waiting until its purpose was truly finished, it cracked. Then shattered. Hundreds of fragnts like shards of black ice scattered across the scorched earth, glinting faintly before going dark. My beloved sword, now nothing but scraps.
"..."
Thirty years.
All that ti—even after I was left completely, utterly alone—spent clawing toward the end of this cursed ga.
And yet, clearing it felt like... nothing, really. No grand swell of pride. No cathartic release. If anything, the feeling settling into my chest felt closer to regret than triumph.
I tilted my head down to look at my stomach—or the space where my stomach used to be. A hole roughly the size of a basketball had taken its place. The only reason I’d survived long enough to land that final blow was my Berserker class, and its stubborn, furious refusal to let die before the job was done.
But that "Last Stand" buff had nearly run its course.
I... was going to die.
[Conqueror, please state your wish.]
Several small orbs drifted closer, hovering around like curious fireflies—or, less charitably, like flies drawn to carrion. Tennis ball-sized "Stream Caras." The gods’ preferred thod of watching their players suffer in real ti.
Most of those gods had tuned out long before now. In the end, only a handful had stuck around to watch the last remaining player crawl his way to the finish line.
Twelve of them. Twelve naless gods, the only company I’d had in this empty world for longer than I cared to admit.
"Heh..." A short laugh scraped its way out of my throat. "Looks like I won the bet."
Chat bubbles floated above the caras, their ssages drifting down to .
[Anon19960509: You really did it! Unbelievable.]
[Anon78440705: Yeah, yeah. I lost the bet... Take my treasures, you bastard! 😭]
[Anon49201131: So this is the end... It had been a fun journey, little hero.]
The usual chaos. All twelve of them, incapable of staying quiet even now. I managed a slight shake of my head—the most I could manage. Turning it fully was beyond at this point.
"Haaaa..."
I exhaled slowly, settling into the stillness, and waited.
[Anon00010101: You cleared the ga, so the ga shall grant you one wish. Quick, tell us what your wish is! 😆 Anything goes! 🔥]
"My... Wish...?"
A wish.
Sothing I would want.
I closed my eyes for a mont—not from exhaustion, but from the strange weight of the question. Thirty years, and this was the part I hadn’t thought about.
"There’s only one thing, then."
My voice ca out quieter than I intended. Barely words anymore.
The Last Stand buff reached its end. I felt it go—like a candle fla snuffed between two fingers.
"I... want to go back. To when it all started..."
If I hadn’t joined the ga a year late. If I’d had the sa head start as everyone else—I wouldn’t have been stuck scrambling for a common class like Berserker. I could have taken my ti, gotten sothing Legendary. Sothing worthy of the thirty years that followed.
If I could wish for anything at all, it would be to redo everything, from the very beginning. Even if it ant letting go of everything else I’d gathered along the way.
The cold had reached my palms now, creeping steadily toward my elbows.
[Anon00010101: Oh... That’s... unexpected. 😅]
I’d already stopped reading by then.
---
"BUWAAAAH! HAAAA—!"
I jolted upright, gasping, drenched from head to toe.
Water poured from my hair, my nose, my clothes—soaked through to the skin in an instant. Standing before was a man with an empty bucket dangling from one hand and the most punchable grin I had ever seen stretched across his face.
"Hehehe! This should make you sll less stinky, you stinky bug! It’s called bathing!"
"A... lucid dream?"
I’d heard of the revolving lantern—that mont at the edge of death where your life supposedly flashes before your eyes. But I’d never heard of anything like this.
The face in front of . My old bully. Soone I hadn’t laid eyes on in a very long ti—soone I’d never gotten the chance to properly deal with, given that he’d had the nerve to die before I could.
I didn’t understand what was happening.
I didn’t particularly care, either.
I was on my feet before the thought fully ford, crossing the distance between us in a single step. My fist drew back—as far as it could go—and then shot forward like a ballista bolt releasing.
"...Eh?"
He didn’t even have ti to blink. My knuckles connected squarely with his nose.
Sothing cracked. Several sothings, actually—his nose, a couple of my fingers, and my wrist for good asure. None of that mattered even slightly.
"BUFUGH!"
He launched backward, completed a full, graceless backflip, and planted face-first into the ground.
"Ha! Serves you right!"
Even in a dream—even in whatever this was—getting that one in felt fantastic.
"..."
Huh.
Wait.
This is a dream.
...Right?
User Comments
0 comments from readers