"Huh?!" The Demon Emperor sighed, his eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets in rage. His anger was beyond comprehension—yet it was not the anger of despair, but that of a being who had just realized he was facing a true rival. Then, he burst into a hysterical laugh that shook the very walls of space—a laugh mingled with anger and reluctant acknowledgment. "Hahaha! So this is how it is! Magnificent... magnificent! Go on, your fate won't change no matter how hard you try!"
Time had already run out for the Emperor, but for Karsu, hope had just dawned!
The Emperor refocused on the chessboard. Their first match had been a true massacre of pawns—one the Emperor lost not due to lack of skill, but because he had been utterly distracted by the stubborn presence of Karsu, who kept hammering at the doors of his consciousness without pause. The Emperor held the black chess pieces, which seemed to represent the dark past, while Qranos, with the white pieces, pushed the future toward the light. The score was 1-0, but the Emperor felt a moral defeat in that round.
"Ten minutes," the Emperor muttered, staring at the hourglass that had begun flowing once more over the distant Karsu. "Just ten minutes until he can repeat his trick. I can't catch him at that critical moment."
The Emperor moved his black pawn forward. "I've figured out his plan, Qranos. He intends to kill himself at the last moment of every quarter-hour. He thinks he's renewing time, giving himself another chance to complete his damned experiments." His voice carried a mix of disdain and hidden respect. "This Karsu—even in his broken state, he clings to illusions of freedom. He thinks he can shatter the very laws of existence with his pitiful sacrifices."
Qranos looked at the Emperor, his eyes holding infinite depth. "Yes, that's correct. It's a loophole in the challenge's terms. Infinite ingenuity in a moment of despair." Then, he raised his eyes toward the glowing hourglass above Karsu. "Don't you see, Your Majesty? It's not just a loophole. It's an existential cry. Every death is a birth. Every suicide is a defiant insistence on continuing. He refuses to be just an echo of his past."
"Ingenuity?!" the Emperor roared, his hands flickering with faint energy, as if the essence of his fury had taken form. "It's madness! Does he truly believe he can succeed in finding that formula by killing himself hundreds of times? With each death, a fragment of his soul shatters, even if his body regenerates! He thinks he's bending the rules, but he's slowly destroying himself. It's only a matter of time before his soul fades entirely." The Emperor shook his head mockingly. "He's naïve to think pain alone creates strength. True strength is constancy, immutability, unshakable eternal existence. I, Qranos, embody that constancy. He is but a fleeting spark in the sea of time."
The Emperor moved piece after piece in terrifying silence. His eyes never left the hourglass above Karsu. The closer the final moment approached, the more he moved. He vanished from the chessboard, crossing vast distances in the blink of an eye, standing before Karsu, reaching out to seize him—to erase those final flickers of hope. In every leap, in every attempt to grasp, the Emperor saw a repetition of his past, where he had tried to crush every rebellion. He did not see Karsu as an individual, but as a symbol of all who dared challenge the absolute laws of his existence.
Each time, Karsu was faster. In a fraction of a fraction of a second, the array would explode, ending the scene with his death—only for the hourglass to flow anew. Every resurrection was a slap in the face of the eternity the Emperor represented.
The second time... the third... the fifth... the tenth...
The Emperor trembled with rage, but it was a cold rage, sharpening his focus like a silently boiling volcano. "This cannot continue! I must be faster! My grip must be stronger!" In this repeated challenge, he saw an eternal struggle. He was the past trying to crush the future, and Karsu was that emerging future, refusing to die.
The twentieth... the twenty-fifth... the thirtieth... the fiftieth...
The Emperor's eyes began to show signs of exhaustion—not physical (a concept barely known to him), but a deep spiritual fatigue. This relentless challenge was consuming him in ways he was unaccustomed to. With each leap, each failure to seize Karsu, he felt as though a part of him was vanishing—not physically, but from the absolute aura he once possessed. Karsu's repeated resurrections, his stubborn refusal to perish, were cracks in the Emperor's armor of eternity.
Suddenly, the Emperor looked back at the chessboard, ignoring the hourglass and Karsu for a moment. "Enough distraction!" he roared—a voice heard not just by Qranos, but echoing through the entire mental space. "We lost the first round because of this absurd distraction!" He spoke as if referring to a moral defeat, a round of challenge, not the chess match itself. "I won't allow this again!" He began focusing on the game with ferocity, as if trying to reset the entire board—not just the pieces. He sought to regain control over something tangible after feeling powerless against Karsu's "suicide maneuver." He moved his pieces with extreme caution, as if pouring all his remaining strength into this symbolic battle. "Victory in this match is proof that my laws still govern this world. I must correct the score, Qranos. Current score: Qranos 3.5 - Emperor 0.5."
Qranos looked at the Emperor with depth, as if reading an unwritten history in his soul. "Do you think he doesn't realize it? That his soul fades with each death?" Qranos shook his head slowly. "He is sacrificing himself. He is sacrificing his past, his essence as you know it, for a future he will only see if he succeeds in transcending himself. He chooses to become something else, something new—even if the price is partial annihilation. He is breaking the chains of his soul through the act of breaking itself. These are not just experiments, Your Majesty. They are rebirth rituals. Rituals of shattering that lead to a power you have yet to comprehend."
Qranos' words echoed faintly in the Emperor's ears, but he arrogantly ignored them. The Emperor could see only folly, despair, and ignorance in Karsu's actions—ignorance of the absolute laws he represented. Yet something deep within him began to waver.
As the Emperor's eyes remained fixed on the chessboard, planning his next moves with deadly focus—determined to turn the tables in this moral match—he suddenly felt a violent tremor in his being, a spiritual quake unlike anything he had experienced since time immemorial. It was not physical, but a distortion in the fabric of reality around him, as if a cosmic piece had shifted out of place.
The Emperor slowly raised his head, his eyes widening in genuine shock. This sensation was not merely growing power—it was the formation of an entity that defied every law he had known across centuries of existence. He looked toward the barrier where Karsu resided and saw space distorting in an unfamiliar way. It was no longer just a void shifting colors—it danced, interwoven with absolute darkness and white flashes, as if two colliding galaxies were forming at a single point.
"Is this a Level Six Quz?!" the Emperor snarled, his eyes blazing from the light emanating from the emerging Quz. But he quickly realized this was impossible—the creator of a Quz could not forge one equal to their own power. Thus, this had to be a Level Five Quz, yet he exclaimed, "Is this the aura of a Level Five Quz? Impossible! I've refined countless Level Five Quz, but none ever had an aura like this. It's... it resembles him." He spoke the last words while looking at Qranos.
After this fleeting astonishment, the Emperor suddenly calmed, as if he had never been surprised in his life. "That thing—as long as it doesn't touch me, I'm fine. What can a man who dies before he even thinks of acting do? I'll seize that Quz the moment Karsu emerges from his shell to fight me!" Then, with a confident smile, he added: "I will win. I am the strongest."
Qranos was taken aback by the Emperor's sudden composure but soon remembered that before him stood the Demon Emperor Karsu, who had lived for one hundred and ninety-seven years—a man described as the very definition of true adaptation. It was this adaptability that had brought him this far.
---
Karsu, the Demon Emperor
The man crouched before me—the Demon Emperor Karsu, who had lived for one hundred and ninety-seven years—was no genius born with a spoon of light, but a curse walking on two legs. He was the living definition of adaptation, to the point of becoming adaptation itself. He was not lucky nor gifted in survival—he was gifted in enduring disasters as if they were raindrops on his shoulders, lifting his head to the sky without fleeing.
In a world where the average human lifespan did not exceed thirty years, in a land where scarcely a day passed without massacre or genocide, Karsu survived again and again. He survived while tasting death more often than he tasted rest. The monsters were not the greatest threat in this world—it was humans, with their hierarchical chains and lust for power.
Karsu was born at the bottom of this hierarchy. No lineage, no authority, no Quz, nothing. He was just a number that could be erased from existence without a single eyelid twitching. Yet within this void, he built his own ladder—step by step—named "strength."
### Childhood: The Hidden Wolf
At ten, he was a cautious boy—social in appearance, a wolf at heart. His teachers noticed him, tried to mold him to their will, fed him lessons of obedience, dressed him in morals that were not his, and preached that the will of the collective surpassed the individual. Karsu listened—but did not believe. He saw the contradiction with his own eyes: those who possessed Quz were treated as kings; those without, as dogs. The morals his teachers preached saved no one from being crushed.
Karsu understood this truth before his features even matured. He decided he would not be crushed. He would become the one who crushed.
At fourteen, he passed the Awakening Test and entered the Quz Masters' Academy. For the first time, he tasted comfort: a soft bed, warm food, superficial respect. He loved it—though he knew it was false. He strove to master everything, becoming the ideal model of a student serving the will of authority.
But all of it shattered on "The Day of Broken Birth."
### The Shattering: Talent of Shame
On that day, the Talent Test revealed the students' abilities and sealed their fates.
The first received a C. Another, a B. Then came Karsu's closest friend, who scored an A... a shock, but a happy one. Everyone applauded, including Karsu, his heart filled with bittersweet pride.
And when his turn came, the unthinkable appeared...
E.
The weakest talent in history.
Laughter began, then insults, then complete withdrawal. Even his friend looked at him with disgust, saying:
"Don't come near me. Don't taint my reputation."
Karsu fell to his knees and wept—for the first time since infancy. He begged for a retest. Pleaded for mercy. But there was no mercy in this world.
> "You didn't make a mistake. You were just born weak. And weakness is a sin."
Even the little his adoptive father had left him was stolen.
"You're not from this village. Its wealth isn't yours."
He believed them once more—but he would never forget.
### The Old Man: Humiliation in Slow Motion
Fifty years later, Karsu was sixty-six—emaciated, crippled, barely a Level Two Quz Master. Used as a human shield against monsters. Mocked by all. The commoners despised him for once being one of them. The masters despised him for no longer being worth even their contempt.
Then...
The invasion came.
The fiercest the village had ever seen.
Everyone fled.
They left him behind.
Him and the commoners... to die.
But he did not die.
He crawled. He didn't know how his paralyzed legs moved, but he crawled.
And entered the laboratory.
### The Transformation: Second Birth
Strange tools. Dusty books. Abandoned experiments.
He survived on nothing but water for days. Then, in a moment of absolute despair...
Light appeared.
A small being floated before him, attaching itself to his chest.
Then, he fell into a deep sleep.
He woke up.
Young.
His face was fresh. His nails and hair had grown. He felt no hunger or thirst.
He ran to a broken mirror, saw his reflection, and gasped:
"What... what is this?!"
He remembered the light.
He remembered the Quz.
The Quz of Youth.
A legend no one believed.
But Karsu did not ask, "Why me?"
He asked... "Why now?"
And found no answer.
Then, as if something had been ripped from him, he collapsed to the ground, starving like an animal.
He crawled for eight hours straight until he reached an herb store.
His body was full of cracks, blood, and deformities.
But his hand finally grasped a green leaf...
And he ate