Pat! Pat! Pat!
The soft rhythm of raindrops echoed across the battlefield, falling from the ash-colored sky like silent tears.
The cold touch of the rain soaked into the cracked soil, mixing with the scattered blood around it.
And there, lying motionless on the muddy ground, was Lin Xiu.
His eyes remained open, fixed on the sky above.
Dark clouds rolled across the heavens, heavy and unrelenting, yet Lin Xiu's expression stayed still.
No tears. No screams. Just the quiet, hollow stare of someone who had lost everything.
A few glowing panels hovered above him, flickering like dying embers.
[ Your health is in critical condition.]
[ The "Judgment Battlefield" is an instant death zone. You cannot revive.]
The warning was brutal, direct, and final.
Lin Xiu read the text but barely reacted. His body was numb, completely severed from pain.
Not by choice. He couldn't feel his arms or legs for a simple reason: they were gone.
His limbs had been violently cut off, left somewhere behind on the ravaged field of the [Judgment Battlefield].
And all he could do now was stare into the clouds above, waiting for the end.
Footsteps squished softly through the wet earth.
Voices followed, familiar ones, sharp against the silence.
"Hell yeah," a man laughed, his tone smug and triumphant, "That was perfect. We're going to be rich."
Lin Xiu didn't bother turning his head to look.
He knew the voice. He knew them both.
"I know, right~?" a woman added with a joyful, singsong tone, "We'll never have to worry about anything again! This is it. We made it!"
Qin Feng and Qin Xiaoyou. His best friends. Or rather, the people he thought were his best friends.
Ten years of friendship. Ten years of surviving side-by-side.
Ten years of laughter, hardship, training, and risking their lives in a world that had been torn apart by chaos.
And now, they stood behind him, laughing. Triumphant. While he bled out on the ground.
"We got the artifact," Qin Feng said, breathless with excitement, "We're good."
"To our new lives!" Qin Xiaoyou giggled like a schoolgirl, drunk on greed and euphoria, "Let's go already!"
"What about him?" Qin Feng asked casually, like he was pointing at a broken piece of furniture, "Do we... finish him off?"
Lin Xiu continued to lie there, still unmoving.
He didn't flinch, didn't cry out, didn't speak.
The pain in his body was distant now. Fading.
Only the weight in his chest remained.
"No need," Qin Xiaoyou replied, a cruel smile in her voice, "Look at him. He's already finished. It's just a matter of time before the monsters come and clean it up for us."
And with that, they turned their backs on him.
The light of a portal opened a few feet away, shimmering gold and green, its surface rippling like water.
They stepped through it without hesitation, not sparing him another glance.
Then the portal closed. Silence returned.
Lin Xiu remained where he was, lying in the rain. Alone.
For a long moment, he said nothing. Just listened to the storm around him.
His mind wandered.
Ten years ago, the world had changed.
A game called [Eternal Soul], or the [Eternal] game in short, had descended upon Earth, merging its unnatural rules and beings with the human world.
Earth's foundation was forever altered.
And a while after its arrival, monsters began spilling into cities, slaughtering people by the thousands.
At first, no one understood what [Eternal Soul] was.
It was like something out of a twisted video game, complete with stats, levels, and power-ups.
And yet, it was real. Too real. Eventually, it was confirmed.
[Eternal Soul] was an entirely separate dimension, and only those brave, or desperate, enough to enter it and survive could gain the power needed to fight back.
Lin Xiu had been one of them.
Like countless others, he trained, fought, and adapted.
Over time, humanity learned how to coexist with the dangerous new reality.
People could enter [Eternal Soul] to grow stronger and earn power, which they could use to make a name for themselves in this new civilization.
Lin Xiu's journey, like so many others, began with hope and desperation.
He wanted to fight for survival, to protect what mattered.
And through it all, Qin Feng and Qin Xiaoyou were there, his partners, his friends, his family.
He trusted them. And that trust had brought him here... to this godforsaken place.
"Heh," he let out, "I was stupid."
[Judgment Battlefield]
[Description: A hidden realm buried deep within "Eternal Soul".]
[Lives loss rate: Instant Death.]
It was said to be one of the most dangerous places in existence, but rumors whispered that a mythical artifact was buried within: the [Eyes of Undead].
They found it.
The journey, the bloodshed, the battles, it all led to that moment.
Lin Xiu was the first to grab it in his hands, but as soon as he inspected it, they realized the artifact came with a cruel limitation.
[Eyes of Undead]
[Rank: Unique]
[Description: The eyes of an ancient god. Can be used by up to two individuals to peer into the truths of the world.]
Only two. The moment they learned that, Qin Feng and Qin Xiaoyou turned on him without hesitation.
They didn't argue or hesitate. They didn't even feel guilt.
And now, Lin Xiu lay broken, betrayed, and discarded.
His HP continued to tick downward, flashing red. Slowly. Inevitably.
He could barely feel the rain anymore.
His blood had soaked into the earth, and the cold had crept into his bones.
This was it. The end.
But then...
Fwish! BOOM!
A sudden gust of wind ripped across the field. Lightning cracked through the clouds above.
Lin Xiu's vision flickered from the burst of light.
The sky... stirred.
Something massive began to form above the cloud, something with a golden glow that pierced through the gray veil.
And then he saw it. An eye.
A massive, golden eye, wide and unblinking, emerged from the sky itself.
Its pupil was vertical, otherworldly, and it looked directly at him.
Lin Xiu blinked slowly.
"Oh great," he muttered, almost amused, "Now I'm hallucinating."
The eye didn't move. It simply watched.
And then...
Ding!
New panels appeared.
[You are about to die. What do you wish to do now?]
[Retry] [Give Up]
Lin Xiu stared at the options, mouth slightly open.
"...Seriously?"
The text looked exactly like a game prompt, but one he had never seen before.
Usually, when you died, you simply revived if you had enough lives.
But this... this was real, wasn't it?
The giant eye above didn't speak. It just kept watching him in silence, waiting for a choice.
Lin Xiu clenched his jaw. He didn't know what "Retry" meant.
He didn't know if this was real, if it was a hallucination, or if he'd already died and this was some kind of post-mortem illusion.
But what he did know was the rage burning inside him.
He had given everything for them. And they had thrown him away like trash.
"I don't know what kind of retry this is," he said quietly, "but if it means I can make them feel even a fraction of what I felt..."
He paused, then looked straight at the panel.
"...Then so be it."
[Retry?]
"Yes."
[Very well.]
The golden eye above him closed.
The sky rippled. His vision blurred as a numbing cold washed over him.
His thoughts dissolved into darkness, pulled away from his broken body.
No pain. No fear. Just silence.
And then—
Everything went black. The world disappeared.
...