"This is the end for you, Leon Virel."
The voice wasn't raised. There was no anger in it, no strain, only the cold certainty of someone who had already seen the outcome of the battle and was merely speaking it aloud so everyone nearby could hear it and remember.
"Your heresy ends here," said another voice from somewhere to the left, judging by the heavy, metallic scrape of armor. It belonged to the knights of the Order of the Solar Altar, whose armor was inlaid with golden plates fused into steel, crafted so that even on the battlefield it looked like sacred relics rather than tools of slaughter.
"You should've died with the rest of the dogs who rejected the gods' grace," a third added, spitting into the red mud.
The words echoed, carrying unnaturally far across the battlefield, as if space itself were overloaded with death and sound had nowhere to fade, only to rebound, repeating the sentence again and again.
The field was crimson, not metaphorically, but literally. What had been a gray, cracked border plain between three kingdoms that morning had turned into a dark red, sucking swamp. Tens of thousands of bodies lay scattered across it, each belonging to a different race, a different world, a different story.
Right by Leon's foot lay the corpse of a drakar, a three-meter-tall reptilian warrior with scales like fractured lava, scales that even in death couldn't be pierced by ordinary steel.
A few steps away were two elaryn bodies, slender, long-eared beings with semi-translucent skin, beneath which the extinguished lines of mana were visible, shattered like broken glass.
There were humans too. Dwarves with stone-like skin. Even one massive, four-armed thing from the southern deserts, whose name most soldiers could never pronounce, so they simply called it "that caravan beast."
And in the midst of it all stood Leon.
Or rather, he barely stood, leaning his full weight on his sword. The blade was cracked as if someone had tried to split a mountain with it instead of men, and the hilt was slick with blood, others' and his own, mixed beyond any hope of telling them apart.
Dozens of warriors surrounded him, every weapon aimed in his direction. And yet no one moved first. Over the past few hours, they had seen too much to believe this was "just one man."
Then one of them stepped forward.
He didn't stand out through strength, but through purity. His silver-gold armor was almost untouched by blood, as if blood itself had no right to cling to it. On his breastplate gleamed the symbol of an open eye pierced by a ray of light, the mark of the gods' personal executioners.
He raised his sword and pointed it at Leon.
"This is how those who dare defy the gods always end."
Leon lifted his head slowly, as if every movement of his neck cost more strength than the hours of fighting before it. He looked at the man through bloodshot eyes that held no fear, only a familiar, old contempt.
He recognized him instantly.
Leon spat blood to the side, licked his split lip, and rasped,
"Then go back to licking your god's boots like a good dog… and don't preach at me, Adam."
Something cracked on the man's face.
First his ears reddened. Then his cheeks. Finally his entire face flushed with a rage so intense it looked almost comical against his holy armor.
"You miserable, " he started, then cut himself off, grinding his teeth so hard they creaked. "You dare mock the One who granted you power?"
He stepped closer, leaning over Leon like a preacher over a sinner.
"Our god is the light that sustains existence. His grace raised you above humanity. And you… you rejected it, like an animal biting the hand that feeds it."
Leon gave a quiet snort that turned into a blood-filled cough.
"Grace?" he croaked. "If that was grace… then I pity those who got more of it."
Adam flinched, as if struck.
Then his face hardened.
He raised his sword again and pointed it at Leon.
"Dispose of the heretic."
They attacked all at once.
Leon parried the first blows on instinct. His body still remembered years of endless battles, sword and magic alike, even though his own mana had been nearly burned down to nothing.
Every block ended in a wound.
A slashed arm.
A pierced thigh.
A torn-open side, heat spilling out faster than blood.
And yet the fight went on.
Minutes stretched into hours.
Hours blurred into something shapeless.
After three hours, Leon no longer saw enemies, only red silhouettes through the curtain of blood flooding his vision. His breathing became wet and rasping, as if his lungs were filling with mud instead of air.
More bodies piled up around him, new ones, fresh ones, added to the tens of thousands already there.
And then something happened that no one wanted to say out loud.
People began to retreat.
Not by command, not all at once. One step back. Then another. Until a semicircle of empty space formed around the half-dead man who was still standing.
Adam scoffed when he saw it.
"Pathetic."
He went alone.
He approached calmly, unhurriedly, like someone strolling through a garden rather than a battlefield, and stopped in front of Leon.
Leon tried to lift his sword.
He couldn't.
His knees buckled without warning, and he collapsed face-first into the bloody mud.
Adam smiled faintly.
He placed his foot on Leon's head and pressed it into the ground.
"This is how the wretched heretic known as the Magic Knight meets his end… the one who dared reject the gods' grace."
He spat on him.
He was about to pull his foot back when he noticed Leon's fingers twitch.
Adam frowned.
"You're still alive?"
He grabbed Leon by the throat and lifted him with one hand, as if he were picking up a rag doll rather than an armored adult man.
Leon's head lolled uselessly, but after a moment his eyes cracked open again.
"Any last words?" Adam asked coldly.
A small, crooked smile appeared on Leon's face.
"Fuck… all… your go… "
Adam didn't let him finish.
His hand punched straight through Leon's torso in one clean motion, tearing through him from the inside until he ripped out Leon's heart, still beating for a fraction of a second before the light within it went out.
Leon stared ahead.
One second.
Maybe two.
Then everything went dark.
***
Ding!
Leon's eyes flew open, and he sucked in air so deep and greedily it felt like he had only just remembered what lungs were for. Cool, dry air flowed into him without resistance, without pain, without that burning agony.
Dazed, he couldn't understand why he was lying here.
Not on blood-soaked earth. Not in corpse-filled mud.
But on a narrow bed, its springs groaning softly beneath his sudden movement as he sat up and instinctively looked down at his body, expecting to see a hole in his torso, a shredded chest, scars, anything that would prove what had happened was real.
There was nothing.
His skin was whole. Smooth. Not a single cut. No sword marks. Not even the old mana scar he had carried for years. His hands, which had been shaking from exhaustion just moments ago, were steady now, and strangely… light.
"This is…" he started, his own voice sounding foreign, slightly hoarse, like after a long illness or a scream held too long.
He fell silent as his gaze finally shifted forward.
The room was small. Cramped. Painfully familiar.
Cracked walls with peeling paint exposing gray plaster. A broken wooden table that still bore the marks of someone once trying to fix it with wedges instead of replacing a leg. A chair with one shorter support. Windows where, in the spots dampness loved most, a thin, pale-green mold grew, smelling of mildew and something sour.
Dust hung thick in the air, so heavy he could almost taste it.
This wasn't a palace.
This wasn't a temple.
This wasn't any world of gods.
Leon looked around more slowly now, carefully, like someone afraid the image might vanish if he moved too fast. And when it hit him that everything looked exactly as he remembered from years ago, the same ceiling crack shaped like branching lightning, the same wardrobe whose doors never quite closed, something clenched painfully in his stomach.
"Earth…" he whispered.
Disbelief came a moment later, heavy and unpleasant, followed by a question that refused to go away.
Had he returned to another dimension?
One where none of it had happened, no war, no gods, no system, no corpse-filled fields and endless fights for survival?
He shifted, bracing his hands on the mattress, ready to stand and test whether this world would fall apart with his first step, when the air was cut by a short, unnaturally clear sound.
Ding!
He froze mid-motion.
Right in front of his eyes, at eye level, a translucent window appeared, as if an alien pane of perfectly smooth glass had been overlaid on reality. Words began to form upon it.
[Congratulations, you have been invited to the "Path of Immortality"!]
Leon went rigid.
[I am "Infinity."]
[This is your one and only true chance to obtain eternal life and become a divine being.]
[500 million of the most promising individuals on Earth and other lower-tier worlds, aged 16–65, will be able to ascend together toward "Eternal Immortality."]
He kept reading, a cold spreading through his stomach.
[All others… will be abandoned by Infinity, as your world is no longer fit to exist.]
[Good luck.]
The window vanished as abruptly as it had appeared, leaving him alone in the cramped, dusty room that only moments ago had felt safe simply because it was familiar.
"This is…"
Leon's eyes widened in shock.
"…I've gone back to before entering the [Path of Immortality]."