The Undying Warrior's Rewind

The world that I once knew was nothing like this.

I looked around and saw nothing but death, blood, the haunting echoes of the fallen, and gigantic monsters the size of skyscrapers tearing through the clouds. 

After a century of me leading a team of legendary warriors and idealized heroes, I honestly, naively thought we could kill the abyssal beasts.

I was wrong.

Now, looking at the smoking ruins of our civilization, all my comrades were dead, and I was rapidly joining them. 

The funniest part? It wasn’t the mountain-sized behemoth in front of me that did it. It was the glowing, jagged blade currently protruding from my chest. 

My trusted elven vanguard had stabbed me in the back during the final dungeon raid. Classic.

"Sorry, boss," a voice hissed in my ear as the world faded to black. "But the gods offered us a better deal."

"If I survive this," I choked out, blood bubbling in my throat, "I’m making a coat out of your ears."

Then, darkness. Eternal rest and i felt nothing but regret and then the peaceful, quiet void.

Or so I thought.

*****

"Ethan Hoke! Wake up, you useless piece of shit!” A sharp, stinging pain slapped across my cheek, followed by the distinct aroma of cheap perfume and stale vomit. 

My eyes snapped open. I didn’t see the shattered skies of the apocalypse, nor did I feel the gaping hole in my lungs. 

Instead, I was staring at a cracked plaster ceiling and a very angry, middle-aged woman holding a bucket of dirty water.

"Get up, Ethan Hoke! The landlord wants his rent, and the academy sent another expulsion notice. If you aren't out by noon, I’m throwing your pathetic belongings into the gutter!" 

What the?

The woman slammed the door shut, the frame rattling so hard a piece of drywall flaked off and landed right on my nose.

I sat up, my brain spinning like a broken roulette wheel. Ethan? My name was Ethan, sure. Ethan Vance. But she had called me Ethan Hoke.

I looked down at my hands. They weren't the scarred, calloused, gauntlet-wearing weapons of mass destruction I was used to. 

They were pale, thin, and remarkably un-muscular, featuring manicured nails and a slight tremble that suggested a severe lack of iron or a profound dedication to alcoholism.

I scrambled out of the creaking bed and practically threw myself at a dusty, cracked mirror hanging on the wall.

Staring back at me was a 17-year-old kid with messy dark hair, dark circles under his eyes deep enough to store groceries, and a face that practically screamed, ‘Please bully me, I won't fight back.’

Memories that weren't mine flooded my brain with the subtlety of a runaway freight train.

Ethan Hoke. Disgraced noble. The black sheep of a minor magical house. Kick-out from the Royal Magic Academy because his mana pool was smaller than a puddle in a drought. 

A total dropout who had spent his final coins on cheap ale before apparently dying of alcohol poisoning on a stained mattress.

"Great. I went from the strongest man alive to a walking magical disappointment," I muttered, flexing my pathetic fingers. 

I tried to circulate my mana. The moment I did, a sharp, burning agony shot through my chest.

Motherfucker! What the—

I examined the inner mana circuits of this new body. They weren't just small; they were clogged with a dark, slimy residue.

"Well, well, well," I laughed, a cold, sharp sound that didn't match this teenager's face at all. "Someone was poisoning the kid. No wonder his mana wouldn't flow. His dear, loving family didn't want a dropout; they wanted a corpse."

But as I began to probe deeper into the world’s ambient mana to figure out where the hell I was, a strange, sickeningly familiar resonance hummed in the air. 

I walked over to the grime-covered window and wiped a circle clean, looking out at the sprawling, medieval-esque fantasy city. It looked peaceful.

Flying carriages zoomed between glittering spires. Knights in polished armor patrolled the clean stone streets.

But I knew that hum. It was the specific, cosmic frequency of the Abyssal Realm.

I closed my eyes, tapping into the advanced temporal math I’d mastered in my past life to calculate the density of the dimensional barriers. The numbers didn't lie.

"You have got to be kidding me," I whispered, rubbing my temples.

I hadn't just transmigrated into a new body. I had been reborn into a completely different world, one that was currently sitting on a ticking time bomb. 

The atmospheric mana density indicated that the dimensional walls were degrading at a fixed rate. This world was destined to face the exact same apocalypse I just died in.

And according to my calculations? We had exactly five years before the sky ripped open and the building-sized monsters came down to play.

"Five years," I muttered, looking at my noodle arms. "I have five years to go from a magical reject to an apocalypse-ending god. Speedrunning it is, then."

First things first: I needed to clear the poison out of this body. If I left it, the toxins would permanently rot my mana core within a week. 

The remedy was simple, but incredibly unpleasant. I needed to force a massive influx of raw, unfiltered elemental mana through my blocked veins, essentially using a magical pressure-washer to blast the gunk out.

The problem? Doing that without a proper catalyst would usually explode a normal human being.

Good thing I was never normal.

I looted the room, finding exactly three copper coins, a half-eaten loaf of stale bread, and a decorative silver dagger with the Hoke family crest on it. 

The dagger was cheap silver plating, but the pommel held a tiny, low-grade fire magic stone. It was meant for lighting campfires, but it would have to do.

I pried the red stone out with my bare teeth, spitting it into my palm.

"Alright, little rock. Don't disappoint me."

I sat cross-legged on the floor, ignoring the shouting of the landlord downstairs. I placed the fire stone directly over my heart, took a deep breath, and slammed my hand down, shattering the crystal and forcing the raw, chaotic fire mana directly into my chest.

Something cracked.

An agonizing white heat flared through my torso. It felt like someone had poured boiling lava directly into my veins. 

Gasping for air, I clamped my jaws shut to keep from screaming. Sweat poured off my brow as I used my max-level combat instincts to mentally grab the wild, raging fire and fashion it into a razor-sharp drill.

Move, damn it! I roared internally.

With a brutal mental shove, I drove the fire magic through my clogged mana circuits. 

The dark poison resisted for a fraction of a second before the sheer, unyielding will of the Apex Sovereign obliterated it. Steam mixed with a foul, black vapor began to ooze from my pores, smelling like rotten eggs.

Then it popped!

The blockages blew out one by one. The pain was astronomical, but the feeling of liberation that followed was intoxicating. My mana pool, previously a stagnant puddle, suddenly connected to the vast reservoir of the world around me. 

The air in the tiny room began to swirl, a miniature vortex forming around my body as I greedily sucked in the ambient energy, rewriting the genetic limits of this pathetic noble body.

By the time I opened my eyes, the sun was high in the sky. I stood up, feeling lighter, faster, and infinitely deadlier. 

I was still weak compared to my old self, but now? Now I had a foundation.

Then I heard a bang. The flimsy wooden door to my room didn't just rattle this time; it splintered off its hinges.

Three men stepped into the cramped space. The one in the lead wore an expensive silk doublet that looked entirely too tight for his fat frame. 

Flanking him were two heavily muscled thugs wearing the uniform of the Royal Academy's enforcer squad.

"Well, look at you, Ethan," the fat man sneered, pulling out a silk handkerchief to cover his nose from the smell of the purged poison. 

"Still alive? Your uncle explicitly paid us to ensure you didn't make it to the weekend. You really are a stubborn piece of garbage."

I blinked, looking at the two enforcers who were already drawing their iron batons.

"Let me guess," I said, a slow, dangerous smile creeping onto my face as I cracked my knuckles. "You're here to evict me from life?"

"We're here to clean up the Hoke family's loose ends," the fat man smirked. "Break his legs first."

The first thug lunged forward, his baton humming with a faint glow of earth magic. To a normal 17-year-old, the strike would be blindingly fast.

To me? It was moving in slow motion.

I didn't even bother drawing a weapon. I stepped inside his guard, grabbed his extended wrist, and twisted. 

A sickening crack echoed through the room. Before he could even scream, I drove my palm upward into his chin, channeling a burst of my newly freed mana. The impact sent him crashing through the floorboards, unconscious before he hit the joists.

The second thug froze, his eyes widening to the size of saucers.

"My turn," I whispered.

Within three seconds, both thugs were groaning on the floor in a pile of broken bones. The fat man had backed himself into the corner, his face pale, his expensive handkerchief fluttering to the floor.

"W-What are you?!" he shrieked. "You're a mana-less dropout!"

I walked over, stepping over the groaning enforcers, and grabbed him by his fancy silk collar, pulling his face inches from mine. 

"I'm a man on a very tight schedule. Now, you're going to tell me exactly how much money my uncle paid you, and then you're going to give me your wallet."

Ten minutes later, I walked out of the dilapidated boarding house, tossing a heavy pouch of gold coins in my hand. 

The fat man and his thugs were tied up inside, stripped of anything valuable.

I had money, I had an open mana core, and I had a grudge. But as I stepped onto the bustling main street of the capital city, the sky suddenly darkened. It wasn't a cloud.

A massive, invisible tremor shook the earth, so violent that citizens stumbled and horses screamed in panic. 

I looked up. High above the royal palace, the space itself seemed to warp, a tiny, hairline fracture bleeding purple light into the blue sky.

My smile faded. The apocalypse wasn't waiting five years to start. It was already leaking.