The Undying Warrior's Rewind

2

The capital city went from a bustling fantasy metropolis to a screaming madhouse in approximately four seconds.

Horses bolted, overturning carriages. Self-proclaimed noble mages forgot how to cast basic levitation spells and tripped over their own silk robes. 

The hairline fracture in the sky was bleeding a sickening purple miasma, and then, the sky literally began to vomit.

They rained down by the hundreds, crashing onto stone roofs and shattering shop windows. I stepped back into the shadow of an alleyway, my eyes narrowing as I evaluated the threat.

They were about the size of a fat chicken, but they sure as hell didn’t lay eggs. These things had a grotesque, multi-segmented body, like a wolf-centipede hybrid—and sported two snapping, rabid heads that oozed green saliva.

"What in the unholy name of the abyss is that?" I muttered, genuinely disgusted.

I had fought mountain-sized behemoths, world-eating serpents, and demonic lords, but I had never seen a two-headed centipede-dog in my previous life. 

Did the evolutionary track of the apocalypse get a weird DLC patch in this timeline?

Nearby, children were crying, frantically dragged by their terrified parents. A squad of city guards rushed forward, shields raised, trying their best to hack at the skittering tide. It was a chaotic mess.

Let’s see what we’re dealing with, I thought, focusing the raw energy in my brain toward my retinas.

‘Eye of the Sovereign.’

A sharp sting pricked my pupils. Instantly, the chaotic world slowed down, washed in a grid of tactical blue light. But the feedback loop was brutal. A wave of dizziness hit me, and a trickle of blood leaked from my left nostril.

Status: Old Ability ‘Eye of the Sovereign’ restricted. Current output: 5%. Reason: Severely deficient mana pool. Current Tier: Tier 1.

"Five percent? Seriously? This body really is a cheap knock-off," I wiped the blood with the back of my hand, but the tactical data was already firing into my brain.

[Target: Abyssal Skitterer - Juvenile Form]

Threat Level: Low (F-Rank)

Weakness: Soft underbelly, severe stupidity.

Notable Feature: Contains a low-grade Yellow Core Stone at the base of the neck.

My eyes locked onto the glowing, faint yellow light pulsing beneath their chitinous armor. 

A Yellow Core Stone. In my old world, those were high-density mana batteries. For a normal mage here, it would take hours of refined alchemy to extract the energy. For me? It was a fast-food drive-thru for my starving mana core.

Everyone else was running away. I was practically salivating.

A centipede-wolf lunged into my alley, its dual jaws snapping inches from my face. I didn't even blink. I sidestepped, grabbed its disgusting, writhing midsection, and slammed it face-first into the brick wall. 

Conveniently, a dead city guard was slumped against a nearby crate. The guy didn't need his weapon anymore, so I politely relieved him of his standard-issue steel broadsword. 

It was heavy, poorly balanced, and lacked any high-grade enchantments.

"Perfect," I smirked, spinning the blade in a tight, effortless circle.

I stepped out of the alley and into the secondary street. To the guards and the fleeing civilians, I probably looked like a suicidal teenager with a death wish. But the moment the first wave of three monsters jumped at me, the ‘dropout’ ceased to exist.

The Apex Sovereign took the wheel. I didn't waste a single movement.

My sword was a blur of silver. I cut the first monster clean in half, spun on my heel to impale the second through both its brains, and used the momentum to drive the pommel of the sword into the third one’s skull.

With a practiced, terrifyingly fluid motion, my left hand dipped into the carcasses, ripping out the small, glowing yellow stones. 

The moment the crystals touched my palm, I activated my raw absorption technique.

The stones shattered into dust, and a rush of pure, unadulterated mana flooded my core. It was like a shot of premium espresso directly to my soul. 

My muscles tightened, the fatigue from my earlier poison-purge vanishing instantly.

"Oh yeah. That's the stuff," I laughed, a manic, dangerous thrill vibrating in my chest. "Keep them coming!"

I became a localized hurricane in that alleyway. Dozens of the creatures swarmed in, drawn by the scent of blood, and dozens of them were systematically dismantled. 

I was moving like I was born to do this, because I was. Every strike was a masterclass in lethal efficiency. No flashy, useless magic circles, just pure, unadulterated combat geometry.

Within minutes, the alley was a graveyard of twitching purple limbs and black goo. I stood in the center of the carnage, completely unbothered by the foul stench, tossing my twenty-fourth yellow core stone into the air and catching it. 

My mana pool was already expanding, pushing hard against the boundaries of Tier 1.

"Well, that was a decent warmup," I soliloquized, wiping the black ichor off my borrowed sword onto a clean patch of a dead monster's fur. 

"If the apocalypse is just going to throw free upgrades at me, I might actually beat this five-year deadline by lunch."

"Ethan? How the hell did you manage to—"

The voice cut through the fading screams of the street. It was sharp, melodic, and carried a tone of absolute, bewildered disbelief.

I froze. That voice.

It was a voice I would recognize if I were deaf, blind, and buried six feet under. It was a voice from my past life. 

A girl's voice, around my current age, but the cadence, the pitch, the slight arrogant undertone, it was unmistakably her.

I turned around slowly, the broadsword dripping black blood onto the cobblestones.

Standing at the mouth of the alley, wearing the pristine, silver-trimmed robes of the Royal Academy’s elite class, was a girl with striking violet eyes and a silver staff topped with a flawless mana crystal.

Geraldine Red.

The prodigy witch. The tactical genius. The bitch. The absolute traitor who had orchestrated the downfall of our vanguard back in the old world, handing the keys of humanity's survival to the abyssal gods on a silver platter.

My heart hammered against my ribs, a toxic cocktail of cold fury and pure shock flooding my system. 

What the hell was she doing here? She was supposed to be a dead, centuries-old historical figure in this timeline, or a future betrayer I hadn't met yet. 

Why did she look exactly like she did before she stabbed humanity in the front?

More importantly, she had just called me Ethan. Not Ethan Hoke. She was looking at my pathetic, 17-year-old face with the eyes of someone who knew exactly who the Apex Sovereign was.

Geraldine’s shock quickly morphed into something far more dangerous. Her violet eyes narrowed, and the silver staff in her hand began to crackle with an ominous, high-density cosmic magic that definitely didn't belong to a student.

"You're supposed to be dead in the abyss, Vance," she whispered, her voice dropping to a deadly, venomous register as she raised her staff directly at my chest. "How did you get here?"