The Undying Warrior's Rewind

3

She knew me? This bitch?

I was standing here in the body of a scrawny, malnourished seventeen-year-old dropout, and she recognized me on sight? What a—

I didn’t even get to finish cursing her out in my mind before the tip of her silver staff flashed with a blinding, violent violet light.

A lightning bolt ripped through the alleyway with the catastrophic speed of an archmage. This wasn't the magic of a teenage academy student; this was the raw, lethal output of a seasoned killer.

My combat instincts, the only things in this body currently working at maximum capacity, screamed at me to move. 

I threw myself sideways, hitting the cobblestones and rolling through a pile of dead centipede-monsters. 

The lightning bolt blasted into the stone wall right where my head had been, melting the brick into bubbling, red-hot glass.

The shockwave blew me back against a crate, knocking the wind out of my lungs. Damn it! If I had my old body, I would have eaten that lightning for breakfast and used the energy to pick my teeth. 

But right now, my Tier 1 mana core was trembling just from the ambient magical pressure she was emitting.

Geraldine stepped forward, her silver boots clicking softly against the pavement, completely unbothered by the chaos of the city around us. 

The violet light of her staff cast long, villainous shadows across her pristine face.

"I know what you are thinking," she said, a cold, mocking smirk playing on her lips. "You thought I was the villain here."

Thought? I didn't think she was the villain; I knew she was. She was the definition of it! But looking at her smirking down at me, seeing the absolute gap in our current power levels, a cold splash of reality hit my brain.

If I fought her right now, I would die. Again. And I really didn't want 'Dying Twice in One Day' on my resume.

I needed a plan, and I needed it five seconds ago. I had to trick her. I had to play the only card I had left: the pathetic, useless identity of the kid whose body I was currently occupying. 

If I could convince her that I was just Ethan Hoke, the magic-less dropout classmate she despised, and that I had absolutely no memory of being the Apex Sovereign, I might just live long enough to slit her throat later.

I let my broadsword drop from my trembling hands, letting it clatter uselessly to the ground. I scrambled backward like a terrified animal, pulling my knees to my chest and letting my eyes widen with authentic, unadulterated teenage terror.

"W-What are you doing?!" I shrieked, letting my voice crack perfectly on the high notes. "Are you insane, Geraldine?! You almost killed me!"

Geraldine paused, her staff lowering by a fraction of an inch, her violet eyes scanning me with deep suspicion. 

"Stop acting, Vance. You just slaughtered dozens of abyssal beasts with military-grade swordplay."

"Vance? Who the hell is Vance?!" I yelled, wiping the black monster goo onto my face to look even more pathetic and disheveled. 

"My name is Ethan Hoke! We literally sat in the same history classroom at the Academy until I got kicked out last week! Look around, I was just swinging the sword blindly because I didn't want to get eaten! I don't even know how I survived!"

I let a tear mix with the sweat on my cheek, leaning heavily into the memory of the original Ethan.

"I know you hate me because I’m weak!" I whimpered, covering my head with my arms.

"I know everyone in the Elite Class thinks I’m a stain on the academy, but trying to murder me in an alleyway during a monster invasion? That's low, even for a rich genius like you!"

Silence descended on the alley. The sounds of distant screaming and guard horns echoed in the background, but between us, the tension was thick enough to cut with a knife.

Geraldine didn't move. She kept her staff pointed near me, her brilliant mind clearly weighing the options. 

The original Ethan Hoke was a notorious, spineless coward. If she truly believed the Apex Sovereign had possessed him, my current display of utter, pathetic weakness was throwing a massive wrench into her assumptions.

Slowly, the intense violet light glowing at the tip of her staff began to dim. The smirk vanished from her face, replaced by a deep, frustrated scowl.

"You... you really don't remember?" she whispered, taking a step closer, searching my face for any hint of a lie. 

"The Abyssal Raid? The betrayal? The Apex Sovereign?"

"I don't know what kind of weird fanfiction you're writing, Geraldine, but I just want to go home!" I sobbed, secretly checking my internal mana. 

The yellow stones I had absorbed earlier were finally settling into my core, quietly reinforcing my circuits. Just a little more time. I just needed her to drop her guard completely.

Geraldine sighed, lowering her staff entirely. "So it was just a coincidence. You're just a lucky cockroach who managed to survive a swarm." 

She looked at me with pure, unadulterated disgust, the exact look the original Ethan always got. "Pathetic. To think I actually wasted my mana fearing a piece of trash like you."

She turned her back to me, preparing to leap onto the rooftops to join the vanguard knights.

I smiled inwardly, my hand subtly gripping the handle of the fallen guard's sword. Got you, you arrogant bitch. The moment she leaped, I was going to drive this blade right through her spine.

But before she could jump, Geraldine froze.

The purple crack in the sky above us suddenly tore wide open with a sound like shattering glass. But instead of more chicken-sized monsters, a heavy, suffocating pressure dropped from the heavens, pinning both of us to the ground.

From the center of the giant rift, a massive, flaming black spear descended, hurtling directly toward our alleyway with terrifying accuracy. And pinned to the shaft of the spear was a glowing, blood-red scroll.

Geraldine’s eyes widened in horror as she looked from the sky, to the spear, and then directly back to me.

"No..." she breathed, her face turning pale as sheet. "The Abyssal Contract... it’s tracking you."