The final raid was supposed to be history.
Flames guttered along the stone ribs of the dungeon, the boss's corpse dissolving into golden light. Notifications spilled across the party feed — Victory, Legendary Clear, World-First Achievement. Laughter crackled in voice chat, the sound of exhausted triumph.
He stood at the center of it all, sword dripping with the last of the dragon's shadow blood. The strongest player alive. For a heartbeat he allowed himself to feel what he'd fought for: every sleepless night, every failed attempt, every guildmate who swore loyalty when things were good.
Then the laughter shifted.
"Alright," said the guild leader. A friendly tone, too careful. "Let's divvy the loot."
The chest appeared — a pulse of radiant code. Inside, the Godheart, the single item capable of rewriting stats and rules. The prize that could crown one person above all others.
He reached for it, but the leader's avatar moved faster.
"Sorry, buddy. Majority vote."
He blinked. "What vote?"
No answer. Only the sound of weapons unsheathing.
Steel pierced digital flesh. His health bar plummeted, red on red on red. He staggered, staring at the guild he'd carried through every dungeon. Their names flickered in the corner of his vision — friends, rivals, lovers — now enemies.
"Don't take it personal," someone muttered. "We just can't risk you keeping all that power."
The system registered each blow with perfect detachment:
He tried to speak, but voice chat was muted. Someone had muted him.
He dropped to one knee, sword scraping the obsidian floor. The boss's dying roar still echoed through the cavern, mingling with his labored breathing. He thought of the hundreds of players he'd outlasted, the worlds he'd conquered, the nights he'd kept the raid together while others slept. And for what? To be deleted like an obsolete patch.
When the last strike landed, the screen fractured. Color drained from the world.
He didn't feel pain so much as discontinuity — a sudden absence of self. Pixels unspooled from his limbs like dust in wind.
Then silence.
Only the slow fade-out of the death theme and the empty words across the screen:
> You have been slain.
Respawn unavailable.
He waited for the usual countdown, the comforting flicker of the respawn screen. Nothing came. Only blackness that breathed.
Somewhere in that void, between the last heartbeat of a player and the first pulse of nothingness, a whisper stirred — neither human nor machine:
> "Death detected."
"Unique Skill initializing…"
The words slid through his consciousness like liquid fire.
He tried to speak, but had no mouth. Tried to move, but had no form. Only the echo of his own disbelief filled the endless dark.
They had taken his loot.
They had taken his name.
But the whisper promised something new — something worse.
> "Resurrection protocol engaged."
"Do you wish to continue?"
His answer wasn't spoken. It burned.
> Yes.
And in the depths of the dying game, a spark flared — small, furious, indestructible.
The story of the strongest man alive was over.
What would rise in his place was something the system had never coded.
The void did not end.
For a long while, there was only the flicker of fragmented memories — laughter over comms, the flash of health bars, the shimmer of a thousand battles. All of it breaking apart like glass caught in slow motion.
Then came light.
It wasn't light as he remembered it — no warmth, no shape — just raw data cascading through the darkness, weaving itself into something that watched.
> "Reconstruction: initializing."
"Core integrity: 12%."
"Warning — entity does not match existing player registry."
His mind sparked. He was still there. Conscious.
The system hadn't deleted him — it couldn't.
He reached out, instinctively, and felt nothing but the pulse of code — a heartbeat made of electricity. For a moment, fear gripped him. Fear that he would be trapped here forever — alive, but unrecognized by the very world he built his legend in.
Then, deep in the code-stream, something moved.
A ripple of red light pulsed through the black. It coiled toward him, like a serpent of pure glitch. When it touched him, agony roared through his existence — not pain of flesh, but identity shredding. Every stat, every achievement, every ounce of glory burned away.
But under it all… was something else.
A spark the system couldn't erase.
> "Unique Skill Verified."
"Infinite Resurrection — active."
The words thundered through his fading consciousness.
He felt the world pull at him — not gently, but violently, like gravity reasserting itself. Pixels screamed into color. The void fractured.
And then—
He fell.
Not through air, but through data — crashing through lines of code and corrupted memory until he slammed into something solid and cold.
When he opened his eyes, the world was… wrong.
The sky was too close. The grass was too sharp. The air smelled of damp stone and dirt.
He blinked. His hands — small, green, clawed.
A guttural breath escaped his throat.
No player interface. No inventory. No chat window.
No human voice.
He stumbled to his feet and saw his reflection in a puddle of muddy water. A goblin's face stared back. Beady yellow eyes. Crooked teeth. A monster.
"No…"
The word came out as a rasp, half-growl, half-moan.
But memory didn't care about his form. His mind was still his own — his rage still human.
He looked around.
In the distance, a group of adventurers — low-level players — were laughing around a campfire. He knew this area. The beginner's field. He had farmed here once, years ago, when he was the one cutting down goblins by the dozens.
Now he was one of them.
A disposable mob.
The weakest kind of creature.
He felt something coil inside him. Not despair — something colder. Something that burned slower and longer than grief.
Rage.
He took one step toward the players, bare feet silent on the grass. They didn't notice him at first. Just another NPC spawning too close to camp.
A blade flashed.
Pain. Bright, white-hot pain. His health dropped to zero in a blink.
> You have been slain.
Unique Skill Activated — Infinite Resurrection.
Then darkness. Again.
But this time, when his consciousness returned, he felt different.
The world seemed clearer. His limbs lighter. The air tasted of power.
He looked at his hand — the claws gleamed sharper than before.
His stats had risen. A little.
The memory of death lingered, but beneath it came a whisper — not from the system, but from somewhere deeper.
> "Each death makes you stronger."
His lips twisted into a slow, terrible grin.
If that was true, then death was no longer his enemy.
It was his weapon.
He turned toward the campfire again.
The players laughed, unaware that the mob they'd killed a moment ago was watching from the shadows — watching, learning, waiting.
For the first time since his betrayal, the fire inside him didn't ache. It burned steady. Purposeful.
He no longer cared about being human.
He would become something else — something the system would learn to fear.
The beginning of revenge was not a roar. It was a whisper.
And that whisper carried his promise:
> "You took my world… I'll take yours."
The wind howled across the field, and somewhere deep in the server's code, a warning flag blinked red —
Unregistered entity detected.
Evolution process: unstable.
But it was already too late.
The strongest player was dead.
What had replaced him was something infinitely worse.
And he had just begun to awaken.