25 Years Ago...
The Kingdom of Flancde shone atop the northern peaks like a crown of carved diamonds. Its high white walls were not merely for protection, but a mirror reflecting the glory of the Flancde lineage. In the marble-paved corridors, King Jani de Flancde walked with dignity, surrounded by the scent of royal incense, accompanied by the Queen, whose smile could soothe the fiercest of storms.
Before his brother's birth, the Crown Prince Eduardo was eleven years old, the very embodiment of early talent. His hair fluttered with every sword stroke, and his eyes gleamed with a boundless ambition. Nobles stood on the balconies, watching how he wielded the blade as if it were an extension of his own body.
"Well done, Eduardo!" King Jani cheered, approaching his son and wiping the sweat from his brow with a royal handkerchief. "Every strike of your sword tells the world that Flancde shall never fall." Eduardo replied with a proud smile, sheathing his blade: "I do this for you, Father, and for this land. I want to be the King Flancde deserves." King Jani leaned in and whispered warmly: "You will be greater than I, my son. Your wisdom in history and your speed on the field keep me at peace regarding our people's future."
Those days were Eduardo's golden age, until he reached the age of twelve—the year the second prince was born. Eduardo ran to his infant brother's room, and the moment his eyes fell upon the child, he felt a sacred bond.
"Arthur..." Eduardo whispered, holding the baby who possessed pale blonde hair and striking eyes; the right one white as snow, the left red as ember. "Fear not, little one. I am Eduardo, your big brother. I will teach you how to hold a sword and how to read the stars. I will be your shadow, protecting you from the sun's heat and the winter's chill."
But the innocence of those promises began to erode as Arthur grew.
By the time Arthur was six, Eduardo had reached eighteen. One day, Eduardo stood stunned in the corner of the training grounds. Little Arthur, barely waist-high to his brother, was wiping a small smear of blood from a graze on his hand after managing to touch Eduardo's chest with his wooden sword in a spar. "How did you do that, Arthur?" Eduardo asked, his tone forcedly playful as anxiety began to seep into his heart. Arthur replied innocently: "I don't know, brother... I just felt you were going to move your right shoulder before you did, so I moved first. Are you mad at me?" Eduardo tried to smile: "No... of course not. You are... simply gifted."
But that "gift" turned into a terror that surpassed Eduardo's years of experience. Arthur did not grow like a human; he evolved like a god. Eduardo reached the age of twenty-five while Arthur was fourteen, and it was then that jealousy reached its peak. Arthur would read forbidden books in hours that had taken Eduardo years to comprehend. The nobles who once cheered for Eduardo were now whispering audibly: "Arthur is the First Founder reborn... as for Eduardo, he is but a pale shadow beside him."
Eduardo entered his chambers and slammed the door with such force the paintings rattled. He looked into the mirror and saw a face slowly devoured by envy. "Why him?" Eduardo screamed, smashing his reading table. "I am the one who sacrificed! I am the one who studied! I am the one who trained! And he gets everything in the blink of an eye?! Even Father... he no longer looks at me with the same pride."
In that dark moment, under the influence of forbidden magic books he had begun to collect in secret, the Entity appeared. Black smoke boiled in the center of the room. "Eduardo..." the Entity called in a voice like grinding bones. "You are fading... Arthur is absorbing your radiance as the sun absorbs the stars. Do you not wish to reclaim your place?" Eduardo wept, his tears a mixture of love and hatred: "I want to be the strong one... I want my feeling of inferiority to vanish before him!" The Entity: "The price is simple... steal his talent. Take the essence of the soul the Creator placed within him. But to do so, you must sever every thread that binds you to this world. You must drown Flancde in blood to stay afloat."
On the night of the Great Betrayal, the beloved prince turned into a monster. Eduardo entered King Jani's chambers. "Eduardo? What is wrong, my son? Why are your eyes so red?" the King asked, rising from his bed in concern. "I am tired of being 'your son' who comes second in your heart, Father," Eduardo said as he drove the blade of treachery into his father's chest. He did not stop there; he killed the Queen as she tried to protect the King's bed.
He headed toward Arthur's room. He found the young boy standing in the center of the room, calm as usual. "Brother..." Arthur said, his voice trembling for the first time. "I smell blood... why?" Eduardo screamed as he bound him with black magical chains: "Because I am taking what isn't mine! I am taking those eyes, that intellect, and that power that made everyone forget I exist!"
Using horrific rituals, Eduardo pulled the "Essence of Talent" from Arthur's body, leaving him a lifeless husk in a corner of the prison before casting him into the Great Abyss. That night, Eduardo stepped out into the courtyard, where the Eternal Dragon, protector of the kingdom, roared in fury. Armed with Arthur's stolen power, Eduardo took to the sky and slit the dragon's throat with a single blow, turning the guardian's blood into fuel for his new empire. "From this day forth," he shouted, looking at the corpses of his people, "I am Gladius! And this is Melngradnia! There is no room for the weak here!"
As the blood of Flancde's Eternal Dragon still boiled on his sword, Gladius did not stop at the borders of his shattered kingdom. He moved like a black hurricane, dragging behind him armies that no longer fought for honor, but out of fear. Within a few years, the continent turned into a stage for his massacres. He stormed the capitals of ancient kingdoms, not just to rule them, but to tear out their hearts.
In the coastal kingdom of Azuria, Gladius stood over the corpse of its elderly king, while the Eternal Water Dragon breathed its last under the weight of black magical chains. The Defeated King (with a trembling voice): "Why? We gave you gold... we gave you land... why kill the Guardian?" Gladius (plunging his hand into the dragon's neck to rip out its core): "Gold rusts, and land withers... but Eternal Power is the only language the universe understands. I do not destroy your kingdom because I need your throne... I destroy it because the existence of another dragon besides me in this world is an insult to my greatness."
For eighteen years, the dragons fell one by one. With every kill, Gladius's body grew more imposing and majestic, but his eyes grew emptier. Eduardo no longer existed; only "Gladius" remained, the entity that fed on the blood of legends.
On the other side of existence... at the bottom of the Great Abyss.
Silence there had a sound... a sound like the tearing of a soul. In that eternal prison unvisited by light, Arthur lay like human wreckage. His frail body, stripped of its "Essence," was covered in the ashes of lost dreams.
He remembered the day Eduardo taught him how to read the stars. "You betrayed the stars, Eduardo... you extinguished every light in this world to ignite your own fire."
Grief slowly, through the years, turned into something hard and dark. Despair began to ferment into rage, and rage began to freeze into a desire for vengeance that surpassed the limits of the mind. He scratched the walls of the Abyss with his fingernails, writing the name "Gladius" in his own blood on the cold stones.
"If this is the eternal prison..." Arthur said, his red eye flickering with a manic gleam in the darkness, "then I shall turn its walls into fuel for my fire. I will wait... I will reclaim every drop of blood my father shed, and every scream uttered by a dragon you slaughtered."
At the deepest point of the Abyss, the Void itself trembled. A digital blue shimmer began to seep into the darkness, forming a rift in space. From the center of this glitch, two figures stepped forth. Elias stood calmly, and beside him, Flora smiled with a terrifying beauty.
Elias: "Does this view please you, Arthur? Or have you enjoyed conversing with walls for the past 18 years? Look at yourself... do you like dying here forgotten while your brother swallows the stars and calls himself a god?"
Flora spoke as she approached: "What would you say to a power that makes your old talent look like a pathetic myth? A power that makes the Absolute Eternal Dragon King—the one your brother boasts of killing—look like an ant beneath the foot of a star burning as bright as the sun."
Elias opened the [Mod Menu] screen in mid-air. Elias: "The contract is simple. I will grant you 'Admin Permissions.' In return... your future, your emotions, and everything left of your humanity shall belong to us."
Arthur: "Take my emotions... take my future... just give me the power to make Eduardo wish he had never been born."
With a single press of Elias's thumb on the [Execute Override] icon, the Abyss exploded with an indescribable light. Arthur screamed as he felt his body disintegrate and be rebuilt with pure cosmic data.
The light faded back in the ruined throne room of Melngradnia. Gladius was now weeping blood as he saw Arthur standing before him in his black cloak. Arthur no longer felt sadness; he had become a moving "Void."
Gladius: "Im-impossible... I killed the Absolute Eternal Dragon! I am the strongest being in this world!"
Arthur took one step, and the ground cracked beneath his feet. Arthur: "You killed an ant, Eduardo... and thought you had become a king. You are now looking at a star that will incinerate your empire just by blinking."
Elias turned to Flora while Arthur began to "deconstruct" Gladius's armor just by looking at him. Elias: "The data is very precise. As I expected, the power we granted him exceeds the logic of this world by ten thousand times." Flora: "Look at him begging, Elias... isn't this more beautiful than all the dragons he killed?"
Arthur thrust his hand into the air, pulling out Gladius's soul without touching him, and began to insert it into the "Infinite Pain Loop."