“Haaah……!”
Had his breathing stopped for a moment?
Dojin slowly drew in a deep breath.
The smell of rusted iron stung his nose, but Dojin no longer even registered something like that. He was used to it.
Corpses.
Everything that entered his sight was either a corpse or ruins.
“……Am I the only one left?”
No. Even if the comrades around him were still alive, the situation wouldn't have changed much. Perhaps they were fortunate to have been able to die now.
“…….”
Dojin looked up at the sky.
- SCREEEEEEEE!
- HISSSSSSSSSSS!
The sky had lost its blue hue and was riddled with cracks.
The idea of the sky itself cracking might sound absurd, but that was exactly what Dojin saw. It looked like glass that might shatter and collapse at any moment.
And monsters continued pouring through every one of those shattered gaps without pause.
Those monsters looked nothing like the ordinary monsters Dojin had encountered until now, such as orcs or trolls.
They resembled enormous slimes, shapeless masses that distorted and writhed.
But countless eyes and mouths covered each of those amorphous monsters.
Their countless eyes ceaselessly searched for humans.
Their countless mouths devoured every human they found without leaving a single one behind.
And now-
Only one monster and one human remained.
“……!”
Dojin's aura poured into his spear and howled.
Mana drawing upon the power of every skill and item Dojin had acquired thus far gathered at the tip of the two-pronged spear-
WHIIIIIR-!
The mana, concentrated to its utmost limit, began spinning with terrifying force.
‘And……!’
Dojin began awakening a new energy he had only recently comprehended. His proficiency with it was not yet sufficient, but…….
This was the only way to bring down the monster before him.
‘Hoo……!’
The golden mana inherent to the spear began mixing with Dojin's distinctive green aura and a strangely alien black energy.
Black energy.
This was an energy Dojin had awakened to after repeatedly crossing the boundary between life and death throughout the ten years since his Awakening.
‘Death qi.’
As Dojin fought his way through the narrow gap between death and life time and again, seizing survival and victory each time, he naturally grew accustomed to death itself.
At some point, he had reached a level where he could perceive death qi, contain it within his body, and wield it according to his own will.
That was the decisive reason Dojin had been able to reign as humanity's strongest.
But the monster did not remain idle either.
When they had first appeared, those things had overwhelmed Dojin's comrades through sheer numbers, killing and devouring them one after another.
But as time passed and Dojin's comrades fell one by one, was it because there were no longer any survivors left for them to eat? Or had they begun to feel threatened by Dojin, who unlike the other humans was killing them instead?
The monsters displayed a reaction they had never shown before.
The other monsters, which had been scattered in every direction and busy devouring human corpses, all converged on the green monster and latched onto it with wet slaps…….
Gradually transforming into a single gigantic monster.
Yes.
The very thing now standing before Dojin.
“What, Phase 2?”
Dojin glared past the amorphous monster at the countless cracks in the sky. Monsters were still emerging from them.
The only difference from when the battle had begun was that the monsters emerging from the cracks no longer scattered. Instead, they immediately merged with the surviving monster before Dojin.
“…….”
Dojin clenched his teeth as he watched.
“……Fine. Let's see this through to the end, you bastards.”
Dojin whipped his head around, taking in everything before him.
His comrades, abandoned after being torn apart and eaten, dead with their eyes wide open.
And the land itself, blackened and dead.
“……Come!”
His aura had been depleted, but there was one kind of energy he could draw upon freely and without limit.
All the more freely and inexhaustibly because reality itself was hurtling toward destruction.
Death qi.
Because the entire world was filled with death, death qi alone had become something he could use without restraint.
At Dojin's will, the death qi around him began to move.
Through Dojin, toward the spear in his hands.
- SCREEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
Sensing something ominous, the monster screamed as though in agony. As if trying to gather even a little more strength, it swallowed everything around it and swelled larger.
The remaining fragments of his comrades' corpses.
The carcasses of the monsters Dojin had killed.
Even the soil and debris tainted by the residual mana left within those carcasses.
Dojin was certain.
This would be his final battlefield.
Humanity was already finished. What point was there in surviving alone?
Even if he desperately clung to life, he would only end up dying alone upon a dead land.
In that case!
“……Die!”
He would take at least one more of them with him.
As though reflecting their master's single-minded resolve, the death qi and aura gathered from every direction resonated with Dojin's spear.
The ferocious mana, eager to devour the prey before it at any moment, became a vortex that looked ready to erupt.
The monster before him stopped swelling.
As though it had already devoured everything around it that could possibly be eaten.
CREEEAK-
Thousands of eyes and thousands of mouths turned toward Dojin at once.
Eyes of different colors and sizes rolled wildly across its mottled flesh, every one of them bloodshot.
Mouths scattered across its body exposed revolting teeth and flicked their tongues as they screamed incomprehensible cries.
WHIIIIIIINE-
Along with the transcendent sound of mana particles colliding and shifting.
The monster began concentrating its mana.
That power gathered.
And gathered-
Then erupted toward Dojin.
At that instant, Dojin leaped straight into the air.
KRAK-!
He drove his spear down toward the monster like a bolt of lightning.
- ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■!!!!!!!!!!
A grotesque, agonized howl that human ears could no longer even identify echoed across the land.
***
The monster was annihilated, unable to withstand Dojin's strike after he had gathered every last shred of his strength.
And over the dead land where nothing remained, Dojin, having exhausted every drop of his mana, plummeted like a discarded doll.
He would probably follow his comrades soon.
But that was fine.
Wasn't it far better to turn to ash than die while leaving that monster alive?
“…….”
The sky, still cracked here and there, though no more monsters poured from it.
The dead earth.
The land being dead was meant literally.
No plant could grow in this soil.
Not even a single insect could survive here.
Monster or Player.
Only creatures that possessed mana—one of those two—could survive here for even a moment.
And it was not merely the stretch of land where Dojin now lay sprawled.
Every piece of land on Earth had been contaminated in the same way.
When the Dungeons disappeared and those damned amorphous monsters appeared, the entire world had ended up like this.
If humans did not kill the monsters, the humans died.
If they did kill the monsters, the corrupted mana released when those creatures died contaminated the land.
Naturally, nearby humans were no exception.
Just like Dojin now, dying despite unquestionably being the victor.
Warning.
Debuff <Primordial Chaos>.
If not removed within 30 seconds, you will become part of chaos and be annihilated.
Remove immediately.
He was in the same condition as the comrades who had ultimately died despite slaying countless monsters.
But Dojin had already guessed his own fate after watching his comrades go before him, so he couldn't have cared less.
Something else filled his thoughts.
“If humanity had only cleared the Tutorial properly…….”
Was it because he had just won such a violent battle?
Was it burnout, or part of the process of accepting death?
Overcome by a terrible sense of emptiness, Dojin kept muttering to himself.
Memories of the past swept through his mind like images on a revolving lantern.
The Great Upheaval had occurred on Earth roughly…….
‘Ten years ago.’
At first, it had not been serious.
No, rather, all kinds of changes beneficial to humanity had appeared.
Thanks to the new resources known as Mana Stones and Gold, humanity entered a second golden age.
A handful of chosen Players seized wealth and glory.
That was why people had openly said things like this back then.
- The Great Upheaval is a gift God gave humanity!
That paradise-like world turned into hell five years later.
The first five years had merely been the Tutorial.
Then the Main Scenario began.
“We didn't even know it was a Tutorial. We spent five years doing nothing but searching for Gold and Mana Stones…….”
Throughout the five years of the Tutorial, humanity had been blinded by the Mana Stones and Gold the System provided as rewards.
During the Tutorial Season, Players could only display their spectacular abilities and put on all kinds of shows inside the Arena. In reality, they were little different from ordinary people.
As for what Players could do in reality, at most it was something like bending a spoon or summoning a single lowest-grade spirit that was little more than a mascot?
No matter how strong they were, Tutorial Players who had logged out of the Arena were not superhumans.
They could still be subdued with guns and blades.
Meanwhile, Mana Stones and Gold were resources that immediately made enormous contributions to advances in real-world science and the economy.
Mana Stones revolutionized human civilization to an extent that surpassed even iron throughout history.
And Gold not only provided an effectively limitless supply of extraordinarily efficient energy to humanity, which had been suffering from energy depletion, but unlike oil or nuclear power, it caused no contamination whatsoever.
It was practically humanity's ideal resource.
Rather than challenge a dangerous Arena only to fail and humiliate oneself, steadily gathering Mana Stones and Gold from easy Arenas was far more profitable.
And so humanity pushed Player leveling to the back burner.
Only later did they realize that this had been humanity's fatal mistake.
Once the Main Scenario began, all manner of Dungeons opened.
As the difficulty rose, humanity was gradually driven onto the defensive.
Eventually, Monster Waves erupted indiscriminately across the entire world, and after losing tremendous amounts of knowledge, technology, and human life, human civilization met its end.
It was not as though the Players had simply sat around doing nothing.
The moment the Tutorial ended and they discovered that their suppressed abilities had been fully unlocked in reality, they too threw themselves desperately into leveling up and fighting the monsters.
But it was too late.
No matter how hard humanity struggled, it could not keep pace with the rate at which the monsters grew stronger.
Only then did humanity realize that those five wasted years had been its golden window.
Humanity wept, but everything was already too late.
In the end, only five humans survived long enough to take part in the final battle, Dojin included.
And once that final battle ended.
Dojin finally became the last human remaining on Earth.
“…….”
That was when a notification window appeared pointlessly before him.
Quest complete.
Victor: Player Lee Dojin
Searching for the Player's desired reward.
“……A reward. You're even giving a reward to a man who's about to die.”
Just as Dojin scoffed at the System for being thorough with its work right to the very end.
The reward window that appeared next made his expression freeze.
<Quest Reward – Choice at the Crossroads>
Player Lee Dojin may choose one of the following two options to continue the game.
Ascension to a Higher-Dimensional Being
Reset
Dojin had no idea what exactly the ‘Higher-Dimensional Being’ mentioned in the first reward meant.
But Reset?
If it meant reset……
“……Does that mean I can go back to the past?”
THUMP!
THUMP!
There was no way such a sound could be heard on this Earth, where Dojin himself was the only living being left.
And yet, it felt as though the pounding of his own heart were echoing directly in his ears.
“If I can start over, then……!”
Dojin's trembling fingertip moved to select the reward.
No.
It was just about to.
“Ghk……!”
Pain suddenly struck him—no, pain that he had only now finally registered lashed through his entire body like a whip.
At the same time, Dojin's health began dropping by the second.
It was the effect of the debuff the warning window had pointed out!
“Grrk……!”
Why is it so fast?!
Dojin ground his teeth.
A horrific pain unlike anything he had ever experienced was swallowing him whole.
“Damn it!”
Just before his posture completely collapsed, Dojin barely managed to move his finger.
Player Lee Dojin has selected <Reset> as the reward.
The game reset will proceed according to the Player's selection.
Reset time: August 25, 2026, eight years ago—the day the reset target Awakened.
Rewinding Earth's time to August 25, 2026.