If you ever found yourself in front of a divine being and it gave you a chance to be reborn into another world, one full of magic and monsters.
Please, take this advice from someone who's experienced that.
"Don't piss off the divine being who is about to reincarnate you."
BOOM!
"AHHH!..." My scream echoes through the room. "Hey, you! I never did anything to you! Why are you trying to kill me?"
"Silence, mortal!"
The woman in front of me roared, with power leaking from her. Her hair was as dark as the empty void; her silver eyes were piercing through me. She wore an office lady's suit, yet she looked more terrifying than any monster I've ever seen.
"It's all your fault; you made me waste decades of my work!"
What is she talking about? I've never even seen this woman before.
"What are you talking about? I don't even know you!"
It all began twenty minutes prior.
After I died, I found myself in an office room that was endless in size. And there was the lady in front of me; she had told me that she was the goddess responsible for Earth and reincarnation.
She told me that it was my lucky day to be chosen to be reincarnated into a world full of magic and monsters.
However, the moment she picked up my 'file', her face changed.
I could already tell that she was in a foul mood, but she got even more so. She started to curse me, saying I wasted decades of her work.
I didn't even get the chance to explain myself before she started kicking me in the face.
"How dare you steal my champion's luck!" She shouted.
"What!?" I was confused. What champion? What luck?
"I spent years carefully nurturing the luck of my champion, making her a perfect soul with the greatest luck, only for you, a worthless mortal, to steal it!"
She then placed her foot on my face and started grinding it.
"You even killed her before she could become my champion."
"What? I never killed anyone in my life."
"Lies!" She then started to kick me again. "The fates have told me everything."
"Even if it was true, how is it my fault? You said it yourself, that it was a pure accident."
"Silence!" She roared. "It doesn't matter; since you stole her luck, you'll just have to take it away."
What the hell is this woman talking about?
Killing?
To be fair, I did cause the death of two people.
My ex-wife and the guy she replaced me with.
To understand why, let's go back a bit, to more than 60 years ago.
...
My name is Alex. I was born into a small but loving family. Life wasn't perfect, but it was good. Both my parents worked hard to give me a good life.
It all changed when I was 12; my father had an accident at work, which broke a few of his ribs. He survived.
However, since our financial situation was not that good, he couldn't afford a good hospital. Instead, he went to a free clinic where they gave him some cheap medicine that caused a severe allergic reaction.
After that, my father never fully recovered.
Each time he got sick, the sickness would be worse than the last.
The once strong, vibrant man I knew was now a shadow of himself, frail and constantly in pain.
The worst part?
He insisted on working, refusing to be a burden. He would push himself until he collapsed, then wake up and do it all over again.
I still remember the day he died.
He was working at a construction site, even though he was as weak as a newborn. He insisted on carrying a heavy metal beam.
Just as he was about to place it, his long-lasting coughing fit returned, causing him to lose his grip. The beam fell, crushing him.
I was called to the site.
The sight of my father, a man of once unwavering strength, reduced to a broken thing under steel, burned itself into my memory.
The company paid us some money, but it wasn't enough. It was never enough.
My mother, a woman who had only ever known the role of a homemaker, had to find work. She took on two, sometimes three jobs, her hands growing rough, her smile fading with each passing year.
I did what I could. I got a part-time job as soon as I was old enough, but it was a pittance compared to what we needed.
Surprisingly, our luck began to change. I was accepted into a prestigious university on a scholarship. My mother got a promotion. Things were looking up.
I won't say that I was smart or anything, but I managed to build a decent career for myself. I became a programmer, a good one. I worked for a tech giant, the kind of place that made you feel like you were on top of the world.
I even opened my own company.
A small one, at least, but it was mine.
That's where I met her.
Sarah.
She was everything I wasn't. Charismatic, beautiful, with a laugh that could light up a room. I was... well, I was me. Quiet, focused, more comfortable with code than people.
But she saw something in me. Or so I thought.
She pursued me, and for the life of me, I couldn't understand why. A woman like her, with a guy like me? It felt like a miracle.
Even though I was handsome by most standards, I was too boring, too nerdy. But she didn't seem to mind. In fact, she insisted on marrying me within just a few months of dating.
Our whirlwind romance led to marriage. I was happy, truly happy. I thought I had finally built a life worthy of my parents' sacrifices.
I built my company from the ground up, pouring my soul into it. Late nights, endless lines of code, missed family gatherings. I did it all, thinking it was for us, for our future.
She never complained. She encouraged me, even.
But after just two years of marriage, everything came crashing down.
I came home early one day to surprise her on our anniversary.
I found her in bed with another man.
His name was Daniel. A rival CEO, someone I'd considered a colleague, even a friend.
The worst part? My company.
They had been stealing my code, my designs, my entire life's work. Sarah had been giving them access, piece by piece, for months.
I didn't scream. I didn't rage.
I just... broke.
And that's not the worst part.
My wife literally stabbed me in the heart with a kitchen knife.
"You were just a stepping stone for me."
That's what she said as she twisted the blade.
She thought I was dead. But I wasn't. The knife had missed my heart by a hair's breadth.
They even threw me in the river to get rid of the evidence.
But somehow, I survived. I crawled out, a broken man, with nothing left.
No wife. No company. No future.
Even my sick mother died after hearing the news about me; she died from a heart attack.
The police, of course, did nothing. Daniel had connections. Money. Power.
I was just a nobody, a ghost haunting the ruins of my own life.
However!
I refused to die; I refused to give up.
I changed everything about me. My name, my appearance, my identity. I became a ghost in the system, a phantom in the shadows.
They say that hatred is a powerful motivator.
They are not wrong.
In just one year, I managed to build another company from nothing; this one was different. It was a shell for something much darker. A tool for revenge.
And for the next twenty years, I turned the life of my ex-wife and her lover into a living hell.
I didn't kill them, no... that would be too kind and boring.
Instead, like boiling a frog in water, I slowly raised the temperature until they couldn't take it anymore.
Every time they opened a company and the moment it started to generate profit, I would destroy it.
Every investment they made, I countered.
Every ally they sought, I turned against them.
I watched from the shadows as their empire, built on my stolen dreams, crumbled to dust.
And the best one of all.
Their daughter, whom they loved more than life itself.
When we were married, we were supposed to have a child, but Sarah insisted on delaying, saying it would affect her acting career. She was an aspiring actress.
And even when she spoke about pregnancy, she would speak as if it were some kind of disease she had to endure. She never wanted kids.
With Daniel, she had a daughter. Emily.
But in fact, Emily was my daughter, not Daniel's.
I made sure that our dear Daniel was sterile by using some of my 'connections' after I found out about the cheating.
This made Sarah believe that Daniel was the one with the problem and not her, which put a strain on their relationship, especially since they wanted a child.
Eventually, Sarah had to go to a fertility clinic to get pregnant with Daniel's baby, or at least what they thought was his baby.
It was mine.
My... 'samples' mysteriously found their way into the clinic and mysteriously replaced Daniel's.
And the best part? Neither of them ever knew.
The sad part? They didn't take care of their child.
They left her with nannies and housekeepers.
They were too busy with their work and their failing companies to notice her.
So I took her in.
I became the 'uncle' who would occasionally visit. The one who brought her presents, who listened to her stories, who taught her how to code when she showed interest.
She was a bright child, with a spark of my own curiosity. I saw in her the potential for greatness, a potential her parents were squandering.
I guided her, nurtured her, from the shadows.
When Emily turned eighteen, I told her everything.
The truth about her parents' lies, their betrayal.
And the truth about me.
Her real father.
I expected anger, confusion, maybe even hatred.
Instead, she cried.
She cried for the childhood she never had, for the parents who were never there.
And then she looked at me, with the same emerald eyes her mother had, and said,
"I always knew there was something more. Something... real."
She disowned them. Not publicly, not yet. That was a part of the plan.
She tried to help me finish them off, but I told her that this was my battle, not hers.
And so the final act began.
After they lost everything- their money, their companies, their reputation.
After they were nothing more than two broken individuals, living in a small apartment, constantly arguing.
I showed up.
I knocked on their door.
I didn't have a weapon. I didn't need one.
The look on their faces when they saw me was... priceless.
It was a mixture of shock, fear, and a dawning, horrifying realization.
"You..." Sarah whispered, her face pale.
"Surprised to see me?" I said, my voice calm, almost gentle. "I told you I'd be back."
Daniel, ever the fool, tried to charge at me. He was a shell of the man he once was, weak and desperate.
I sidestepped him easily, and he crashed into the wall, slumping to the floor, a pathetic heap.
I then turned to Sarah.
She was trembling, but her eyes held a defiant spark.
"Go on," she spat. "Kill me. Get it over with."
"Kill you?" I shook my head. "No, that's too easy. Death is a release. You don't get a release."
I walked over to the small table in the corner of the room, where a single, framed photo sat.
It was a picture of them, with a young Emily smiling.
"How much do you love your daughter?" I asked, my back to them.
"What do you want?" Daniel rasped, pushing himself up.
I turned around, holding the photo.
"She's my daughter," I said, my voice dropping to a low, dangerous whisper.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Sarah's face went from pale to a sickly green. Her mind raced, connecting the dots: the 'sterility', the 'failed' pregnancies, the 'uncle' who was always a little too close.
"No..." she breathed. "It can't be..."
"It can," I confirmed. "And it is."
I explained everything I did to them over the last 20 years. The slow, methodical destruction of their lives. The manipulation, the sabotage.
I told them about Emily, about how I raised her from the shadows, about how she chose me over them.
"And now," I said, placing the photo back on the table, facing the wall. "You have nothing. You are nothing."
The final blow wasn't the loss of money or status.
It was the loss of their daughter.
The one good thing in their wretched lives, the one person they thought was truly theirs, was mine.
And she hated them.
Daniel broke first; he ran outside and jumped off the apartment building. He couldn't handle it.
Sarah, on the other hand, just stood there, a statue of despair.
I didn't do anything to her. I simply walked away, leaving her to her own personal hell.
The last news I heard about her was that she took her own life a week later.
I didn't feel any satisfaction, no happiness, just... emptiness.
The rage that had fueled me for decades was gone.
And in its place, there was a void.
Well, at least I still had my daughter Emily.
I lived for another 40 years; I built a new life, a quiet one, with Emily by my side. She became a brilliant programmer, taking over my company and making it a force for good.
I died peacefully in my sleep, at the age of 82, surrounded by my grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
And then, I ended up here. In this endless office, getting kicked by an angry goddess.
"Oh, fuck you, bitch!"
Hello everyone!!
I hope you enjoy this new novel. Don't forgot to leave a comment and thank you for the support.