"Stay away from me!" the man shouted, scrambling backward until his back hit the wall. His entire body shook as he stared at Daniel, whose eyes no longer looked human.
Daniel didn't respond immediately.
"Hmmm…" he murmured, glancing down at his hand.
The mark had changed again.
The number now read—666.
His brows furrowed slightly.
This mark is confusing… why the hell did it change now? he thought, studying it more carefully.
Unlike the other powers he had gained, this one didn't come with instinctive clarity. Those abilities were simple, direct, easy to understand and use. This, however, felt different—layered, unpredictable, as if it operated on rules he hadn't fully grasped yet.
"Help… stay away from me, devil!" the man screamed again.
In his panic, he grabbed a broken bottle from the ground and swung it wildly toward Daniel.
The attack never reached.
His arm froze mid-air, held in place by an unseen force, trembling but unable to move forward or pull back.
Daniel finally looked at him properly.
"You're really crazy, trying to attack someone who just helped you," he said calmly. "You look less like a victim and more like a druggie."
His gaze shifted briefly to the man's arm, noticing the needle marks.
"Yeah… that explains it."
The man struggled, fear rising as he realized he couldn't move at all.
Daniel tilted his head slightly.
"Well then," he said, his tone almost casual, "let me take back what I gave you."
He made a small, precise motion with his fingers.
There was no visible energy, no dramatic effect.
But the number on the man's wrist dropped instantly.
From centuries—
To zero.
The change was immediate.
The man's body jerked violently as if something vital had been ripped out of him. He clutched his chest, gasping once before all movement stopped.
He collapsed.
Dead.
Daniel straightened slowly, brushing the dust from his coat as his eyes moved across the street with sharper focus.
"This world's genetics…" he muttered, "have reached a whole different level."
What he was seeing wasn't just poverty.
It was structure.
A system.
In this world, as long as you had time on your clock, you could live forever. Humanity had solved the one flaw that defined every other world—aging. People stopped growing older at twenty-five, their bodies frozen in their prime, untouched by time itself.
On the surface, it sounded perfect.
Immortality.
But the reality beneath it was far from that.
The clock on their arm wasn't a blessing.
It was a countdown.
From the moment a person turned twenty-five, it began ticking down, measuring exactly how much life they had left. When it reached zero, they didn't grow old, they didn't weaken—
They died.
Instantly.
Daniel glanced at the people around him again, noticing how often their eyes flicked to their wrists, how tightly they guarded that single resource.
Time wasn't free here—it was earned, traded, or stolen.
"And yeah…" Daniel continued under his breath, "the difference between rich and poor is insane."
He had already seen enough to understand it.
The rich didn't just have money.
They had centuries.
They lived without fear, hoarding time the same way others hoarded wealth, existing in a state that was practically eternal.
But the poor—
They lived day to day.
Every hour mattered.
Every minute could mean survival or death.
They worked constantly, not to live better, but simply to keep their clock from hitting zero.
Daniel exhaled slowly, his expression settling into something colder.
"Yeah," he said quietly, "this is a messed up world."
***
At the same time, far from the slums Daniel stood in, there existed another world within the same world.
New Greenwich.
A place where time itself separated the rich from the poor. The streets were clean, the buildings tall and untouched, and the people walked without urgency because they didn't have to fear the ticking of their clocks.
Inside one of those towering buildings, a man sat alone at a long polished table.
He looked no older than twenty-five.
On his left arm, the clock glowed steadily—
centuries.
A number so large it no longer felt like time, but permanence.
He swirled a glass of wine lazily, watching the liquid move.
"Eternal life really is a blessing," he said with quiet satisfaction.
Then—
Something moved.
From the ceiling above, darkness seeped out like liquid, slow at first, then crawling downward in unnatural tendrils. It didn't fall—it slithered, stretching and twisting until it reached him.
Before he could react,
It entered his body.
The glass slipped from his hand and shattered on the floor.
The man choked.
His body convulsed violently as he clutched his chest, falling from the chair and hitting the ground hard. Veins darkened under his skin, his breathing turning erratic as something inside him fought for control.
Seconds stretched into minutes as the struggle raged, brutal and unrelenting, until it suddenly stopped and his body went still; for a heartbeat there was nothing—then his fingers twitched, he drew a sharp breath, and his eyes snapped open, twisted, cold, and furious.
"That scum… Luke," he growled, his voice no longer matching the man who had been sitting there moments ago. "How dare he do this to me…"
He pushed himself up slowly, his movements stiff at first, then steady.
"I almost had the world in my hands," he continued, his tone dripping with hatred. "And that bastard ruined everything… reduced me to this state… trapped in a human body, stripped of my power."
He looked at his own hand, flexing his fingers as if testing the limits of this new vessel.
Then he let out a low, unsettling laugh.
"But…" he said, his voice calming as something darker settled in, "this world isn't entirely useless."
He turned slightly, his shadow stretching unnaturally across the floor.
"There are no mutants… no real resistance," he murmured. "But there are people."
The shadow behind him shifted.
It bulged.
Twisted.
Then split apart into something grotesque—multiple tendrils forming, writhing slowly like living things, barely contained within the shape of a shadow.
"I can devour them," he said softly. "Rebuild my strength… piece by piece."
The tendrils curled and uncurled behind him.
"And when I do…"
His smile widened.
"I'll find Luke."
"And I'll kill him."
At the same time,
On Daniel's side, the mark reacted as the black half flickered violently, its numbers scrambling before collapsing into a single value—zero—and Daniel's arm twitched before being yanked sharply, without gentleness or subtlety.
It jerked forward as if something invisible had grabbed it and started dragging him toward a direction he couldn't see.
"What the hell—" Daniel muttered, trying to steady himself.
The pull grew stronger.
His hand strained forward, fingers twitching as if responding to a call.
The mark wasn't just reacting.
It was… excited.
"Why is this thing acting like a dog that just found something?" Daniel said, trying to force his arm back.
*****
A/N: If you'd like to read ahead of the Webnovel release schedule, you can join my Patreon!
The Patreon version is 30 chapters ahead.
👉 patreon.com/Universal_Peace