Leon sat motionless for a long while, elbows on his thighs, hands hanging limp between his knees, staring at the spot where the system window had floated a moment ago, as if, if he kept looking long enough, something would return. A glitch. A footnote. An explanation. Anything that would tell him it wasn't what he was starting to realize.
He finally stood and walked to the window, pulling the curtain aside with the same practiced motion he'd done thousands of times before. Outside was the same gray courtyard. The neighbor's car parked crookedly. The battered bench no one ever sat on because it was always damp.
And something about that ordinary scene hit him harder than any sword strike.
This wasn't another dimension.
This wasn't an alternate timeline.
This was the past.
I'm back, he thought, and there was no relief in it, no joy. Only weight. Because with it came the awareness that he had returned to the exact moment before the greatest disaster he'd ever known. The instant before the world became an arena, and humanity became raw material.
Leon took a step back and pressed his spine to the wall, feeling the facts click into place one by one.
For some reason, and that reason didn't yet have a face or a name, he'd been thrown back to the beginning. Before "Infinity" cast its invitation.
Five hundred million.
That was exactly how many people from each lower world were granted entry to the Path of Immortality, without consent, without the option to refuse. Ripped from their homes, from streets, from hospital beds. Dragged into something no one explained beyond a few lines of text flashing before their eyes.
For most, it was unimaginable cruelty.
On Earth, it meant that out of billions, only a handful, a tiny fraction, got a "chance," while the rest were written off from the start, condemned to the slow dimming of a world that had stopped being necessary.
They didn't take everyone because most wouldn't survive even the first stage anyway, he thought bitterly. Because the Path of Immortality wasn't a prize or a rescue.
It was a filter for those fucking gods.
Leon rested his head against the wall and closed his eyes.
If the system was right.
If "Infinity" was going to do it again…
Ding!
Another system window appeared before his eyes.
[You will be teleported to the Domain of Sacrifice…]
Leon read it calmly, without haste. Then he let out a quiet snort and smiled in mockery, not because it was funny, but because it was exactly what he expected.
So we're starting from the beginning…
The world around him began to blur. The room's edges lost their sharpness; the cracks in the walls smeared into gray streaks. Even the smell of dust seemed to vanish, replaced by emptiness, something with no temperature, no weight.
He didn't resist.
He didn't try to move. He didn't shout. He didn't grab the bed or the wall. He knew it wouldn't matter. The system didn't ask and didn't wait.
It was happening everywhere at that same moment.
Those chosen by [Infinity] vanished from their homes, offices, factory floors, streets, cars stopped at red lights, hospital beds, crowded apartments, leaving behind empty spaces and people who, for long seconds, couldn't even understand that someone had just disappeared from right in front of them without a trace.
No one knew the selection criteria.
Leon assumed it was the ones who would survive what was coming.
Fuuush!
The sound was short and dull, like someone snuffed the world out in a single motion.
Darkness swallowed his vision.
When he opened his eyes again…
There was only light.
Just endless and uniform, stretching in every direction, no horizon, no landmarks, no shadows to hide in, until Leon felt like he was standing inside something that wasn't a place or a space so much as a state of being.
A system window appeared before him, suspended in the void as naturally as if it had always been there. Beneath it was a simple gray bar, empty, unmarked, like something waiting to be filled.
[It is time for your sacrifice.]
The letters were emotionless, toneless, like a technical notice.
[The more you sacrifice, the stronger the talent you will receive.]
Leon stared at the words without expression. He remembered this too, just as clearly as he remembered that the system never lied… and never explained what it meant by "more."
Another window appeared.
[You have 2 minutes to choose your sacrifice.]
It vanished almost immediately, as if its existence were only a formality. In the same instant, a plain timer lit up above the gray bar, its numbers changing without hurry and without mercy.
120
119
118
Leon's gaze dropped to the bar, a familiar tension tightening in his thoughts, the same tension as the first time, except back then it had been laced with ignorance. Now it was clean and calculating. Two minutes was nothing if you chose wrong.
Last time.
That was the first thing that came to him.
Last time, under the same rules and the same silence, his sacrifices had been enough to earn an S-rank talent - Magic Knight. An ability that let him fuse body, magic, and weapon into a single whole, giving him power feared by humans and beings from other worlds alike.
It had been a monstrous talent.
One of the kind that decided who lived through the early stages and who vanished without a trace.
Leon looked at the gray bar again, still empty , knowing the stakes weren't the same anymore. And the time was exactly what the timer said, steadily counting down.
This time, I can go one step further…
With the knowledge from his previous life, after trading countless experiences with people who had talents on his level or higher, he had at least some idea of how to push his evaluation upward.
The gray bar wasn't just an indicator, something Leon understood almost instantly because he remembered the feeling too well. It measured the price, not progress. To receive a talent, you had to fill it. Each full completion pushed you into the next threshold, starting from the lowest F-rank talent, barely useful in practice, and ending at ranks that could rewrite an entire life.
There was no list.
No hints.
The system never said what anything was worth.
The one making the sacrifice decided - no, discovered - through irreversible trial.
Leon stared at the bar and spoke his first words without hesitation, calm and without drama, like stating an obvious formality.
"I sacrifice the scar on my back."
For a brief moment, nothing happened. Then the gray bar filled completely in one smooth motion, shifting into a cool blue-gray color. Leon felt a short, dull pinch between his shoulder blades, not pain, more like the sensation of something being peeled away from him.
The bar instantly cleared, empty again.
Leon didn't even look at it for long. He knew this was only the beginning.
"I sacrifice my musical and artistic talent."
It was something he'd had on Earth. Something real. Something that belonged only to him, years of practice, rhythm, the ability to create. Something he'd never fully developed because life had gone another way.
The bar filled again, turning green, but not all the way. Only a third, stopping cleanly, as if the system had judged it still not enough.
Leon nodded to himself.
"I see. The system works exactly the same as in my previous life."
He knew the system would never let them return to Earth in the future. That was why a cold smile tugged at his mouth as he spoke his next words.
"All my past friends from Earth will forget me."
This time, the bar reacted violently. Green shifted to yellow, filling completely, and without pausing, it changed to orange, which began filling too, until it stopped at one third, clearly showing he'd crossed another threshold.
Leon studied it closely.
Orange.
A B-rank talent.
Still not enough.
He smiled faintly, crookedly, and murmured, "Thanks, Leokadia."
There was no irony in it, more a dry kind of gratitude. He knew that sacrifice had the face of a specific person, someone who saw herself as a failure, talentless, so she wanted the world to forget her. And with that knowledge, Leon chose to take inspiration from her and use it in his sacrifice ritual.
His eyes sharpened. He knew exactly how far he still was from the talent he wanted. The orange bar, nearly full, still told him plainly: not yet.
"I sacrifice the memories of my first love."
His voice didn't tremble.
The bar filled further. The color deepened. The gauge reached three quarters and stopped just short of the end, like it was pausing on purpose to taunt him.
Leon didn't even blink.
"I sacrifice my own surname."
This time the reaction was immediate.
Orange vanished, replaced by a deep red that began filling from the start, climbing to one quarter of the bar before stopping with a heavy finality, as if the system itself were underlining that this was a step that could never be undone in any world.
Leon stared at the red bar and knew.
He knew exactly what would be enough.
A smile touched his lips that didn't match his next words at all, too calm, too light, like he was talking about something trivial.
"I sacrifice all memories of my biological parents."
The bar filled in one uninterrupted motion. Red disappeared, and the whole thing turned a deep purple.
For most people, the very concept of sacrificing memories of their own parents was unthinkable, a boundary you couldn't even touch with your mind. Parents were the foundation of identity, the point of reference, the first home, the first name you learned.
But for Leon, raised in an orphanage, whose biological parents existed only as dry lines in paperwork and a few meaningless sentences in a file, those memories were worth exactly as much as last year's snow, long since melted and forgotten.
He looked at the purple bar.
Three quarters full.
His gaze lifted to the timer hanging above in the void. The digits had dropped under thirty seconds, blinking faster and faster, as if the system itself were reminding him this was his last chance to decide.
In his previous life, this was where he stopped.
This was the point where he decided going further was pointless, and that what he'd already achieved was enough, because a purple bar at this level had given him a powerful S-rank talent, Magic Knight, elevating him above millions and letting him survive everything that came after.
But that was his previous life.
Now he could take one step further.
An image forced its way into his mind: a human silhouette, hard to call male, but not female either, as if it existed between the two, without clear borders, pure form with no assigned meaning.
Leon bit his lip lightly.
His brow furrowed.
For a brief moment, he hesitated, not because he didn't understand the consequences, but because he knew this sacrifice wouldn't be about one memory or one trait. It would be about something the world treated as obvious from the moment of birth.
In the end, he decided it would be worth it.
He drew a deep breath, letting air fill his lungs, then spoke into the silence of the domain in a steady, heavy voice, words that landed like weight.
"I sacrifice my sex."
The purple bar reacted instantly.
First it surged forward violently, as if something had been torn free from a place it had been clinging to with its last strength. Then, right near the end, it slowed, almost stopping at the threshold, hanging for a fraction of a second as if the system itself were hesitating…
And then, in one final motion, it pulled the bar to completion.
The color changed.
From purple… to gold.