"It's been thirty years..."
The words left my lips in a whisper, barely louder than the wind. My greatsword's tip rested against the scorched earth, the only thing keeping me upright. Blood dripped from the gash on my forehead, crawling down the bridge of my nose and blurring my right eye—not bad enough to matter, but enough to be annoying.
"Thirty years of fighting. Thirty years of trials, and walking alongside death."
The being before me wasn't faring much better.
An eyeball. A giant eyeball, roughly a hundred meters across—so absurdly, grotesquely massive that it would have been almost comical under different circumstances. It looked like something a stray cat had coughed up and left to rot; tattered and ragged at its edges, its surface slick with wounds that still wept.
But its power was not something to laugh at. I couldn't afford to give it time to recover.
Move.
"UGH!"
Driving strength into my arms—bones already cracked, tendons already frayed—I wrenched my blade off the ground and raised it high. I kicked off the earth with everything I had left, an explosion of dust and ash erupting in my wake. I crossed the distance to the center of that colossal eye in less than a heartbeat.
"HAAAAH!"
Every last scrap of mana I could muster, poured into every buff my body could barely sustain. One final strike, built from thirty years of surviving things that should have killed me.
"HEAVEN SPLITTER!"
The kind of sword slash that could carve through space itself—through the sky, through anything.
The monster released a sound that wasn't quite a roar and wasn't quite a scream. Something in between. Something grieving. Its colossal form split cleanly down the middle, both halves drifting apart and tumbling slowly, like two mountains finally giving up on standing.
I didn't lower my guard.
Earlier, even after taking wounds that should have ended it a dozen times over, the thing had stitched itself back together as if death were merely a suggestion. Fully regenerated, each time, as though mocking the very concept of a fatal blow.
This time, it might do the same.
...For the 188th time.
"..."
But nothing came.
Silence spread across the field—a silence so complete it almost had a texture to it. No trembling ground. No gurgling regeneration. No slow reopening of that enormous, hateful eye.
Only when the notification appeared—the one I had spent thirty years quietly, desperately hoping to see—did I finally allow the tension to bleed out of my body.
[Congratulations WhiteGod! You have defeated the Beast Lord: Infinite Gazer!]
[You gained experience points. You have leveled up.]
[You have reached max level. Level 65,535]
[Achievement title received: Hero, Sole Survivor, Gods' Favorite, Conqueror]
[You have cleared the game, Heaven's Path.]
[The gods bless you.]
A cascade of hollow notifications blinked into existence before my eyes.
I thought my lips had curled into something resembling a smile, though I couldn't say for certain. My body had gone numb a while ago.
"Urk..."
With a sound like a felled tree, I dropped onto my back.
My old partner—my black sword, Gray Destroyer—clanked against the ground beside me. And as if it had been patiently waiting for exactly this moment, waiting until its purpose was truly finished, it cracked. Then shattered. Hundreds of fragments like shards of black ice scattered across the scorched earth, glinting faintly before going dark. My beloved sword, now nothing but scraps.
"..."
Thirty years.
All that time—even after I was left completely, utterly alone—spent clawing toward the end of this cursed game.
And yet, clearing it felt like... nothing, really. No grand swell of pride. No cathartic release. If anything, the feeling settling into my chest felt closer to regret than triumph.
I tilted my head down to look at my stomach—or the space where my stomach used to be. A hole roughly the size of a basketball had taken its place. The only reason I'd survived long enough to land that final blow was my Berserker class, and its stubborn, furious refusal to let me die before the job was done.
But that "Last Stand" buff had nearly run its course.
I... was going to die.
[Conqueror, please state your wish.]
Several small orbs drifted closer, hovering around me like curious fireflies—or, less charitably, like flies drawn to carrion. Tennis ball-sized "Stream Cameras." The gods' preferred method of watching their players suffer in real time.
Most of those gods had tuned out long before now. In the end, only a handful had stuck around to watch the last remaining player crawl his way to the finish line.
Twelve of them. Twelve nameless gods, the only company I'd had in this empty world for longer than I cared to admit.
"Heh..." A short laugh scraped its way out of my throat. "Looks like I won the bet."
Chat bubbles floated above the cameras, their messages drifting down to me.
[Anon19960509: You really did it! Unbelievable.]
[Anon78440705: Yeah, yeah. I lost the bet... Take my treasures, you bastard! 😭]
[Anon49201131: So this is the end... It had been a fun journey, little hero.]
The usual chaos. All twelve of them, incapable of staying quiet even now. I managed a slight shake of my head—the most I could manage. Turning it fully was beyond me at this point.
"Haaaa..."
I exhaled slowly, settling into the stillness, and waited.
[Anon00010101: You cleared the game, so the game shall grant you one wish. Quick, tell us what your wish is! 😆 Anything goes! 🔥]
"My... Wish...?"
A wish.
Something I would want.
I closed my eyes for a moment—not from exhaustion, but from the strange weight of the question. Thirty years, and this was the part I hadn't thought about.
"There's only one thing, then."
My voice came out quieter than I intended. Barely words anymore.
The Last Stand buff reached its end. I felt it go—like a candle flame snuffed between two fingers.
"I... want to go back. To when it all started..."
If I hadn't joined the game a year late. If I'd had the same head start as everyone else—I wouldn't have been stuck scrambling for a common class like Berserker. I could have taken my time, gotten something Legendary. Something worthy of the thirty years that followed.
If I could wish for anything at all, it would be to redo everything, from the very beginning. Even if it meant letting go of everything else I'd gathered along the way.
The cold had reached my palms now, creeping steadily toward my elbows.
[Anon00010101: Oh... That's... unexpected. 😅]
I'd already stopped reading by then.
---
"BUWAAAAH! HAAAA—!"
I jolted upright, gasping, drenched from head to toe.
Water poured from my hair, my nose, my clothes—soaked through to the skin in an instant. Standing before me was a man with an empty bucket dangling from one hand and the most punchable grin I had ever seen stretched across his face.
"Hehehe! This should make you smell less stinky, you stinky bug! It's called bathing!"
"A... lucid dream?"
I'd heard of the revolving lantern—that moment at the edge of death where your life supposedly flashes before your eyes. But I'd never heard of anything like this.
The face in front of me. My old bully. Someone I hadn't laid eyes on in a very long time—someone I'd never gotten the chance to properly deal with, given that he'd had the nerve to die before I could.
I didn't understand what was happening.
I didn't particularly care, either.
I was on my feet before the thought fully formed, crossing the distance between us in a single step. My fist drew back—as far as it could go—and then shot forward like a ballista bolt releasing.
"...Eh?"
He didn't even have time to blink. My knuckles connected squarely with his nose.
Something cracked. Several somethings, actually—his nose, a couple of my fingers, and my wrist for good measure. None of that mattered even slightly.
"BUFUGH!"
He launched backward, completed a full, graceless backflip, and planted face-first into the ground.
"Ha! Serves you right!"
Even in a dream—even in whatever this was—getting that one in felt fantastic.
"..."
Huh.
Wait.
This is a dream.
...Right?