The next attack came far too fast for Leon to properly react. The creature's massive claw slashed across his chest mid-flight.

SLASH!

Blood sprayed through the air in a crimson arc.

"AHHH!"

Leon teleported desperately in the middle of being torn apart, his body covered in deep cuts and gashes. The previous wounds had barely started healing when new ones opened across his torso and legs.

FWOOSH!

Blood poured continuously from multiple wounds. His mana was being sucked away like water through a sponge, converting into brilliant green Life energy that desperately tried to knit his flesh back together.

SHIMMER! CRACK! HEAL!

The brutal cycle continued for what felt like an eternity. Attack. Teleport. Bleed. Heal. Attack again.

Each time, Leon grew weaker. Each time, the healing took longer.

Until finally, inevitably, his mana reserves were completely finished—drained to nothing.

Empty. I'm completely empty.

And now the terrifying creature violently caught his broken body between its enormous claws, the sharp talons piercing through his sides.

CRUNCH! SQUEEZE!

The claws were slick and bloody, covered entirely in his own blood.

"Urgh..."

The massive beast began descending toward the ground, carrying its captured prey down to its master—the woman standing calmly on the arena floor below.

Leon's mana was slowly recovering through his natural regeneration, drop by precious drop. He could potentially try to teleport away one more time since the technique didn't require too much energy.

I could escape the grip for a few seconds.

However, he saw absolutely no point in doing so when he was this hurt, this weak, this utterly defeated.

The creature would just catch me again immediately. And experiencing how painful and violent its claws are with the force of those giant muscles... I can't. I just can't do it again.

Leon didn't want to experience that agony another time.

Knowing that teleporting again would be completely futile with the little mana he'd barely gathered, he simply didn't attempt it.

What's the point? I've lost.

In the background, he could hear the thunderous cheers from the massive crowd as his broken body was unceremoniously dropped onto the hard ground by the creature, landing directly in front of the girl with her fiery armor and blazing greatsword strapped to her back.

THUD!

"KRESH! KRESH! KRESH! VEL MANDOR!"

The noises were like rolling thunder in his ears, making his head pound. Everything felt utterly pointless as he lay there weak and defeated.

I couldn't even win against her pet. Winning against her directly was always just a pathetic dream.

A terrible realization crashed over him like ice water.

Does that mean I have to die now? After I admit defeat, that psychotic man will execute me?

But why?

Why does it always have to be me?

Why, why, why?

The crowd's roar became a painful ringing in his head. The woman in the fiery armor stood directly over him, looking down with her blazing crimson eyes.

The scent of scorched flesh filled his nostrils, and the hot stone beneath his back pulsed with radiant heat, as if mocking his weakness.

She said something in her harsh language, her massive sword positioned right next to his exposed chest.

His invisible armor was completely destroyed. His barely-healed skin was already sizzling painfully from the intense heat radiating from her technique.

SIZZLE... CRACK...

But Leon was mentally checked out—completely dissociated, trapped deep inside his own tortured mind. The physical pain couldn't reach him anymore, couldn't gain his attention now.

Since the moment I came to this cursed world, I've been constantly getting into life-threatening situations. My existence has always been on the edge of death, somehow.

His thoughts spiraled backward through his suffering.

First, I nearly died inside the Awakening Dungeon on my very first day.

Then it seemed like that was my only major test. But no—due to my Holy energy incompatibility, I was tortured for an entire subjective year to forcibly build my mana heart. I barely survived by dying repeatedly and being revived over and over by the Phoenix Tears treasure I'd bought.

Then I finally got my new Divinordial race, which promised unimaginable power and strength beyond mortal limits.

I genuinely thought I didn't have to be weak anymore after that transformation. But then again, in Thornwood Forest, I encountered the Coreborn monster Morpheus, which nearly took my life anyway, despite my new power. I only survived by desperately exploiting my time dimension.

I thought I'd finally escaped that fate of constantly nearly dying. The supreme leaders of the middle domain had to bow down to me and accept my demands! I felt powerful! Safe!

But no. Here I am now, trapped in this unknown, hostile world, just lying helpless on the ground waiting to die. And if I lose and surrender, that monstrous man will execute me without hesitation.

Despair consumed him entirely.

I'm not strong enough to even escape this time. No tricks left. No trump cards. Nothing.

Do I really have to die now? Here? Like this?

Nooo... I don't want that. This second life was so, so much better than my previous existence. I finally had someone who truly loves me.

Seraphine's face appeared in his mind, smiling at him.

Everything was finally good. But why? Why, why, WHY am I getting thrown into these damn death situations over and over and over and OVER again?!

That faint feeling—the one he'd been ignoring for so long—was still there, lurking at the edge of his awareness.

That wrongness. That sense of being... manipulated.

Leon suddenly shouted with everything he had left, his voice carrying past the deafening cheering of the arena, past the woman looking down on him, waiting for his surrender.

"WHOOO ARE YOUUUUU?!"

His desperate scream echoed.

"AND WHY ARE YOU AFTER MY LIFE?!"

----

In a world that crossed the barrier between universes.

Inside a mighty, grand throne room stretching impossibly far and wide—yet filled with only emptiness and ancient, suffocating silence.

A single being sat motionless upon an ornate throne, eyes that had been closed for... who knows how long.

Centuries.

Millennia.

Perhaps even longer.

No one but the being itself knew the true answer to that question.

But those ancient eyes had opened some time ago—watching the boy lying bloodied on the distant arena floor, listening to his desperate shout carried across dimensional barriers.

The being smiled slightly, an expression both amused and contemplative.

Its voice, ancient and resonant with power beyond comprehension, spoke words in a dialect lost to time:

"So... this unnatural existence cannot yet bear the weight of the Primordial Mark of Fate. Will this be his end? Even I cannot tell what lies ahead. Even incomplete as he is, I cannot peer into his future. That is the nature of us Divinordial—no force in existence can measure or predict our destinies with certainty."

----

Leon received no answer to his desperate question.

But a shimmering golden screen slowly revealed itself before his blurred vision, the text glowing with otherworldly light.

The air itself shivered faintly, brushing his skin with static warmth—as if the system's presence rippled through the world like a god inhaling.

[CONGRATULATIONS]

[You have consciously noticed the influence of your PRIMORDIAL MARK OF FATE]

[May Fate favor you in the trials ahead]

Leon's eyes went impossibly wide as he read everything displayed.

What... what is this?!

He knew with absolute certainty he wasn't imagining this. Since the time he'd awakened his SSS Rank Elemental Paragon Class, there had been something—really, really faint back then, almost imperceptible.

But after his race change to Divinordial, it had become slightly less faint. Still subtle, but... present. Always present.

That feeling. That wrongness. It was THIS. This whole time!

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