I was born into a world that others envied. A world of gold-gilded halls and opulent feasts, of power woven into my very blood. A world where men bowed at my passing and whispered my name with reverence, where women adorned themselves with jewels and perfumes, seeking to catch my gaze, if only for a fleeting moment. A world where everything I could ever desire was placed before me like a banquet of indulgence.
I felt nothing.
Not joy, not satisfaction, not even the dull hum of contentment that lesser men seemed to cling to like a lifeline. It was all so dreadfully empty. The halls of my palace? Cages dressed in grandeur. The endless flattery of nobles and sycophants? Noise without meaning. The women who offered themselves to me, eyes filled with false affection and bodies wrapped in silk? Puppets playing a role in a play I had no interest in watching.
I was a prince.
I was a God among men.
And yet, I envied the beggar in the gutter, for at least he suffered. At least he felt.
But then—
Then, I found war.
The first time I took a blade in hand, something within me stirred. A flicker, faint and fragile, like the first spark of a flame in the dead of winter. The weight of steel felt right in my grasp. The scent of blood and iron was not revolting, but intoxicating. And when I stepped onto the battlefield for the first time, when the first clash of steel against steel rang in my ears, when the first blade carved through flesh and bone—
I awoke.
I had spent my life wading through a sea of gray, drowning in monotony. But in battle, the world bled color. Every moment became sharp, every second stretched into eternity. For the first time, I did not feel like a spectator in my own life. I felt alive.
The agony of an enemy's blade raking across my skin? Exhilarating.
The raw, animalistic struggle of life and Death? Addictive.
The sight of a foe's dying breath, the recognition in their eyes that they had been bested? A pleasure unmatched.
It was there, amid the chaos, that I found meaning.
The poets speak of love as the greatest of all human experiences. They write of passion, of devotion, of the ecstasy of uniting one's soul with another. Fools. I have known love, and it was found not in the embrace of a woman, but in the unrelenting clash of battle. Not in whispered words beneath silk sheets, but in the act of war cries and the wet gurgle of a dying man.
Love? Love is the moment when two blades meet, when two warriors understand each other in the purest form possible. There are no lies in battle, no deception, no pretense. Only truth. When I fight, I see men as they truly are. Not as they pretend to be in the courts, not as they present themselves in the facades of civility. On the battlefield, stripped of their masks, I see their naked souls.
And when I kill them, I grant them the greatest gift of all.
A meaningful end.
Does that make me a monster? Perhaps. But tell me this—what is nobler? To waste away in decadence, to rot from within as time wears you down into nothingness? Or to die in a moment of absolute clarity, knowing that you fought, that you struggled, that you existed?
I pity those who fear Death. I pity those who clutch their wealth, their power, their fragile little lives as if they hold any true value. I pity kings who never step foot onto the battlefield, who send men to die in their place while they cower behind walls of stone and gold.
They call me mad.
They call me depraved.
They call me a bloodstained prince, the warhound of the empire, the cursed son who finds joy in carnage.
And perhaps they are right. But I ask you—who among us truly lives?
The merchant who spends his days counting coins, waiting for the inevitable day when Death claims him? The scholar who drowns in books and theories, never once feeling the weight of a blade in his hand? The noble who dances through empty pleasantries, never knowing the taste of blood on his tongue?
Or I, who stands atop a mountain of corpses, who dances in the act of war, who feels the pulse of existence with every swing of my sword?
Life is struggle.
Life is pain.
Life is conflict.
And I—I am alive.
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[Earlier]
[???]
In this moment he was dying, but he had never felt so alive.
Mikoto sighed in delight, that beautiful face of his was illuminated by the carnage before him. His blood-red eyes, alight with twisted glee, drank in the sight of Selwyn kneeling in his own blood, his enormous frame convulsing from the damage Mikoto had already inflicted upon him. He had long since dismissed his blade, it was not needed anymore.
The so-called monster now trembled.
Mikoto's rosy lips curved into a satisfied smirk. His snow-white hair, streaked faintly with soot, fell over his delicate shoulders as he tilted his head, his expression mockingly intoxicatingly cruel.
"You're quieter than usual," he mused. "Does the animal have no more words to say?"
He took a step forward. The sound of his heel clicking against the cracked earth echoed. Selwyn lifted his gaze, eyes blown wide—not with fury, but with something far darker.
Mikoto saw it—the way Selwyn's stare devoured him, the way his heaving chest rose and fell, his breath hitched, his fingers twitching as if resisting the urge to reach for him, to take him, to claim him.
How pathetic.
Mikoto let out a soft, mocking laugh, one that twisted into Selwyn's marrow like a poisoned dagger. "Falling for me you damn animal?"
Selwyn gritted his teeth, his body trembling—not from pain, but something far more insidious.
Mikoto relished every second of it but his amusement had limits, his gaze darkened, his smirk sharpening.
"Enough playing," he murmured.
With grace, he raised his small hand before, he snapped, he sound resonated across the area—sharp and clean.
"Technique Development: Stellar Cataclysm."
A sudden, deafening silence consumed the world, the sky cracked. Not just fractured, but shattered, like a mirror struck by a hammer. Thin, radiating fissures spiraled across the sky, spreading outward in veins of searing white light.
And from beyond the broken firmament—
It came.
A colossal pillar, descending from the skies like a spear hurled by forces above.
Monolithic.
The presence of the incoming destruction warped the air. It twisted violently inwards, spiraling toward the impact zone like a vortex. The laws of physics screamed, the gravitational pull of the blast distorted everything—rivers of eroded magma surged skyward, drawn upward by the force, entire plates groaned as they cracked apart, debris and shattered stone lifted unnaturally into the stratosphere.
The land fractured. Folded in on itself.
Mikoto twisted midair, his long coat tail flaring around him as he leaped backward, away from Selwyn.
Then a whisper.
"Paradigm Rebirth."
Mikoto's eyes narrowed.
Then—
Impact.
The instant the pillar of destruction collided with Selwyn's form, the entire planet convulsed. It recoiled—as if the presence of the attack was too much to bear. For a moment, there was silence—a terrifying, suffocating void of sound, like the entire universe held its breath.
Then Detonation.
A blinding explosion of unfathomable magnitude erupted, consuming the battlefield. The force of impact didn't just tear through the atmosphere—it ripped it apart. The sky split open, the firmament unraveling, exposing the space beyond. A singular shockwave, more powerful than any natural force, expanded outward at absurd speed—faster than the eye could perceive.
The ground crumbled before it even reached, entire mountain ranges collapsed in on themselves, their towering peaks crushed into oblivion before they could even be reduced to rubble. The bedrock, once solid, became liquid fire, lava veins of the planet's inner mantle erupting like geysers, spewing torrents of white-hot magma high into the stratosphere. The crust of the planet shattered like fragile glass, splintering into colossal fragments, entire sections splitting apart as massive landmasses broke free from their foundations, floating upward—as if gravity itself had been utterly uprooted. Massive slabs of the planet tilted, rotated, and collapsed into themselves, as if caught in an unimaginable gravitational flux.
And yet the destruction did not end.
The sky continued to collapse, the atmosphere itself was forcefully ejected. No longer did the land resemble anything natural, there were no more mountains, no more valleys.
Only an endless, infinite expanse of molten lava, the land was no longer land. It was a broken husk, a sphere of molten fire and drifting debris. The axis of the world was destabilized, the planet tilted unnaturally, its rotation thrown into chaos, the forces that governed its orbit now utterly broken.
The pillar of light finally began to wane, its force receding as the blinding light bled away.
The air still glowed with light. The ground—if it could even be called that anymore—was a lava wasteland, twisted and fractured, vast chasms of searing magma stretching in all directions like open, bleeding wounds.
Something suddenly stirred, a form emerged and it was no longer human.
Selwyn rose, his body completely transformed.
A towering figure, impossibly broad, with a physique so exaggerated it seemed to radiate strength. His form was now replaced with something… monstrous.
Dark and wicked.
His armor, its black surface decorated with golden engravings, swirling patterns that seemed almost alive. The armor's edges were cruel with sharp, protruding spikes, each one extending like the fangs. Atop his head, elaborate, curved horns spiraled outward. His face was obscured, the armor wrapping around his jaw and cheeks like a second skin, yet enough of it remained visible to show the intensity in his expression.
And his eyes.
Burning.
Twin orbs of gold, piercing—devoid of doubt, devoid of fear. They stared forward with an intensity that could burn holes into anything, their gaze alone suffocating.
And behind him—
A crimson cape, tattered yet flowing, swirling as if caught in some current.
Mikoto floated effortlessly above, perched upon the thinning air, one hand lazily resting on his hip, the other brushing a few stray strands of his hair from his eyes.
Then—he scoffed.
He let his eyes slowly wander across Selwyn's new form, dragging his gaze across the barbaric opulence of his armor, the exaggeration of his physique, the way his new form oozed aggression, oozed intimidation, oozed power.
And then, with the slow, measured exhale of someone entirely unimpressed, Mikoto let out a low, mocking chuckle.
"Oh dear." He tilted his head."Someone's been hitting the gym."
Selwyn's glowing gaze snapped toward him.
Mikoto simply sighed, crossing his arms, his expression utterly languid—dripping with condescension.
"Let me guess." He gestured vaguely to Selwyn's monstrous new physique. "Bigger muscles mean bigger power, hmm?"
He unfolded his arms, spreading them in a dramatic gesture.
"Oh, woe is me!" he proclaimed in mock despair. "How ever shall I stand against such a towering, hulking, brutish, mindless mass of—"
He cut himself off with an exaggerated snap of his fingers, pretending as if he'd just had a sudden realization.
"Oh, right. That's not impressive at all."
His smirk deepened.
"Let's be honest, Selwyn." Mikoto's voice dropped, smooth as silk, sharp as a dagger. "No matter how much you change…"
Selwyn cut him him off as he moved, faster than a thought.
A single instant stretched into eternity as he lunged, his monstrous frame moving with an unnatural, fluidity, his hand howling through the air, aimed directly at Mikoto's throat.