No matter where you looked, flames engulfed everything. It looked as if the fire had extended to beyond the horizon. Even though they were surrounded by the ocean, the sea of flames did not die down. Within the demon-like flames, no one could differentiate between the living and the dead. The flames surged intensely, as if they were intent on burning down the skies.

Inside those flames, one man could be seen walking. He walked calmly as if the flames didn’t exist at all. He wore light clothing with a travel pack slung over his shoulder and a longsword on his waist. He suddenly stopped walking when he saw something. He looked above and shouted, “You’re pretty good!”

The place he was looking at had a dead blue dragon. Its huge body was as big as a mountain but its head was bloodied and stuck in a crater on the beach. A man wearing armor was panting heavily on top of that dragon’s head. Surprised by the voice, the armored man turned his head and greeted the man in light clothes.

“I... pay my respects to Your Majesty.”

“Gain, it seems you’ve made quite a mess here,” the lightly-clothed man spoke.

“The negotiations... didn’t go too well,” Gain replied.

“Dragons are very inflexible and arrogant. Did you kill them all?”

“I killed seven ancient dragons... I think those were all. But the Dragon Lord has escaped,” Gain struggled to answer while panting heavily.

“Drink the dragon’s blood, you should feel way better after that. Don’t worry about the one that escaped; I’ve taken care of it.”

Gain’s eyes widened. The lightly-clothed man emptied the pack on him and the head of a blue-haired old woman rolled out from it. The severed section of the neck still had fresh blood dripping out.

“It seems they had no intention of negotiating from the start. She wanted to raise a tsunami in the eastern sea to divert our attention. I happened to come across her on my way here, so I cut her down.”

Gain laughed dispiritedly when the lightly-clothed man acted as if he had just plucked off an apple he had chanced upon. Gain remarked, “It seems I’ve inconvenienced you, Your Majesty...”

“It wasn’t a bad idea to try and resolve matters by coming to a compromise. It’s always a good idea to solve things without shedding blood, but they had intended to backstab us from the start,” the lightly-clothed man shrugged. He then continued, “I’m thinking of killing all the adults for this betrayal, as we only need to tame the hatchlings. I’ve already cut down a few on my way here.”

“You want to kill... all the adults?” Gain asked.

“Those who want to escape will escape eventually, but they won’t dare to think of coming back to the archipelago. There’s no way I’ll forgive those who dared to trick my son,” he smiled.

***

Juan woke up from his sleep, feeling a slight headache and a sense of unpleasantness. Technically, the memory itself was quite pleasant if he remembered it on its own. The face he hadn’t seen in a long time and the subjugation of the rebellious dragons of the eastern archipelago were nostalgic memories. It had been a while since he had dreamt something—other than the time Gerard Gain had stabbed him in the back.

Just then, an unpleasant sensation swept across him. He looked around him and found himself in a room with damp and moldy stone walls. There was no one else in the room.

Juan unknowingly reached out for the crazy woman’s hand, only to realize that she was no longer there; that he would never hold her hands again. At that moment, a great sense of loss overwhelmed the boy.

It felt like another large hole had opened up in the same spot where Gerard Gain had stabbed him in the past. The sense of loss and despair rooted itself deep in his heart.

“Urgh!”

Before he knew it, Juan had vomited onto the prison floor. The floor was now soaked with the blood of the demonic beast he had drunk the previous day along, with chunks of some mysterious food. His hands were trembling as he lifted them up; someone seemed to have treated his wounds and bandaged them.

‘Even though I should have died, here I am, alive and kicking, while unrelated people keep dying instead.’ He went into a daze as he realized that strangely enough, he didn’t feel regretful for having survived.

He had never thought of wanting to live longer, nor did he have any plans for the future. But when he had been soaked in the blood of the soldiers as he attacked them, he hadn’t had any thoughts of dying.

Juan suddenly checked his mana heart’s condition. The mana heart was different from a physical heart; it controlled the flow of mana inside his body. When Juan had been the emperor, he had pulled out the heart of Mananen Mcleir, the Mana God, and used it as his mana heart.

Juan still remembered how to utilize the infinite power and strength he used to have, despite having lost it all. He also remembered the method to destroy the mana heart.

If Juan really wished to die, he could do it easily by destroying his mana heart. It was easier to do than making a fist with his hand. An ordinary person would just lose the ability to control mana if their mana heart was destroyed, but that was not the case for Juan. Since his physical body was made up of mana and recovered with mana, the loss of his mana heart would spell death for him. Juan found it strange that he hadn’t thought of this method in the first place.

‘Did I not want to die?’ he asked himself.

Indeed, it was the undeniable truth that Juan hadn’t really wanted to die. He still had a lot of unanswered questions, things he had to do, and people he cherished. He used to be really happy.

But he had chosen to ignore all of that and had chosen death instead; he didn’t want to be revived either. Juan realized that he had been avoiding his future because he was scared of it.

However, something had snapped within him when he had seen the supervisor worshiping the emperor and massacring slaves in the name of the emperor. Juan knew that the world he loved wasn’t perfect and also knew the true reality of human nature, but he had strived to make the world as perfect as possible up until his death. Yet, this place was now committing the very deeds he had once banned, and they claimed everything was in his name. They killed the people he cherished and used that as worship for his name.

Juan felt an emotion rising deep in his heart—a dark and disgusting emotion he had never felt before in his life. He no longer wished to look back on what had happened... He had no idea how to describe this feeling, but he had become aware of it and ended up surviving. The crazy woman and goat-horned man’s bodies were telling him that he still had things he had to do.

“What more do I need to do?” Juan mumbled. He closed his eyes and remembered the sight of his hair scattered in the puddle of blood next to the crazy woman.

Juan had no place to return to.

But at the very least, he now wanted to live on.

Juan struggled to sit up straight. His body screamed from the muscle pain all over. That was to be expected, since he had used mana to forcefully go beyond his body’s physical limits. Fortunately, he didn’t have a lot of mana in the first place, so he recovered his mana pretty quickly.

‘Talter.’

That was the name that Juan immediately thought of. Dark emotions caught hold of Juan and swallowed him. The boy sensed a very faint energy that he hadn’t been able to sense until yesterday as he had been indifferent toward everything. Juan could sense traces of Talter somewhere within the colosseum.

Juan was certain he had beheaded and killed Talter. But gods had lives that were more tenacious than cockroaches. Even with some believers and trivial motives, they could be revived. Of course, it’d take them a long time to regain the power they had during their prime, just like the current Juan.

Juan wore a dreary smile as he came up with the first thing on his bucket list: killing Talter. If Talter had a corpse, Juan would destroy it and grind it into powder. If Talter had a soul lingering around, he would erase it from existence. The manager and his subordinates were practically apostles of Talter, so they needed to be killed as well.

Killing his enemies was Juan’s field of expertise. To be more specific, killing gods was what he was best at.

He felt great now that he had a purpose. Juan took up a comfortable position and shifted the flow of mana headed towards Talter to himself instead. He focused on recovering his mana, but the process was slow. It was like quenching a large, arid desert with drops of water. While concentrating, Juan also reflected on his battle at the colosseum.

‘I acted too emotionally.’ Juan had often acted as he pleased when he was the emperor, but he no longer had the power to do that anymore. Killing the soldiers was still acceptable, but he should have retreated the moment he had to fight the female knight.

He had no qualms about running away since he was used to making tactical decisions from when he had been the emperor. Moreover, the female knight didn’t seem to be one of Daeron’s subordinates, so there had been no reason to fight and kill her.

‘The female knight had pretty good swordsmanship.’ He also remembered her mentioning a ‘Baltic Sword’ or something like that. Juan didn’t recall giving his sword style such a name. He had simply called it ‘Imperial swordsmanship’. But the name Baltic reminded him of a man—Barth Baltic.

‘The Grand General.’

Barth Baltic had been the last survivor of the hornsluine race, who had crown-like horns, and a strong warrior whom Juan could entrust his back to. Barth had sworn allegiance to Juan and vowed to kill gods for the rest of his life when they had slaughtered all of his kind.

Juan had taught his own swordsmanship to Barth, which later became the foundation of the first military that was established in the empire. Although he was the one who had taught Barth, these sword skills had become, in a way, a symbol of Barth Baltic. Hence it was understandable as to why people would name it ‘Baltic Sword’. Since Juan had established the basics of most techniques known to man, he had way too many styles that could be attributed to him, so he was willing to let Barth have this one.

Juan smirked at his own childish thoughts. He had felt that his thoughts had become childish ever since he had been reborn as a child. It was natural for someone to behave the way they were treated by others, after all.

In any case, Juan had made a mistake by not retreating the moment he had clashed with the female knight. Had she not held back, he would have died then and there. No—that wasn’t a guaranteed outcome, since Juan would most likely get revived again.

‘I need to prepare some countermeasures.’

Juan had struggled in the previous battle because he had been forced to fight so suddenly. He hadn’t been able to use magic, summoned beasts, or even use his best techniques. Not to mention that at this moment, all those skills would place a burden on his body. There was not much he could do in a situation where he was restricted so heavily. But Juan did think of one option.

‘Magic seals.’

It was a technique where a magic tattoo was engraved on one’s body in order to reduce both the mana consumption and the time needed to cast complicated magic spells. Depending on the mage, there were instances when one covered their entire body with magic seals. But not only was the process usually complicated and delicate, one could even die if something went wrong. Also, magic seals clashed with other seals if one had too many of them.

‘That doesn’t apply to me though.’

Juan’s body was made of mana itself, so using mana was no different than breathing to him. The problem was deciding on what magic seal to engrave. He didn’t want to have any useless seals, but also couldn’t engrave seals that would consume a lot of mana due to his limited mana reserves. He needed the most useful seal based on his current condition.

After pondering for a while, Juan thought of something. High-rank magic with low mana consumption that most people didn’t use due to its high difficulty—‘Blink.’

It was a useful spell that quickly moved the user to their desired location. However, unlike the spell ‘Teleport’, Blink simply shot the user toward their desired location. Thus, mages that couldn’t control the magic would end up crashing into walls or people at high speed, making it a highly difficult spell. That was why most magicians used Teleport over Blink.

‘But this is very useful for me in my current situation.’

Firstly, it didn’t require much mana. Second, if he could control it well, he would be able to use it to either attack or escape. Juan focused mana onto the back of his hand, causing a painful crimson pattern to emerge as the mana burned his skin. Using mana to burn a seal into the skin was an extremely advanced technique even among high-rank techniques.

Juan smiled bitterly as he engraved the tattoo without making a single sound.

‘I wouldn’t even need a magic seal if this was my old body.’

Juan had been able to easily use even the highest-rank magic as if he were breathing, and he could have easily obliterated the entire colosseum with just a bit of mana.

But that was the past, and this was now. Juan continued to focus on engraving the seal.

Saumya's Thoughts: Sadge... Juan was barely opening his heart up again, and then this happened... the boy gonna end up with depression...