Death was a real prick. And unlike all the other ninnies out there, I wasn’t afraid to say it… or at least think it out loud in the safe confines of my thoughts.

For one, it was a cruel, uncaring crisis that no one avoided. Cultivators wasted their lives hungering for power—chasing the illusive dream of immortality. They struggled and fought in vain. The fools could battle to their soul’s content. My fight was finished. Selene’s abyss. I could barely hold my head up.

Tears filled my vision as smoke taunted my face. All around me, towering bloodwood trees burned, releasing scents of distress. As fire rained from their outstretched limbs, it boiled and melted the ground it touched. My vision blurred as trees came to life. The red golems hurled boulders at foreign beings with otherworldly faces and cultivators fighting for their lives.

The haze of war cloaked the field. Light battled dark, ripping the power from the controlling hand. Darkness dispelled, mana poured out, and the Bloodwood Forest was torn apart. As ten lifeless beings walked away, death soaked the barren grounds once lush with life.

In the end, death won. Death was power and devoured all…

But what did I know? I was just casual victim number one in this cruel fight, or was I number two? I still wasn’t sure—even after a hundred cycles. I was the remaining survivor of the callous battle. The first to fall and the last to die. Too weak to be given the mercy of a fast death. Too weak to be noticed as alive. Not even death wanted me.

Dying would be different this time. One hundred-one was my new lucky number.

Unlike my previous deaths, where I struggled and flailed on my bloodwood pike in vain, this time, I was slightly more content with my post. Sure, the excruciating pain was still there; that hadn’t changed. This time, however, I struggled less. My current theory was that being staked was like one of those mysterious quicksand scenarios. The more one struggled, the quicker one sank.

The damned optimist in me swore the pain hurt less than what had become so uncomfortably familiar. So, maybe I was on the right path. I even survived thirty breaths longer. Which was quite a terrible feat.

As I endured this miserable extended life, I noticed Squid’s face reaching for me—a terrible sight to behold. The foreign bipedal octopus wore a turquoise battle robe, shell pauldrons, and an inverted crown helm. His body laid five feet in front of me where he’d fallen in battle.

Never had my grave neighbor moved before. His long, bluish hands gripped into the muddy dirt. As Squids inched himself forward, his arm shook with great intensity. Inch by inch, the strange creature crawled closer. Unlike his strained arms, dragging legs, and broken body, his face tentacles flayed violently toward me.

I’d be running if I wasn’t so staked on my property.

Acting on gut instincts, I swatted his face tentacles away as any normal person would. I wasn’t in the mood for this weird stuff. Despite my natural strength and high dexterity, I swatted unsuccessfully.

Tenacious Tentacle wrapped his unnatural beard around my arms. The man-fish pulled his dead body to my dying self, covered me with the rest of his tentacles, and held me in an all-encompassing embrace. I hated it. I wanted to say I wasn’t screaming. And proudly, I boasted I wasn’t—denying any claims I couldn’t.

As if experiencing life on a pole several times wasn’t enough, my face was now getting sucked or eaten by a human squid. It was teeth-grindingly painful. My mind flashed with bright lights. I gasped for air, only to choke on a mouth full of vile thick liquids.

My limp hands reached for the nightmare that violated my last breaths of life. At first, I tried to pull the tentacles off. Then I threw punches that bounced off the rubbery squid man. When that didn’t work, I clawed my nails into his flesh. Tickling his back would’ve been more effective.

I tried channeling my mana so I could ice-spike my way out of this madness. My plight was hopeless. Not even my deep bag of curses could dislodge the monster.

Light pulsed in rapid flashes, growing brighter each time. I squeezed the squid as scorching pain raced through my body from thrashing on my pike.

Then darkness. A black abyss surrounded me. I no longer felt any pain. In fact, there was almost a peaceful tint in the air. I’d been doing a lot of dying lately. This wasn’t dying. This was different. My body was in an ethereal state of being. I existed and didn’t exist, present by not all there.

What was the squid doing to me? His actions couldn’t be moral.

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“You humans…” A voice cracked the silence, booming in my ear. It was old, hollow, and had a strange accent that was not Helmish. “... are such an inferior species.”

“What?” I asked into the void, with an accidental snap in my tone. I searched the darkness for the source and found only emptiness. I tried to reach out with my mana to catch a hint of energy. My attempt bore no fruit.

“No Flayen ever struggled to grasp the concept of recursion as much as you.”

“What?” The startling, loud voice behind me caused me to repeat myself.

I turned to catch this so-called flayen. I looked up and down, finding nothing. A tingle ran down my back—another false alarm. No matter how fast I turned, I met emptiness, and yet all my senses tinged, warning me of the flayen’s presence. Squids were so gross. Hardly even tasted good, and that was only if you had the right combination of sauces and a strong drink to chase it.

“Inferior and insufferable,” the mysterious calamari said, his voice haunting me once more.

I didn’t like this ghost and fought back the only way I could. “Technically, I’m an orc.”

“That does not matter.” Calamari dodged my verbal riposte.

“It doesn’t.” I countered, cutting away the space he tried to create from the subject. Conversations were always an intense battle. In my earlier years, I fought hard to avoid them. I couldn’t afford to do so now. “Figured you’d want your facts right if you’re gonna profane an entire species.”

Judging by the stupor, my crushing words won me an insignificant victory. I’d take it, and now that I’d claimed the high ground, I could go on the offense. I carefully calculated my question. “What did you do to me?”

“I possessed you… At least, I tried to.” Despite the flayen’s waning pride, his clamored response shook my focus.

“Oh, that’s what we’re calling it? Gross.” I stumbled with my words and tried to recover. “What happened? Tentacles lacked proper grip? Got cold feet? Didn’t like what you see? Was it performance issues…”

Cal clicked his tongue as if he were sighing. My last guess might’ve hit a nerve.

“Where are you, anyway? Why can’t I see you? I need to punch something.”

“I am dead, and so are you. At least you will be. We are in your mindscape—something your inferior orc brain knows nothing about.”

“Listen, slimy sucker...” Not my best retort, sure. I was so far outside my realm of comfort that I had to rely on base impulses. “It sounds like you can only belittle me because my inferior mind allows you to… since you’re dead.”

“You are on the last legs of life yourself.”

“Dying isn’t dead, and I outlived you. Stop your self-aggrandizement, or be gone. As you noticed, I’m busy dying here.”

Based on perception, Tentacles eyed me with a squint. “You are not the quiet, reserved lad you used to be,” he said.

Did Squids know me? How? I guess we were kinda coffin brothers if we discounted the fact that neither of us were in a coffin—as well as only one of us was dead. So maybe half-coffin brothers. Might be a stretch, but it was like what the blood-hungry zealots of Ao were always saying, ‘Dying was uniting.’ Was Squids a believer?

“Well, a hundred lives would change a man.” I wasn’t a believer and bit back with snark. Oh, have I changed—more snark and more vocal. Dying birthed my inner cynic. No longer content with being a side character, a brilliant voice rose to triumph in an era of unreserved criticism—as if it were the dying caterpillar’s one last attempt at life not prone to crawl a—

“Two hundred.” Calamari cuts my revelation short. “It took a hundred deaths before you stopped passing out immediately. And calling it ‘lives’ is generous. You barely breathed on the stake with how much you squirmed.”

The flayen had knowledge of my loops. Had Squids been involved the whole time, and I didn’t notice before? I did last longer in this life than I ever had. Was squids the cause of the loops? There wasn’t enough time to toil with the implications. I had my honor to defend.

“I was merely trying to break free of my cocoon.”

“What?” Squids asked. “No, do not answer that. We are running out of time, and I have yet to make my offer.”

“What offer?”

“To live.”

“I refuse.”

“Too late.”

Ao’s bloody pits. “That doesn’t count as an offer.”

“I have already given you full authority over this recursion. I am sending you what memories that I can. Sir Kainoa—”

Squids didn’t just know about my loops. Somehow, he knew who I was. Hearing my former name was almost the oddest part of this cycle. I buried that name five years ago in the same pit of betrayal where my old squad died. The name Kainoa died with them and I hadn’t heard it since. It was a different life, a different time. Memories forgotten threatened to resurface and haunt the peace I’d fought to establish.

I pushed the past away, returning to the battle with my new tormenter.

“—I am giving you an incredible opportunity. Do not squander it. Please, be nice to my people. They are coming, and you will need their help.” Cryptic Cal lands his final blow, layering it with mystery and subterfuge.

Before I found ground to respond, the uncomfortable sensation vanished from my mind. Not even a goodbye or anything. All Tenty left me was a painful headache and blurry vision. Comforting. Familiar. Selene’s sweet abyss… I was finally dying.

Life was back to normal.

Silly me. Everyone knew prime numbers couldn’t be lucky. One hundred-two—now that was a lucky number—sexy, even. Or was it two hundred-two? That felt pretty lucky as well. Life faded. I breathed my last breath.

“Hello, death.” I welcomed the prickly end to all things and clenched my body to prepare for another terrible life.