Day 0

“We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.”

― Erich Maria Remarque

I try to gasp, but choke and start coughing. Twin blazing suns bake my face, while the rest of my body is blessedly cool. Agony replaces both sensations almost immediately as blue screens flash before my eyes. Something bites and stings, and I focus my eyes on giant black ants tearing at my flesh, carving tiny pieces and carrying them away.

I jerk my arms, thrash with my legs. I push and pull, but regardless of what I do, I cannot move, buried in hard-packed ground up to my chin.

The ants are merciless. I close my mouth, bite, spit at them, nothing helps. I check BSD, but all I see are squiggles again, and I know the dead man whose body I am possessing was illiterate. There is nothing left for me, save to accept my torment and wait for my doom.

The agony lasts for two hours before my godly body mercifully expires, half-devoured by the still feasting hive.

Instead of respite, smoke chokes me. My eyes sting, and my whole body burns. I try to snap my arm towards me, but my wrist and elbow flash with horrid pain. I glance down, hardly alive as my heart beats so fast I know for sure that the body’s original owner had died of a heart explosion.

I am horrified with what I see. I am atop a flaming pyre, my body nailed to a thick log. Five massive nails secure my arms and torso to the massive piece of wood. There is no way for me to escape and all I can do is wait for the fire to consume me.

I check BSD and find that the previous owner of my body was literate. She was an imperial concubine or something similar based on her skills, and her current class is Sacrifice.

Fire kills me much faster than the ants did, as I pass out and probably choke to death.

The next moment I am in a dark-blue world. I cannot breathe and I can feel myself sinking.

I am drowning. The realization fills me with joy. I could swim up. I move my arm, but find it shackled in iron. Both my arms and my legs are chained. I struggle, twist my body, and I can feel myself moving upwards as the chains grow heavier.

I grit my teeth and fight with all I have, but my lungs are already full of water, and my vision turns dark. A blessedly painless death compared to the previous two.

Life after life, death after death, I meet my end in inhuman torture, coming to terms with how inhuman humans can be, how needlessly cruel we are towards ourselves and towards others. They are all short bursts of violence and pain, lasting no more than several hours, but after thirteen such deaths, they still add up to more than a day in hell which would shake even the sturdiest heart.

Then, I am lying peacefully on my back, my vision a blur. The space I am in is slightly cold, but nothing that would bother me. Other than a mild discomfort, there are no problems. I close my eyes, and focus on my body, trying to find injuries or particularly painful areas.

Nothing.

I use the temporary peace to check BSD, but all I see are random angular glyphs. I check my Anarchist window too, but there have been no changes since the last time I have seen it.

[Anarchist Level 5

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Abilities - Rage, Redo, Blunt, Heavy Handed, Direct, Insightful, Precise, Godly ✦✦, Vengeful ✦, Grandmaster Rider ✦

To level up, help a person wrongfully penalized by the authorities, heedless of the consequences.]

Hours pass, and nothing happens; I nap, recovering from all the trauma I suffered in the past several dozen hours and, once calm enough, I try to make sense of things. What happened? Why did Manuella kill me in our last two weeks together?

Pain, torture, and deaths I have endured helped clear my thoughts to an extent. She was right, of course; Manuella always was. I had fallen into a vicious loop, or possibly an addiction, and I needed someone to liberate me, an external force to push me out of the way of self destruction.

But what do I do now? I am in a place free of danger. My vision is blurry, my limbs neither hurt nor obey my commands, and I have finally comprehended what my body’s previous owner had died of.

Hunger.

To be honest, if my limbs are paralyzed or damaged, and if I am not in pain, the time I have I should spend planning how to survive the next death, maybe contemplating all my mistakes during my time as Aang and how not to repeat them.

A sudden thought strikes me. The violent deaths I suffered were like hell, and now I am in purgatory. I have come to terms that I will keep dying until extraordinary circumstances give rise to a chance which I can grasp thanks to my godly body.

I drift in and out of consciousness as I drift to sleep much more often than normal. The abnormal situation helps me reach several conclusions regarding this body, life, and what I should do with myself.

I am a baby right now. I have infinite potential, but somehow, for some reason, this baby has died, and nobody is around. The climate is warm enough, and all I have to do to survive is cling to my dear life until someone finds me. Maybe they take pity on me, and if they do, I will reward them and take care of them with everything I have.

Second, being a newborn means my possibilities are endless, I will grow and integrate into the world like a native with the advantage of two entire lifetimes in different worlds and different civilizations. One day, I shall be a giant.

Third, I should refrain from using Redo, it seems to cause mental issues. Humans probably are not intended to relive the same events over and over again, and they break down with a large number of loops.

I failed to notice it while suffering from it, but from an outside perspective, the problem becomes incredibly obvious. Reality became less real, my beloved Manuella had become a thing, a requirement to satisfy, and ceased to be my wife and one of the most important people in my life.

I am trapped in my thoughts, napping longer and longer. Redo informs me my naps have grown from four-five hours to ten-twelve, until they reached the one day mark, and Redo is no longer red.

Hunger tortures me, but the pain is gone. The body has given up on warning me of its needs and now it focuses on preserving as much energy as possible.

I have hope. Hope that someone will find me, that I will survive and grow. Then I fall asleep once more, and the next time I wake up, I am not as hungry, and Redo is red once more.

[Redo cooldown - 13d 21h 27m 12s]

Nobody came for me. The thought is heart-wrenching. A life full of potential will never come to be. Depression hits me. How many such lives are discarded? Is there a reason? Do gods hate us or is this an evil of man not divinity? What kind of parent could abandon their child? Are they dead somewhere nearby?

The bout of self-pity chokes me, but passes after two days of waiting to die again.

I start struggling, trying to move, wasting energy, so that I die faster, and determination crushes my despondency. Next time, the next time I reincarnate, I will grasp for straws, I will do everything I can to live, to not disappoint myself or Manuella, who lives in my memories.

Sleep takes me, and I awake broken at the base of a cliff. I move and look up only to see a man with a club studded with obsidian shards staring down at me with surprise. My hand shoots forward to grasp his ankle and knock him down. That is what I wanted, but the broken bones and torn muscles fail to follow my intention.

I squirm and the terrified man slams the club towards my head. At least I explode and take the sadistic bastard down with me.

Next, I swim through water with broken limbs, I claw forward in a desert, assaulted by gigantic bat-like creatures. They rip me to shreds, I no longer know exactly what or who I am, but I fight and I will keep fighting until the end of time. Whoever has done this to me, I will not let them win. I will live, and one day, I will have my revenge!

The End, or is it?