The man stood in a midst of darkness, he tried to think but realized he could not remember his own name, he had plenty of knowledge but no personal info to speak of.

“Hello” he said.

“Anybody there?”

He scratched his butt.

“Yeah, that feels good, does this means i am not dead?”

“You are already dead!” a deep voice said.

“NANI!” said the man, jumping in surprise.

“Do you want to live?” asked a feminine voice.

“Do you want to live?” a third male voice said.

“Am i dead or alive?” the man asked.

“You stand on the edge of infinity! Walking between life and death!” said the first voice.

“Ok?” said the man, this voices obviously had some kind of script to follow, better let them.

A vision of a world appeared in front of him, first a pale blue dot, then a pale blue watermelon, then a gigantic sphere that clouded his vision with sheer size, like any planet does, really.

The planet disappeared and returned to the watermelon size, then it changed in some strange way, the man could not put his finger on it but he could feel the world changing.

“The old age ends and another begins” the feminine voice said.

“The old changes, its destroyed and renewed” said the third voice.

“So it’s the way of the worlds, such it’s the way of the universe” the first voice said.

“But how could we simply accept it?”

“How can we simply step aside” at this point the voices merged.

“Let the wheel move, let the clock run.”

“But we are defiant.”

“We will not let ourselves be lead into the dark.”

“And with our last hour, we throw a wrench into the perfect machine of tomorrow.”

“We make our mark, as the past still shapes the future.”

The world separated into the old and the new one, they looked exactly the same but the man could feel a heavy difference.

“Tell us mortal, do you want to be our champion?”

“Hell yes!” the man said “This gives the feeling of titanomaquia, I’m in.”

The old world stretched an formed a vortex that surrounded the man and merged into him, then he was taken and smashed into the image of the new world, making cracks as he fell on it.

The darkness and the voices vanished after choosing their champion.

*****

Edmond Dantes was betrayed and thrown into the pit of ‘If, one of the entrances to the underground abyss were the old demons were casted aside to wither and die.

His punishment was to have his soul devoured and his body fell into the stillness, forever a testament to his foolishness.

Now, a soul crashed from beyond the heavens and merged with his empty husk.

As soul and body merged ten years went by.

*****

“That was awesome!” Edmond said waking up.

Edmond examined his new memories, some from the body and some received from the gods as a “starting pack” and got a rather clear idea of what happened, there was a conflict between old gods and new gods and the old ones were defeated, now the old gods decided to select a champion to shit on the work of the new gods, as a last fuck you.

Good for him, he had a new life and great potential for power, but he also got a clear understanding of a key factor: his godly (or championy?) powers were incompatible with the world’s power system.

“If i grow too strong the powers to be will realize I’m powered by the old gods and destroy me, this forces me to hide and plot, i guess the old gods were not idiots.”

“And i got the loot from good ‘ol Edmond, display!”

A translucent wheel appeared in front of him, his system interface that gave him access to the power granted by the new gods, or just “the gods.”

The world had a system based on spells that could be stored as cards, then they could be traded, combined or upgraded.

In his vision while he crashed into the world the old gods gave Edmond a comprehensive idea of the plan, the new gods would hand over plenty of cards that could be obtained by performing feats, their versatility and abundance would make all the people abandon the old powers in favor of the card system and eventually all the power would be ordained by the cards, and the cards would be managed by the gods.

But faith is power and the great secret was that people could make their own cards if they really tried, then the main danger would be if people found new ways of making cards because that would make gaps on the order created by the new gods.

His mission was to contaminate the card system before it became completely solid or it would create an order in which the gods could not be challenged again.

A perfect faith-farming machine, such a boring world could not be allowed.

Edmond examined his new body, after ten years in the abyss it had shrunk and transformed, or it would be more precise to say his body had been corrupted by the power of the old gods and demons that were cast into the abyss.

In any case he was now an imp, regular imps were half the size of a man and thin but as he started as a human he was a very tall, very emaciated imp, he was more like a teenager skeleton covered in blue-ish skin and his clothes looked too big.

He fiddled with his pants and belt until he was comfortable.

“Ok, let’s see what can i make with my cheat power.”

The old power lay inside of him like a spring or a tree, and Edmond realized he could nurture it by absorbing other sources of energy.

Before using it he looked around to make sure he was alone, only white withered trees could be seen and the arid terrain had nothing but gray rocks, only a few hills could be distinguished on the distance and above a dark sky loomed over him.

It was not a sky but the world above, and that lone star was actually the entrance from which he was thrown of, he could see in the darkness but the opaque tones made it clear there was no natural light.

“Looks good to me, power!”

A light shone on his hand but after picking up a rock he realized the light was only inside his mind as a way to visualize the power and it could not really illuminate.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

His skin took the texture of the rock.

Assimilation, a cool power.

Edmond realized he felt almost no thirst or hunger, and advanced slowly towards the hills while practicing his new power.

Several days went by and the hills looked to be as far on the horizon as ever.

“They may not even be hills, but really far away round mountains.”

*****

The past, more than ten years ago.

A younger Edmond received a card bracer, a device to be mounted on his arm to facilitate access to the use of cards, this in particular was a duel disk, capable of storing up to seven cards to be activated in rotation or displayed in a fan-like tray to rearrange them on the fly.

He posed in front of a full-body mirror, admiring his newfound coolness.

The door opened and his fiancée Mercedes walked in.

“You look so handsome” she said and hugged him from the back “One day you will become a legend of the kingdom.”

“I will be grateful if i just spend a quiet life with you” Edmond said, but he still deployed and closed the duel extensions.

“Do not sell yourself short, Edmond, a young man must be ambitious.”

*****

The present.

Edmond fiddled with his card disk, the system could be accessed even without a physical device but many perks were lost, to begin with the wheel had to keep the main card card ready for activation, and its magic signature could be seen while it activated. Unlike a device that could keep the magic stored until the spell was completely formed and executed.

“I guess Mercedes wanted to marry a big shot, i can’t blame her since i will totally go after the hottest babes in this second life.”

The other advantage of a physical device was the potentially unlimited number of cards that could be stored, each and every one of them required the user’s mana to work, and his mental energy to direct them so they were limited by the user. But everyone could easily use more than the five slots provided by the system, making the circle a beginner’s tool.

The third benefit was the ease to combine them on the fly, a basic wheel or “hand” could combine cards, but that had to be done outside battle or it would take too much time, and the mana signature would be too obvious for any opponent.

Still, a basic wheel was better than nothing, and plenty of people simply stored the cards on set combinations and deployed them on their hands as they went, because the upper-tier devices that could combine cards efficiently were expensive. And merely having a device plus the wheel meant two possible combinations to draw from.

With the fall of Edmond he only kept the cards he had on his hand as they could not be stolen, it being the only real benefit provided by the wheel.

“Fireball tier 1, Strength tier 1 and Recovery tier 3, a very shabby hand but better than nothing, i guess” said Edmond while checking his wheel.

Then he got a lot of branches and set up a simple magic circle consisting of a triangle inside a square inside a circle, then he used all of his mana and more than twice his weight in wood to produce a pair of basic flame cards tier 1, they could be used to cook, or to enhance other fire spells.

Elemental Tier 1 cards were the easiest to make but anything more complex required specific materials, rituals and sources of energy.

He had nothing to light on fire but better having them than not.

After several more days of walking in the dark Edmond got a better feel of his power, he could assimilate things into his body but they were still stuff inserted on his body, when he tried to combine his hand with rock he found the rock sank into his flesh and cut the flow of blood, forcing him to have the stone just on his skin.

The legends said the upper layers of the abyss were full of demons, and other fallen creatures so he covered most of his body in wood, with small amounts of stone in critical areas as armor.

By fiddling with himself he realized he could also transform his body by shifting matter from one area to another but he had no idea what the capabilities of his body were in the first place so he had to thread carefully, and find other imps to see what he could learn.

He found them not so long after.

A small colony of imps of every color lazed around a fire pit two meters wide, it was the first one Edmond had seen and he assumed he had not seen other creatures because there were no pits around, a faint influx of mana could be felt from it. An incredibly shabby hut of branches stood near... “stood” being more of a polite way of describing how it didn’t fell onto itself because it looked like a bunch of branches gathered together in a cone.

Actually, was it really a micro hut?

It looked more like a reserve of timber.

“I guess those are like volcanic vents, and the imps are like underwater creatures feeding of the nutrients.”

Edmond made sure to stay away as not to be seen and hid behind the white, dry trees, he then realized he was too weird of an imp, the ones around the pit could jump and move around with ease while Edmond still had the physical abilities of a thin human. The imps had oversized heads and Edmond only shared their pointy teeth and pointy ears.

One of the key factors laid in their bulbous forms. They looked as if their arms and legs had balls of flesh that contrasted with their thin limbs.

“I see, they have a small size so they require less strength to move their own bodies, then those big muscles give them explosive power while the bony limbs keep the weight light” said Edward to himself “I bet their tendons are thick like ropes to compensate for the disparity.”

As he was too tall Edmond decided to become smaller and sacrifice size for strength, but even as he shifted the weight around he found the bones to be too heavy and cumbersome to modify.

Even compressing the bones gave him little benefit as now he was way heavier.

After careful consideration Edmond decided to push the excess bones out of his body.

He first grew horns and when they were big like a forearm he detached them, then reattached one to see if he could absorb it back.

He could.

“Horns... i think i can do better.”

He reabsorbed both horns and felt a little tired but kept going, this time he grew two big fangs and detached them.

“There, teeth are stronger than horns.”

Strangely he felt refreshed after shedding them.

“That’s weird, could it be...?”

Edmond cut his shirt and made himself a belt, or a sash to hold his new weapons, then he grew a thick arm bone and experimented, trying to grow a modified jaw on one side of the arm.

He detached the bone as a club and one side had a row of spiky teeth, it could be used both as blunt weapon and piercing weapon.

With the excess bone out Edmond made himself smaller, and found with delight his hunch to be correct.

“A smaller body consumes less energy!”

“I see, i cannot grow too big without ranking up or my own body will drag me down.”

Now that his body had ball-like muscles and bony limbs he could appreciate the benefits of the design, he could not carry much weight but was very agile.

Confident on his new gear he spied on the imps again and waited until one of them got away from the camp.

He waited a lot, really, abyssal creatures eat mostly energy and their need for digestive processes are few so it took several days for one of them to take a piss on the outskirts.

In truth, other imp took a piss before but he did it inside the camp, so he was killed and his soul and body eaten by the others, which grew a little bigger after that.

In any case now there was a lone imp on the outskirts, and Edmond stalked him and gave him a good strike with his club to the back of the head. It died but not before screaming in pain.

The imp’s soul left his body as a ball of ectoplasm, Edmond knew his new body could interact with souls directly and slurped the orb, feeling empowered. He was the lowest of the low so even one soul would make a big difference for him.

The camp got alerted by the death cry and they rushed outside to see if there was a monster stalking them, a bigger imp bossed three imps around and forced them to go and make a few rounds of patrolling on the area. But they found nothing.

Over the next week Edmond ambushed and cut down the imp population by five and used the souls to upgrade his flame cards into fireballs, he then realized his cheat was the opposite one in that place.

“I get it, this assimilation it’s the power of the old gods so the abyss creatures have it in some degree, but the card system comes from the new gods and the abyss monsters don’t have it, meaning the cards are my cheat in the abyss and the assimilation will be my cheat on the surface.”

That meant he could not use his cards that openly in the abyss or it would invite the greed of stronger people, as they say they had to reserve them as... well... trump cards.

Once the pit was down to ten imps Edmond confronted them directly, and charged into the place swinging his club around. Two imps tried to attack him by distracting him with attacks from two sides but they only had their claws so he allowed himself to be lightly mauled in exchange of focusing on one and clubbing him to death, then did the same to the other.

Seeing this the big imp made everyone stand together and charge at him like a pack, just what Edmond expected.

“Fools!”

“You activated my trap card!” he said while raising his hand towards them, a fire glow accumulated for two seconds and shoot.

A fireball exploded and killed two of the eight imps, another fireball killed three more and the remaining three were too burned to put up resistance. Edmond crushed their skulls with ease and eat their souls, he could feel the power stored inside him, enough of it and it could be used to rank up himself or his cards.

Edmond tried the flesh of the imps and found it foul to the extreme, but he recognized the importance of organic matter so he turned off his sense of taste and smell to eat and assimilate until he was a stocky, muscled imp, still as tall as a child.

He had the feeling he could fight for hours in that size but only for twenty minutes if he were to become as tall as a human.

Edward examined the fire pit and found the influx of mana soothing to his body, he almost had the desire to jump inside and sleep, but the pit had no apparent bottom and it was an endless well of fire.

With his newfound soul manipulation moving other energies was not hard, so he replenished his fireball cards and realized the pit had lost a significant chunk of its energy.

Deciding he had to be on the move anyway, Edmond sucked all the pit’s energy and upgraded one fireball card to level 3, moment on which the pit vanished, leaving behind a hole twenty centimeters deep and no signs of the endless hole of before.

He stocked on some meat and was about to continue his journey when he noticed the sad excuse of a hut crashing down, and a painful grunt coming from it.

Carefully, Edward approached the bunch of branches and found a stump of meat inside, something that used to be a person and had his legs and arms bitten off, covered in destroyed rags that used to be priestly clothing.

Zigzagging marks of burning could be seen on his torso, a divine punishment for a fallen priest.

“Hello father” Edmond said “May you give your name to this poor sinner?”

The stump of a man looked at him with hazed eyes and barely whispered.

“Faria.”