CHAPTER 1: One Last Chance

ONE LAST CHANCE

Your species has fallen to the invading races. As the last free native left, a protection has been placed on you for one year to prevent hostility against you. You may travel the remains of your world or travel through the invader’s portals to find a new home. However, the [System] finds the loss of an entire race to be a tragedy to the universe. It is willing to use the last of the power it gave to your world to send your memories back to when this conflict first began. This will allow you one last chance to save your species and your world. Use your memories to build upon that beginning to rise up and prevent this loss.

Should you choose to return to your past, you will be able to use all your memories and knowledge to better influence the world. We wish you good luck!

Return your memories to the past?

[ Yes / No ]

Adam looked at the message floating in his sight. The message wasn’t actually displayed in his eyes, blocking his view. It was his mind giving him the information while still allowing him to see through it, to see the corpse of the last human other than him, who had died moments before.

A laugh broke out of Adam’s mouth. It was a quiet cackle, meant to show his disdain. Did the laugh sound a little insane? Maybe, but since there was no longer anyone around to hear it there would be no judgement. No one to decide whether anything he did was right or wrong. Morality was decided by those still alive, and that amounted to only Adam. There was no one left to think ill of him for killing the man at his feet, triggering the message. That thought tickled Adam, but would lead nowhere, so he focused back on the message.

The [System] told him that he would have a last chance. A last chance to save humanity. Of course that was laughable. It sounded way more insane than his laugh. One last ditch final chance to use all the knowledge he’s gathered while running, hiding, fighting, surviving, and leveling. The [System] was rooting for him to prevent his tragedy, huh? One LAST chance. A laughable last chance that he had been given 68 times. A last chance that he would continue to be given again and again after humanity gets wiped out through his next play throughs.

For 68 times Adam had watched humanity get killed, wiped out, and enslaved. He had watched friends, family, loved ones, and enemies all get annihilated while he was the last one standing. What did that even do to a person? Adam knew the answer. It did both a tremendous amount and not much at all. Life after life he had lived within the [System] and the invasions, yet every time he was the last man standing. Did this make him better than everyone else? Adam had to answer that question as Yes.

In the original life he hadn’t been very motivated, so he went for a survival build, starting as a [Protector], then a [Knight], [Defender], and so on until reaching the [World Aegis]. Yet it was impossible for one person to protect the whole world. That life had allowed him to survive even as his last few companions fell. When he received the message, he immediately accepted it and went back.

His second life had been lived with more fury and determination, vividly remembering all the pain and loss from the original play through. Instead of going defensive with his class he had chosen attack magic, getting to the point where he could destroy invasions almost single handedly. In the end, though, there were just too many invaders and his tremendous power didn’t allow him to protect others either.

The third life went by with depression and self-loathing. He didn’t even remember what power and skills he had focused on, and all he saw when he looked at people were their corpses from the two previous lives. Yet he knew enough about all the different invasions, races, and locations because of his first two lives, that he had somehow gotten through the third. It had even been more of a struggle than the first two attempts due to his mental state, but the knowledge allowed him, and only him, to survive.

In the fourth he used his knowledge to empower others, at the cost of focusing on his personal strength, but that worked out even worse. As soon as a companion felt they were stronger than him, they would abandon the group and end up killed, alone, or surrounded by weaklings that never pushed them to greater heights. He was never able to convince people to follow his 17-year-old self. His knowledge couldn’t be spread to those in power until it was too late. There was no way to get them to believe him or to deviate from their losing strategies.

Adam’s various lives went on like that. Different classes and builds were used in each play through. Different strategies and contacts were attempted without significant change to the outcomes.

Then he tried simply exploring and gaining as much knowledge as possible, knowing that at the end he’d have another chance. By his seventh life he knew everything of relevance that would happen, even if each play through occurred differently, and every location on earth. Adam would always be the last standing unless he purposely chose to die. By then it was too easy for him to survive. Getting everyone else to survive was the struggle.

From there, Adam began focusing on stealth. Becoming as unnoticeable as possible so that he could slip through invader portals and do research on their worlds. Earth held no answers. Reading the histories of different races and researching their classes and skills under the [System] taught him so much more than any other human could learn. Unfortunately, it also taught him the truth of the [System] related invasions. It was impossible for humanity to win.

The reason planets got the [System] before the invasions was the same reason human fed livestock. To fatten them up before being consumed. The different races in the universe would allow weaker races to start the invasions so that the natives could grow stronger and gain levels, allowing their soldiers to grow even more when they finally arrived and battled them.

The whole scenario was simply training for the stronger races. Adam hadn’t figure out what the [System] was after or why it facilitated this massacre, but the benefits for the invaders was clear. They got stronger. Battles were fought without damaging their own land or killing those who matter, while allowing many of their troops to grow stronger. Then the strongest race would own the planet, all it’s land and resources.

Given all this, it was IMPOSSIBLE for the natives to win. Impossible. Adam had felt so dumb when he realized that around his tenth life. This was all impossible.

Why was it impossible for humanity to win even if it had the same [System] as the invaders? Even if the [System] would limit the strength of the invaders in the beginning so humanity had a chance to fight back?

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Adam wanted to facepalm when thinking back to his realization of 58 lives ago. It was too obvious. These races had been using the [System] for hundreds or thousands of years. They had mapped out all the prerequisites for strong classes. They had ensured their armies had the proper balance and the elites had the strongest classes. They had optimized leveling so they knew when to evolve classes to get the best skills and growth.

Humans were just winging it and overconfident that they could overcome the odds. Too many Saturday morning cartoons and superhero movies. That a few strong could beat armies trained to take them out proved outlandish. Earth’s outdated and ignorant tactics were no longer relevant after the [System] arrived, no matter how hard humanity held on to them.

After that realization, Adam had focused on researching classes. By then he accepted humanity’s loss and felt no emotions towards it. It had become his reality for decades. He went through life after life just to learn as much as he could. Portal after portal and world after world to gain their knowledge. At some point it stopped being about saving anyone, or even the pride of victory, and just became a puzzle that Adam was determined to solve.

Adam sighed, pulling himself from his thoughts and looking out over the jungle below the cliff he stood on. It had been a beautiful sight a few months ago. Lush green filled with life. Now collapsed areas of jungle and scorch marks could be seen from his vantage. Gregor, the corpse at his feet, had caused that destruction. His class had been strong and had even worried the invaders, so they had left him alone until they were ready. The class had also been taught to Gregor by Adam. Nurturing him until Gregor reached the point Adam wanted. Once Gregor reached it, Adam knew it was time for his plans, lifetimes spent preparing.

When Adam had realized the futility of the fight, he had looked through the records of other worlds to find the strongest classes, to see if there was any class that could turn the tides. There wasn’t much hope to Adam since any class that powerful would already be in use by the other races.

After many lifetimes of research, he found an anomaly in the history of the strongest group of invaders, the Scyrric. Once during a planetary invasion, they had encountered a native with a class so strong it forced them to leave the world. They had sent numerous armies and their strongest elites, yet everyone fell before that person. Those that remained cut their losses and left. This person had a class called [Untouchable Juggernaut]. No one had heard of that class before that time, and the destruction it caused was prolific.

After that, the Scyrric that survived tried to find the path to the [Untouchable Juggernaut] class. Their experiments figured out that it was in the line of Berserker classes. Phenomenal strength, toughness, and regeneration was contained within. Unfortunately, they also figured out why it was called untouchable.

With berserker classes rage is used to strengthen the body and attacks. Skill doesn’t matter if the attacker’s power is that much higher. As the rage becomes larger and the berserker classes evolve, the person’s reason, intelligence, and memories get consumed. With the [Untouchable Juggernaut] class, there was no self remaining in the person. Everything was rage. The “untouchable” part of it wasn’t only to enemies either. The Scyrric ended the experiment after the juggernaut they created had killed every living thing on the planet, and then smashed away at the landscape as mountains fell and oceans drained through continental cracks caused to the planet’s surface. That was how much power the class had. It had been estimated to be five times more powerful than the Tier 5 evolution it was listed as. Even Tier 6 evolutions, the highest rank achieved, fell to it. The Scyrric destroyed the remains of that planet hoping to do away with the very weapon they had created.

Now Adam knew the path to an [Untouchable Juggernaut] and had manipulated Gregor into taking it. Gregor hadn’t reached quite that high, only that of the Tier 4 [Grand Blood Berserker], one step removed from the [Untouchable Juggernaut]. He also wasn’t going to advance anymore since Gregor had lost most of his ego and didn’t have the intelligence left to even select a new class evolution. That was fine for Adam though, because Gregor had advanced enough for his plans.

Adam moved closer to the body of Gregor so that he could touch his head. Then he brought up his own status screen.

Name: Adam Clemens

Age: 29

Race: Human

Class: Soul Forger [250] Epic / Tier 5

Strength: 447

Agility: 423

Vitality: 644

Intelligence: 1858

Wisdom: 1299

Core Skills:

Soul Shatter

Soul Combine

Soul Shaping

Memory Manipulation

Soul Resonance

Mental Fortitude

Sensory Control

Soul Vision

Emotional Manipulation

Skills:

Curse of Darkness

Curse of Light

Environment Control

Lesser Illusions

Danger Check

Soul Bolt

Spirit Infusion

Comforting Wave

Soothe

Charm

…

Just like Gregor’s class, Adam had a class he had gotten from the invaders’ knowledge. It had the skills that were going to allow him to move forward with his plan. The Tier 3 class [Soul Explorer] had come from an unusual place. One of the races of invaders had been Vampires.

When Adam had first sneaked onto their world, he thought he would find classes that controlled blood. However, their real power came from manipulating their own souls, not directly manipulating blood. Instead, they would blend and anchor their souls into their own blood. That meant that who they were couldn’t be fully destroyed without destroying most of their blood. When they drank the blood of others, they were actually increasing the size of their own souls, providing more substance to form their own souls.

From there, Adam learned how to manipulate the soul and evolved the class to allow him to try what he wanted. His ambitious plan was very different than anything else he tried in the many lifetimes. No amount of memory reincarnation was going to save humanity. No amount of knowledge would provide humans the time to get strong enough to face the last few races of invaders. It was all a doomed path. What Adam was going to do now might fail spectacularly. Unfortunately, his own soul and memories wouldn’t be there to know if it works or not. This Last Chance really would be this version of Adam’s final one.

Once Adam had learned about souls, what was in them and how they could be shaped, he realized that it wasn’t just memories that went to his past self, but the segment of his soul where the memories reside. The soul fragment with memories would combine with the 17-year-old Adam’s soul, amalgamating the memories into a single soul.

Unfortunately, souls could only grow so large. They could only hold so much information. Memories, personality, class, skills…the more you had, the more soul space they took up. This Adam had run out of soul space long ago. New lifetimes of memories overwrote past ones that mattered less. Adam knew he couldn’t keep going without losing more and more of himself, the valuable memories he had built up over 68 lives. He had decided to reset.

Looking down at Gregor’s body, freshly killed, soul still contained thanks to Adam’s skills, Adam touched Gregor’s head with his right hand. This would be his final One Last Chance.

Adam held his left pointer finger above the [Yes] option on the message, preparing for what was going to happen. He had decided on power over knowledge.

His mana fed into the skill [Soul Combine] and reached for a part of Gregor’s soul. A connection was made, and he surrounded the part he wanted with his skill. This was a huge gamble.

Adam triggered [Soul Shaping] on himself, rearranging his own soul, moving parts out of the places that they were supposed to stay in. Who he was, what he knew, and the powers he had grown swirled into the wrong places within his own soul. A single word was also etched into his soul, a message for his future past self. Conquer! He had decided to risk everything on this chance of victory.

Finally, with the last of his coherent thoughts as the rest moved and blurred, Adam targeted his own soul and cast [Soul Shatter]. The targeted force of it blasted apart his memories and sense of self. To make space for the part of Gregor’s soul he was combining with, everything that he was and had been, all his experiences and knowledge, all his past and future were destroyed. After surviving worldwide alien invasions 68 times, he would now die to himself.

While part of Gregor’s soul combined with his own, taking the place of his memories, he was left with no ego to control his soul or body. Adam’s body slowly lost its position. The body was still alive, but just a blank doll, without identity or thought. Slowly the body lowered to the ground, with its left pointer finger passing through the [Yes] before falling all the way and becoming still. Adam left it to his younger self to figure out the rest of the plan.