[ Reincarnation cycle starting ]
I felt a presence all around me. I didn’t know what it was or how it was talking because I was sure there was no air around me. I wondered how I was breathing. Was I even breathing? The presence was all-encompassing and wasn’t talking to me directly, but I somehow could feel its words, as if they were being transmitted directly to my mind.
[ Energy conversion starting ]
I then felt something entering me. I didn’t know what it was, but when I started to feel parts of me vanishing, I knew it wasn’t anything good. I tried to move my arms to throw it away, but I couldn’t feel them. Did I even have arms?... What were arms? I felt another part of me vanishing.
No. I didn’t want to end like this. I still had so much to do. I was going to enter a big tech corporation and climb its ladder to the top. I couldn’t just let this weird thing just erase me, not without a fight. I didn’t know how to fight, but it didn’t matter. I was trying everything I could to push the thing away from me.
The thing was thrown off and was stunned for a moment. I then knew I could stop it. I doubled my efforts to push it away.
[ Soul resistance detected. Increasing conversion rate ]
Whatever it was, it increased in strength and started to take parts of me. I could feel memories turning to dust as it bit its metaphorical teeth into me. No, I couldn’t let it continue. I formed fists using only my will and started to punch the thing, and it was pushed back a little before trying to bite me again. I pushed myself away from it at the same time I punched its metaphorical mouth.
I knew that whatever I was doing wasn’t happening as I was describing, but it was what I could understand from the situation. The place felt like a liminal space where the metaphysical was just as physical as a brick wall. I made a pair of brass knuckles using only my will before shattering the teeth of the amorphous mass of energy with mouths that was trying to eat me.
[ Soul resistance detected. Increasing conversion rate ]
The thing grew in size and power, then came at me again. I was starting to understand how to shape my will, so I created a shield that blocked the creature’s advance. I pushed it back and converted my shield to a gun and tried to shoot it, but no actual bullets came out of it. It seemed I couldn’t shoot my will, only wield it as a melee weapon.
This distraction cost me a few years of my childhood, but I was already on top of it with a will hammer. I smashed the creature backward and then followed up with an overhead swing, smashing the creature to the nonexistent floor.
[ Soul resistance detected. Increasing conversion rate ]
I felt more creatures seep into me, gnawing at my memories. My classmates crumbled into dust, followed by the walls of my high school collapsing into nothingness. Desperately, I pulled whatever I could away from their grasp and created a shield of my will, but I couldn’t split it enough to fend off the swarm. Each time I blocked one, another lunged through the gap and tore away another piece of me. My first girlfriend was erased, together with my first crush. Both were gone like they had never existed.
I needed to change tactics. I couldn’t hold off these many creatures. I would eventually lose if things stayed the same. I pulled everything that was left of me and wrapped it around my own will, forming a barrier. If I couldn’t fight them off, then I would at least defend myself.
The creatures jumped at me, biting and trying to tear off the barrier I had created of my own will. But I held. Every bit of will that was shaved off only increased my motivation to keep myself whole, which in turn increased the strength of my own will.
[ Soul resistance detected. Increasing conversion rate ]
They grew in numbers and strength. But I held. Every hit I took was a test of my will. I couldn’t falter, not here. I didn’t really have a lot to live for. The only thing I had going on for me was my friendship with Vinicius. I worked a dead-end job, didn’t have the time or the energy to date anyone. My life was basically wake up, go to work, get home, eat, sleep, repeat, with the only exceptions being my off days, like Vinicius’s graduation party.
But still, it doesn’t mean I didn’t want to live. I wanted to go out, make friends, date someone. I wasn’t ready to abandon life. Even if it meant I had to crawl out of hell, I would not give up. I would survive this, and after it ended, I would tell Rogério what I really thought about him. I didn’t care about that job anymore. I would do whatever the hell I wanted, and no one was going to stop me.
[ Soul resistance detected. Increasing conversion rate ]
They grew even more; they were now completely around me, trying tirelessly to erase me. But as long as I held my will firm, they would not break me. I refused.
[ Soul resistance detected. Increasing conversion rate ]
They started to pressure me more, but I still held. I still refused.
[ Soul resistance detected. Increasing conversion rate ]
[ Soul resistance detected. Increasing conversion rate ]
[ Soul resistance detected. Increasing conversion rate ]
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
[ Soul resistance detected. Increasing conversion rate ]
[ Soul resistance detected. Increasing conversion rate ]
[ Soul resistance detected. Increasing conversion rate ]
…
..
.
I held. That was everything I knew. I held myself from being swallowed by an angry sea that was constantly trying to devour me. I had lost track of how long I had been here. The only thing I knew was that I needed to keep my own will, and keeping it I did. The pressure on me was like trying to hold up the sun, but I still held. There wasn’t anything else that could protect me but myself. I would keep holding.
[ Soul resistance detected. Increasing conversion rate ]
[ Soul resistance detected. Increasing conversion rate ]
[ Soul resistance detected. Increasing conversion rate ]
[ Soul resistance detected. Increasing conversion rate ]
[ Soul resistance detected. Increasing conversion rate ]
…
..
.
Eventually, something changed. I didn’t know what, but after so much time and so much pressure, I had changed on a fundamental level. I didn’t know how or what happened to me, but the pressure suddenly vanished like it was never there. Even so, I kept my own will, now feeling like a hard shell around my core.
[ Soul crystallization detected. Stopping normal reincarnation cycle ]
[ Sending requests to nearby supreme entities before proceeding to alternative reincarnation cycle…]
[ Request accepted. Sending soul crystal ]
I felt like something had grabbed me, and now I was traversing through the nothingness with incredible speed. I eventually was dropped somewhere. It was a different space from the nothingness before, it was a weird sensation, being nowhere at all to being somewhere.
Suddenly, another presence appeared next to me. It was different from the one before, but no less powerful.
I felt another thing trying to enter me. Initially, I resisted, but as my own crystallized will blocked the energy, the energy transmitted its intentions. They weren’t like the thing from before, trying to erase me, no. This energy was another thing entirely; instead of trying to erase me, it was trying to change me. I didn’t understand what it meant at first, but the energy transmitted its intentions to help me.
After a long time… time, another thing that I was experiencing again after being in a place where time simply didn’t exist. I eventually relented and felt the energy easily passing through my will shell. It passed so easily that I knew if it tried to force me like the creatures from before did, I wouldn’t be able to resist, but it still waited for my permission to enter.
I felt warmth spread through my entire being, and then everything faded as my consciousness went to sleep.
I woke up an untold amount of time later. My memories of what had happened were fuzzy at best. I felt different, but I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly had happened.
I blinked and rubbed my eyes… I stopped, then looked at my own hands. Why was I feeling like they didn’t exist before I woke up? They were part of my body, of course they existed. I looked at myself. I was completely naked, but my body was there, on my bed, in my house.
“What happened?” I asked, trying to remember anything, but the only thing I could remember was that I had gone to my best friend's graduation party and… “Did I really get blackout drunk? I can’t believe it.”
I got up and stretched, the act feeling a little strange to me, almost as if there weren't any muscles to stretch beneath my skin.
“Weird,” I said.
I looked around, then started to feel that something was amiss. I furrowed my brows and started looking around, but everything felt almost exactly as it was supposed to be–no, it was definitely different. The furniture, my personal objects, they felt hollow somehow. As if they were just a painting of an actual object and not the real thing.
I went mindlessly to the window next to my bed, but paused…
“Where are the windows?” I asked out loud.
My room had three windows total, but now there were none. It was just walls all around. Feeling an unnerving feeling, I left the bedroom for the small corridor that had a bathroom, the living room, and the door to the laundry area.
I opened the door to the bathroom, but there were no windows here as well, and everything felt just as hollow. Closing the door, I moved to the laundry door, but I paused before opening it. The door was different. It looked like a laboratory door and not the door to my laundry area.
I quickly moved to the living room. The space was exactly how I remembered, minus the windows, and yet everything felt hollow. I grabbed the TV remote from the table, turned to the TV, which was hung on the wall, and tried to press the on button, but it didn’t budge. I tried pressing any other buttons, but not a single one moved, they felt like a 3D printed remote painted to look like a real remote.
I dropped the remote and ran towards the front door, opening it and taking a single second to see that I was on what looked like an abandoned building with half-finished walls and the floor and ceiling laid bare. After a moment of confusion, I tried to run outside. Tried being the keyword as the moment I passed through the door threshold, I felt myself being jerked backwards and watched in horror as I saw my own body keep moving forwards as it fell and broke apart, turning into tiny rainbow particles.
My eyes jerked open, and I jumped out of bed. I looked around, but everything felt normal.
“Was it just a nightmare?” I asked myself, but the moment my eyes moved to the windows, or lack thereof, I knew it was reality.
I ran back to the front door, but before I reached it, I saw a weird, colorless gas entering through the door, covering the whole door, and starting to spread through the house. I backed away from it. For all I knew, it could be poisonous, and I would die if I breathed it.
As it approached me, I backed towards my own room, but the moment it passed in front of the door to my laundry room, it was as if it was sucked towards it, vanishing through the door. A few seconds later, I started feeling like I had just eaten a big meal.
Before I could do anything else, as I found the sensation strange, I felt suddenly full but still stuffing my face full of food. I felt nauseous and wanted to throw up, but was unable to do so. This was poisonous gas, I was sure of it. I needed to close the door to stop more from entering, but doing so meant I needed to go through it.
Covering my nose and holding my breath, I bolted towards the door, almost falling over because of the nausea I was feeling. I eventually managed to get to the door and slammed it shut before turning and going back to my room, where I closed the door before finally breathing again, not feeling strange whatsoever that I had stayed so long without breathing and not feeling my lungs burning.
Unfortunately, the nausea only kept getting worse and worse. I fell to the ground, unable to stand. I thought I was going to die here, poisoned by the mysterious gas, but then the nausea stopped getting worse. I was still so full that I was nauseous, but it stopped getting worse and instead started to lessen.
“Wha…What is happening?” I said to myself as I tried to get up from the floor, but was unable to.
Dragon Keeper: And the Eternal Quest for Rent Money
by Wyatt_Wriots
Stuck out of place.
Stuck out of time.
You really f’d yourself now, Ike.
Alone.
Forgotten.
Dragons-eye. Just beneath its silver surface, an ancient being slept—now awakened by a portal leading to another world.
? What to Expect ?
- [+] Weak → Strong → VERY STRONG!
- [+] Portal-hopping to different worlds.
- [+] Powers, powers, and more powers.
- [+] A S*** talking Dragon.