Chapter 7 — Would a Super Talented, Super Hot Guy Still Be Happy after Reincarnating?
The man who later came to be known as Darian had reached the end after living a full life. Born to a wealthy family, he had been raised wanting for nothing. But rather than let his good fortunes go to his head, he’d studied hard and ended up becoming one of the wealthiest men on the planet. There was no dark underside to his business, and he even took on great philanthropic projects that had significant global impacts. He married the woman he passionately loved, was blessed with a family that loved him just as much, and when his time finally came, countless people mourned his passing.
His life had truly been full of happiness. He couldn’t say that he had no regrets at all, but he had expended every bit of effort on accomplishing the things he wanted to do. With his wealth, good looks, fame, and power, it was easy to accept that any goal he failed to achieve could not have been accomplished by anyone. His life had almost seemed too good to be true.
“Yay! I’m Malna, from Malnarilna!”
So when he found himself conscious after death, and a young girl energetically jumped out to meet him, it wasn’t hard for him to accept his situation. He was a phenomenally lucky man. Such bizarre and unexpected things happening in his favor were par for the course.
“And who are you?”
“I’m God!”
“Oh, really? I’m familiar with a number of religions, but I’ve never heard of one with such a cute young girl for their god.”
“I’m not any of the gods you know. Do you realize you’re dead?”
“I do. I’m a little surprised, though. I didn’t think there’d be any life after death.”
“Technically, there isn’t. Consciousness and memories—actually, we normally just call it the soul—rarely survive after death!”
He wasn’t at all surprised to hear that he was one of the few exceptions. He was well aware of just how special he was.
“What is your business with me?”
“I’m going to reincarnate you as my pawn! I’ll give you a new body, some fancy new powers, all sorts of stuff like that!”
He chuckled. “I suppose I don’t have the right to refuse?”
“’Course not! I’m a god, you know?”
“What is it you would like me to do?”
“Live however you want! We’re bored. We just want to watch.”
“‘We’?”
“I’ve got a partner who’s looking to reincarnate the worst guy she can possibly find, figuring that even if such a guy gets another chance, he’ll still end up being awful.”
“I see. So what was the idea behind picking me?”
“Would a super talented, super hot guy still lead a happy second life?”
“Ah, like the prince and the pauper?”
“Who knows? You might end up being born really poor! You’ll have to wait and see what happens!”
The girl abruptly disappeared, and the man was reincarnated.
Darian was born the second prince of the Kingdom of Manii. If that was a result of random chance, it seemed his lucky streak had carried over to this new world. Everything was smooth sailing for him. Even without extra powers, his life was easy as anyone could imagine.
With the knowledge and experience from his past life, being born into a royal family gave him all the resources he needed to ride along effortlessly. Even being in such a different environment changed little for him. If he did his best slowly but surely, he would always get the best results. If anything, he was a bit disappointed. Even after dying and being reborn, life just wasn’t that difficult for him. So what could he do to make things more interesting?
He decided to save humanity.
Someday, he might become the ruler of Manii. It could likely be accomplished with minimal effort on his part, but that would be boring, nothing more than a future of tedium. He wanted to do something challenging, something that no one else had done. Something that no one thought could be done.
Humanity in this world was a truly fragile thing. From the ancient armies of the Demon Lords to the intrusions of foreign gods, the attacks of the Aggressors, and the reign of those known as Sages, terrifying threats snapped at them from all sides. So he would eliminate them all and create a world where humanity was united. He thought that sounded interesting.
To that end, he would need to push the powers he possessed to the absolute limit. The god had given him two abilities. One was the chance to try again any time he died. Once dead, he could go back as many as ten days into the past. He could choose the exact time and date to return to. While it was an enormously powerful ability, it still meant feeling the sting of death. It was only really useful as an emergency escape.
The other power was the ability to manipulate the Gift. This new world of his possessed a system called Battle Song, through which magic and special skills could be made into reality. He had been given the class of System Engineer, an irregular class that would never appear naturally.
However, even though a System Engineer held the greatest potential the Gift could offer, it was still only potential. Manipulating the system directly required very involved procedures and complex instructions. It would be beyond the comprehension of most people and a wasted talent.
But Darian was a genius. Through persistent effort and studying, he gradually learned how to wield the power to its utmost limits.
When Darian was twelve years old, he entered a school for the children of nobles and royalty.
“Hey, I’m Rilna from Malnarilna!”
Time suddenly froze, and a young girl appeared out of nowhere.
“Are you a friend of the god I met before?”
“That’s right! She’s Malna and I’m Rilna!”
“How can I help you?”
“I have a request. There’s a kid at this school named Jolt. He’s hilariously full of himself, so he’ll probably try to pick a fight with you, but could you let him live?”
That must have been the “absolute worst person” Malna had previously told him about.
“I thought you were just going to watch whatever happened?”
“I mean, yeah, but him dying here would be super boring, you know?”
“Okay. I just need to go easy on him, right?”
“Great! As a thank-you, I’ll give you this time control power I’m using now.”
With that, Rilna disappeared and time began to move again.
A few days after the entrance ceremony, just as the god had predicted, an older student named Jolt called him out. The older boy made it sound like he wanted a friendly competition, so other students had packed themselves into the training room to watch.
Jolt’s strength was rather lackluster. Darian couldn’t possibly have lost, but if he hadn’t been warned beforehand, he might have killed him by accident. Instead, he was able to crush Jolt and take him on as one of his subordinates.
The incident instilled in him an interest in other reincarnated people. Many of them had special forms of the Gift. Analyzing them would help Darian’s own abilities to grow stronger and might give him clues about how to manipulate the system.
Once he began searching, those who had been reincarnated or summoned to this world were fairly easy to find. Though they often tried to hide it, most of them were so proud that they couldn’t disguise their abilities and were exposed rather quickly.
Darian decided to recruit them. If left alone, they were liable to start some sort of disaster sooner or later. Having them all in one place so that he could manage them would make it easier to keep them in line and would also be convenient for the purposes of studying them.
At some point, the group he had pulled together became known as the Invincible Battalion. Naturally, they drew the attention of the Sages, but thanks to being a member of the royal family, Darian was spared from having to join their ranks. If the option had existed, becoming a Sage would have been quite advantageous to him. But a Sage had the crippling limitation of being unable to kill other Sages. For Darian, who planned to one day wipe them out, that was a problem. And even if he had become a Sage, it wouldn’t have allowed him to exceed the limitations of the system.
Darian had discovered that there were those who considered the Gift to be nothing at all. The Sages, who were supposed to have the ultimate form of the Gift, were outmatched by those known as the Aggressors. How would he be able to defeat them?
It wasn’t long before he began searching for a path to godhood.
After graduation, Darian expanded his area of operation. He began traveling around the Kingdom of Manii. The royal family’s strength came from using their power to protect the people, who in turn did everything they could to support them, so the second prince touring the countryside wasn’t anything special. He would travel around, gathering those who had been reincarnated, inspecting the seals, and defeating the demons that invaded their lands.
All of this was, of course, for the sake of increasing his own strength. In order to save humanity, he would first need absolute power in combat. Darian’s actions towards that goal were seen by the world as him trying to help the people, a notion he felt no need to disabuse them of. And while his ultimate objective was to acquire power for himself, he refused to overlook the suffering of his people. If he was to do something as grand as saving all of humanity, he needed to start by saving those struggling in his own kingdom. That was an obvious conclusion.
Beyond that, having a good reputation made it easier for him to gather information. Even word of seemingly trivial incidents and rumors made their way to him eventually.
In one town, he began to hear repeated reports of half-demons being stolen.
“Half-demons? What’s the point of stealing something that’s so hard to use?”
“Apparently they go for quite a price on the magic market,” Jolt explained.
Half-demons were rare and quite useful. For those who knew how to make use of them, they were a valuable commodity.
“But if they were common burglars, surely they wouldn’t target half-demons. After all, they haven’t been stealing any other valuables.”
Curious, Darian investigated the incident, at which point he made an unexpected discovery: the culprits were half-demons themselves. The number of their kind in the wild was exceedingly small. Even if individually strong, they shouldn’t have had the strength to assault a human city and liberate their comrades so easily. It was widely accepted that once captured, no one would come to save them.
But there had been no violence so far either. Half-demons served in a variety of roles, from servants to prisoners, ranging from being physically restrained to magically locked away. In every case, the creatures in question had simply disappeared without anyone realizing it until later.
Looking into the case further, Darian discovered that there was a vampire among the rogue half-demons. A vampire could charm the owners, manipulating them into setting their property free.
Darian moved out to retrieve the stolen goods. He would take back that which had been unjustly seized. That was a given, but he had also taken a considerable interest in the alleged vampire. Although “Vampire” was a class within the Battle Song system, it was said that such beings had existed in this world well before the arrival of the Sages, so he felt there was some value in studying one.
“This is your doing, is it?” Darian asked calmly, glancing back at his panicking soldiers.
The boy standing before them was disguising his abilities, but behind that disguise he had no Gift at all. In short, if he was responsible for the deaths of Darian’s people, he was using a power entirely unrelated to Battle Song.
“That’s right. If you understand, please leave.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not? You can’t take the half-demons back, so you might as well give up.”
“I wouldn’t have thought that it needed explaining, but do you know what half-demons are used for?”
The boy thought for a moment. “Barriers?”
He didn’t seem to know precisely what purpose they served, but he’d clearly had some exposure to the idea.
“Yes. That makes this a lot easier to explain. There are numerous threats to the people of this world. Keeping them at bay requires a barrier, and half-demons are needed for those.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like the idea of treating people as numbers, but if you could sacrifice a hundred to save a million, don’t you think that’s worth it? That’s what being part of a greater whole is all about, isn’t it?”
“I understand what you’re trying to say, but why should I care?”
“Takatou!” the girl beside him interjected. “Can you try to be a bit more tactful?!”
His companion seemed to have far more reasonable sensibilities.
“Do you really understand?” Darian asked. “By saving this small number of half-demons, you’re causing the deaths of countless innocents.”
“You’re strong, aren’t you? Why don’t you just kill whatever you people have been locking up?”
“We don’t know what will emerge once those seals are broken. The safest option is to maintain the status quo.”
Darian found it unlikely that he would be unable to kill anything that might be freed, but he had no idea what such a battle would look like or what the wider ramifications might be. It was possible that a battle would cause unnecessary casualties. If his goal was to save humanity, that would surely defeat the purpose.
“The truth is, I don’t care much about the half-demons anymore,” the prince said as he dismounted his horse. “The few we have left can be reorganized to ensure the most dangerous seals are maintained. You are the reason I can’t back down.”
“Because I killed your friends?”
“That too. Your actions here constitute murder within our kingdom. I’m not sure exactly how you did it, but you admitted it yourself, and I, as a royal, stood witness, so you won’t be able to escape accountability.”
“I know you probably don’t care, but I was only defending myself.”
When the boy had killed Darian’s subordinates, he hadn’t so much as twitched an eyebrow. This world was far from peaceful, and even Darian had moments when he needed to take the lives of others, but that didn’t mean he felt nothing as he killed them. No matter how evil they had been, he always hesitated when it came to taking a human life. This boy, however, didn’t seem to have felt anything at all. That was one reason Darian couldn’t let him live.
“You killed my companions, who hadn’t done anything to you yet. Don’t you feel the least bit guilty?”
“If I hadn’t acted, I would have died. I didn’t have a choice.”
“Is that so? It still seems to me that you went too far. Nothing that happened excuses your actions. Objectively, you have no proof. You only thought they were going to attack you, so you killed them. That’s hardly sufficient reasoning.”
“I’m not trying to make excuses, and I don’t care if you accept them. All I want is for you to leave.”
The boy was clearly growing irritated, but he wasn’t making any move to harm anyone else. However, if Darian tried to apprehend him, it was a certainty that Darian himself would, almost mechanically, be dispatched without hesitation.
“You can kill people with a single thought. It takes no action on your part.”
“That’s right.”
“And whenever you feel someone is going to hurt you, you kill them before they have a chance to do so. In short, it depends entirely on your mood. You could kill someone merely because they rub you the wrong way. Do you realize how dangerous you are?”
“Of course I do,” the boy replied with a frown.
“I see. In that case, you must be dealt with. Someone like you shouldn’t be allowed to live.”
“I get that a lot, honestly.”
“Hey! I don’t think you have the right to say that!” the girl exclaimed. Although the boy himself didn’t seem to be especially bothered by his words, the anger in her expression showed that she felt far more strongly about it.
“Of course I do,” Darian answered. “All living things are threatened by his ability, and all have a right to criticize him.”
The girl said nothing more, but her expression didn’t change. She didn’t seem to have an argument of her own but was obviously not willing to accept his.
“I know it’s a bit late for this, but I might as well ask,” Darian continued. “Do you have any intention of committing suicide?”
“You’re right. It’s kind of late for that. If I was going to kill myself, I would have done it a long time ago.”
“Of course.”
“And I’ll say it again: if you leave us alone, I have no intention of hurting you. Then again, I guess I kind of have already.”
The boy’s face was conflicted. He seemed exasperated and bored but not the least bit nervous. Whatever Darian might do, his opponent seemed fully confident that he could handle it.
“I’ve concluded that I cannot allow you to live any longer.”
“I get where you’re coming from. If I met someone like me, I probably wouldn’t let them live either.”
“You seem awfully composed. Are you so sure you can’t be killed?”
“I don’t consider myself invincible. If you’re stronger than me, I’ll die, right?”
“I see. Then perhaps it wasn’t coincidence that the two of us met. It seems to be the will of heaven that I put a stop to you.”
The boy was unprepared. He claimed not to think himself invincible, but he had no concerns about losing. It gave Darian an idea of what to do. He was sure that he could win.
The prince stopped time. Technically, that wasn’t exactly what was happening, but it appeared that way from his perspective. Of course Darian himself could still move. The air around him moved enough to allow him to breathe, and he could touch anything he liked to allow it to move as well.
An ability to kill with a single thought was a considerable threat, but if the power relied on the boy’s conscious choice to activate it, the solution was clear: offer no chance for it to be activated. Kill him before he realized that he was about to be killed.
Darian’s companions had been killed just as they’d made the decision to attack, so the boy likely had some sort of ability to predict such things. But if time was stopped, such a power became irrelevant. Darian’s ability to do just that was enough to resolve almost any situation he found himself in. But as convenient as it was, it did have its weaknesses. While time was frozen, he couldn’t use any of his other skills or magic. Anything he threw would freeze moments after leaving his hand. So if he wanted to defeat someone in that state, he had to approach and attack them directly.
Darian walked around behind the boy. With time halted, his adversary wouldn’t be able to see him anyway, but he figured it was best to use extreme caution. Stepping close enough for his sword to reach, he paused. From his perspective, the boy was trapped in time. There should have been no brain function. He shouldn’t have been able to perceive any killing intent and therefore shouldn’t have been able to react to an attack. If any issue arose, it would be because his enemy was resilient enough to survive a strike from a blade.
Darian’s earlier inspection had found no traces of any magical items, skills or other such effects on the boy. He appeared to be an ordinary human, meaning a single slash would be enough to cut him down. That much was a certainty.
Even so, he continued to consider whether he had overlooked anything. Stopping time consumed an enormous amount of magical energy, but he could maintain that state for about an hour. There was no need to rush. He considered everything carefully, ensuring that there were absolutely no holes in his plan.
And then a thought occurred to him. Was it really acceptable to kill him? Using such a power, or even having a chance to study it, could be of great help to his plan to save humanity.
He immediately discarded the thought. This boy was an enemy of humankind, one whose very existence threatened them all. Letting him live for even a second longer was too dangerous. He would deliver a blow to the head, swiftly ending his life. There wouldn’t be the slightest opening for a counterattack. That would put an end to his Instant Death power.
Still, he wasn’t used to the idea of striking a defenseless opponent. He hesitated briefly but soon pictured the result in his mind: he would slice the head from the top right diagonally downwards, then again from the top left. He would follow with a horizontal slash through the skull, and then finally a single straight slash from the top of the head down through the body to the groin. Although the first attack would likely kill him, he would take no chances.
Darian drew his sword.
Then their eyes met.
“Huh?”
With no warning, eyes had appeared. In the space between Darian and the boy, they began to open up in front of him. They weren’t just eyeballs but full eyes, furnished with eyelids and set as if within a face.
A chill ran through him as the eyes continued to appear one after another. It was hard to tell how much time had passed while everything was frozen, but in what seemed like the briefest of instants, the space around him was filled with eyes in numbers beyond counting.
Eyes.
Eyes.
Eyes.
Each and every one of them was staring fixedly at him, watching. As Darian began to tremble in fear, the pupils moved, tracing his faint movements, observing every minute detail.
Even so, Darian raised his sword. The eyes followed the tip of the blade as it cut upwards through the air. They were watching him carefully. What would happen if he tried to bring the sword down? There was no way they would allow it. He was certain they would strike back at him somehow.
This was the line. If he turned his sword even slightly towards the boy, he would be killed. He was absolutely sure of it. And he realized that if he were killed, it wouldn’t be something as simple as death waiting for him. It would be far worse.
He finally comprehended the bizarre situation he was in. The eyes were more than enough to clarify the danger, forcing him to understand. Their gazes bore into him, compelling him to grasp what was happening.
And then he realized something else. The nature of the boy had nothing to do with the flesh and blood standing before him. Even if he were to pound the stranger’s skull to dust, his true self wouldn’t suffer so much as a scratch. This was a being beyond human understanding, against whom resistance barely passed as a joke, whose enormity could only be recognized as absurdity. A monster.
Why...why is that thing pretending to be human?! And why here?!
This was a being he should have never come into contact with, but that was a fact one could not understand until contact was made. It was like a bad prank thought up by a truly wicked person.
There was nothing he could do.
Darian released his power, letting time flow again.
Hearing a sound behind him, Yogiri turned around.
“Huh? What happened?” Tomochika murmured, surprised by the mysterious development.
It doesn’t appear to be the vanishing technique. As a member of the Dannoura family, I would have seen it.
Darian had been standing before them just a moment before, but now he was behind Yogiri. He had fallen to his knees, head bowed as if he didn’t have the strength to stand.
“Lord Darian!”
The Invincible Battalion was shocked. No one seemed to process what they were witnessing.
“I’ll say it one more time. Please leave. That’s all I want.”
Darian slowly lifted his head, the exhaustion in his face making him look like an entirely different person. “What...are you?”
“I don’t really have an answer to that except that I’m a normal high school student.”
Darian began to laugh hysterically as he lifted a finger to the side of his head.
“Hey, what are you—”
Getting a bad feeling about it, Yogiri tried to stop him. But what could he have done to prevent it? With a loud bang, the prince’s head exploded. His body flopped forward onto the ground, prompting the Invincible Battalion to turn and flee.
“What?! Why did he do that?!” cried Tomochika.
Aren’t you going to make a comment like, “Oh please, as if you’re just a high school student!” or something?
“Of course not!”
“I really wanted to avoid that,” muttered Yogiri.
It was hardly the desired result, but they had technically gotten what they’d asked for, so things had more or less worked out in the end.
The impact of dying had left Darian in a state of shock. It was normal. His senses were always in a state of chaos afterwards, like the inside of his head had been scrambled. His vision was filled with wildly vivid colors, his hearing overwhelmed by white noise. A nauseating smell assaulted his nose, and it felt like something was seeping into his body through each and every pore. The feeling of drowning in this chaotic mess was a side effect of traveling through time.
What was that?
He had no idea what he had just seen. But now that he knew such a being existed, it didn’t matter. All he had to do was avoid it next time. It wasn’t something any human could hope to challenge. He knew that no matter how many times he tried, he would always lose.
His churning senses finally settled, and he found himself back in bed. It was night. If he had to go back and do things over, this was the best time to re-emerge. He had until morning to consider the situation that had caused his death, thereby minimizing his own disorder and reducing the chance that others would notice.
Darian opened his eyes. First he needed to know how far back he’d gone.
And then their eyes met.
Darian screamed, sparing no thought for appearances. He should have escaped, but still he was being watched by countless eyes.
“No, that’s wrong! This time should have been before I ever met him!”
He suddenly realized something. Rather, he was forced to notice. He had indeed returned to the past, but the eyes were still there. That could mean only one thing: those eyes had existed everywhere, right from the start.
Whether it was a curse or some kind of corruption, he always maintained his memories when he traveled to the past, and now that he had noticed those eyes, he could never unsee them. No matter how far back he traveled, he would still know they were there.
There was nowhere he could run.
Darian’s sanity didn’t last for much longer.
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