Marianna smiled wide and stood to her feet. Her white and gold uniform pristine, the cape pulling gracefully, and she brushed out her raven hair.

In her hand--and this surprised me--was a glass sword that glowed a menacing red.

"It has been a while, hasn't it, Imsi?"

"It has," I said.

"Forgive the mess. As you can see, I have guests."

From behind the throne, a small girl walked out. Long red hair, dressed in all black, goth makeup.

Elf's ears.

It was Laya. In her hands, a spell she was working on. A dark, glittering orb that coalesced into a single pebble. She noticed me staring--she smiled back--and carefully pocketed the rock.

"Something bothers me, Marianna."

"Oh?"

"Why?" I asked. "Why all of this? Why genocide? Why try to kill our home? No one is so pointlessly evil. Not to such a cliche."

She scoffed. "Oh, Imsi, you stupid, ignorant fuckwit. I know that you as a man are only capable of thinking with your dick, and so something of such complexity might escape you." She held the sword blade in her hand and admired its edge, its glow, its power. "The world is suffering, Imsi. Life is suffering."

"Then aren't you adding more suffering by committing a sin such as this?"

She hit me with a sideways glance. "It's euthanasia, Redrim. The suffering of existence--war and violence and disease and loss--all of it far, far outweighs what little good could ever come out of it, and for every solitary man who leads a good and happy life, there are dozens who suffer. Perhaps countless."

"I don't think that's a fair calculation," I said. "Life can be rough, sure, but a little good can outweigh a lot of bad."

She burst into cutting laughter. "A lifetime of torture for a single good moment? And you think you can justify this? It's far from a fair equilibrium. Perhaps you have forgotten that not even death is an escape."

"What? If death isn't an escape, then why even bother with genocide?"

"You already know the truth of the multiverse, Imsi. You've seen it. When a person dies in one world, they are reborn into the next. Most forget their past lives, but only very few retain their memories or their skills."

"That's a good thing. It means no one truly dies."

"It means no one truly escapes suffering. A person will live an entire life of pain and loss just to die and become reborn to suffer it again elsewhere. It is an endless cycle--or at least, endless without my intervention." She took a step toward me. "Think about it, Imsi. If there is no life anywhere, no one being born, then no one can become reborn as anything else. This is the death of isekai. The systems apocalypse."

The ship rumbled again. Chandeliers rattled above. A window cracked. Outside, a burning ship toppled past.

"How can you be satisfied with that?" I asked. "Isn't life worth striving for? Even if there's a dream, and even if we have to suffer just to even have it, isn't that worth it in the end? Can't we… make it better?"

She sighed and shook her head almost sadly. "Imsi, you haven't learned a thing, have you? You only spent a small portion of your lifespan as a trash can. You do not know suffering." She raised the sword, and it pulsed a villainous red. "The ancients called this the Sword of Gods' Twilight. It is not a weapon. It is a blank slate. A canvas. An empty well that I could pour my resolve into. And I did."

She aimed it around, and it hummed with power. "You see, the Delta-S cannon didn't just destroy planets. No. It drained the order from them. The essence that formed their identity. And all that order, all that energy of creation and structure--" She presented the sword at me. "Coalesced into this single tool. The one tool that can fix everything. It can dismantle the tilted order created by the Grand Magi of the universe. It can return us to silence. To peace."

She aimed it at me. "But in order to use this, Imsi, I must die."

"Wait, what?"

"So I'll give you a wager. If you can defeat me in open combat, I'll give you your body back."

This sounded vaguely like a trap, but it really was the entire reason I was here. To kill her, I mean. Getting my body back would just be a bonus at this point. "That sounds like a good trade," I said.

She grinned and took a swordsman's stance.

Laya stepped back to spectate. Her haunting smile never left her.

Cassandra spoke into my ear. "Imsi, it would be wise not to trust her."

"I know," I said inwardly back.

Hmmm-click.

+1 Longsword (Mythic)

I equipped it to my left hand. My right hand remained as the LMD dispenser gun.

Heart of the Sadist activated.

Heart of the Masochist activated.

Emergency Power activated.

Marianna took a careful step forward.

I aimed my sword.

She thrust out her palm at me.

LMD: Nullification Smoke

A greyish-red burst of smoke erupted from me, and I felt the rush of a deactivated spell cross through.

I knelt down.

Marianna's blade passed over me.

I hurled it--An icy blue potion. It toppled toward Laya--she had aimed her staff at me--and it shattered against her chest and erupted with glacial ice. She was frozen.

I sensed Marianna's blade slicing again at me, and I rolled back. A thin line of red light slashed vertically across the room, and everything it touched sliced in half.

I rolled to my feet and kicked her back.

She parried and gripped me by the ankle and hurled me across the room.

I landed feet against the wall and looked up to see red slashes of light zipping at me.

LMD: Manawall

The attack crushed through my manashield, shattering it like glass, but lacked the power to finish through me.

Marianna aimed her finger at my center mass.

LMD: Nullification Smoke

Dozens of black hands reached out from the floor to grip me but disintegrated in the greyish mist.

A gust of wind roared from one side of the room to the other, and the nullification cloud dispersed.

Marianna aimed her palm.

I jumped and--fuck! A hand gripped my ankle, then another, and several more. I was locked down. Tethered.

I looked back at her.

She channeled some crazy bullshit spell. Fuck!

Mining (Waist) activated.

Little mining lasers on my waist clicked out and cut a circle into the floor around me, and just as Marianna's spell fired, I dropped down into the floor below.

Before I could even land, Marianna burst through the floor and ceiling and shattered down before me, ready to strike.

I didn't have time to parry. I blocked it with my gun arm, and it shattered. The metal pieces sprayed across the concrete floor.

Mining Lasers activated.

My arms reformed into lasers, and I burst them at her.

She jumped back and gripped her fist. A protective aura pulsed around her, and the lasers simply buzzed against her inertly.

"I'm not impressed," she said from behind her manawall.

"Neither am I," I said back.

She stepped back into a sword stance, aiming the tip of her blade at me, and the reddened glass sword shone with power--

Heart of the Dragon activated.

And it erupted as a miniature Delta-S ray--

Which slipped into one of the portals across my body and reflected back at her. The beam ground against her manawall, digging fast at it, chipping it away, and right as the spell clicked off, her mana shield shattered.

And she looked up to see me flying down at her, sword and shield aimed for the killing blow.

She flicked her hand to the left, and the entire ship--all hundreds of thousands of tons--yanked over to the side so suddenly and with enough force that I slammed into the far wall and bounced back onto the floor.

I looked up.

She aimed her weapon again. It glowed.

Molt.

She fired, and the beam cut cleanly through my body, and the metal of me began to rust and crumble and fall apart.

But I was empty.

Flashstep activated.

Heart of the Kraken activated.

I appeared behind her in my truest form—a rogue trash can with metal hose arms and Kraken tentacles flailing about. You know. An abomination.

She swung around in shock.

I spun as a whirlwind, and my knife-hands slashed, and my tentacles slapped around meatily--

She tumbled back--

I slivered at her, knives out, tentacles gliding me across the floor as fast as a shadow, and before she could even right herself--

I thrust out my knife-hand.

She yanked the ship over again.

The walls shifted violently to throw me off, but--

My tentacles gripped madly in pursuit of her.

And she hit the far wall.

And I shanked her.

It was a good one. An effective one. I felt her ribcage give way, the cut through her skin and her body, and I drove it deep.

I tried to stab again, but a burst of wind drove me back, and I landed several meters away from her. On guard, but victorious.

She coughed. Blood drooled from the side of her mouth. She tried to step over but fell to her knee.

I had done it. I had won. I beat her. I beat the ship. Everything… everything was done now. Everything could go back to normal again. Right?

The battle outside continued. The ship vibrated with another series of explosions, and the lights flickered.

"Good work, Imsi." She smirked. "Now, then. For your reward."

She snapped her fingers and said, "Negentropic Polyfill: Reorder."

I felt my trash can skin vibrate wildly, and my insides... twitched. My body began to smoke, to glow hot, to boil.

"Imsi," said Cassandra. "I'm detecting that--"

She cut off.

I groaned and fell to my knees, slumping over, and I felt myself come alive. Bones manifested where my tentacle arms once were, the muscles and tendons wrapping around, blood vessels and nerve endings, skin and hair, and I shouted in shock and pain--

But it was my voice. Not the voice of Redrim, the recycler. But the voice of Obi Imsi, the fallen Paladin.

Through the transformative mist, I stood. I stared at my hands--human and fleshy--and then at my bare body--muscled and toned--and my dick--a girthy size, just how I left it.

I brought my shocked eyes up to see Marianna's demon grin, and the hairs on my neck stood up on end.

I shouted in pain. Something cut me. Cut through me. I looked down. A sword stuck out of my chest. Hot blood trickled out of me, down my waist and thighs, and pooled at my feet, and on my back, I felt someone's breath. A girl's breath. Laya's breath.

I felt... her smile behind me.

And she said, "Finally..."

I coughed. Blood flooded my mouth. My vision blurred. My knees felt weak. I looked up again to see Marianna reaching out to me, gripping my face, caressing me. She looked almost softly at me and said, "There. Now we can see him together."

"You-you fucking bitch," I spat.

She grinned, and she pointed a finger gun at my temple and another at her own.

And she pulled the metaphorical triggers.

And the world went black.

A timeless moment passed. A measureless measure of silence between then and there and here, and somehow, sometime, I opened my eyes again.

Something was... clicking. Tik-tik-tik-tik-tak.

There was a light there. A single lamp, and beside it, an oak-wood desk. Something... moved. A person. A dude. An older guy who worked at what looked like a computer console.

I blinked and looked around. Nothing but darkness as far as I could see.

"What the fuck just happened?" I shook back and searched the area around me. It sounded like Marianna herself said what I wanted to say at the precise time I had meant to say it.

"Oh, hello there," said the older man. "One second, please. I just need to get this file done real fast."

"Where am I? What happened?" I jumped back again. It was her voice. She was near, had to be. But when I searched: nothing. It was just me in empty space and that weird old guy. Was this my voice? It had to be. But why did it sound like Marianna's fuckin' voice?

I looked at my hands. Fleshy hands, but--

My eyes widened.

These were girl's hands. Small and soft and slender.

I looked down.

Tits. I had tits.

Not just that, but I--

"Ah, you're one of those bunch," said the old man. "I suppose you'll be getting used to your new body."

"What the fuck happened?" I demanded. "I was in a battle, and--"

"And you died," he finished. "You have the gene that forces you to become reborn as whatever killed you last." He glanced me up and down. "And you happen to have been reborn as her."

I tried to cover myself from his leering eyes. "Who are you?"

"The Grand Magi," he said. "Or God. Or the Demiurge. Or the goddess, if you prefer. I prefer to be called the goddess, personally." He chuckled. "It's been a busy day, so let's get you started. You'll need to be reborn into a new fantasy world with different rulesets, and you'll also need to choose what skills you'll retain."

I looked down at my hands again. There was no way this was real. Just a fever dream, right? I was Obi Imsi! There was no way I could die, and there was no way I could be a woman--of all fuckin' things. Right?

Well, maybe—maybe this was good. Marianna died in the end, right? My friends and my crew and my fleet could destroy the ship, and they could return to their homes and forever tell my tale. The tale of Redrim, the world-saving martyr.

Right?

Something shattered nearby.

I looked up.

And I saw Marianna on the other side of his workstation, staring down at him. "Hello, again, goddess," she said.

"Oh," he said. "It's you. The real you this time."

"I told you I'd come back."

"Yes," he said. "Everyone does."

She showed him the Sword of Gods' Twilight.

He jolted out of his chair and stumbled back. "H-how in the hell did you--"

"I told you," she said again. Her eyes widening like a snake before the kill. "I told you that I'd fix what you had broken."

He thrust his hand at her, and a force that could rival the creation of all existence rushed at her as a bursting wave of darkness, but--

A red light spun at him. Toppling. Tumbling.

She had thrown the sword.

And it struck him in the chest.

And he collapsed.

The spell clicked off. There, in the wake of that magic, stood Marianna, half her skin boiled off, half her face missing, more skeleton than human, and she stepped over him to get at the computer.

"S-stop her," the goddess grunted. He grasped the hilt of the sword in his chest, but it pulsed dark energy that gripped him. "She'll destroy everything!"

I tried to step over, but--

My feet were stuck.

I looked down.

Shadow hands gripped me by the ankles.

Marianna typed furiously at the keyboard.

I tried to cast a spell--nothing. I kicked and clawed--no effect. I wasn't strong enough. I was weak as fuck! Like level one kind of weak!

Her typing ended with a final, definitive tak.

Something blinked in front of me. A status screen like a hologram, but not just in my mind's eye, but real. Nearly tangible. And on it, an enlarged title that read, SYSTEM APOCALYPSE. Beneath was my level: Level 1, of course, and beneath that was a list of every skill I ever had, a near-bottomless list of secret and unlockable abilities that I could've exploited in a future life, but line-by-line, they vanished. Deleted. Forgotten.

I looked up. Marianna began to chuckle. Then laugh. Then roar.

She raised the Sword of Gods' Twilight and rammed it down through the computer.

"What have you done?" I asked her.

"Welcome to the end, Imsi," she said. "Every world that has ever been will now experience the height of entropy. The heat death of the multiverse."

The goddess spat out a mouthful of blood and aimed his palm at me. "Obi Imsi, I can only offer you this, but—" Marianna kicked the hilt deeper into him, and he groaned in pain. "Go!" he ordered. He thrust his open hand at me, and the world flashed white again.

I felt my body, my soul, my essence transported to another world, and I saw the whiteness of transferral fade into blue with streaks of white to dissolve into wide swathes of brown--a desert with a scorching blue sky.

And I opened my eyes there, in the sand. Not as a recycler. Not as Obi Imsi. But as a woman, starting from level one again.