Some stories have a happy ending.

Jack’s didn’t… at least for now.

[- … I… think it’s better for me to leave, then]

Jack’s words stunned his mother. As for Elicia, she knew this was coming. And his children… well, they knew something was off, but couldn’t tell exactly what.

Jack’s eyes, for some reason, were dry. He himself couldn’t tell why. With a trembling hand he pushed the “divorce” button as well.

This way, his now ex-wife wouldn’t suffer from any of the maluses of ending a relationship in a unilateral way.

The devs, for some reason, thought that it would be fun to add a few debuffs for those who had ended their relationships by themselves, without the partner’s approval. The “broken heart” debuff, which prevented healing above a certain percentage of someone’s health, was one of the nastier ones.

Why exactly had them done such a thing?

No one can tell exactly. Maybe it was the case where one of the devs had lost his in-game wife? Well, those kind of debuffs healed with time but, regardless, they were quite bothersome.

- Son… - before Sasha could say something, Jack was gone. His old house was were he was now, and he had nothing to do there anymore, except… sleep.

With a few breaths, all memories were erased.

The table were he and his family used to eat. The old treasuries where he and Elicia called bedroom. The children’s rooms as well.

All turned into molten rock and metals.

The dungeon core, then, was destroyed as well. He had no interest on managing such a thing, and it would respawn eventually… maybe.

He really didn’t care.

As for the monster waves which would happen all over due to that reckless act of his?

He didn’t even think of that. All he wanted was to turn his old lair into scorched and molten rock.

Rock that he could dig, slowly and compulsively, while ignoring those behind him.

Mother, wife, children… he had none of them. He never had. He didn’t want to have.

His powerful brain told him he had, indeed, had those one day.

But now he didn’t.

Sasha observed with quite a good amount of despair as her son’s Mind became opaque and lost its brilliance.

Not the Fairy Dust. That was there, as bright and shiny as ever. No. What he lost was his Mind’s will to do anything besides that.

Cutting a small hole on the wall and hurling his huge body in it.

A Dragon King’s body, gigantic on its own right. Bombarded by sad shouts from his once loved ones, and then even attacks and all kinds of forms of trying to wake him up.

For nothing.

He wouldn’t hear, he wouldn’t answer.

Jack fell on a long, long dream - one made of pure lightness in the dark.

***

The years flew by.

Jack’s mother endured five thousand. Riddled with guilt, she tried as hard as she could, but her son wouldn’t wake up.

Shouldn’t he wake up after three thousand and six hundred years had passed by?

Wasn’t that how much Elicia had calculated?

But he kept on sleeping.

On a last act of detachment, her mind lighted up with countless lights and turned into beautiful dandelions, lighting up the consciousness of many powerful beasts that roamed nearby.

His “friend” of old, riddled with malice and ill intent after losing everything, managed to persevere against his deadly dungeon for two hundred years. Marcus hated Jack to his bones, and after his soul regained its old body, it only became worst.

But time eroded all things, his ambitions of vengeance included. Obviously, the fact that Sasha’s control over Jack’s old dungeon was installed after a hundred years had past didn’t help - indeed, it made almost impossible for him to progress over the 200º level.

His ex-wife lasted a long time as well. Five hundred and seventeen years. Then, her Soul split and she lost her sense of self, becoming many.

As for his children… those lasted many, many years more than their relatives. Jack’s firstborn, Sandro, lasted eight thousand years. Sandra, the youngest, lasted even longer - five hundred thousand years.

As for Pietro, his drive for self-improvement lasted for about a few hundred years more than Sandro’s desire of power.

Still, none of them saw him awake, ever again.

The chains of time firmly holding him in place, Jack couldn’t be made to wake, no mater how hard one tried.

His youngest, Sandra, on her late years, would for a long time sleep right next to him, her own grandchildren coming to pay respects.

His firstborn’s, ex-wife and mother’s graves were nearby, and his middle son’s was enshrined on a far away land. The “god of self-cultivation”, some called him.

And time went by…