The SSS Ranked Villain's Return

"How are you holding up?" the being asked innocently.

"Fuck you," Neraxis muttered, holding up a hand over his forehead.

He had been through God knew how many previous incarnations of himself. In fact, he'd lost count after 25,000.

These memories, or whatever he was viewing, didn't actually display the entire lifetime of that particular version of Neraxis. Instead, he only saw the most important bits.

The first version of himself stood in a forest, and the only reason he was there was because that was where he killed his first human.

The second was a bit simpler. Just a Neraxis who had started a family, and he watched his kids' first steps.

Each one was much different from the rest, and as for the family-related ones? Half of them, Neraxis couldn't even recognize.

Sometimes his parents were different, even a couple of times he didn't have a sister and instead had a brother.

Basically a mess... a total fucking mess... Neraxis thought with a sigh.

But now that he had his rest, he was ready to continue.

However, even after several seconds had passed, he wasn't thrust into a memory again. In fact, he hadn't even viewed the memories of the first-ever Neraxis.

Instead, the being—who was an amalgamation of all the past Neraxises—slowly walked up to him, glancing him up and down.

"How do you feel?" the being asked.

"Like shit. It doesn't help that I resonate with each of those past mes," Neraxis replied. "Though I can't help but wonder... what exactly are you trying to do here?"

"Well, whatever I was trying to do seemed to have worked." The being shrugged. "Though I actually didn't really need to do anything. You have a lack of empathy. That's why you still haven't broken down despite watching your past selves' most emotional moments. Honestly, you're broken."

"...?" Neraxis tilted his head. "That's not the nicest thing to say to someone you've practically kidnapped."

"Kidnapped?" The being scoffed. "If you want to leave, be my guest. Just note these exercises were to strengthen your mind."

"So did I pass?" Neraxis asked with a smirk.

"You've passed, I suppose. However, don't you think there's one thing remaining? Something you've yet to do because you were afraid?" the being asked knowingly.

And the moment it did, Neraxis froze.

There was one thing he never wanted to go back to, but he was constantly reminded of it.

But before he could answer, the being suddenly approached Neraxis, stood behind him, and tapped the air.

In the very next moment...

<Stellar Dominion: Entering the Astral Tower!>

Neraxis's eyes widened. "Wait—"

However, he didn't even have time to protest as he was sent away, floating up from the shallow water and standing in front of a grandfather clock.

The surroundings were very different. Unlike the previous times, he could now see vague monsters in the skies, floating around and devouring the stars.

Nonetheless, the hour hand was a murky black color that was bleeding into the surroundings, and he felt like it was staring back at him.

Yet, it might just be his heightened emotions because he didn't want to do this.

It was mental torture, and while this might be what he needed, the last time had left him a little scarred.

But he couldn't imagine anything being worse than what he had experienced on the second floor.

Therefore, with newfound confidence, Neraxis focused on the murky black hour hand, and in the very next moment, he found himself on top of some building in his home city, Argon.

[Astral Tower - 3rd Floor: The Reflection of Truth]

[Objective: Confront the shadow of your own choices. Survive the truth you've hidden from yourself.]

[Status: Initializing...]

Shadow of my choices... Neraxis pondered, wracking his brain over the hidden meaning.

It seemed pretty simple, at least on the surface.

All he had to do was deal with the opposite outcome of his decisions.

Frankly, he felt like he had made pretty decent decisions ever since coming back. Or at least, most of them weren't too destructive. frёewebnoѵēl.com

Nonetheless, he couldn't exactly tell why he was on a building right now, so Neraxis simply took a few steps forward and then jumped down, gently gliding to the ground.

The city of Argon was usually lively, so he was puzzled by how dead it felt now.

There was the occasional person walking around, yet even their appearance seemed pretty normal—except for the fact that they looked to be on edge.

Almost as if they were scared of something or someone.

What's going on...? Neraxis thought as he approached one of the people quietly and tapped them on the shoulder.

"Excuse me, do you know—" Neraxis froze, his eyes widening.

What the fuck?

"Y-You... how dare you show your face in our city!" the man yelled, clearly startled.

Not only that, the man took out some sort of glowing pistol and, without warning, shot it at Neraxis.

Of course, Neraxis simply tilted his head, dodging the flaming bullet as it zipped past him.

Before the man could shoot again, Neraxis approached, put his hand over the weapon, and swiftly deteriorated it. Then, he simply chopped the back of the man's neck and knocked him out.

Neraxis decided to just leave him on the ground for the time being since he was of no use to him. Instead, he had to find out what was going on.

They're averse to me, so maybe a choice of morality? Maybe this is a timeline of when I became evil right off the bat? Neraxis pondered.

Yet in the middle of his pondering, he heard a pair of footsteps. They were extremely faint, belonging to some assassin.

Neraxis entertained the fact that they thought they could sneak up on him. So when they were right behind him, he swiftly turned around and threw a full-powered punch.

Yet just as it was about to land, Neraxis retracted the punch, his eyes widening at the assassin responsible.

"Celina...?"