Unrivaled in another world

[: 3rd POV :]

"N-No, this shouldn't be happening!" Arcturus screamed, his skeletal frame rattling as his voice cracked into madness.

His scythe trembled in his grip, veins of corrupted energy leaking from its edge.

"I'm the one who's supposed to stand at the top! And you're all beneath me!"

Daniel's eyes narrowed, his expression turning cold as frost.

"Standing at the top? With this kind of power?"

His words rang with scorn, unflinching and sharp.

"How laughable."

Arcturus flinched as if those words themselves struck him harder than any blade.

Daniel stepped forward, his shadow swallowing the trembling figure of the guildmaster.

His voice carried weight and judgment carved in stone.

"After sacrificing countless lives, after twisting men, women, and children into corpses and puppets…you dare to speak of standing at the top? You have no right."

Arcturus snarled, his jaw clicking violently.

His voice rose, laced with fury and desperation.

"No right!? No right to say that!? The one who should be saying that is me!"

His claws scraped against his own ribcage as his wings shook with erratic spasms.

"You could say all these righteous words because you were born with it! Power! Talent! Destiny!" His voice broke.

"People like me, who were born powerless, can only be ridiculed! Spat on! Crushed beneath the boots of the strong!"

The chamber trembled with the force of his roar, his denial echoing against stone walls.

His fanatic eyes blazed with both hatred and grief.

"You don't understand what it's like to be powerless! To claw for survival! To be despised for existing! You'll never understand!"

Daniel's aura pulsed, a heavy silence falling between his words as he raised his head slightly, violet eyes burning with quiet truth.

"Maybe you're right…" Daniel muttered, his tone low, carrying the weight of memory.

"But you're wrong about one thing."

Arcturus froze, his clawed hands stilling.

Daniel's gaze sharpened.

His voice carried pain—but also steel.

"I was once weak. So weak… that all I could do was lie on a bed, day after day. My body was broken. My voice was unheard."

His hand clenched slowly, his aura thickening with every word.

"And in this world, I was nothing more than a slave. Chained. Beaten. Tortured."

The words rang across the chamber like thunder.

Arcturus staggered back, his hollow sockets widening in disbelief.

"What… what the hell are you talking about?"

Daniel didn't flinch.

His aura pressed heavier, his past bleeding into his voice like poison.

"You think I don't know what it means to be powerless? To be stepped on? To be treated as less than nothing?" He shook his head. "I know it more than you ever will."

Arcturus hissed, shaking violently, but deep inside, something rattled—a tremor of doubt.

Because Daniel's tone wasn't fabricated. It wasn't self-righteous or hollow.

It was true.

A truth Arcturus didn't want to believe.

After all… how could someone who stood like a god before him, someone untouchable, absolute, and terrifying, have once been a slave?

"No… no!" Arcturus roared, his voice breaking as fear clawed at him. "You're lying! You have to be lying!"

But the unshaken look in Daniel's eyes told him otherwise.

Daniel's next step felt less like movement and more like the approach of judgment.

The air around him tightened until it pressed like iron against Arcturus's ribs.

Every breath the Guild Master took rasped and shortened as the boy's presence bore down on him.

"That's right," Daniel said, voice steady, each word a cold hammer.

"You would of course refuse to believe me, because you will never understand what I'm talking about, or what I've been through."

His violet eyes never flicked away.

"And in the end, the cycle keeps going on. Lives are fed into your machine. The same excuses, the same rituals, the same lies. It never stops."

Arcturus's fingers twitched on the haft of the Crimson Scythe, knuckles white.

His mouth worked, but no words came that could stem the tide of Daniel's words.

Around the,m the ruined chamber seemed to hold its breath.

"But this isn't some contest of suffering,"

Daniel continued, the aura around him thickening until the torches guttered, their flames bowed toward him like supplicants.

"It isn't about who bled more or who was born weaker''

''There is one truth you cannot hide behind your bluster and your blessings, thousands have died for your selfish gain."

A murmur rippled through the ranks behind them, angry, disbelieving, ashamed.

Faces that had been fixed in horror now cracked with something like guilt.

Daniel took another step.

The pressure in the room turned physical; the Guild Master reeled, staggering backwards until he hit the altar's base.

Dust fell from the carved ceiling; the statues' red stone eyes seemed to narrow in the dim.

"What are you going to do?!" Arcturus spat, but the words were brittle, swallowed by panic more than fury.

He wasn't listening to the meaning of Daniel's words, only to the dread building in his chest as the boy closed the distance.

"I'm not trying to be a hero," Daniel said, voice low but molten with resolve.

"I'm not pretending to be good. I don't need your thanks or your songs''

''But with what I have now, with this power, I will not let anyone else be burned on your altar''

''Not your organisation, not the rulers who look the other way, not anyone who treats lives like a coin."

His words hit like a verdict.

The mercenaries exchanged looks: some with raw hope sparking, others with the grey weight of realisation that they had been tools, and that someone who'd been a tool once might now be the instrument of reckoning.

Daniel's words hung heavy in the air, but within him, another storm raged.

Memories surfaced, unbidden, sharp as blades.

He saw again the iron chains digging into his skin, the collar that had reduced him to less than human, the mocking laughter of those who had bought and sold him like livestock.

He remembered the days when all he could do was lie in the dark, powerless, waiting for the next strike, the next order, the next humiliation.

But then the memories shifted.

He saw the faces of the children he had freed from the clutches of the Zero Organisation.

Their small, trembling hands were clutching his sleeves, their wide eyes shining with disbelief that someone had come for them.

And then, the smiles, hesitant at first, then radiant, fragile yet powerful.

Those smiles had burned themselves into him more deeply than any scar.

When he recalled them now, something in his chest tightened, then blazed.

A warmth that refused to be extinguished.

A purpose that had taken root without him realising.

Daniel knew the truth; he couldn't save everyone.

Cruelty was carved into the bones of this world, cruelty that no blade or power alone could erase.

There would always be suffering, always more darkness waiting.

But when he remembered those children's smiles, the way hope had bloomed in their eyes, he understood: for them, he had changed something.

And that was enough.

He wasn't walking the path of a saviour draped in glory.

He wasn't pretending to be a hero sung in songs.

He was just… himself.

A man who had been powerless, broken, enslaved.

A man who had chosen, when given strength, not to let others fall into the same abyss he had.

He didn't need gratitude.

He didn't need people bowing at his feet.

All he wanted was simple: for those he saved to be safe and sound.

That was all that mattered.

The violet in his eyes burned brighter, his aura thickening with that quiet, immovable resolve.

Arcturus laughed, but it was a broken, wet sound.

"You imagine yourself the saviour?" he sneered through clenched teeth.

"You think you can decide who lives and who dies?"

Daniel's jaw tightened.

"I don't decide fate for sport. I cut it when it is used to feed monsters like you."

He paused, and for a heartbeat, the chamber was only the sound of ragged breathing and the far-off drip of blood.

"You took thousands. You deserve to know what it feels like to lose that power."

"So, Arcturus," his voice was calm, chilling, and absolute, "maybe in your next life, you shouldn't have done the things you've done in this world."

His violet eyes glowed, no longer calm pools of void, but blazing with judgment.

He took one step forward, his aura crushing the air itself.

"That is," Daniel continued, his tone sharper than any blade, "if I give you the chance."

The moment he spoke, the atmosphere shifted.

The oppressive dread thickened until it felt as though reality itself bent under the weight of his existence.

[: Eyes of Calamity: Final Judgement :]

The instant the skill's name echoed, the world itself seemed to recoil.

A deep, guttural crack split the air behind Arcturus as the fabric of reality tore open, not like the ragged wounds of gates but with a grim, purposeful inevitability.

It was not chaos clawing its way into the world, it was the world itself opening willingly, as if relieved to purge the corruption that had stained it.

"W-What… what the hell is this!?"

Arcturus screamed, his voice breaking with a pitch that reeked of true terror.

The rift yawned open wider, its edges bleeding with a shadowy void.

From within, countless chains surged forth, not forged of steel or flame, but of pure emptiness, glimmering faintly with the essence of annihilation.

They writhed through the air like serpents seeking their prey.

One after another, the chains pierced through Arcturus's grotesque body.

They ignored his skeletal armour, his blessing, his laws. They sank into both flesh and soul, binding him completely.

"A-Ahh! No! NO! Please—!" Arcturus shrieked, thrashing violently as the chains tightened.

His wings flailed, his scythe swung wildly, his body twisted and tore against the bindings, but nothing gave way.

The chains dragged, pulling him toward the waiting rift.

His nails screeched as they clawed against the stone floor, leaving deep gouges as he tried to anchor himself to the world. But the pull was absolute, relentless.

"P-Please! Don't! Don't take me—!"

His voice was no longer that of a conqueror, not even of a warrior; it was the broken wail of a man consumed by the inevitability of death.

Daniel stood, unmoved, watching with cold finality.

His aura pressed down on the chamber, silencing all else.

The mercenaries and guild members could do nothing but stare, wide-eyed, trembling.

They had once feared Arcturus, worshipped him even, but now they watched him reduced to nothing more than prey.

The chains dragged him inch by inch toward the abyss.

His body contorted, his skeletal wings snapping like brittle twigs under the strain.

His scythe clattered from his hands, its crimson glow flickering out as though even it had abandoned him.

"NO! I BEG YOU! P-Please, Daniel! Spare me—!"

The plea was pitiful, raw with the terror of a man who realised his so-called immortality meant nothing.

But Daniel's eyes held no mercy. Only judgment.

The rift pulsed, the chains yanked, and with a final, desperate scream that echoed with all the fear he had inflicted upon others, Arcturus was dragged into the void.

His voice faded, swallowed whole by the darkness.

And then, silence.

The rift closed with a sound like the sealing of a tomb, smooth and absolute.

The chamber stilled, as though time itself sighed in relief. No trace of Arcturus remained, no body, no scythe, no lingering aura.

Only the broken ground, the shattered walls, and the heavy silence of those left behind bore witness to what had transpired.

The mercenaries and guild members stood frozen, their weapons slack in their hands, eyes wide with terror.

Their breaths came shallow, their hearts pounding in their ears.

For them, there was no mistaking it, what they had just witnessed was not a battle.

It was an execution.

And Daniel, standing calm, unscathed, and silent in the aftermath — was no longer just a man.

He was judgment incarnate.