Except for him finally accepting the fact that he had fallen in love with the dragon, there wasn't anything new in his life.
The strengths and intelligence of the monsters continued to increase by 20% with every reset, while Ivan continued to grow stronger and stronger. His castle was completed by his summons under his guidance, and with the knowledge of the magic circles, he added everything he needed inside the castle.
He then theorised a loophole to the berserk state of the monsters: that he would kill one, and only one, monster a day and see how long it would last without him killing every monster every time, but unfortunately for him, his theory failed, and he had to kill every monster in the monster army, together with the black dragon, his lover, whom he had named Nara, which meant the nearest and dearest one.
From then on, his nightmares got a lot scarier. He "always," every time he slept, had a nightmare in which he watched his family members get killed while he could do nothing about it, except watching. He had seen them die in all kinds of ways in all kinds of scenarios, and he was terrified of it every time, but waking up, he would console himself by thinking those were just nightmares and that they would never come true, which was helpful because at the end of it, he was motivated to get stronger.
But now, a new member, Nara, was added to his nightmares, and in every single one of those nightmares he saw, he was the one killing her with a smile on his face. He was torturing her while she screamed in pain, asking him to stop and help her, but instead, in every one of those nightmares, Ivan took pleasure in her pleas.
He did all kinds of unimaginable things, things he would never do, to her in his nightmares. All of them were such a mental torture that he began to blame himself, thinking that if he didn't have those kinds of thoughts in a corner of his mind, then why would they appear in his nightmare, he was a monster that didn't deserve to exist, and whatnot. Since Nara was in front of him every day, it was becoming harder and harder for him to not blame himself.
He was so indulged in his depression that his eyes had turned dead, and he hadn't even realised that a year had passed, and the monsters had gone berserk, rushing towards him to kill him. What woke him up from his insignificant depression was Nara, who breathed out a humongous breath in her dragon form, killing off all the hostile monsters, and landed in front of Ivan before turning into her human form and attacking him with the intent to kill him.
Subconsciously, he fought against her, and soon, he began to overpower her; in a flash, he was sitting on her dragon head, gazing at her humongous eye that was glaring at him.
'No!' 'Don't!' 'No!' 'No!' with his own, slightly more mature voices ringing in his head, asking him to stop and not do what he was about to do, with tears streaming down his eyes, he raised his head and spat out a mouthful of acid into Nara's eye,
With a smile on his face.
*
With a flash, Ivan was now sitting on top of a pile of gigantic corpses, tears streaming down his eyes as he looked down at Nara's corpses in her black dragon form with a clear, bright smile on his face.
"NO!!!!!" With a loud yell, Ivan woke up as he sat in the middle of his large canopy bed, huffing and covered in cold sweat.
"Fuck, this goddamn curse." Ivan mumbled under his breath and looked down at the large claw marks on his chest. He was naked, with only a thick, velvety brown blanket covering his lower half of the body. Ivan cracked his neck with his right hand placed on his neck, looking around. He had an ominous, purplish-black aura oozing from a simple, black-coloured ring on his right index finger and an inverse cross locket with a chained necklace around his neck. He had pitch-black abyss-like hair and eyes, a pair of "C"-shaped horns protruding out from the corners of his head, and a sharp and handsome facial feature. His left hand was covered in maze-like patterns and was covered in a silvery left arm glove that had small, black-coloured, light-devouring scales adorned on it. He was a 7-foot-tall, handsome man with a muscular, chiselled, and lean body that seemed to be ready for combat, with 8 core in his body, 7 were in the spots of the chakra points in the human body, while the other, his first ever core was behind his belly button.
He was in a majestic, 500-foot-wide and 100-foot-tall black room that was luxuriously furnished, with dull, translucent black chandeliers and scentless black candles lighting up the room. The pillar designs and decorative add-ons in the room were made out of pure white, well-polished bones.
With a deep sigh, Ivan scooted to the right corner of the bed, got up, and went into the bathroom for a bath. The bathroom's aesthetic was similar to that of his room.
The bathroom was a 100-foot-wide and 50-foot-tall room. In the middle of the room was a bathtub filled with the fresh blood of the monsters. He dipped himself in it, and by circulating magic power around the tub, he heated up the blood and took a warm, comfortable bath, almost falling asleep again.
*
After half an hour, Ivan walked out of the bathroom, covering himself in a black bathrobe.
Sensing the maid, dressed in black, standing in front of his room's door, "Come in." Ivan commanded, and as he looked at a fair, grey-eyed, half-human, half-snaked maid slithering into the room, he lightly smiled.
"You are here again, my sly maid." Ivan commented and shook his head with a light chuckle, noticing the maid blush and lower her head in embarrassment.
"Your majesty." She bowed her head in a 90-degree angle, and hearing the way she called Ivan, he shook his head with a light sigh before his face turned solemn, and with a slight nod, he walked towards the black reflective surface in the wall that was being used as a mirror, while his body involuntarily coated itself with a thin layer of reddish-black, menacing aura.
*
After a few minutes, he was dressed in large, black-coloured trousers that were made out of monsters' skin. Just like everything else that seemed like clothes, without wearing anything else, he walked out of the room, with the maid walking behind him, to a dark, dimly lit hallway.
With a subtle, elegant wave of his left hand, two white, band-like magic circles appeared around his left forearm while another two-layered white magic circles appeared an inch away from his left palm, and with a mid-air tap of his index finger, Ivan disappeared from the spot he walked.
Unsurprised by her master's actions, Nu, the maid, too, disappeared from the spot.
WHOOSH!
*
Ivan appeared in the middle of a humongous coliseum that had reddish-black coloured sand in the middle, surrounded by millions of seats for the spectators, while the mesmerizingly twinkling, beautiful stars that filled the night sky could be seen from below.
Complying with Ivan's will, the ring adorning his index finger liquidised, and a purplish black droplet dropped down from his index knuckle and halted mid-air. With a greyish, single-layered magic circle beneath Ivan's right knuckles, the droplet enlarged, and a shotput-sized, purplish black ball floated a foot below his right palm, splitting into two equally sized balls and floating a foot beneath both of his arms.
With a strong stretch of Ivan's palm, the shotput-sized balls floating beneath his hands morphed into a pair of two-foot-long daggers, which he slashed ahead with.
WHOOOSH
SWISH
While he continued to slash down an imaginary entity, Nu appeared a few metres behind him, gazing at him with her chest puffed up in pride.
In the past 2,897 years, Ivan had "created" many things in the years of free time he had, some of which were the furniture and decorations in his "castle." He had set many traps on the first few floors, studied runes from Drayce's knowledge, and using those, he had modified the ways of using magic circles in such a different form and way that one could easily say he created an entirely new kind of magic circles.
He had then "created" many things, among which were the armoured clothes that they use on a daily basis; they were made out of the skins of the monsters and the spider monster's web.
Artefacts, among which were his cursed ring and left arm glove. The ring allows him to wield any kind of weapon; the ring he wore was actually two different kinds of rings with different purposes, but after combining, it now allowed him to wield any weapon and transform into any weapon that the ring has "eaten," while also boosting the inherent abilities of weapons it ate. The ring was "cursed" because it wouldn't come off of Ivan's index finger no matter what; even if his index finger was cut off, it would simply find another finger to stick to; if there weren't any fingers left, then it would just float next to him. The left arm glove he wore is made out of the web of the spider monsters and the scales of the black dragon's; the glove had its very own set of abilities.
Weapon artefacts, which were weapons created by Ivan but with inherent abilities, and many more; but the most important thing he had "created" was,
"Father!"