A malnourished young man with tearful red eyes and a ghastly face sat on the ground, his arms were chained to the wall of his old, moldy cell. He'd been sitting there motionless, not even eating a single bite as his mind had fallen into a deathly spiral of doom.
He had just been betrayed by the love of his life; a courtship that had lasted for over a thousand years had ended in such a horrendous way that he couldn't even imagine.
A tiny spider crawled beside him, climbing the wall to build her nest between the arch of his arm and the rotten old bricks.
****
"My Lord! My Lord…" A titanic golden dragon that dwarfed countless realms looked down, bending his head down to the single man standing before him. "I advise against such a thing! The world would balance itself; you don't have to do this."
The water of the sapphire ponds shock, vibrating from the dragon's deep voice.
"Shinryuu…" The man said with a soft-spoken voice, looking back at the dragon with burning blue eyes of pure wisdom and might. "By that time, countless people would've died. My students, their children, and families, even our poor ancestors in the lower mortal realms. I do remember him, that kid living on the farms, he wished to be a shepherd. His dream won't come true at this rate."
"Why do you always trouble yourself with such thoughts? O' divine emperor!" The dragon growled, a hint of rage and sadness coming through his shaking voice. "It can't be helped; you don't need to do this."
The small dragonfly resting on the pond flew away, the rumbling of the water scared it. It made it way to the divine emperor, landing on his shoulder as no place was safer than by his side.
"Shinryuu, my old friend. This is not the end, even without my power or immortality, I would still live for a solid half a decade as I slowly age and die. That's the natural way, immortality is abnormal." He looked at the dragonfly on his shoulder, extending his finger for it to ride. "The world is dying, the countless cultivators violated the sacred world tree, and now everything is crashing down." He looked at the titanic withered tree on the horizon as the dragonfly flew away from his hands, gliding down the holy mountain to the lower lands.
"They sapped every bit of power the tree had to further their cultivation. When the tree dies, the countless realms she carries upon her great branches would fall and signal the end of the whole world." As the dragon spat those words out, his claws extended out as lightning crackled across his back.
"You are indeed right. This is our fault, the cultivators' fault." The emperor looked down with a sad face, "It's my fault."
"No, it isn't!" The dragon glared at him, rage boiling in his red eyes. "You've fought the demons with me, we shared blood and sweat protecting the tree's root from those vile pests. That's where you got your power."
"But that doesn't change the fact that I wasn't harsh enough on my disciples and students. They took the easy path of sucking the world tree's power like the demons do and rapidly enchanted their cultivation." The emperor lifted his hand, "No matter how many of them I killed, the knowledge seems to have already spread across the masses, and everyone is trying to grow stronger by sucking Yggdrasil's power."
"Then let me kill them!" The dragon roared, fire crackling between his massive fangs. "One breath! I swear, one breath is what it'll take and they shall be dead."
"I'm certain you can kill them, I fought by your side and I do not doubt your magnificent. Dragon Overlord. But…One life is worth less than many, and it'll be a faster and simpler solution for me to give up my immortality and power." The emperor took a step forward upon the edges of his emerald palace and looked at the majestic tree in the horizon.
"Using all of my power, I can restore the tree's vitality and seal its cracks. That way neither demons nor humans would be able to sap its power ever again." He smiled, "A perfect solution that would allow us all to live and see another day."
"Perfect my tail! You'd turn back into a mere mortal with no power, you'll be no different than the weakest human in the lower mortal realm!" The dragon growled with flames burning inside his massive maw. The mere thought had made his scales itch.
"You hate it?" The emperor looked back with a smirk, "To befriend a weak and worthless mortal?"
"Say that again and I'll smack you down!" The dragon roared, the ground beneath his claws cracking with a boom. "I'll still carry you upon my head even had you turned into a demon's turd! Do you remember how many times you've saved my life? The dragons' lives? All the divine beasts owe you… their lives!"
"I see…I too owe the world my life. We all owe it for letting us live in it, and the tree is its spine." The emperor lifted his hands, "I'll start now." A cold wind blew across the palace, sending a shiver down Shinryuu's spine.
"What about her? Did you tell her? Your wife?" The dragon sighed as he lowered his head even lower to look at the emperor's face. One last attempt to convince him to stop.
"No, she cries a lot. But I'm certain she already figured it out." Divine magic started rushing out of his fingers. "She's weaker than me, so please support her in ruling this world."
"What are you saying? You'll still live for another fifty years like all humans, cultivate once more!" The dragon growled, "I'll protect you against the demons."
"My core would be destroyed, so I can't cultivate." The emperor replied with a calm voice and the dragon gasped in terror, "You what!"
"The world is worth more than my whole life. Giving up my entire power and life to save it isn't even something that I would hesitate about." The emperor released the countless seals protecting his core, allowing the power to seep out.
Countless magic circles flashed from his body, reaching across the heavens toward the world tree.
As quick as the wind, a woman wearing a fancy black dress flew in from the inner palace and swung a red dagger, stabbing the emperor in the back, straight through his heart and core. "If you don't want that power, then give it up." The woman growled, sapping the emperor's unprotected core out.
As the power rushed into her body and her eyes burned with divine energy, a large smile crossed her face as she started floating with magic. The emperor fell to the ground, bleeding with dead eyes.
She burst laughing in a maniacal hysteria as the dragon stared at her with a shocked face, he couldn't comprehend what had just happened, that woman was Sofia, the emperor's wife. For a second, he wished this was planned by the emperor, but alas, it didn't seem to be the case.
Sinking into a euphoric ecstasy upon feeling her power getting amplified several folds after sucking her husband's whole cultivated might, she couldn't help but feel as if the whole world is now beneath her feet. The emperor was the strongest being before, but now, when his power mixed into her cultivation, she had ascended in a second and surpassed anything the emperor had ever been or achieved.
The dragon's blood rushed into his head as he swung his claw down, trying to crush her. His talon was easily stopped by her delicate hand, "Dragon Overlord Shinryuu, my power far outclasses yours. Either obey, or I'll eradicate all of Dragonkind." She said with a smile, licking her crimson lips.
Shinryuu had never been so mad in his life, and he was about to blast her with his strongest breath alongside the whole palace, but suddenly, a booming voice of a woman rumbled, shaking the whole world.
"You Wench!"
The two looked around, confused. They never heard that voice before, and even with their great power, they couldn't tell where it was coming from. "If he isn't inside me…" The voice boomed again, "Then no one will!" The whole world started shaking and crumbling, the sky shattered as a rumble filled the air.
Shinryuu realized it first and smiled, roaring into the heavens, "Heavenly beasts! It's the end, gather for one last crusade!" With his roar, the first thing to appear was a massive black spider that crawled up the world tree's trunk and jumped at the palace, her body alone dwarfed several realms in size.
"The World's Spider? How did she come out of the underworld?!" Sofia cried in shock, but her eyes quickly shifted toward the new figure standing before her dead husband. A tall ape-man stood there, menacingly cleaning his long red staff, crying rivers as he stood beside the emperor's corpse.
"My lord… It's been my honor to serve under you." He knelt down, holding the emperor's hand. Golden lightning crackled across the ape-man's back, his darkened face twisting with rage.
"Sofia, you've made a grave mistake. The world itself has spoken, and it shall soon be no more." The Dragon Overlord cracked his neck, "We're here to vent out anger at you before it's all over." Countless divine beasts started emerging left and right, both weak and strong. The world itself allowed them passage straight into the emerald palace.
As the fight broke out, the world crumbled into nothing. It used its last power to send one soul out, giving it a second chance in another universe. The emperor's soul got ejected out of the world at high speed and drifted in the time-space mazes until it finally landed in a peculiar place, the body of a frail prisoner in a forgotten asylum.
****
For weeks, he didn't move, lacking the will to even live. No matter what the guards left for him to eat, whether it was stale bread, water, or gruel, they always returned to find it rotten on the ground. He had sat still for so long that dust started to gather upon his frail body and a spider even built her web on the arch between his left arm and the ground.
The guards checked several times, and they were stunned to find him still alive, conscious even. They could tell with a single glance that he had lost the will to live or do anything and they decided to let him be until the gods took back what they owed.
Death loomed over his head, and his newly found life was about to end as miserably as it started.
"Move it! Careful, don't stick your hands into the cage!" One of the guards shouted as he pushed a large and rusty cage with a cat-eared woman inside. "She bites! Look!" One of the guards poked the woman with the back end of his polearm, and she rapidly turned around and bit it, shattering the wood into pieces with ease.
"FOUL BEAST!" The guard gasped, staring at his broken polearm.