An ancient Greek philosopher once posed a series of intriguing questions;
If God is willing to prevent evil but not able, then He is not omnipotent.
If He is able but not willing, then He is malevolent.
If He is both able and willing, then whence comes evil?
If He is neither able nor willing, then why call Him God?
"But clearly," Elijah muttered to himself, closing the aged philosophy book in his lap, "he didn't think deeply enough. What if everything evil, good, and everything in between was part of a predestined plan? Destiny, you might call it. What if people were just pawns on a massive chessboard? And what if, just what if a pawn dared to play as a Knight, a Bishop, the Queen... or something outside the game entirely? A demon lord, perhaps?"
Elijah clenched the brittle pages of the book before setting it aside. Rising from his small bed, he stretched and glanced toward the thin door of his dorm room. The chatter and laughter of other freshmen filtered through.
At seventeen, Elijah was considerably young for a college student. His genius had been apparent since childhood, earning him the privilege of skipping grades and securing a scholarship to a prestigious university. Of course, his scholarship might also have been awarded out of pity. he was an orphan, after all, with no one to support him if he hadn't been "special."
Elijah moved to the window, his dark, rough-skinned hand brushing aside the curtain. His striking green eyes scanned the courtyard below, taking in the sight of the other students mingling effortlessly.
His short black hair, uneven and coarse, seemed as though it had been scorched, leaving it wild and untamed. His appearance made him an easy target for bullies all he's life.
He sighed, his breath fogging the cold windowpane.
"What's the point?" he murmured.
"Not like I have parents coming to the entrance ceremony. Maybe I should just skip it and head to the library instead."
His gaze lingered on the students outside. They laughed and chatted in tight-knit groups, forming cliques like packs of animals. Their joy was annoyingly tangible, and their camaraderie grated against Elijah's lonely existence.
He sneered.
"All I'll ever need is myself. I don't need these fakers and hypocrites."
But even as the words left his lips, a flicker of loneliness shone in his vibrant green irises, betraying his true feelings. Frustrated, Elijah yanked the curtains shut and threw himself onto his bed, burrowing under the covers.
"I don't need anyone," he whispered into the darkness. "I can't trust anyone. They'll just betray me and take everything precious to me."
A cold chill ran through his body, causing him to shiver uncontrollably. It wasn't the first time this had happened, so he dismissed it as a passing nuisance.
But then, it happened.
A voice clear and distinctly feminine echoed in his mind.
[NOTICE: Host has perished.]
[NOTICE: Cause of death… depression.]
[NOTICE: System self-preservation protocol has been triggered.]
"What? Who's there? What's going on?" Elijah's voice trembled as he tried to move, but his body wouldn't respond. Panic welled up inside him.
The voice ignored his protests, continuing in a mechanical, almost robotic tone:
[NOTICE: Isekai almost complete.]
[NOTICE: Host has no mana.]
[NOTICE: Host has no special talent.]
[NOTICE: Host has no luck.]
[NOTICE: Host has no intelligence.]
"No! Stop it! All my hard work, my entire life, it's all disappearing!"
Elijah felt weightless, suspended in an endless void. It wasn't a dream. No, it was far too vivid. He realized with chilling certainty that he was dead, and the voice... perhaps it was God, delivering his judgment.
[NOTICE: Host is now completely average.]
[NOTICE: All conditions have been met.]
[NOTICE: Isekai is commencing.]
"So, that's it, huh?" Elijah muttered bitterly. "You're going to throw me into the world again with nothing? Not even a shred of help?"
The voice continued as though he hadn't spoken.
[NOTICE: Demon Lord Revival System has been acquired.]
Elijah struggled with every ounce of his being, fighting against the pull of the overwhelming darkness. But it was futile. In the end, he was devoured, swallowed whole by the void.
The young man, who had earned his every talent through sheer hard work and unyielding persistence, met his end in the quiet solitude of his dorm room at the tender age of seventeen.
A groan escaped Elijah's lips, low and pained, cutting through the suffocating silence.
"Damn it… why does dying hurt so much? Aren't we supposed to, you know, rest in peace or something?"
His voice was hoarse, the words slurred as if he were still half-asleep. Slowly, Elijah forced his eyes open, but instead of being greeted by some ethereal afterlife, he was met with impenetrable darkness.
To make matters worse, something heavy pressed down on him, suffocating and unrelenting, like a sack of beans, except it smelled far worse.
"What the hell is this?!" he muttered, squirming in vain beneath the crushing weight. With a monumental effort, he managed to free his right arm and shoved at the mass above him. It barely budged.
"Ugh, what is this stuff? And why does it reek so damn much?"
A cold, female mechanical voice suddenly echoed in his mind, startling him.
[NOTICE: Host is being crushed by a heap of dead human male bodies.]
Elijah froze, his eyes widening in horror.
"Wha what?" His voice rose into a shrill scream, but no sound escaped the pile of corpses that entombed him.
[NOTICE: That was you screaming like a little girl.]
Elijah hissed, his voice trembling as he redoubled his efforts. He managed to push aside enough of the weight to poke his head out of the suffocating pile. Gasping for air, he sucked in a lungful of the burning, metallic air.
"Oh, thank God… I thought I was gonna suffocate after dying."
[NOTICE: Host is not dead yet.]
Elijah scowled. "Yeah, I kinda figured that out, thanks. But this doesn't make any sense. I did die, didn't I? I even heard the voice of God. Wait a second…" He paused, his brows furrowing.
"That wasn't your voice, was it?"
The realization hit him like a freight train. He wasn't just hearing things, he was talking to someone, or rather, something, and it was responding.
"What the hell is going on here?!"
[NOTICE: Please clarify what you don't understand. System will answer all questions.]
The robotic, female voice was unnervingly calm, but Elijah couldn't muster a response. Not because he wasn't confused, no, he was so confused that he didn't even know what to ask.
With trembling hands, he shoved aside more of the grotesque mass and crawled free, collapsing onto solid ground. He took a moment to catch his breath before looking back, and immediately wished he hadn't.
The heap of bodies he'd been buried under wasn't human. Not entirely, anyway.
Most of them were grotesque monstrosities, their upper halves resembling humans while their lower bodies took on the twisted forms of snakes. Others were even stranger, hybrids of bears, lions, horses, and fish, their features fused together in ways that defied logic.
"Oh, hell no…" Elijah whispered, his blood turning to ice.
Some of the creatures were clad in what looked like military uniforms, their grotesque forms almost comically mismatched with the rigid attire.
Around them lay rifles with bayonets affixed, archaic weapons that wouldn't have been out of place in a centuries-old battlefield.
Elijah turned his gaze upward, his stomach churning as he took in the sky. Black clouds churned ominously above, casting the entire landscape in a suffocating gloom. The air was thick, hot, and acrid, searing his lungs with every breath.
Suddenly, the sound of hooves pounding against the earth shattered the silence. Elijah's head snapped toward the noise, but his body refused to move.
The thundering grew louder until a group of horsemen appeared, their silhouettes cutting sharp figures against the dim horizon. Before Elijah could react, the riders stopped mere feet away, and one of them, a woman leapt gracefully from her mount.
She landed lightly, her military uniform pristine despite the carnage surrounding them. Her sharp eyes, framed by her youthful face, locked onto Elijah with an assessing gaze.
She couldn't have been older than her early twenties, but there was a commanding presence about her.
she announced, her voice crisp and authoritative.
"Young male. Appears to be a worker."
Elijah looked up at her, his fear momentarily forgotten as he took in her striking features. Before he could stop himself, a foolish smile spread across his face.