Why does life sleep? Because it does not wish to wake from its dream.
Why does life sleep? Because it is not yet ready to face death.
Why does life sleep? Because we have grown weary.
Why does life sleep? Because one day, we will awaken from our dreams.
During the long years he spent sealed away, Samirth had fallen into deep contemplation countless times.
Nothingness seemed to have become the truest reflection of his innermost self.
Reality was filled with absurdities that could not be explained through common sense or logic, and that very absurdity was the root of the emptiness he felt.
Reality itself did not offer people any inherent truth or revelation. It was people who gave it meaning.
It was like a set of raw experimental data, while the values and meanings people assigned to it formed a beautiful trend line.
Yet those data points often strayed from their expected path and veered into the unknown, just as he had inexplicably arrived in the New World hundreds of years ago.
Justice did not always triumph over evil. No matter how hard an individual struggled, if they went against the tide, they would ultimately accomplish little.
Perhaps the version of himself who had believed he was the protagonist had been nothing more than an insignificant accident.
Death. What a terrifying word.
It was like a massive mountain bearing down on him until he could barely breathe, or a bottomless abyss hidden within endless darkness, filling his heart with dread.
Yet to Samirth, death was not the most frightening thing.
He knew full well that he was afraid of dying. There was no denying that.
But even more than death, he feared losing himself and no longer being the person he once was.
The Player known as Samirth was merely a fortunate man who had been lucky enough to cross into this world. He did not possess an iron will that could never be shaken.
All he wanted was to survive, to set out into the unknown with his pet, explore this wondrous and unfamiliar world, and record every beautiful sight they encountered.
Was even such a small and simple wish impossible to fulfill?
Samirth had lost count of how many times he had wanted to stop resisting and quietly accept his fate.
But whenever despair overwhelmed him, the image of the pet that had always stayed by his side would surface in his mind.
That was a precious pet he had spent a full 500,000 on!
It represented the wealth he had painstakingly saved over countless days and nights, along with all the tireless effort he had poured into obtaining it.
Then there had been the joy of discovering that his pet possessed an independent mind after they arrived in the New World, and all the stories they had created while traveling together...
Those precious memories had given him the strength to endure for hundreds of years.
He could not betray that profound bond or everything he had invested in it, because he knew his loyal pet would do everything in its power to avenge him.
Even as Wild Magic eroded his Soul, he gritted his teeth and held on.
He told himself, I absolutely cannot lose. It is not time to give up yet. It is still waiting for me!
That unyielding determination became an anchor buried deep within his Soul.
He struggled, resisted, and tried to break free again and again, until it became little more than instinct.
For hundreds of years, he repeated that cycle without ever stopping.
Then, one day, he finally escaped the seal.
But when he confronted his former mortal enemy, he suffered another crushing defeat. Worse still, he learned from that enemy that his pet had died.
From that moment onward, Samirth grew weary of reality.
He would never accept such an absurd world!
His Soul, unwilling to face the truth, chose to sleep within a beautiful dream, covering the ugly blade of reality beneath a layer of flawless, illusory foam.
The foam dissolved into soap, coating the rust of reality, while the Soul that faced reality scrubbed that rust away.
New colors remained within the soap, and with them, he built a new world. A world that belonged to him alone.
There was no pain or sorrow in that world.
Samirth immersed himself in it and savored its tranquility.
Everything outside had lost all meaning. He was like a wounded bird resting in the warmth of its nest, quietly awaiting the end of its life.
He would meet his end within nothingness. At least then, he could enjoy a little of the peace he had missed for so long.
But just as he sank deeper, he suddenly saw a glimmer of light.
It was faint, yet within that world, it shone with extraordinary brilliance.
"My Lord..."
A hazy voice came from within the light, as though crossing the barriers of space and time.
"My Lord..."
The lost Soul murmured the words, confusion spreading across his face.
The title felt both familiar and strangely distant. Almost unconsciously, he reached out his hands and walked toward the light.
...
In the outside world, Samirth slowly opened his eyes as his blurred vision gradually came into focus.
He tried to sit up, but his body felt as though it were pinned beneath blocks of lead. He could not move at all.
"Where... am I?"
Samirth muttered to himself.
At that moment, a figure suddenly threw itself into his arms and clung tightly to him.
A moment later, it burst into loud sobs.
"Waaah... My Lord, you're finally awake! I thought I would never see you again!"
The familiar voice reached his ears. Even after hundreds of years, he still remembered it clearly.
It belonged to the companion who had once been closest to him.
"Fivey..."
Samirth gazed at the figure in his arms, who looked almost exactly as he remembered. For the first time in hundreds of years, a gentle smile appeared on his face.
He lifted a hand and softly patted his pet on the back.
"Don't cry. I'm all right, aren't I?"
He did not know how any of this had happened, but for now, he only wanted to quietly savor this reunion after so many years apart.
"I hate to interrupt your long-awaited reunion, but it has been a long time, old friend."
A deep, resonant voice came from beside him, interrupting Samirth's thoughts.
Samirth instinctively turned his head and saw an arm covered in jet-black scales extended toward him.
His gaze followed the arm upward, and a face that seemed both familiar and unfamiliar entered his view.
It belonged to a Dragonoid with horns and scales, his entire body shrouded in a faint black mist.
Beside the Dragonoid stood a Skeleton Undead and a pitch-black humanoid Slime.
"You are..."
Samirth frowned, struggling to remember whether he had seen that face before.
He had the vague sense that he recognized it, but he could not recall who it belonged to.
Then, memories of the past surged through his mind like an unending river, and realization dawned on him.
His eyes flew wide open, astonishment spreading across his face.
"Naohara?! Damn! You got transmigrated too?!"
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