Another Stupid Isekai

It was like an invisible barrier, you had to force your way through, but the pushback was so strong, that even if you charged at it at full speed, you wouldn’t make it.

I tried. I tried really hard, by bringing up the image of my family in danger, somewhere out there, clueless about the devastation happening just under their noses. I brought the vision of Martin, kneeling down dead with a smile on his face.

It made my heart hurt, but that too wasn’t enough. Even Nobuo, who fought to the very end, knowing he will die. Druoag too. The alien whom I saw butchered, surrounded by the aliens who did that to him.

All of it was too little. The pain pushed back on me so hard, that it felt like there was no option I could transform.

To focus on the internal issue, I didn’t notice the general supreme appearing not too far away above me, with the hands still crossed on his chest. He could attack, but instead, he was just observing. Hoping that I was about to change my mind due to the impossible odds I was facing.

I was still running, but mostly on autopilot, much slower than before because I was paying more attention to my thoughts than to anything else.

I realized he was there after I failed. I turned around, sliding on the stone, and rising cloud of dust, just to shoot a beam of scorching energy he blasted away with the back of his hand like it was an annoying mosquito.

“You know you can’t win”, he suddenly told me. “Surrender. There will be a place for you here, among us. We will rise even stronger than we ever were, win the war against the creator, and then we all will be free”, he assured me.

The first part he told me was painfully true, but the rest of it I just saw as a bunch of crap. In the mids of that, I stopped.

“Surrender now to forever stay on your knees”, I answered. “I’d rather die.”

“It will happen if you will keep fighting. You indeed will die”, he replied. “You know it. You can’t win with me, and there are plenty stronger than I am. You already lost, trying to fight with us in the first place. We are right. We are just. We are the answer. Why can’t you see it? The path to true freedom. Just surrender.”

“Path to true freedom doesn’t go through slavery. I won’t be your puppet. Maybe I will lose, but so will you. There will be more coming after me, and they will be stronger”, despite my bold words, I didn’t believe in them at all.

It was just a lie to make him lose his confidence. Why? Because I wanted to at least win at something. I know it’s pity, maybe even stupid, but that was the best I could do since my attempt to transform into that monster failed miserably.

“Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?”, resonated in the back of my head. I was doing the same thing I did back then, and yet I couldn’t make it. It was like the threshold increased, and the resolve I needed to pass became even greater. It was barely attainable back then, but now it became something I simply couldn’t achieve.

“Is it because I’m afraid?”, I asked myself.

The general supreme was speaking to me, still in my mind, but I didn’t even listen at that point. He was blabbering the same nonsense, refusing to understand the very base he built his idea was wrong. After all, you can not achieve peace by killing people.

Only going forward, despite the violence, despite the difficulties can bring you to your goal. I once read about a guy like that. Not much, but enough to be inspired.

“One way or the other”, I told myself, then returned to reality.

The general supreme seemed to be waiting for an answer to a question I didn’t even register.

I pushed once again against the barrier, and the pain hit me like a truck. It was paralyzing. So strong that I lost vision, even my mental one. I didn’t back down, and kept pushing, trying to make it past it. My legs gave out, and I ended up falling to my knees.

Right now I wonder how the general supreme reacted. Did he smile? Did he take it as his victory and my surrender? Well… Maybe it doesn’t matter.

Back to the pain, though. It was overwhelming. Devastating, like going forward despite hellfire burning everything around you. I lost my grasp on reality completely. It was just me and the pain. I was not backing down, and the pain wasn’t either.

Each step forward made it worse, to the point I didn’t want anything more than to just stop. The feeling was like an anchor, pulling me down, almost forcing me to give up. I knew that I was going to lose at that moment, so I told myself something completely stupid.

“Just one step forward, and then you can give up.”

It became my mantra after each step I took. “Just one more, and then you can give up.” But I wasn’t giving up. It was the dumbest lie I could tell myself, and yet it was working. I was making it. Passing through the impossible, until I stopped feeling the pressure f pain pushing me away. Instead, it started to pull me inside.

At that moment my body began falling apart. The void essence in my veins started to eat me. A race against time. Either I make it, becoming the monster of my nightmares, or the void will eat me before I can make it.

And the void was hungry. So hungry that no words can describe it. Countless voices were demanding to be fed. They were screaming in my mind to the point that my own thoughts stopped existing.

I knew that I need to stop it before it would be too late. I just didn’t really know how.