Ten Lucky Draws: I Became OP

Chapter 298: Eternal Bonds – The Middle Dimension

While the outside had vanished from his view, Ash found himself in a familiar space.

The void expanse that stretched in every direction.

It was featureless and infinite.

Being here usually meant one thing—more memories. Yet as he looked around, there were no other incarnations present.

“Oh brother… what’s going on now?” he muttered with a sigh, irritation already simmering. The job outside had still been done the way he intended, but—

His poem was definitely not what he wanted to say.

“Why the hell didn’t those bastards mention they could embody me?!” It was obvious that emotionless tone and aura hadn’t been him at all.

As he stood there, the void rippled—like water disturbed by a stone.

Then the memories began.

As always, he watched his incarnations as if they were films. Only on rare occasions was he pulled into one. But this time was different. It wasn’t one life unfolding before him… but thousands.

Thousands upon thousands of lives played out around him in perfect simultaneity—yet each one was clear and vivid to him.

In one, he was a blacksmith in a soot‑choked village on a dying world—hands calloused, back bent, forging swords for kings who never paid him.

A life that never saw beyond its own kingdom.

He died at thirty‑two, coughing blood from his lung, never knowing even a whisper of his origin.

Another showed him as a young boy born under a red sun in a desert of black sand. Homeless, abandoned before he even had a name. He died at seventeen, throat slit by raiders while clutching a stolen loaf of bread.

The memories didn’t stop.

He watched them all with a clear mind, only wondering what the point of this was.

’I understand… these must be all the failed incarnations. But what’s the point?

The nine rings in his golden eyes spun slowly.

He continued watching for what felt like five hundred thousand years.

Each life—whether scholar, warlord crowned in molten iron, healer, poet, thief—was different.

Some suffered quietly, enduring hunger, betrayal, mortal disease.

Some were evil, wearing crowns soaked in the blood of their own kin. Some were benevolent, healing with their hands, soothing with their words, sacrificing themselves for others.

…And some were lustful, living only for endless nights with harems and broken hearts.

But one thing remained consistent…

They all died early.

Not one life he watched made it beyond the Lower Dimension. Some didn’t even make it beyond their kingdoms… or their worlds.

It was a cascade of everything a being could experience. He lived lives that reached the peak of the Lower Dimension… and countless others mired in mediocrity or suffering.

When the memories finally ended, the void returned to its original stillness, leaving Ash alone once more.

Yet he didn’t feel any different than before.

He had already suspected this long ago. When the Second told him only a few incarnations were special, he knew then that he had lived many lives that amounted to nothing.

“So, are you going to keep being all mysterious?” His voice echoed through the void.

He honestly had no idea which incarnation would appear—but he knew he couldn’t be kept here forever.

As if responding, a faint silhouette materialized before him.

A pure white eye—half‑lidded, unblinking.

There was no face…. nor body. Only the Eye, and a presence beyond vast, beyond emotion— a silhouette of pure beginning and absolute end.

“Oh, the Eye of First Dawn again… huh?” Ash exhaled, finally understanding why this felt different from every other memory cycles. He had only encountered this Eye once before—back on Elaris.

Back then, he hadn’t seen much… or so he thought.

But now he realized the truth.

“So, do you show everyone the creation of everything?”

Because that’s what it had been. When the man vanished into nothing back then—that had been the cascade of creation itself.

The Eye didn’t blink nor did it respond to him directly. It simply stared at him with immense, unsettling interest.

When it spoke, it used Ash’s exact voice—just stripped of all emotion.

“You are the last.”

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere—resonating in his bones, in his thoughts, in the silence between heartbeats.

“All before you failed… too confined within their own creation.”

Ash raised a brow but didn’t interrupt. He simply listened.

“Failed architects who could not leave the house built for them. Seeds that refused to break the soil. They tasted power—some briefly, some for centuries, some for cycles— but never enough to step beyond the frame.”

The silhouette did not move.

Yet it felt closer.

“The one before you… he came nearest. He walked the edge of escape. At one point he saw the door. He touched the frame many times… but then beauty found him. Bonds found him. And soon he too became a failure—unable to step beyond the complete frame.”

A pause followed—longer than time itself.

“You are the catalyst. The one who will burn the house down. Not to save it. Not to mourn it. Only because it is time for something new.”

Ash’s golden eyes stayed fixed forward—narrowed, unblinking.

The silhouette spoke again, voice unchanged.

“Begin.”

The void rippled.

A new memory unfolded—slower, heavier.

And this time…

Ash felt himself fall into it.

He was no longer watching like a film… but as the times when he witnessed his lovers’ memories.

He was there—tethered like a ghost.

For a long moment, there was only darkness. A darkness so complete it felt as though the void had never changed.

Then—

CRACK!

CRACK!

CRACK!

The sound of an egg splitting echoed through the endless black, and through the fractures, light finally seeped in.

When the shell broke fully, Ash found himself tethered to a child who looked no older than ten.

They floated in the sky—surrounded by an endless field of multicolored grass stretching as far as sight could reach.

Above them, the sky wasn’t blue.

It was a symphony of shifting colors, not flat like paint but more like a vast tunnel—an upward vacuum spiraling into infinity.

The farther the tunnel stretched, the more the colors faded from perception, as if slipping beyond the limits of sight itself.