Immortal Paladin

Ezekiel lumbered through a forest that did not belong to any world it recognized. The Holy Skeleton had no memory of arriving there. One moment it had existed as one among countless others, linked to an endless congregation of identical beings, each sharing thoughts, senses, and purpose through a vast divine network. The next, in almost an instant, its connection had been severed.

Panic was not an emotion Holy Skeletons like it were meant to possess, yet something cold and alien crawled through the empty spaces between its bones. Ezekiel reached outward instinctively, searching for the familiar presence of its brethren.

However, nothing answered.

The Tower’s laws descended upon it, mercilessly, stripping even the distant echoes of its being, isolating it from the collective awareness and its master.

Ezekiel’s skeletal frame shuddered violently. Hairline fractures raced across ivory bones. Vertebrae twisted. Rib cages snapped apart with explosive cracks. The strange creature had entered a mysterious place that rejected its existence, and reality itself sought to correct the mistake.

[ERROR!]

The message flashed before its glowing eye.

A moment later, a soft voice reached it.

”Everything’s gonna be okay.”

The words carried authority, comfort, and certainty.

Its master’s voice, embraced it.

Slowly, the ’it’ became a ’he’ as Da Wei held him in his embrace.

[ERROR!]

Golden light erupted from the skeleton.

The Tower pushed.

Something greater pushed back.

Divine authority flooded the malformed vessel as the power of the Supreme Bearer rewrote the impossible. Bones that should have shattered instead elongated. The spine stretched with wet cracking sounds. New joints formed between old ones. The rib cage unfolded like a grotesque flower as strands of crimson flesh began weaving themselves across the skeletal frame.

Muscles grew first.

Long cords of red tissue wrapped around bone after bone, knotting themselves together with horrifying precision. Tendons stretched from newly formed limbs. Veins spread throughout the body like roots invading fertile soil.

The skeleton collapsed onto all fours, its jaw hanging open as flesh began to pour from the empty cavity of its skull. Muscles layered themselves over the forming face, cartilage pushing outward while teeth emerged from bleeding gums. A tongue slithered into existence, followed swiftly by a layer of skin. The grotesque sight would have unnerved anyone, but no one was there to witness its—no, his—transformation.

He crawled over exposed muscle in rippling sheets, sealing the grotesque anatomy beneath pale flesh. Fingers formed one joint at a time. Nails pushed through fingertips. A beating heart materialized inside a newly created chest.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

The sound echoed through the forest.

”I... I am alive...”

The left eye glowed with an ominous golden radiance, showing the Ophanim. The divine construct watched silently as the vessel stabilized, fulfilling its single minded purpose to facilitate descent and welcome the master. The eye brightened as reality trembled and the consciousness within shifted.

The thing that had once been Ezekiel inhaled sharply.

And I opened my eyes.

The first thing I noticed was that I was completely naked.

The second was a massive floating message glaring directly into my face.

[ERROR!]

”...Well, that’s reassuring.”

I pushed myself upright and immediately realized something was terribly wrong.

This body was pathetically weak.

I’d possessed mortal bodies before. I’d experienced fragments of myself incarnating across countless lives. Yet this felt different. This body felt so fragile that I was genuinely concerned a stiff breeze might qualify as a lethal attack.

The fact that I was standing completely naked in the middle of a forest wasn’t helping matters at all.

I extended my senses and instinctively reached for Divine Qi, but nothing happened. I tried again, this time drawing on quintessence, yet the gathered energy unraveled before it could even stabilize, dispersing like smoke slipping through my fingers.

“Ah, shit.”

I looked down at my own hands. The flesh appeared healthy enough on the surface, but I could feel the limitations beneath. Weak muscles, fragile bones, and a body that barely possessed enough vitality to sustain itself. This was somehow worse than when I had been reborn on False Earth and that was saying a lot, because I started as an infant there.

My gaze swept across the forest. There was no sign of Yu Han or Li He. I hoped those two were still alive, but the thought left a bitter taste in my mouth. Neither of them deserved any of this. They had been dragged into the insanity surrounding Supreme Heart and me through no fault of their own. Every catastrophe seemed to spiral outward from the existence of Supreme Beings, collecting innocent people along the way.

A loud chime suddenly interrupted my thoughts, and a new message appeared.

[ANOMALOUS BUG DETECTED.]

[DESIGNATION: DA WEI.]

[STATUS: EXISTENCE UNAUTHORIZED.]

[CORRECTION PROTOCOL INITIATED.]

[TERMINATION PENDING.]

”...Excuse me?”

I stared at the message, and the message stared back. That felt distinctly ominous. Deciding that panic could wait until after I figured out exactly how screwed I was, I began experimenting with the interface. Several translucent windows popped into existence around me. One looked suspiciously like a character sheet, and I immediately blamed Supreme Heart. This had his fingerprints all over it.

Sure enough, the moment I opened it, I regretted everything.

Name: Da Wei

Race: Divine Shit

Class: Sexy Boner

HP: 1/1

I stared. Then I stared harder. “What the fuck? One HP? One?” The system was literally asking me to die. And what even were “Divine Shit” or “Sexy Boner”? Who the hell designed this game?

I kept reading, growing more incredulous with every line.

Strength: Human

Dexterity: Sloth

Constitution: Grape

Charisma: Middle Finger

Intelligence: Blue

Wisdom: Leeroy Jenkins

Silence filled the forest. “What does any of that even mean?” I poked at the window, but nothing happened. The insulting text just hovered there, mocking me. The charisma of a middle finger? A constitution of a grape? I wasn’t entirely sure what an intelligence of “blue” was supposed to represent, but somehow I still felt offended. And then there was the wisdom stat, Leeroy Jenkins. The name felt eerily familiar, like an old memory lurking just beyond reach. I frowned, straining to recall it, but the answer refused to surface.

“Ugh...”

I raised both middle fingers toward the heavens. “Hey! If you’ve got a bone to pick with me, come say it to my face!”

The words had barely left my mouth when the forest suddenly darkened. A massive shadow swallowed me whole. I slowly tilted my head upward. “…Oh.”

An enormous giant towered over the treeline, its skin covered in ancient bark with thick roots twisting around its powerful limbs. Its eyes glowed with a dull green light as it regarded me like a particularly offensive insect. A name floated ominously above its head: Forest Giant - Level 50.

I stared. The giant stared back.

”Well, that was fast.”

Forest Giants were among the most common monsters during the early days of LLO. They were practically tutorial bosses compared to the nonsense players fought later, but that didn’t mean much when my current health pool consisted of a single hit point.

The giant ripped an entire tree from the ground and swung it downward like a colossal club. I immediately opened my skill interface, silently thanking every deity in existence that my skills were still there. As the massive trunk descended, I activated Divine Step. The world blurred around me. Despite the complete absence of Divine Qi, the skill responded instantly. Space folded beneath my feet, and I appeared high above the giant’s head just as its attack crashed harmlessly into the earth.

For a brief moment, gravity claimed me. I fell, the wind roaring past my ears.

“Holy Sword!”

Golden radiance condensed within my hand, forming a blade that was smaller, weaker, and incomplete, yet still unmistakably divine. I rode the momentum downward and swung with every ounce of strength my fragile body could muster. The sword passed cleanly through the giant’s neck, then its chest, and finally its waist, leaving a glowing line of golden light across its massive form.

The Forest Giant froze mid-motion. In the next instant, the monster split apart with a sickening crack. Blood erupted skyward in a gruesome fountain as chunks of flesh and shattered wood exploded across the forest. The two halves of its corpse collapsed with thunderous force, shaking the ground beneath me.

[EXP GAINED.]

[LEVEL INCREASED.]

[EXP +500]

[ANOMALOUS ENTITY BONUS APPLIED.]

”That’s awfully nice of you.”

A rain of blood, meat, and gore poured over me.

I landed on the ground as gracefully as a sloth could muster, which was to say I nearly fell on my face.

”Okay...”

I steadied myself.

”...I hate this body.”

My lungs already felt tired, and my muscles ached with soreness. The simple movement had taken far more effort than it ever should have. Looking at my status sheet again, I reluctantly admitted that the system might not have been lying after all.

My strength genuinely felt human, and pitifully so. My dexterity was exactly like that of a sloth, and given how fragile I felt, there was a disturbingly high chance my constitution really was equivalent to a grape. The charisma and intelligence stats were impossible to verify right now, but the wisdom stat worried me the most, mostly because I still had no idea who Leeroy Jenkins was.

”I swear I’ve heard it before...”

The only silver lining was that my abilities still functioned. An Ezekiel usually operated at roughly seventy-five percent of my original capabilities, yet this body felt far weaker than that. At best, I could maybe exert a tenth of my true power. Maybe. Possibly even less.

A warning prompt suddenly appeared.

[TOWER NOTICE]

[ANOMALOUS BUG IDENTIFIED.]

[SUBJECT: DA WEI.]

[EXISTENCE STATUS: ILLEGAL.]

[CURRENT PRESENCE DISRUPTS TOWER BALANCE.]

[CORRECTION PROCEDURES IN PROGRESS.]

”I have a very bad feeling about this.”

The Tower immediately rewarded my observation.

[TOWER NOTICE]

[BOUNTY ISSUED.]

[TARGET: DA WEI.]

[ELIMINATE THE ANOMALY.]

[REWARDS AVAILABLE.]

”Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

The sky exploded with brilliant light as an enormous system prompt materialized overhead. My own face stared down from the heavens like a wanted poster, visible to every player, native, monster, and lunatic inhabiting the Tower. The giant portrait helpfully labeled me in bold, mocking letters:

ANOMALOUS BUG

TERMINATE ON SIGHT

I rubbed my forehead. Honestly, this felt strangely nostalgic. A new world, new enemies, and everyone trying to kill me. The usual. Still, I hadn’t descended here for entertainment. I needed to create a system that would reduce casualties among those dragged into the Tower. These people were my subjects. If I could build proper protections, fewer innocents would die. Unfortunately, having a universal bounty attached to my head would probably complicate those plans.

Then again… who in their right mind would actually attack the Holy Emperor? I chose optimism.

Optimism immediately betrayed me.

[RECONFIGURING SPECIAL EXISTENCE.]

[BESTOWING CURSE OF THE CHAINED ONE.]

[LOCKING ULTIMATE SKILLS.]

[LOCKING IMMORTAL ARTS.]

The Holy Sword in my hand flickered once, then vanished into empty air. I stared at the spot where it had been.

“…Oh, come on.”

The silence lasted approximately three seconds before my Ophanim activated. Golden perception spread outward, and my expression immediately soured.

“Oh, fucking hell…”

Presences surrounded me from every direction. There were hundreds, no, thousands. The forest was absolutely packed. Voices drifted through the trees as the mob organized itself.

“We should split the reward equally.”

“Equally? Screw that. My guild found him first.”

“Surround the target!”

“Tighten the eastern perimeter!”

“Archers, move forward!”

“Don’t let him escape!”

More voices piled on, mixing greed with old grudges. “Remember the Hollowed World!” “My brother died because of him!” “Someone said he destroyed three continents!” “I heard he accidentally started seven apocalypses!” “I heard he’s an idiot!” “Pretty sure that’s confirmed.”

My eye twitched. ”Excuse me?”

The pressure radiating from the crowd made my stomach sink. There were genuinely dangerous individuals among them, far stronger than the Level 50 Forest Giant. What the hell were they feeding these people?

Taking a deep breath, I straightened my posture and assumed my Holy Emperor persona, letting golden authority enter my voice. “Citizens!”

The forest quieted for a moment.

“This is treason!”

Silence lingered. Then someone shouted back, “We don’t care!”

“You’re incompetent!”

“Idiot!”

“My village exploded because of one of your plans!”

“You accidentally summoned a moon!”

“A moon and a sun!” someone corrected.

“That somehow makes it worse!”

”You also dropped my continent!”

”Mine too!”

”Fuck reallocation and relief goods, fix my house!”

”We want compensation.”

”I want money!”

The crowd erupted into loud agreement. Shouts and insults flew from every direction as the mob quickly adjusted their positions, covering their tracks and slipping further behind the trees to stay out of my direct line of sight. My shoulders slumped. Now I just felt bad.

Then another voice suddenly rang out. “Wait.”

The forest quieted. “What?” The speaker sounded stunned. “No way.” “What is it?”

The man peeked through the bushes again. His eyes widened, his jaw dropped. A long silence followed before he whispered, “…Holy shit.”

The surrounding crowd grew curious. “What?” “What did you see?”

The scout pointed at the tool between my legs with a trembling finger. “I… I didn’t know they came that big.”

The forest fell deathly silent. My face froze. The entire crowd collectively looked downward. Several women whistled. Someone started clapping. Another person looked deeply offended.

“Come on!” I pointed angrily at the approaching army. “Focus, people!”

It was funny while it lasted, until they brought out the big guns. The first volley came from every direction at once from arrows, spears of lightning, balls of fire, compressed blades of wind, and a suspiciously glowing chicken that I didn’t even want to know about.

”Flame Phoenix, erupt,” cried out one of them, and the chicken in question burst in colorful flames.

“Shield of Faith!” A silver barrier enveloped me. “Shield of the Eternal!” A golden second layer formed around the first. The projectiles slammed into my defenses with devastating force. Explosions ripped across the forest, shattering trees and sending earth flying skyward. My barriers trembled violently.

“Oh, that’s not good.”

I immediately activated Divine Step and ran. Or rather, attempted to run. My sloth-tier dexterity turned what should have been a majestic retreat into a desperate, flailing scramble. The crowd behind me erupted into cheers.

“He’s running!”

“Get him!”

“Don’t let him escape!”

“Someone shoot his legs!”

“Not the legs!”

“Then shoot something else!”

I didn’t want to know what they meant by that. Divine Step carried me dozens of meters forward, then dozens more, until both shields shattered simultaneously with a loud CRACK.

“…What?”

A bald man burst through the smoke like an angry meteor, his fists burning with crimson flames and veins bulging across his forehead. His eyes radiated pure hatred. “THIS IS FOR YOUR FAILURE, YOU ARROGANT EMPEROR!”

He punched toward my face. I didn’t even bother looking at him. My Divine Zone expanded. “Frost Smite.”

Ice exploded around the man, freezing him solid mid-charge. Without missing a beat, I followed up. “Halo of Restriction.” A ring of golden light appeared around him. I cast it twice more, locking his torso and legs. The frozen man toppled sideways. I grabbed him under one arm like a sack of rice and resumed running, quickly reapplying my shields.

The crowd stared. I stared back. For a brief moment, nobody said anything.

Then someone shouted, “Did he just kidnap Mr. Lin?”

“HE KIDNAPPED BALDY!”

“PUT BALDY DOWN!”

“WE NEED BALDY!”

“WHO THE HELL IS BALDY?”

“THE BALD GUY!”

“I CAN SEE THAT, IDIOT!”

The frozen man remained completely unhelpful. I kept running. The mob kept chasing. And the cursing somehow intensified.

“GET BACK HERE!”

“THIEF!”

“KIDNAPPER!”

“CRIMINAL!”

”PERVERT!”

“YOU OWE ME PROPERTY DAMAGE REPARATIONS!”

“YOU OWE ME EMOTIONAL DAMAGE REPARATIONS!”

“YOU OWE ME A NEW GOAT!”

I glanced over my shoulder. There were somehow even more people now. Where were they coming from? Did the Tower manufacture angry citizens in underground facilities? Because that would explain a lot.