“Lily Caldwell! Are you even human?!”
Ethan Caldwell’s eyes snapped open.
Veins bulged across his forehead. Shock, rage, and a freezing kind of disappointment churned in his eyes.
Pain.
Too damn much pain.
Not even in his worst dreams had he thought the little sister he had raised with his own hands would do something like that to him.
“I thought you were just chasing idols. Thought you were in a rebellious phase. But in the end…”
The memory of what had just happened came back like a rusty blade sawing through bone, and Ethan’s heart went cold.
No one knew he was a transmigrator.
The moment he crossed over, he had become an orphan. Not long after, a kind couple took him in and raised him as their son.
When he was five, they had a daughter of their own and named her Lily Caldwell.
Still, the couple never favored the younger child. They treated both of them the same.
So Ethan had always looked after Lily more than anyone else.
Especially after he turned eighteen, when their adoptive parents died in a car crash.
From that day on, he carried everything alone—survival, the household, and the burden of raising his sister.
Then the change came.
It happened the year Lily had just entered university.
The game Godforsaken descended upon the world.
People could enter the game, kill monsters, and gain lifespan. They could even burn that lifespan to extract in-game powers into reality.
Once a person grew strong enough, ripping apart planes and tanks with bare hands was no joke. Even enduring a nuclear blast with flesh and blood stopped sounding impossible.
After that, the whole world turned upside down.
Disaster spread everywhere.
When countless people could barely keep themselves alive, Ethan dragged Lily forward through blood, ruin, and one killing ground after another. Step by step, he fought his way up until he became one of the top hundred experts on the planet.
And in the end, inside an Ancient God ruin, he obtained a mysterious Ancient God eyeball.
Only then did he finally gain the right to climb toward the peak.
He never thought Lily Caldwell would be the one to make a move on him.
Ethan Caldwell had never guarded against his own sister. Not once.
She had mixed ‘Water of the Wandering Soul’ into his drink. The moment he swallowed it, all strength left his body. His limbs went dead. He could not move a finger.
Then Lily stood in front of him and spoke in a flat, cold voice.
“Ever since we were young, all you ever did was keep me on a leash. Watch me. Control me.”
“You wouldn’t allow this. You wouldn’t allow that.”
“Every day with you, I could barely breathe. Not for a single moment did I ever feel free.”
“I know you hate Tristan Ashvale. His fan gathering, his concerts—you never let me go. Because of you, do you even know how much I missed?”
Her eyes shone as she spoke, like she was finally saying words she had buried for years.
“But do you know what? Brother Tristan reached out to me today.”
“So it turns out he always knew I existed.”
“But because of you, he knew there was no chance for us. I waited until now—only now did I finally get my chance…”
“As long as I get your Ancient God eyeball, Brother Tristan will become stronger than you!”
“And then you won’t be able to stop us from being together!”
Ethan’s soul drifted outside his body, helpless, forced to watch every second of it.
His sister, Lily Caldwell, dressed in a white gown, stepped close—
and with her own hands, she dug out both his eyes.
Her pretty face was flushed with excitement, with joy so bright it looked almost cruel.
“Don’t worry,” she said softly. “Brother Tristan said he’ll find you a new pair of eyes. As long as you stop getting in the way of us being together…”
Once she got Ethan’s eyeballs, Lily left the room in high spirits, almost skipping with delight.
What she did not know was this—
the ‘Water of the Wandering Soul’ Tristan Ashvale had given her carried a deadly poison mixed inside.
Not long after she left, Ethan died on the spot.
...
When Ethan Caldwell opened his eyes again, he found himself lying in bed.
A small bedroom. Plain. Clean. Nothing fancy.
The curtain by the floor-to-ceiling window stirred under a soft breeze. Warm sunlight slipped through the cracks, falling across the blanket in thin golden strands...
“I came back... nine years?”
“I was reborn?”
Ethan pushed himself upright, still dazed, like his soul had not fully settled back into his body.
Then the memories of his last life rose up, one by one.
His face turned cold.
“Tristan Ashvale...”
That man was a celebrity in Great Xia.
Back when he was still just a trainee, Lily Caldwell had already been following him. Same as those crazed fangirls—obsessed, headstrong, deaf to reason.
Because of that, Ethan kept a tight hand on her.
“No staying out all night. No bars. No smoking.”
“And that was enough to make you feel suffocated?”
“When the era of the Godforsaken Game came, I didn’t let you party up with strangers. For your safety, I took you with me the whole way and leveled you myself...”
“And in your eyes, that meant I was taking away your freedom?”
Ethan still remembered it clearly.
On the very day the Godforsaken Game descended, Lily was in the middle of a fight with him.
Because Tristan Ashvale had a concert in the next city over. Lily wanted to buy a ticket and run off to see him, but Ethan shut it down on the spot.
She had an Advanced Mathematics exam that day.
Skip the exam...
for a concert?
How could Ethan Caldwell ever agree to that?
Yet in the end...
Lily Caldwell still slipped out with her best friend and went in secret.
At first, Ethan meant to wait. Wait for her to come back, lower her head, and apologize.
But the very next day, the Godforsaken Game descended.
Worried sick something might happen to Lily, Ethan went to find her himself. He took the first step. He gave in first. He made peace first.
From then on, under Ethan’s protection, Lily hardly suffered a thing in that age of disaster. No real setbacks. No real hardship. While others clawed and bled just to stay alive, she lived sheltered beneath his wings.
A lot of people envied her.
Envied her for having a brother like that.
But who could have guessed that in her heart, this brother who had raised her, protected her, and carried her for more than ten years—nearly twenty—still weighed less than some singer-dancer on a stage?
“Brother Tristan Ashvale?”
“Heh.”
“Lily Caldwell, I really didn’t think you’d be this stupid. If you took the Ancient God Eyeball and used it yourself, fine. That would’ve been one thing.”
“But you handed the eyeball to someone else...”
“You really think Tristan Ashvale knew you? Really think he liked you?”
Ethan laughed, cold and sharp.
After the Godforsaken Game arrived, the old star Tristan Ashvale had done all right for himself, sure. But at the end of the day, he was only a second-rate expert. He wasn’t even worth one of Ethan’s fingers.
In those nine years, Tristan Ashvale had never had any dealings with Ethan or Lily.
Not once.
And yet the moment Ethan obtained the Ancient God Eyeball, that man came knocking.
The meaning was plain as daylight.
There was only one thing Tristan Ashvale wanted—
the Ancient God Eyeball.
But Lily had actually been foolish enough to believe he came for her.
Believed he wanted to be with her.
“In my last life, I missed too much just to protect you.”
“I missed too many people. Too many chances.”
“I gave up a lot of dangerous zones for one reason only. I didn’t want to drag you into them.”
“If not for that, I might not have stopped at the global top hundred. I could’ve gone even higher...”
“If you think me keeping watch over you, protecting you, is just a chain around your neck, then fine.”
“In this life...”
“I’ll act like I never had a sister.”
“With your burden off me, I’ll only move easier.”
If it had been anyone else—anyone at all—who had done that to Ethan Caldwell, then after coming back to life, he would never have let them off so easily.
But Lily Caldwell...
She was, after all, the true daughter of his adoptive father and mother.
For the sake of those dead parents, Ethan was willing to leave her one path to live. Just one. No more than that...
From this day on, she could fend for herself. Live or die by her own hand.
As for Tristan Ashvale, his name had long since gone straight onto Ethan’s kill list.
The moment Ethan truly made up his mind to throw off Lily Caldwell, that burden he had carried for years, something inside him loosened all at once. His whole body felt light. His chest opened up. It was like a knot jammed in his heart had finally been ripped free.
For all these years, he had never felt this relaxed.
He was honestly looking forward to it now. Without Lily Caldwell, without that deadweight hanging off him, just how high could he climb?
Then, right at that moment—
Inside Ethan’s mind, a cold mechanical voice suddenly rang out.
At the same time, a string of mysterious symbols flared before his eyes!
[“Eye of Judgment” activating...]
[You have obtained the “Authority of Judgment”!]
That icy voice sounded so abruptly that Ethan froze for a moment.
The Eye of Judgment?
The Authority of Judgment?
What the hell was this?
The ancient god eyeball he had obtained?
“The Eye of Judgment is an ancient god relic.”
“When I got it, it was already bound to me.”
“Even if they gouged out both my eyes, they still couldn’t take it away.”
“So…”
“This thing followed me back through rebirth?”
In his last life, no matter what Ethan Caldwell tried, he had never managed to awaken this thing.
But now, after being reborn, the ancient god eyeball had actually come alive.