Omnipotent? Omniscient?
If those were the qualities of a god, Sector Commander Azaroth did not qualify.
He was something worse.
His will could silence stars. His whims decided which civilizations thrived and which burned. When he spoke, solar systems obeyed. But divinity? That was a fable the insects below clung to.
In truth, he was an executioner with too much time.
So when the young man before him—Jack, a freshly flattened college dropout—stammered, "A-Are you… God?" Azaroth only smiled.
That thin, weary smile of someone who had murdered galaxies between breakfast and boredom.
---
Far behind them, flickering dimly like a dying candle, Zarek drifted in silence. A tiny yellow soul-orb, pulsing weakly in the white void.
He said nothing. He didn't beg. He'd already put the pieces together.
The moment his phone exploded, and the dark took him, he knew he had been dragged into something beyond human comprehension.
He just hadn't realized how insulting it would be.
"A good-for-nothing extra," Azaroth had said earlier. Not to Zarek. About him.
As if he were background noise. A fart in the wind.
---
Jack bounced in place like an overexcited child.
"I get three wishes? Anything I want?"
Azaroth chuckled. A hollow, calculated sound.
"Yes. Anything."
But beneath that smile, was something completely different, something dark and sinsiter.
Azaroth wasn't granting a reward. He was offloading a curse—an ancient artifact, buried and forgotten in the long river of time, that now whispered threats into his eternal mind.
He had glimpsed the future once. Just once.
And it had shown him how he would die—burning, screaming, at the hands of that artifact's chosen host.
This was something that he couldn't allow to happen, when he was already aware of the problems and not doing anything to solve it wasn't his style.
To solve the problem the he needed to take control, he didn't know who that host was, but now he knew.. because he would be the one deciding.
Jack would be that host.
A lamb that was already on the chopping board.
---
"I wish for… a system!" Jack declared with glee.
Zarek didn't speak or rather he couldn't didn't blink. He simply watched, then something started to click in his mind.
He had read too many stories to miss the pattern.
The wishes.
The setup.
The smiling god.
It looked like a plot of some top tier tashy Isekai novel.
If that wasn't enough, from the way this so called god treated the young man, Zarek relized something very important..he wasn't the protagonist.
Not this time. Maybe not ever.
Still, he clung to something cold and sharp inside him—a defiant ember that refused to die.
Just as he was thinking, Something changed.
Azaroth's eyes flicked toward him.
Immediately at the sight of those emotionless eyes, Zarek froze. Like a mantra he repeated in his head.
Don't think. Don't speak. Don't exist.
But it was too late.
Azaroth smiled again, this time with teeth.
"Still here?" The god's voice slid into his mind like a dagger dipped in oil. "You don't get to speak. You barely deserve to watch."
The words sliced through Zarek's fragile soul, searing shame into every corner of his being.
"You left a one-star review on my masterpiece," Azaroth said, tone devoid of irony.
"You called it trash. Called me talentless."
"And what were you, Zarek? A maggot living on old fast food and power fantasies? You couldn't even finish a novel, let alone write one."
For a moment the gods voice seems to ovelap with his dad's words from beofore, Zarek trembled. Not from fear.
From rage.
Because every single word was true.
And because it didn't matter.
Jack, meanwhile, had finished choosing his three wishes—three glowing orbs now hovered around him, radiating unknown power.
Azaroth gestured lazily.
"Into the gate, then."
A swirling black portal tore open like a wound in space. Its edges hissed and bled shadow.
Jack hesitated.
"Is… is this safe?"
Azaroth's smile returned.
"I sincerely hope not."
Jack was gone.
---
Then, the void cracked.
BOOM.
The white expanse shattered like glass, the fake dimension dissolving into nothing. Cosmic light spilled in. Zarek saw them then—
The stars.
Dead. Dying. Screaming in their silence.
And something worse.
It moved.
An impossible shape slithered between constellations. A thing of scales and infinite teeth. A dragon that dwarfed planets. Its eye opened—
"Is that a dragon?" He unconsciously muttered.
For one agonizing second, he felt it peel his soul open like wet paper.
Then, a whisper from Azaroth.
"No. This one's not for you."
"You don't get to reincarnate. You get to rot."
And the world turned black.