Stepping out into the hallway proved to be pure torture. Every single step echoed in my head, not with sound, but with images. Thousands of personalities were crammed inside my skull. Thousands of lived lives. Heroes, villains, hermits, kings. And every single one of them was screaming, desperately asserting that they were the real one.

  And my current life? The life of Greg the student, who loves pizza and hates classes? It felt like a tiny, insignificant grain of sand swept away by a colossal ocean. It felt like I had lost my own identity forever.

  I walked down the hall, bracing myself against the wall. Alphus appeared ahead. He was walking toward me, and noticing my state, he opened his mouth to ask some banal question.

  Blink. Reality fractured. Alphus vanished. Standing in his place, towering all the way to the ceiling, was a Horrific Demon of the Old Eras. The exact same one I killed (or the one that killed me?) in the sixth cycle. Scales, saliva dripping with venom, raised claws ready to shred flesh. I felt the exact same primal, paralyzing terror I had felt thousands of years ago.

  I collapsed. My legs simply gave out. I scrambled backward, my fingers scrabbling uselessly against the floor, desperately trying to evade the incoming strike.

  "No... no..." I rasped, throwing my arms up to protect my face.

  "Greg?" The voice was anxious and painfully familiar. "Are you okay?"

  I froze. Blink. The Demon dissolved into mist. Standing in front of me was a terrified Alphus, offering a hand to help me up.

  "I... I don't know," I choked out.

  I didn't take his hand. I staggered to my feet and just walked away, giving him a wide berth.

  "Greg?" he called after me. I kept walking in silence.

  Every step was a transition into another world.

  Step. The hallway vanished. An Ice Storm howled around me. The cold pierced straight to my bones. I was walking through a blizzard, seeing nothing but a white void. I could feel my blood freezing in my veins.

  Step. The storm vanished. I was standing on the Peak of a Mountain. The sun blinded my eyes, the thin air burned my lungs. I felt like a conqueror who had just subjugated the world.

  Step. Back in the dim hallway of the Academy.

  Everything was blending together. Where was reality? Where was memory? These weren't my memories. They were the memories of others. But they were inside me. They were clawing their way out, tearing my psyche to shreds in the process.

  "Who am I?" I whispered, taking another step into the unknown. "Am I here, or am I there?"

  I stumbled my way to the Combat Magic classroom. My hand reached for the doorknob.

  Blink.

  For a fraction of a second, I saw my classroom: the desks, the chalkboard, the bored students.

  Blink. Reality tore open. Instead of students, an entire Army of Demons sat before me. Horns, crimson skin, bared fangs, the suffocating stench of sulfur and rotting meat. They were all staring at me, coiling to attack. And the teacher... Elandr? Was that his name? Instead of a strict professor in robes, I saw a Terrifying Dark Elf. His skin was the color of ash, his eyes burned with violet fire, and his hands gripped a ritual dagger.

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  I recoiled violently, my back slamming into the doorframe.

  "Greg?" the professor's voice sounded like the roar of a rockslide. "Come in. Is everything alright with you?"

  He took a step toward me. Through my eyes, the Dark Elf raised his dagger to strike. My eyes went wide with pure, animalistic terror.

  "Stay back!" I wheezed.

  I took a step back. Then another. And I ran.

  I huddled into a far corner of the hallway, cowering behind a statue of some long-dead hero. I curled into a tight ball. It felt like the only safe place left.

  The walls of the Academy melted away. I was in a Cave. Dark, damp, endless. And outside, a tempest was raging. A horrific cold seeped under my skin. I was freezing to death.

  "So cold..." I whispered, hugging my shoulders. "I'm freezing to death..."

  I didn't realize that in reality, in the warm hallway of the Academy, Ice was rapidly blooming outward from my huddled body. Frost coated the floor, the walls, the statue. The temperature within a five-meter radius plummeted below freezing. My magic was reacting to the hallucination.

  Five minutes passed. Or maybe an eternity. I genuinely thought I was going to die here, in this icy tomb.

  A change of scenery. A battlefield. Smoke, ash, corpses. The deafening silence after a slaughter. I lay in the mud, utterly drained of strength. Suddenly, a shadow loomed over me. Someone offered me a hand. A rough, powerful hand.

  "GET UP! FIGHT!" a voice thundered inside my head.

  I jolted upright. In reality, I sprang to my feet, shattering the crust of ice that had formed over me. Adrenaline-fueled power boiled in my veins, ready to crush any enemy in sight.

  "I'm ready!" I roared at the empty hallway.

  The sky darkened. Dragons. They were everywhere. Massive wings blotted out the sun, fire rained from the heavens. The War of the Dragons. I could hear their roars, so loud they threatened to burst my eardrums.

  Back to the hallway. Silence. Only the steam rising from my breath and the puddles of melting ice beneath my boots.

  I stood there, panting heavily, leaning against the wet wall. I didn't know what to do. I was lost between worlds. I was everywhere and nowhere.

  Exhausted, I collapsed onto a staircase. A horrific, sticky memory was splitting my head open: I was dying of some fatal illness, lying in a delirious fever, and no one would even bring me a cup of water. A grave-like chill began to radiate from me once more. The stairs frosted over.

  I looked up. A crowd was starting to gather. The entire class had stepped out to see what the commotion was.

  Blink.

  Reality warped. I was no longer sitting on the Academy stairs. I was sitting up to my ears in mud, down in a sewer ditch. And those weren't students standing around me. They were incredibly wealthy, overdressed aristocrats. They were pointing their fingers at me and laughing.

  "Look at this worthless nothing!" I heard their mocking laughter.

  Rage, black and viscous, began to fill me. In reality, the entire class began to back away in sheer horror. My dark aura had become visible—heavy, suffocating, palpable.

  "Step back!" one of the "smart" ones yelled, but the fools kept staring.

  Suddenly, the crowd parted. The Teacher (Elandr) stepped through.

  "Students, move away from him immediately!" he commanded. He stepped in front of me.

  Blink. I didn't see a teacher. Standing over me was an Arrogant Elf. He was draped in silk and velvet, dozens of magical rings glittered on his fingers, and a sickening smirk stretched from ear to ear. He had come to finish me off in the gutter.

  I started to hiss like a cornered beast. A circle of pure darkness etched itself around me. A territory of death.

  "Do not enter," I hissed.

  The Teacher took a step. He breached the circle.

  BOOM! Instant detonation. A pillar of hellfire, swirled with pitch-black darkness, erupted around me. The Teacher threw himself back at the very last microsecond, deploying a heavy shield.

  "Phew..." he exhaled, looking at his severely scorched robes. "Barely made it."

  But I didn't see any of that.

  Blink.

  The fire vanished. I was small. Standing around me were two incredibly kind people. A woman and a man. They were smiling at me.

  "You have a very kind heart, little one," the man said, gently stroking my head. "You are going to be a good man."

  My heart violently shuddered. The pain of losing that pure goodness was unbearable. Tears began to stream down my cheeks. Tears for a warmth that I no longer possessed.

  I couldn't stay here anymore.

  Pop. I teleported into the Academy courtyard. I collapsed onto the grass and stared up at the sky. I watched the clouds drift by. It felt like all my past personalities, all those thousands of "me's," had done the exact same thing whenever the pain became too much to bear.

  And so, I did it too.