1. The End?

The World is doomed.

Cities flattened, Kingdoms were in flames, and humanity was almost wiped out.

Comrades and their partners who have been through hell and back, the unfavorable of situations...

The strongest of the Zen Users who were symbols of power, pride, and envy... depleted all their Zen and life energies.

**Dooom!!!

And above the vast stretches of land contaminated with the unreal stench of corpses, blood-smeared metals, burning greens, smoke, and death was a single most powerful survivor of the Zen arts and his partner.

All of this destruction... has been caused by a single entity leading the Rumbling... Krul.

**Doooom!!!

This gargantuan demon of a beast was nothing but pure evil carnage without a hint of intelligence in its sanguine eyes.

**Roarrrr!!!

Sigurd Völsunga— the last Zen User, and his Titan partner Fafnir— a giant humanoid mecha knelt about 2km away from Krul along with a few hundred golems and robots with only his giant spear to support him as he threw away his broken giant sword.

"... ...Dammit, we've battled it with our lives on the line... yet it seems we did nothing when it hasn't shown any sign of going down until all intelligent lives are eradicated..."

Breathing laboriously, Sigurd who was within Fafnir spoke to the non-living Fafnir before commanding the golems and robots to swarm Krul to refill his now-empty Zen reserves. He stood this long in battle mainly due to the [Conception Breathe Circulation Technique] and as the most potent Zen Assimilation art, it was fitting its most powerful user will be the last man standing.

"...I'm weary. If death will come then let it but this bastard varmint must pay with an eye"

Visible currents energy started to surge around him as he concentrated on replenishing his Zen core whiles keeping an eye out.

However, the sight of Krul destroying the hundreds of automatons at an alarming speed, brought Sigurd to the realization that time wasn't on his side as his lives flashed before his eyes.

None in this current era knew but this was his second full life. He was reincarnated after dying at the blast of another gargantuan monster.

Before his current life, he was a CIA Operative in the year 2042, a normal but well-oriented young man who was determined and single-minded about most things.

A lover of birds of prey, junk food, reading, travel and his work.

A hater of old classic music and literature, boredom and small serving gourmet food due to circumstance and not by choice.

All that changed when massive dark-red portals suddenly materialized all around the world, spewing a seemingly endless stream of monsters that could haunt any adult's dreams to their graves— literally.

Many high-class elites who tried to escape the scene with the moon and outer space in sight were met with instant death when they learned the hard way from the afterlife that a powerful imperceptible shield... or more accurately a cage encased around Earth exactly 7,080 miles into space.

This became proof of a larger, more superior power at work for such a thing to happen, but that didn't mean humans were going to place their heads on a chopping board for whatever principalities were responsible.

The world's military and governments put up a pretty good and persistent fight for a while but at the cost of many lands becoming uninhabitable and a waste. Sigurd was among the few to survive and stayed in places where some humans of the 21st Century made their last stand.

And a last but pointless stand it was when the giant last boss monster revealed itself to wipe them out with a blast.

And no, it wasn't Krul but a winged Western True Dragon along with a herd of wyverns(a slightly small two-limped dragon).

Instead of the afterlife like expected, Sigurd opened his eyes to a new world with swords, magic-like arts, and monsters as a newborn baby. Born into a noble home that gave him his current name, he decided to make the most of his time by any means but as time passed the feeling that this new world was in fact, Earth; the blue planet he once called home but in the far future grew ominously.

With that realization, he began to speed up his plans against all odds but at a cost, cause it seemed he was the only one who knew that the monsters this civilization was battling are child's play compared to what killed him and ended his civilization. Which he will later find out was killed centuries after his death

And after a few ups and downs, he was able to join the ranks of the strong but that still wasn-- **Dooom!!!

A thick, immense movement of heat and energy forcibly dragged Sigurd out of his theatre of memories to see Krul fire a breath attack after dealing with the distractions.

Normally, Sigurd would have sensed killing intent or bloodlust before such an attack could be prepared but Krul was such a mobile force of chaos that it doesn't even release a stench of it.

Sigurd in Fafnir leaped to the side in time to evade the attack that created an extremely wide crater as an aftermath.

But it wasn't without a cost though, he had to pay for being distracted in battle. So Fafnir lost a leg meaning he was sitting docks in front of such a monstrosity but that didn't seem to concern him at the moment.

Because he--

"I shat myself?. Bastard!! Fu*k F*ck Damn! ... he made me sh*t my pants. He's not only trying to kill me but humiliate me? This will not stand!!"

As Sigurd was throwing a tantrum, Krul was preparing its next attack which he was quick to notice this time around. With Fafnir immobilized and Zen reserves not enough to put up a persistent struggle, Sigurd did what the warriors in the afterlife before him did.

He held up his long spear and poured out every last ounce of his Zen and life energy into this attack as he began to physically deteriorate.

A solid bright sanguine brilliance enveloped his Spear with lightning and thunder cracking around it as the fabric of Space started to distort, and before he became a dry sack of bones he threw the spear with enough force to completely split any sea and put any railgun to shame, a few seconds before Krul fired its attack.

"Eat... Sh*t!!!!!!!"

**Booom!!!

With a dry, almost non-existent throat, Sigurd cursed his last before returning to the soil as ash.

**Roarr~~

A painful, ear-bursting cry echoed throughout the Badlands from the fruit of his attack, sadly he wasn't around to see his work.

But maybe, he was watching from the other side as Krul move past the battlefield and rampage for a while before dying a slow painful death.

....

The Zen is pronounced like Nen from Hunter x Hunter but with a "Z". However, Anything goes as long as you get it as you read on.