Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 172: Craving Oblivion

Isaiah was the first Dragon Lord.

History hailed him as the unifier, the first arbiter of draconic justice. He emerged from nowhere one day, a force of nature with scales of obsidian and eyes that held the cold fire of judgment.

He began hunting down the ancient, wicked dragons who preyed upon the weak, his power so absolute none could defy him, his morality so unimpeachable none could question him. He became a legend woven into law.

He married Kirana, the Ice Dragon, a love as deep and enduring as the glaciers. They bore a son, Raden. Together, the three founded the Alicei Bloodline, a dynasty born of strength, justice, and love.

But the foundation of that dynasty was a lie, buried in forgotten snow.

One day, as Raden turned twenty, a Voice descended.

"Raden Alicei, you are chosen as the next Key Bearer."

Isaiah heard it. Kirana heard it. Raden heard it.

And with the Voice, a dam broke in Isaiah’s mind.

A memory, long buried under layers of borrowed identity and amnesia, surged forth. He saw himself, not as Isaiah, but as a broken, nameless figure collapsing in a field of endless snow.

He saw Kirana, young and fierce, finding him, nursing him back to health. The only word in his shattered mind had been a name. Isaiah. He’d clung to it as his own.

But it wasn’t his. His true name was Ierofey. Isaiah was the name of his God. A plea that had become an identity.

The memories unfolded. He came from another world. It was once as vibrant and magical as this one, but now a festering corpse-world.

It had been consumed by the Black Seed, an entity of pure corruption that twisted souls into monstrosities called Voidcrawlers. His world was dead, dying, and contagious. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Ierofey and his kin, the last uncorrupted dragons of that world, devised a final, desperate spell. They would sever their world from the infinite tapestry of dimensions and timelines, creating an impenetrable quarantine to contain the Black Seed and its spawn forever.

They forged the ultimate seal. The Key.

The war to enact the spell was an apocalypse. They fought the corrupted, perfected the incantations, and died one by one. When it was complete, they began sealing the dimensional doors, cutting their world off from all others. The corruption was trapped.

But two doors refused to close.

Both led to this world, anchored to its twin magnetic poles. An anomaly.

Ierofey’s brother, Yehua, understood. "Brother, maybe the only way for these last two doors to be sealed is for you to close them from the other side. This anomaly... once you’re there, you must connect the doors in a closed-loop wormhole and seal them simultaneously."

"But to close them," Ierofey realized, "the Key must be on that side. To bring it... I can only merge it with my own soul and bloodline."

"I know," Yehua said softly, his eyes full of sorrow. "The Key must be destroyed for the doors to be sealed forever."

The price was his life.

"You are the strongest of us," Yehua smiled. "Ierofey, pray to Isaiah. Ask him to meet you in paradise, and lead you to us. We will be there, waiting."

So Ierofey did. He fused the Key with the very essence of his soul and lineage. He tore through the unstable door, breaching into this new, untainted world. His mission was to weave a wormhole between the two polar doors and crush it shut in a single, cataclysmic act.

But the Voidcrawlers sensed the breach. They flooded the forming wormhole. Ierofey fought. He fought until his scales were cracked, his magic spent, his body broken.

On the precipice of annihilation, he poured his last hope into a prayer to his god. Isaiah.

And Isaiah answered.

Divine power, searing and pure, flooded his ravaged form. With a roar that split dimensions, he annihilated the Voidcrawlers, fused the two doors in a perfect, closed loop, and slammed them shut, sealed with the Key that was now his soul.

Then, darkness.

He awoke on Kirana’s lap, in a field of snow, remembering nothing. Only a name.

Isaiah.

He built a life, a legacy, a family on that borrowed name.

Until the Voice spoke to his son.

"Raden Alicei, you are chosen as the next Key Bearer."

Hearing it, in front of his wife and child, the full, horrifying memory crashed back into Isaiah. He collapsed from the weight of the truth. It was too late.

The Key, fused with his bloodline, had passed to his heir. The seal was not permanent. The doors, bound to the living Key, would weaken and reopen every hundred years, for as long as the Key-Bearer lived.

Isaiah—Ierofey—was consumed by a despair deeper than any abyss. Even if he could now, with his son’s power, seal both doors simultaneously... it would require Raden’s death. How could he kill his own child?

But Raden, learning the terrible truth, offered his life. Kirana, her heart breaking, held them both, and the family made a pact. They would face the next opening together, and finish this cursed duty as one.

They would die together.

A hundred years later, the doors groaned open. The three Alicei dragons wove the closed-loop wormhole and fought the invading Voidcrawlers. But Ierofey was a shadow of the god-touched warrior he had been. His old wounds, the backlash from wielding Isaiah’s power, had never healed. They were weaker.

They failed. They could not close the doors at the same instant.

Faced with this failure, Ierofey made a bitter, strategic choice. He fully embraced the lie. He took the name Isaiah not as a memory, but as a mantle.

He preached his ’divine’ justice, unified the dragons, built a better world, all to make it strong. He trained Raden, imparting every scrap of knowledge to at least close the doors each century, holding back the tide, even if it wasn’t at the same time.

Raden succeeded him. He closed the doors, one after the other, holding the line. So did the Dragon Lords who followed. Each inherited the Key, the duty, and the grim knowledge. They were a cursed bloodline, living plugs in a dam that would forever leak.

They were the reason the threat would always return.

Generation after generation bore the burden, fighting the century war, dying with the secret.

Until Oathran was born.

The Voice spoke his name in the first snowfall after his twentieth birthday.

"Oathran Alicei, you are chosen as the next Key Bearer."

He was the culmination of a cursed lineage, and he was the strongest Dragon Lord in history. His power was exponential, a furious, focused star compared to the flickering candles of his ancestors.

He lived four hundred years. He faced the reopening four times.

Each century, he fought. Each time, he failed to achieve the simultaneous closure. He held the line, but the dam leaked.

Then came the fourth attempt. After seventeen years of meticulous, obsessive preparation, studying the anomalies, pushing his magic to its theoretical limits, he devised a plan.

He would unmake the space between them.

He succeeded.

In a cataclysm of will and power that sundered the inverted sky between the poles, he wove the perfect, closed-loop wormhole and, with a final, universe-bending exertion, crushed both doors shut at the exact same time. The seal was absolute.

The curse was broken.

But the cost was his body. The backlash was apocalyptic. The closed wormhole, recoiling like a snapped tendon, spat his ravaged, near-lifeless form across the continent.

He landed in a random, muddy ditch on the outskirts of the Cassia Kingdom.

On the precipice of oblivion, a memory surfaced, fragile and sweet against the pain. A child in white, her eyes too old for her face, speaking an oath in a sun-drenched temple.

"I will bear the burden for you."

Yes. He had to find her. The Saintess. He had to reach the Iondora Temple.

With the last dregs of his divine strength, he dragged himself from the ditch and flew, a comet of dying light streaking across the sky.

But his power was spent. He faltered, plummeted, and crashed into another ditch, this one closer to the capital, but still a lonely gouge in the earth.

At least... it was closer to her now.

The thought was a faint comfort. Here, even if his corpse was found... she would take care of it. She wouldn’t let scavengers pick his bones. She wouldn’t let some arrogant prince claim to have slain the Dragon Lord.

She would... protect the world from his death.

Right?

Yes. All he needed to do now... was to die.

And the world would finally... be completely saved.

As darkness crept in at the edges of his vision, he saw her. A miracle. She was there, running with a smile across the clearance, her golden hair a banner.

But she wasn’t alone. A man was with her. A tiger of terrible power, bound to her by a glow he recognized. Her bonded mate.

The next thing that happened made him swallow back her name.

He saw the tiger’s hand. He saw it pierce her chest. He saw her heart ripped from its cradle. He saw her beautiful, brilliant life extinguish as she crumpled to the ground.

Why?

Why does she too... must die?

Why, Isaiah? Why?

She had become... everything. Over the seventeen years of his preparations, even in his isolation, he had kept track. Her rise. Her quiet, stunning intelligence. The disasters she averted.

She had grown from a solemn child into a woman of breathtaking grace and formidable strength. Talented. Refined.

His Saintess.

His hope.

And now, after spending his borrowed time with her, she had become the love of his life.

Oh, Isaiah... I don’t want to die anymore.

He prayed. It was a child’s whimper in the vastness of the void.

When I die, can you erase everyone’s memory of me?

Let there be no war. Let there be no grief in her eyes.

When I die... no. Please, don’t let me choose at all.

He thought of Ierofey, his ancestor. Isaiah had erased Ierofey’s memory, made him choose a new life, a wife, a son. A reprieve from the truth.

If it was me... you don’t even have to erase my memory.

I will choose Cecilia.

I will choose to live.

He would choose her. He would defy the curse, the duty, the very fabric of his fate, just for the chance to live in a world where she drew breath.

But the thought curdled instantly.

But my son—and his son... and his grandson... they will continue to suffer because of my selfishness.

The doors will remain. The cycle continues.

And Cecilia... Cecilia will suffer if she knew I chose her over the world.

She would bear that weight until it crushed her.

The choice was a torture no being should endure.

So he begged for the only mercy left.

So don’t give me a choice.

The ultimate absolution.

Kill me.

The removal of his own will.

Kill me.

He prayed not for death.

Kill me.

He prayed for the certainty of it.

Cecilia.

Kill me.