Noctis stopped caring about the beauty of the new world.
The red-streaked sky, the suspended peaks, the silver waterfalls—all of it slid into the background, reduced to moving wallpaper. Color and awe were distractions meant for someone with a softer past and lighter bones. His world narrowed to the shape standing in front of him.
Leathered green skin, stretched too tight over wiry muscle. The sour stench of old blood and damp soil. Fingers wrapped around a crude cleaver, wrists held with a tension he remembered too well.
A goblin.
Not just any goblin, but that goblin. The shape of the first monster that had ever really taught him what weakness cost.
Noctis remembered the first time.
He'd been slower then—slower in body, slower in thought, slowed most of all by panic. Prey that didn't realize it was prey until teeth were already in its flesh. That goblin, or one exactly like it, had been his first real teacher. The one that carved the lesson into him that the world did not care if he was scared or kind or not ready.
Every scar on his body felt, in that moment, like a letter in a message the goblin had written in torn flesh and pain. Now the system told him he was weakened, eighty percent slower, a shadow of his usual self. Maybe it was a joke. Maybe the world had dug up this memory just to see if he'd fail the same way again.
Anger rose, cold and clean.
It formed a shell around something deeper and uglier—fear, yes, but also raw defiance. He remembered the taste of dirt forced into his mouth, the sting of claws raking his ribs when he tried to crawl away. He remembered dragging himself through mud, lungs burning, refusing to die for one petty reason: if he died, the goblin would win.
He spoke aloud, voice rough, like his throat had never quite healed from all the screaming it had done in other lives.
"This is too familiar," he said. "I should've known. First test. First failure. First lesson in pain and hate."
He tightened his grip on his weapon, feeling the tremor in his fingers, calculating the angle of attack through the haze of suppression. Somewhere behind his eyes, old fight footage replayed: the goblin's favorite patterns, how it liked to feint left and swing right, how it never overextended, how it seemed to understand cruelty instinctively.
Noctis didn't expect mercy now. He didn't expect any favor from the Oracle that had thrown him here or from the rules of this new world. Luck was not a gift; it was something you stole when everything else was aligned against you.
"Yeah, I see you, bastard," he growled under his breath, not sure if he meant the monster, the system, or himself. "I survived you once. Maybe you taught me too well. If I have to crawl again, I'll drag you with me."
It wasn't bravado. Noctis had lost the habit of talking big a long time ago. Bravado belonged to people who still thought the world might be impressed. Everything inside him was practical now—bruised, tired, hungry for any reason to fight that wasn't naive hope. Hope felt like a luxury for people who weren't already on their last reserves.
As he advanced, his mind split in two: one part cataloguing the battlefield, the other sifting through memory.
What did I do wrong last time? he asked himself. Where did I bleed that I didn't need to? Where did I stand and trade when I should've backed off, or stay down when I should've moved?
Each question cut him, but he wore the answers like armor.
The goblin lunged.
The motion was almost comforting in its predictability. A quick forward rush, cleaver raised, mouth stretched in a crooked grin. Noctis sidestepped, slower than he wanted, but still enough. Barely. Gravity felt thicker around his legs, like the world had its hands on his ankles. Complaints rose on instinct, but he strangled them before they took shape. Complaints were dead weight. Survival was movement, not commentary.
"Maybe the world wants a rerun," he whispered to himself, lips twisting in a faint, dark smile. "Fine. Maybe this time, I'll give it a better ending."
He smiled without humor—sharp, thin, edged with exhaustion. It truly didn't matter, in that moment, how weakened he was. The system could laugh, the world could stack the odds until the tower touched the clouds. He had learned pain from experts. He had learned how not to die when every reasonable rule said he should.
He faced the goblin head-on, eyes cold, heart steadying into the rhythm of necessity. Fighting was not a calling; it was simply the only thing that had ever kept him breathing.
But the restriction weighed heavier as the seconds passed.
Noctis felt his body failing small tests—slight delays in response, missed chances for counters, balance a half-beat off. The eighty-percent clamp crushed his reflexes, turned what should have been smooth transitions into negotiations. Every motion was a bargain between his will and the world's imposed limitations.
The goblin circled him.
Its eyes gleamed with hunger and a cruel, practiced intelligence. It carried itself like something that knew it had the upper hand, like a predator aware of its advantage over wounded prey. Noctis measured the distance, replaying every hard-earned lesson that had come with bruises and broken bones.
When it lunged again, he tried to sidestep. He moved as fast as the world allowed, but it wasn't enough. The cleaver scraped along his forearm, tearing cloth and slicing skin. Heat and pain flared; blood welled up in a bright line.
This isn't just a goblin, he realized, as cold sweat trickled down the back of his neck. It was moving like something else—quick, predatory, relentless. Like the little wyvern that had nearly killed him more times than he could count. The kind of sharp, aggressive speed that should never belong to something so small and ugly.
Memory hit him: claws raking across his chest, wings beating the air into chaos, the wyvern's shriek echoing in his skull. Panic pressed against his ribs, trying to sneak in through old cracks.
No. Focus. Adapt. If I panic, I die. That rule hasn't changed.
He forced each breath slower. Forced his gaze to track every twitch in the goblin's shoulders and legs. When it feinted and spun, cleaver angling toward his thigh, he twisted just enough to keep his leg intact, feeling the rush of air where the blade should have been.
The goblin laughed—a rasping, wet sound that dug its claws into his nerves.