For a time, he lived like a homeless man on the streets, sleeping in alleyways and surviving on scraps. He would get picked on and beaten on a daily basis by strangers who saw him as less than nothing. Again and again, people reminded him that he wasn't human anymore. It got to a point where he began to truly believe he wasn't human, that he was some other lesser race entirely.
Many times, he had tried to kill himself, driven to the edge of insanity by loneliness, betrayal, and pure hatred of everything around him. But each time, he stopped himself at the last moment. He cursed at the world that day, denounced himself as no longer human, and decided to go live amongst the trash where he felt he belonged.
He had used up all of his remaining savings, bought everything he would need to survive in isolation, and disappeared from society, never looking back.
"Dad!" Emma cried out, running after Zenryu, who had already vanished from sight. Now she remembered why she had been so hostile that day her father came home... she had found the divorce papers before he arrived. She had discovered that her mother was planning to leave her dad, and she had been angry and disgusted with her mother for it.
Her father had appeared at the worst possible moment, and she had been too worked up to think clearly. She just told him to leave her alone and slammed the door in his face... she had regretted that day so much that she buried the memory far too deep, refusing to ever think about it. That was her dad standing there. That was her best friend. And in trying to be angry for him, she had lashed out at him instead.
She reached out desperately, wanting to catch up to him... but she was too slow. Even as she broke the sound barrier, even as she pushed herself faster than she had ever flown before... she was still too slow. But her eyes widened as Lisa burst past her in a blur of speed, the shockwave her sister created sending Emma flying backward through the air.
Emma's eyes went wide as she watched Lisa rocketing after their father, who was already long gone from this area... but even Lisa was too slow to catch him.
Lisa felt tears streaming down her face as she flew. She had never meant to abandon her father. Her father's best friend was a scientist, and he had been helping her study, feeding her secrets and research that the rest of the world hadn't seen yet. It was like a drug to her mind, consuming all of her attention and focus. It took her months to even realize that her dad was missing from her life.
Although their bond wasn't the same as the one between Emma and their father, he had still been her rock. He always understood her in ways no one else did. She hated talking, and her father rarely spoke when he was around her, giving her the comfortable silence she craved.
She hated doing anything that wasn't interesting to her, and her father always knew how to make even the most boring activities fun. Her father was the one who helped her make friends when she couldn't connect with anyone. When she was being bullied at school, it was her father who taught her how to deal with the bullies…
Gritting her teeth in frustration, Lisa held her arm up before her chest and began tapping away at her suit's interface. She took control of the satellites orbiting the planet, commanding them to lock onto her father's location.
Meanwhile, Zenryu was in Japan, where he had just finished buying every manga volume and DVD containing every anime he could get his hands on. He threw them all into the Gate of Babylon without hesitation.
"Nice doing business with you," Zenryu said with a polite nod. The storekeeper happily nodded back, delighted since Zenryu had overpaid by a significant amount.
Zenryu went on to buy toys related to anime as well, figures and collectibles of all kinds. He was a big fan of anime. It had been his only form of entertainment for years while he lived alone in that trash yard, his sole escape from reality.
"What else should I get?" Zenryu asked while eating some Naruto-themed ramen at a nearby stand. There were just too many things he wanted to do right now, and not enough time to do them all.
"Can we go to the place where you got the system?" Jarvis asked. Zenryu paused for a second at the question, then nodded. With a flash, he appeared at the exact spot where he had encountered the old man all those years ago.
Using The Almighty, which now allowed him to perceive the past as well as the future, he quickly witnessed the scene from decades ago—the child version of himself trying to help an old man on death's door.
He looked further back in time, rewinding the events, and stopped at a point where the old man was walking toward that spot. The man struggled to move, each step clearly painful, before he suddenly paused and looked back directly at Zenryu, as if he could see across time itself.
"You want to find out the truth about your system? I regret getting this thing. I just want to die and end it all," the old man said weakly, his voice barely more than a whisper.
"You're not from my universe... or this plane of existence," Zenryu said softly, his gaze lifting upward towards the plane of the gods.
"It was created by the gods, recreating what the tower spirit originally made. This system isn't limited like other systems are. It was born from the collection of countless systems merged together, birthing a system that can become anything the user wants... the user just needs to pass the trial first... I failed." He said weakly, looking back at Zenryu with tears streaming down his aged face.
"My life was destroyed. I was a god once. I was immortal. I had everything a being could ever want... but it was all ripped away from me. And now look at me. Falling to the weakest plane of existence, where the system now demands I find someone else worthy..." He said through his tears, only to collapse to the ground and begin coughing weakly, his body failing him.
That's when Zenryu's younger self arrived on the scene, and the old man felt how the system reacted to the boy's presence, wanting the younger Zenryu as its next host.
"Why did the system pick me?" Zenryu asked softly, watching the past unfold. He saw how the old man was absorbed by the system, his existence consumed, and how fate itself was rewritten to ensure the younger Zenryu would receive the ideal life he had always dreamed of. A life that, once lost, would crush anyone who had experienced it.
In other words, for different people, what they would receive would be different based on their deepest desires. For one person, it could be a simple life on a farm, peaceful and quiet. For another, it could be simply living a normal life surrounded by ordinary happiness. For Zenryu, it had been wealth, a loving family, and at least one friend he could trust with his life.
With all of that stripped away from him, he fell to rock bottom. He went from being loved by everyone to being hated and discarded like garbage. Naturally, passing the trial would be nearly impossible for anyone put through such suffering.
Zenryu shrugged at the revelation and teleported away, vanishing just as Lisa appeared, bursting through a portal she had desperately torn open. Her eyes were bloodshot from crying and exhaustion as she quickly tried to locate where he had gone. It took precious time to track him, but once she did, she wasted not a single moment and shot after Zenryu at full speed.
"Your daughter is following you. Shouldn't we..." Jarvis said softly, but Zenryu cut her off before she could finish.
"Ignore her. Of course, she would remember I exist now that I'm not trash anymore. When I didn't have value, I was something she could throw away without a second thought. Now that I'm worth something, suddenly I'm worth her running after me." Zenryu said lazily, his tone carrying years of bitterness.
"But..." Jarvis wanted to say more, wanted to tell him the truth, but she didn't want Zenryu to speak harshly to her again. So she kept her mouth shut and said nothing.
"I find there is nothing left to do here now... let's go buy comic books, movies, and so on. Best to have everything collected. Who knows what the plane of the gods will be like?" Zenryu said softly, teleporting away once more. A heartbeat later, Lisa appeared at the spot he had just left, and she cursed under her breath before quickly trying to locate him again.
This chase would go on for hours. Lisa was always one step behind, no matter how fast she moved. Until finally, in the middle of a busy street filled with people going about their daily lives, wild and chaotic energy readings suddenly went off. The power being detected was enough to destroy the entire universe, so naturally, the whole planet was alarmed by its presence. Everyone looked up, and there they saw Zenryu being pulled towards the heavens by an invisible force.
Lisa appeared on the scene, watching helplessly as Zenryu, with one arm resting casually on his hip as if this was nothing special, was slowly pulled away from this world. Fearing for his safety, she shot after him without thinking, using her nanobots to try and pull him back down to Earth.
But for all of her strength and power, even while secretly being the strongest being on the planet, she was sent rocketing away by the force surrounding him. She slammed through countless buildings, her body crashing through concrete and steel.
"Dad!" She cried out softly, forcing herself up from the rubble despite her injuries. She flew upward with tears streaming down her face, ignoring her twisted and broken arm as she desperately tried to reach her father. He was still being pulled higher and higher, and for the first time since she had seen him again, he looked at her with something other than cold indifference in his eyes.
"I'm sorry!" She cried out, her voice cracking with emotion. Zenryu was left confused by her outburst since... well, this wasn't the girl who always prided herself on acting logically. She was the one who claimed those who acted on emotions were stupid and beneath her... so why was she being stupid now?
"That's what I was trying to tell you. It was all a misunderstanding," Jarvis said quickly, finally able to speak. And with that, Zenryu paused and used his power to look back in time, to see what truly happened all those years ago... and indeed, everything had been one huge misunderstanding. But that realization came too late. Zenryu disappeared from the lower plane, leaving it behind for good.
***
Elsewhere, in a small and peaceful city near the beach, a woman could be seen staring at the television screen. It showed the man she had thought died years ago, ascending into the sky. This was Zenryu's ex-wife... well, they were still technically married to this day. She had never actually divorced him. Everything that happened back then had simply been the worst possible outcome of a series of misunderstandings.
Was she cheating on him? Of course not. His best friend at the time had been drunk and was in her office wanting to talk about some plan he had just come up with. It was annoying since the idiot was going through his own marriage problems and stayed at work all the time just to avoid going home and facing his wife.
It was then, while he tried to describe his grand plan in his drunken state, that he knocked over the hot cup of coffee she had just made for herself. It burned like hell against her skin. She had quickly tried to remove her stained and scalding clothing, and that's exactly when Zenryu opened the door and walked in. It was like fate itself had moved everything together so perfectly just to make Zenryu believe she was cheating on him.
She regretted not running after him in that moment. She didn't chase him because, well, she was half naked at the time, and his best friend was too drunk to do anything but smile stupidly at Zenryu. He had actually been happy to see his friend, as they had grown distant lately thanks to the stress of his failing marriage and Zenryu being systemless.
She had tried to explain the situation afterward, and she thought Zenryu believed and trusted her explanation. So she assumed everything was okay between them... but she should have realized he didn't actually trust her. He was just choosing not to walk away because of the kids, staying for their sake alone.
Yes, she took his place as CEO... but she had been pressured into doing it. Everyone wanted her to take his position. It was either that, or both she and Zenryu would be forced out of the company entirely. She would have just walked away from it all without looking back if she and Zenryu hadn't shared a dream together. A dream to one day make enough money for all of their families to live happily ever after, free from worry.
She had kids who would be entering the towers someday, siblings who would also be doing the same and needed support... naturally, she felt she had to take Zenryu's place to protect them all. Luckily, Zenryu had agreed that her taking over was for the best after seeing what her system could do... but why did the others go behind her back and refuse to give him any position in the company? She never approved of that.
She had been so busy managing everything at once—dealing with the company's demands, having to go to the tower to level up and maintain her strength, handling crisis after crisis—that she never noticed her own husband believed she had forcefully taken everything from him. She never saw how isolated and abandoned he felt.
It was much later that those board members tried to pressure her to divorce Zenryu, wanting her to marry someone else who had a business system instead. She had gone home that day, angry and clutching the divorce papers they had prepared for her without her consent. She wanted to talk to Zenryu about it, knowing he would be just as furious as she was about their audacity... but she got distracted by something else, set the papers down, and Emma found them first.
That single misunderstanding led to Emma hating her to this very day, believing her mother was planning to abandon her father. Lisa also lost all respect for her, though she stayed in the household anyway. But that meant nothing since Lisa was always different from everyone else, preferring to act logically rather than emotionally.