Chapter 214: The Shepherd’s Past

The pale light swallowed Nathan whole.

He fell. He didn’t just fall through space; he fell through time, through complete silence, and through someone else’s memories.

When he finally opened his eyes, he wasn’t Nathan Cross anymore. He was in a totally normal world. There were no Babel Towers. There was no magic, no mana, and no monsters. It was like his original world.

He was just a young man. Skinny. Weak. Invisible. He wore thick glasses and carried a heavy backpack full of books. Other kids shoved him into metal lockers and laughed at him in the crowded hallways. He ate his lunch sitting completely alone. He went home to a dark, empty apartment. He was an absolute nobody.

Then, he crossed the street.

The headlights blinded him. He felt the heavy, crushing impact of the truck. He felt his bones break. He felt the cold darkness rushing in to pull him under. He felt himself die.

And then, he woke up.

He was in a brand-new body. A brand-new world. It was a modern city, but it was filled with magic and plagued by the Babel Towers. He was young again. He had been given a second chance at life.

The school’s awakening ceremony took place in a massive indoor stadium.

Nathan watched through the boy’s eyes as he nervously stepped up to the center of the room. Hundreds of students and strict teachers were watching him. The air was thick and heavy with magic. The boy’s hands were shaking badly, but he closed his eyes and stepped right into the glowing circle on the floor.

The circle exploded with blinding light. Magic runes spun in the air. The crowd gasped.

A blue system screen popped up. It was a class nobody had ever seen before.

[Class: Overlord]

[Rank: SSS]

It was the ability to use every single skill from every single class. Close combat. Heavy magic. Healing. Stealth. It didn’t matter. The boy could learn everything, and he could master all of it. He was special. He was the chosen one.

The teachers actually bowed to him. The other students stared with their mouths hanging open. The boy—the Overlord—gave a wide, bright smile.

Nathan felt the boy’s emotions directly in his chest. The pure joy. The wild hope. The absolute certainty that he was going to save the world.

The years flew by in fast, bright flashes.

The Overlord grew incredibly strong. He climbed the Towers. He killed the boss monsters. He saved thousands of people. He met amazing friends and built a loyal party that completely believed in him. He met a beautiful woman with kind, warm eyes and a soft smile. He fell deeply in love.

They fought evil guilds together. They cleared the hardest Towers on the planet. They became living legends. The Overlord was totally unstoppable. The world was completely safe in his hands.

Nathan felt it all. The purpose. The happiness. It was exactly how a perfect story was supposed to end.

And then, the Towers broke.

It wasn’t just one Tower. It was all of them, all at once.

The blue sky turned a bleeding, sickly red. The ground ripped open. Millions of monsters poured out of the broken Towers. Every rank. Every type. It was an endless, crashing wave of teeth, claws, and dark magic. The entire world caught fire.

The Overlord fought back. He fought harder than any human had ever fought in history. He used every single skill he had ever learned. He killed tens of thousands of monsters, his magic tearing the sky apart.

But it wasn’t enough. There were just too many.

He watched his friends get torn to pieces. One by one, the party that trusted him fell into the dirt.

He watched his family die. The kind people who had raised him in this new world were crushed under the monster wave while he screamed, too far away to help.

He watched the woman he loved die. She bled out right in his arms. She reached up, touched his dirty face, smiled softly, and told him it was going to be okay. And then her eyes went totally blank.

The world literally ended all around him.

And the Overlord... The fearless hero, the living legend, the SSS-Rank chosen one... broke.

He ran away.

He was a coward. He didn’t want to die in the dirt with everyone else. He found a single Tower’s portal that was still open, and he ran inside. He locked the portal behind him and hid in the dark while his entire planet was eaten alive. When he finally opened the portal years later, there was nothing left. Just empty rocks floating in a dead sky.

His friends. His parents. His girl. His home. Everything was gone.

The inside of the Tower was a sealed pocket dimension.

The Overlord was completely trapped. The exit door was permanently locked again. There was absolutely nothing out there to go back to anyway. He was totally alone.

He wandered the empty floors of the Tower for decades. He studied the ancient magic in the walls. He cracked the codes. He learned the deepest secrets of the system. But no matter how smart he got, he couldn’t open the door again for that world was already gone.

Depression swallowed him whole. He stopped eating. He stopped sleeping. He sat down in the pitch black and just waited for his body to shut down.

But he didn’t die. The Tower’s magic kept forcing him to stay alive.

Eventually, he figured out the horrible truth.

The Towers weren’t just on his planet. They were a massive, multiverse network called Babel. The system connected thousands of different dimensions and realities together. And every single one of them was slowly being eaten.

He learned how to move through the network. He learned how to slip between the dimensions. And he finally learned exactly who was running the show.

They were called the Lords.

They were ancient, god-like beings. The strongest ones sat at the very top of the Babel network, controlling the system. The weaker ones served at the bottom. They were the ones dropping the Towers. They were the ones eating the planets.

The Overlord was just a human. But he realized he could become one of them too. He could steal their power.

So He threw away his human name and gave himself a new title. The Pale Shepherd Lord.

"Lord" wasn’t a name; it was a military rank. He was officially the lowest, weakest Lord in the entire Babel system. But he was in the club.

He started eating broken worlds. Not to feed the Babel system, but to feed himself. Every ruined world he swallowed gave him more magic. Every lost soul he ate made him stronger. He was building his own private army. He was getting ready to climb the ladder and kill the Lords at the top to get his revenge.

But Babel isn’t stupid. The system realized what he was doing. It reacted fast, sealing his real body deep inside the Origin, a tower made from the very first World he had ever consumed. He was locked in a cage again.

But the Shepherd didn’t give up. He learned how to build puppets. He sent fragments of his mind out into the other Towers to keep eating worlds, gathering power, and waiting for his chance to strike back.

He thought he could still win.

Then the vision shattered like glass.

Nathan blinked hard, stumbling forward. He was back in the real world. He was standing in the cold, dusty ruins of the Origin.

The Shepherd was standing a few feet away. But he wasn’t a giant monster made of blinding light and dark shadows anymore. He was just a man. He was a skinny, tired, broken man. He looked exactly like the quiet kid who got hit by the truck.

His eyes weren’t burning stars anymore. They were just human eyes, filled with deep, heavy sadness.

"I know I was wrong," the Shepherd said. His voice didn’t echo. It was just a quiet, tired whisper. "I took so many lives. I burned so many worlds to the ground. All to build an army for a war I was never going to win."

Nathan didn’t raise his bow. He just stood there and listened.

"Thank you," the tired man said, giving Nathan a small, sad smile. "Thank you for stopping me. Thank you for finally ending it. I can just rest now. I can finally see them again."

His human body started to turn to dust, blowing away in the dead wind. But right before he vanished completely, the man reached his hand out.

A small, warm ball of light floated out of his chest and drifted into Nathan’s. "Take this," the man whispered. "It is a piece of all the power I stole over the centuries. I can’t give you all of it, but it should be enough. Use it to save your home. Protect the people you love. Do not make my mistakes."

The light sank right into Nathan’s chest.

It felt like swallowing a star. Pure, roaring energy flooded through his veins, expanding his mana channels until they felt like they were going to burst. His B-Rank core shattered and instantly reformed, burning hotter and brighter than ever before.

[Ding! Magical Aptitude Increased!]

[B-Rank → A-Rank]

[A-Rank → S-Rank]

[Ding! Sub-Class Unlocked: Overlord.]

[Ding! Level Up! Nathan Cross: Level 85]

Nathan dropped to one knee, gasping for air as the massive surge of power finally settled down into a steady, thrumming heartbeat inside his chest. The Shepherd’s life work. The Overlord’s final gift. It was more raw power than Nathan had ever felt in his entire life.

He slowly stood up and looked at the spot where the man had been standing. There was nothing left. Just a few specks of light fading into the dark sky.