Solo Leveling: Banishment of the Anomaly

Tens of thousands of threads of gold, silver, black, and white, wrapped around her body and his soul like a silken cocoon of fate and denial, memory and madness. They wove into her skin, through her bones, and into the very depths of his soul.

And from the abyss within, they pierced everything.

Countless memories, buried deep in the abyss of his soul, surged upward like a tsunami of forgotten lives. Fragmented echoes, long sealed, now burst forth and merged with him.

Shattering into light, it flashed before his eyes. One after another… lifetimes surged into him.

A beggar child starving in the snow.

A royal princess poisoned on her coronation.

A one-armed jester who danced until he dropped dead.

A mute slave strangled by chains.

A murderer who killed her family.

A terminally ill man who smiled as he drew his last breath.

A priest who lost his faith.

A king who bathed in blood.

A farmer buried beneath his own harvest.

A girl burned alive in a jealous village.

A cat who was worshipped.

A raven who flew into a storm.

A psychopath who painted cities red.

A boy who simply wanted to live.

It was a total of two thousand and three lives.

Each life was incomplete. Fragmented. A broken film reel cut short—none of them reaching past the age of thirty. Some not even past twenty.

Every time, right when he discovered something, when his powers surfaced and used it for his gains, when the soul within shined through—he was killed.

Overwhelmed, Jake clutched her skull, though no sound escaped him. Her mouth was agape, eyes blank, skin glowing with unbearable heat. The memory transmission was nothing short of cataclysmic.

A mind flooded with ecstasy, agony, and confusion.

His soul had been fed to forgotten history—again and again—until it forgot the taste of peace.

And then came the pain, each memory brought death with it.

Burned at the stake.

He was beheaded.

Punctured, poisoned, betrayed.

Skinned alive. Drowned. Sold. Cut to pieces.

Buried alive. Kidnapped and raped. Fed to animals.

Stabbed in the back. Torn apart. Hung. Crushed. Sliced.

A thousand ways to die, and he had lived them all, with each death brought a unique horror, and each scream was his.

He screamed. He laughed. He cried. He clawed at her own face, begging everything to stop. But the threads kept coming.

Their death were real, and each life belonged to him.

However, something was wrong. All first hundred lives were missing. There were no signs of beginning and only ends, as if it were deliberately hidden from him.

But one thing remained certain—in every lifetime, there was always the same man. His face changed with the ages, but his voice never did, echoing like a curse across centuries.

The fragmented memories unified in a single vision. And through all of them, that same voice echoed.

"Why… won't you just DIE?!"

"Fine. If you insist on defying fate—if you truly wish to live through each century"

"Then I, the Overseer, will find you. In every age. In every corner of time, I guard!"

"I will... kill you! In every life. In every form. Until nothing remains of you but dust and silence."

The voice was etched into the bones of his existence. That hatred, that need to end him, to erase him, had followed him for eras of two hundred millennia.

But now, the threads stopped glowing as the memories finally settled.

He finally has the answers to most of his questions. Though incomplete, he felt better amid the excruciating pain of a thousand deaths.

And with that final, perfect clarity, he smiled.

It was not a sane smile. But with a calm, curved madness that sent shivers across reality.

Her eyes dimmed, washed away in blood and ash, until what stared outward were eyes filled with pure hatred.

And with voice torn between hate and divinity, she whispered,

"Found you… Overseer. Wait for me, for I'll return soon~"

Her laugh followed, soft and trembling, growing louder until the threads around her shivered.

Like a butterfly tearing free from its cocoon, Joo-Hee emerged from the wrapped threads.

The barrage of celestial chains halted. The red space of before had long since collapsed upon itself.

She gradually returned to the hollow interior of the purple tree she had conjured, where all had begun. The moment her foot touched the bark-lined floor, something inside her snapped.

CRACK—!

Then another.

C-CRACK!

Her limbs shattered into pieces, brittle like dry plaster, splintering with jagged bursts of pain. Bone, muscle, and mana pathway—everything broke.

Joo-Hee dropped to her knees, falling to the ground.

And yet… she merely laughed amidst the pain.

A bloodied smile curled her lips as her body contorted. The pain should have rendered her unconscious—but no, she was awake, every nerve lit like a sun on fire.

Her laughter was half-mad, half-triumphant. "Tsk… When I thought I could fast-track my growth," she gasped, eyes twitching, "this damn body decides to fall apart."

The shell he inherited from the very start of his transmigration was now cracking.

The lingering essence of hundreds of lives—grief, power, hate, wisdom, blood—refused to fade, prompting the body to crumble from the immense strength enough to dry up the body to mere hardened block.

Her fingers cracked further, disintegrating at the knuckles.

"No… this body is done," she whispered with tired emotions. "I need a stronger one. A body that can contain all this… A body equivalent of a Monarch. Jin..."

She looked up at the canopy above, the purple light dimming.

"Well, there are many in this Worldview."

But time was running out.

Another piece of her shoulder cracked like dried clay. Her spine twisted unnaturally. Her breathing staggered.

Instinctively, she reached for her innate Fate manipulation ability… then paused to avoid further complications.

Instead, she raised a trembling finger and summoned a different source.

[Verdant Growth]

At her command, a wooden hand erupted from the ground, carefully scooping her broken form. It reached into her side pouch and gently offered her the item she'd almost forgotten about.

The scroll she received from the bastard, Master Key Holder.

[Exclusive Class Quest Scroll].

One she'd never used, only acting as her artifact. And without hesitation, she bit into it like a feral creature clawing for life.

The scroll reacted into ethereal light, and pure life essence surged into her crumbling form—otherworldly, wild, healing.

It crashed through her body and soul like a tidal wave of light, repairing, restoring. Bone reformed. Flesh regrew. The cracks in her skin mended with radiant emerald threads. Limbs twisted back into place with wet snaps and gory regeneration.

Roots of energy spiraled through her veins, knitting her together piece by piece. Her lungs stopped spasming. Her heart steadied. The green hue of nature's blessing wrapped her in its cradle.

The pain was immense.

But compared to the agony of reliving thousands of lives of dying over and over again?

It was nothing.

...

Moments passed, and she continued to lie on the ground longer, containing the storm inside her. It was the vast, unrestrained force of Fate that had threatened to tear her apart.

There were even thousands of voices in her mind, enough to drive any being without formidable mental tenacity into madness.

Aside from Jake, of course.

She proceeded to raise her hand and single-handedly swipe her finger across her forehead, severing the threads binding her to those voices.

"Now, that's better," she muttered.

"You all had your chances in your lifetimes, so let me be. After all, it's not like you're not me. You... All of you... We're the same. So shut all your traps."

With that, the rampaging essence threatening to fracture her body once more was silenced, calmed by sheer will.

And the power within her… finally settled as a profound stillness followed.

The power of Fate folded itself into her soul like a dormant sun, and his being—her vessel—reformed, repaired, renewed.

She was whole once more, but no longer the same. She had realized who she is and who she has become.

A creature outside logic. A presence beyond classification. A being who no longer followed the strings of destiny, because there were none left to bind her.

She cracked her neck to the left—pop. Then to the right—snap. Her shoulders rolled back, spine realigning with an audible grind.

Fingers curled, then straightened. She flexed her knuckles with a dry, metallic click.

Then her hand rose to her hair, paused.

Gone was the warm, sunset-orange of Lee Joo-Hee. In its place flowed strands of molten silver woven with soft gold, glimmering like twilight caught in a mirror.

Her very appearance had shifted, altered by the outburst. Yet, the flesh, the form, was nowhere near a vessel truly fit for her.

Raising her once-crumbled right hand, she observed as it split open like silk transfiguring into countless threads, each carrying her innate power, gliding and writhing like divine filaments of destiny unspooled.

"Hmm…" she murmured, watching them dance.

She grabbed a goblin's corpse nearby. With a single touch, its flesh withered and unraveled, transforming into black, malicious threads that slithered and merged into her right arm like hungry serpents.

A low chuckle escaped her lips as she watched them coil and tighten around her threads.

"It seems I have no trouble wielding this much power. It's been a long time… but this feeling, this power, it's as intoxicating as it is addictive."

Then her voice hardened, gaze sharpening as her tone shifted to scorn.

"And you," she said into the silence, eyes narrowing. "I know you're still listening. What now, parasite?"

"Shall I kill you, like the obedient dog you were sent to be? You... you really are as pitiful as I am."

The threads moved, slithering up to her temple like loyal serpents. They pierced her head, not to harm, but to search.

To seize.

Deep within her mindspace, nestled like a tumor, the threads found it—a shapeless blob pulsing weakly, wrapped around a leaf-shaped core of green light.

[Alphaterium Cell].

She yanked it free without hesitation.

The weakened cell writhed as she tore it from her soul and tossed it onto the soil like rotting meat. It pulsed with panic, shrinking in on itself as green system-like lines shimmered around its core, desperately trying to compute, defend, and survive.

But it was already too late.

With a single hold of her finger, glowing black threads woven from the evil karma of the goblin's corpse formed a radiant orb-shaped cage around it.

The [Alphaterium] squirmed, struggling to adapt, to analyze the binding.

"Your actions are futile, little pest. Stop resisting," she said coldly, tone hollow and sharp.

"Do you truly think I haven't noticed?" Joo-Hee's voice was cold, laced with contempt.

Her eyes, once bright and human, had slowly inverted—now glowing with liquid gold and silver, pulsating with deformed crescent rings of black and white, like destinies collapsing in on themselves.

It was as if she were staring into a place no mortal gaze could pierce, a realm beyond time and meaning.

She crouched beside the writhing orb, her gaze sharp enough to cut through lies, through code, through fate itself. The threads around her arm writhed in anticipation, feeding on the trembling fear leaking from the imprisoned [Alphaterium].

"You're no longer connected to anything. Severed. Alone. What will you do now, now that your bastard of a master has abandoned you?"

She lifted her hand slightly, threads of glowing karmic energy tightening around the orb's prison.

"And don't even think of escaping," she sneered. "That cage is woven from karma I've usurped from a fresh corpse. Do you really believe your child-tier algorithms can comprehend something birthed from the accumulation of suffering and rage?"

She scoffed, the corners of her lips curled in cruel amusement. "Pathetic."

The [Alphaterium] shrank further, now barely the size of a fist. Its pulsations were erratic, its green aura flickering, dying.

She looked down at it, her golden-silver hair fluttering around her face like a halo of judgment, staring at it like an insignificant toy.

There was no pity in her eyes. No sympathy. Only finality.

This was their first meeting.

And it would might be their last.