SSS-Rank Evolving Monster: From Pest to Cosmic Devourer-Chapter 123: Better luck next time

"What do you mean by ’One True Eternal Above’?"

Ricky’s mandibles twitched slightly, his brow furrowing as the words left his mouth.

The couple before him had returned to their warm laughter, too caught up in their bubble of affection to notice the monster lurking within their child’s gaze.

But Ricky’s attention remained fixed. That name—that face—gnawed at something deep within him.

There was weight behind it. Something ancient. Something terrible.

And then—

With a flick of the infant’s tiny wrist, reality shifted.

The warm, luxurious apartment was swept away like sand in a storm.

In its place: a blinding white void.

Everything was white. Floorless. Ceilingless. A space of pure light, stretching endlessly in all directions. A place where reality felt fragile, like glass waiting to shatter.

Ricky’s compound eyes darted around, trying to make sense of it. His spiritual field pulsed in confusion.

When he looked down at himself, his confusion deepened.

He was wearing a strange suit, thick and slightly bulky, with seals along his limbs and a reflective dome over his head.

"Is this... a space suit?" he muttered, disbelief dripping from his tone.

Though it was the second time he had seen "space," the awe hadn’t dulled. The oppressive silence. The vastness. The sheer insignificance of his presence in the great stretch of white light.

His question wasn’t directed at anyone in particular—but someone answered.

A figure walked toward him, hips swaying with lazy confidence. The light bent around her as if it too were caught in her gravity.

She was a stunning woman, with a sculpted hourglass figure wrapped in a sleek gown of celestial light. Her silver hair fluttered despite the absence of wind, and her gaze—those ancient eyes—sparkled with amused detachment.

Ricky’s mandibles clicked as his voice cracked in disbelief.

"It’s you again... but how?"

He recognized her instantly. There was no mistaking it.

The baby. The Eternal. The being that had smiled at him with omniscient calm—was now standing before him in the body of a goddess.

She smirked and scoffed softly.

"Why would it not be me?"

Her voice was like silk soaked in cosmic truth.

Ricky struggled to respond, but before he could even think clearly, the world shifted again.

The void shattered into fragments—and each shard became a new world.

The woman changed. So did the landscape.

In the blink of an eye, she was no longer a woman—but an old crone, hunched over with shaking hands and eyes that bled time. Then, just as suddenly, she was a teenage girl, awkward and acne-scarred, with a bright grin and ancient knowledge glowing behind her irises.

Then she was gone altogether—replaced by a tiny insect crawling across a mossy stone.

And around Ricky, the scenery transformed with every identity.

He stood in the heart of a dense forest, where the mist rolled thick and the canopy swallowed the light.

He blinked, and he was on a mountaintop, wind howling around him as snow bit at his skinless shell.

Then the stars themselves exploded around him as he drifted through galaxies, and the insect beside him buzzed a greeting he could somehow understand.

Each form the Eternal took was more absurd than the last, and yet—Ricky couldn’t deny it.

He felt it in his bones.

They were all the same.

Every form, every face... every single manifestation... it was still that being.

The one true eternal above.

The baby in the luxury apartment. The woman in white light. The crawling insect.

They weren’t disguises.

They were truths. Simultaneous. Eternal. Unchanging despite change.

And Ricky?

He was just a witness. An anomaly caught in the vision of something far beyond comprehension.

The absurdity of the situation was beginning to gnaw at Ricky’s mind.

Reality—if this even was reality—had been unraveling around him for what felt like hours, or maybe minutes, or maybe no time at all. Time was irrelevant here, and so was logic.

The stream of endless transformations, cascading scenery shifts, and the oppressive sense of watching something he was never meant to see had numbed his instincts.

In that numbness, Ricky did the most human thing he could:

He forgot to ask the most important question.

How was he supposed to go back?

Was this some elaborate spiritual illusion?

Was this a game?

A trial from the system?

Or worse... had he wandered into something that even the system couldn’t control?

Eventually, the endless scenery changes began to slow.

The form of the Eternal had shifted back into the woman in white—calm, radiant, and terrifyingly serene.

Ricky, at last, managed to take a deep breath, one that trembled with the weight of lingering fear.

He narrowed his compound eyes and asked, cautiously, "Are all these people your clones?"

For a moment, silence.

The One True Eternal Above didn’t answer. She merely looked at him.

That look—so quiet, so unfathomably ancient—spoke volumes. But none that Ricky could understand.

Then she finally spoke, voice like still wind before a cosmic storm.

"Little one, I don’t think you want to know the answer."

And as those words fell, her eyes—those ancient, abyssal eyes—locked onto his.

In that instant, Ricky felt as if the weight of the entire universe had been dropped upon his fragile form.

It wasn’t just spiritual pressure—it was something deeper. Something that bypassed the soul and crushed the idea of identity itself.

Ricky’s thoughts shattered.

Blank.

He couldn’t remember his name.

Couldn’t remember where he was.

Couldn’t remember why he existed.

Only the eyes remained. Cold. Patient. Endless.

Then, with a casual, almost amused gesture, the Eternal clapped her hands.

Reality snapped back.

The pressure vanished. Ricky’s mind flooded with identity once more, thoughts rushing in like a dam had broken.

He staggered back a step, gasping.

"Ahh!" The Eternal gave a mock-gasp, touching her cheek in mock surprise. "Don’t tell me I forgot to warn you not to look directly into my eyes."

Ricky didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. His trembling limbs and twitching mandibles spoke for him.

He turned his gaze away instinctively, staring instead at a distant swirl of starlight forming galaxies in the fabric of the void.

But another question escaped him before he could stop it.

"What... are you?"

His voice sounded strangely hollow. As if he himself wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

The woman—no, the thing—sighed deeply.

Her form rippled again, becoming that of the old woman with wrinkled skin like paper folded a thousand times.

"Didn’t I already tell you not to ask me that question?" she said, her voice far more human than it had any right to be. "Your mind is too small. Too fragile."

Her eyes sparkled with the pity one might show a single-celled organism attempting to understand nuclear physics.

"Even if you survived the answer," she continued, her tone suddenly laced with melancholy, "your sanity wouldn’t. You’d be left a hollow shell, reciting truths no one can understand, waiting for oblivion to finally take pity on you."

But Ricky’s mind—stubborn as ever—clung to a thread of defiance.

He wanted to know.

Not out of pride. Not out of curiosity.

But because not knowing was even worse.

And somehow, the Eternal knew this too.

Her gaze turned away for a moment, as if considering something beyond comprehension.

"Calm down, kid. You’re still too young to die for something so stupid."

The voice of the One True Eternal Above echoed with a strange kind of warmth—like a god speaking with pity to an ant.

"Keep growing stronger... and you’ll find the answer yourself."

Her words hung in the air like the echo of a thunderclap in a hollow cave.

For a few moments, neither of them spoke.

Even the swirling cosmos around Ricky seemed to hold its breath, frozen in timeless silence.

Then Ricky broke it.

His voice was quiet but firm, laced with suspicion and fatigue.

"Why am I here?"

The question wasn’t rhetorical. It wasn’t fearful either.

It was direct—sharp. He wanted the answer.

No, he needed it.

Why him?

Why the transmigration?

Why the system?

Why now... this being?

The One True Eternal Above offered a thin, amused smile. The form she wore—a frail old woman wrapped in layers of space-light—tilted her head.

"That’s a difficult question, I’d say," she replied with a tired sigh, as if the answer were buried beneath a mountain of forgotten stars.

But Ricky didn’t blink.

Didn’t look away.

He refused to be brushed off.

He kept his gaze steady—careful to avoid her eyes—burning with silent resolve.

There had to be a reason.

It wasn’t coincidence anymore. First transmigration. Then the system. Now this incomprehensible cosmic entity who could casually rewrite reality like turning pages in a book.

Something was wrong with him—or right with him. Either way, it wasn’t random.

The Eternal Above said nothing, but Ricky could feel the shift.

A ripple through space.

Reality peeled away like scorched parchment.

---

Suddenly, he stood on the surface of a red giant of a planet.

The ground beneath his feet simmered and hissed with heat, glowing faintly like molten glass.

Above him, a sky the color of blood stretched endlessly, filled with massive, fire-breathing clouds that twisted and churned like serpents of flame.

The air was thick, hot, and oddly sweet, carrying the scent of ozone and burning incense.

Ricky stared, entranced—until something moved beside him.

He turned—and froze.

A dragon.

Not just any dragon.

A titanic, scaled monstrosity with wings like obsidian sails and eyes glowing like dying stars.

Each breath it took scorched the air. Its massive claws could crush mountains.

"Holy fucking cow—a DRAGON!" Ricky blurted out, his mandibles twitching in disbelief.

He barely had time to think before the same calm, melodic voice echoed in his head:

"Calm down, little one. It’s still me."

The moment shattered like glass.

All the awe, all the wonder, washed away in a heartbeat—drenched by an invisible bucket of cold water.

Ricky’s excitement evaporated instantly, leaving behind only confusion and slight irritation.

He groaned internally, then asked with a twitch in his brow:

"Why? What was the point of constantly switching bodies? You were a baby, a woman, an old man, a bug... and now a freaking dragon?"

The dragon tilted its massive head down toward him. Its eyes softened, almost twinkling with mischief.

"Because none of it matters."

Ricky blinked. "What?"

The Eternal Above continued, its voice echoing from all around him, from the burning skies, from the molten ground, from the very air itself.

"Form is just a lens. You keep focusing on the glass. You haven’t learned to see the light inside."

Ricky didn’t reply.

He was still processing.

The Eternal gave a low, rumbling chuckle.

"In truth, I don’t have a form. I simply take on whatever shape helps you understand me best. A body is nothing but a translator for your limited perception."

Then the skies trembled, and the dragon’s form began to dissolve into countless stars.

"But you’re not quite ready yet, Ricky. You still think like a mortal."

"That’s fine." The voice grew distant, like it was slipping into infinity.

"Grow stronger. Ask better questions. When you’re ready... I’ll be waiting."

---

Then everything collapsed into darkness.

Only a whisper remained in the void:

"One day, you’ll remember this dream... and understand what you saw."

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