The Ending This Story Needed
This is a little painful to write, but I feel it's best to bring this story to a close. It hasn't had the popularity I hoped for and, on top of that, it consumes valuable time that keeps me from advancing with other novels —like Marvel—. More than once I found myself breaking my head trying to keep moving forward.
In the end, it makes sense: this was my first original novel, and to be precise, the theme I chose was not exactly the easiest to tackle. I literally had an Excel sheet with the stat panels of most characters, and at some point I felt so overwhelmed that everything began to blur together, creating a chaos you probably noticed, especially when I stopped publishing the status panels.
The same thing happened with the abilities: they turned out to be a real headache. In my next novel, I'll go for a simpler system, with more straightforward, easy-to-handle abilities.
Still, I don't want to leave anyone with doubts or end things on an open note. That's why this chapter is a collection and summary of all the ideas I had planned for this story. Looking back, maybe it was too ambitious, truly insane… but I also think it would have turned out incredible if I had known how to carry it to the end.
So here it is: the "super-mega-hyper summary" of a story that, in theory, was meant to last much longer.
In the real world, the war against the elves broke out unexpectedly. What should have been a simple surveillance force ended up becoming the first line of battle against the players. The elves, lacking a conquest army, found themselves at a disadvantage against humans who, for the first time in centuries, wielded magic as a weapon.
The elven forces fell one after another, until Supervisor Donovan, in charge of planet 1552-T, descended onto the battlefield. Unlike his soldiers, Donovan was a monster in terms of mana control. After consuming dozens of flasks, he could invoke spells instantly, without long incantations. His body became infused with a power that made him fast and brutal, a warrior capable of fighting both hand-to-hand and with magic, using something akin to aura.
The main team, with Loli and the other players, was unable to stop him. Donovan crushed them, pushing them to the brink of death. However, when defeat seemed inevitable, Lua appeared. Though it was only a clone with 10% of her true power, it was enough to show the supervisor what real magic looked like.
In a desperate act, Donovan stormed into his own ship and threw himself upon the reserves of liquid mana. His body, unable to withstand such an overload, began to deform until it became a colossal creature, a mass of flesh and uncontrolled power. In his frenzy, he attacked Lua, but she annihilated him with ease. Before being destroyed, the ship sent out a distress signal into space.
Lua gathered the surviving players and brought them to Liora's base. The reunion was emotional: for the first time, Liora felt she wasn't alone when leaving the game and returning to the real world. As a precaution, Lua left her clone in "hibernation mode" on Earth, ready to awaken if enemies returned.
Meanwhile, in Drunai, the players understood the magnitude of the threat. They had defeated Donovan, but they knew the elves could return at any moment. The news spread everywhere, igniting the spirit of battle. Lua ordered SIA to use every bit of collected energy to summon more players, multiplying their forces.
On Earth, Bert used one of the captured ships to send a message to all mana extraction stations, revealing the existence of the "game." Thousands began to search for their old computers, eager for a chance to enter.
Beyond the atmosphere, Donovan's signal reached the elven forces. However, they were embroiled in a war against another invasive species and could not intervene immediately. The situation enraged them: Earth, which should have provided them with a steady flow of mana, had turned into a problem. They knew that Donovan, with his history, would eventually destroy the planet if he grew tired of it. Even so, they decided to wait until they had resolved their own war… afterward they would send a world-drainer to permanently eradicate this source of rebellion.
The elves were not a powerful force in the galaxy, but they discovered something that could elevate them higher: the divine fragments. They had found one on a planet currently contested against another force. With it, they believed they could rise and rival the four great powers that already existed.
…
In Drunai, six months passed like a storm. The players, aware of the coming war, trained without rest. They evolved, gained new forms, and the small starting village grew into a kingdom. Half of humanity now lived in Drunai, while the other half awaited their turn to cross.
Joe and the first players achieved positions of leadership within the new kingdom. Joe, in particular, was close to ascending to the rank of demigod, though he still needed a divine fire fragment —his true affinity. In their possession they only had a light fragment, a spatial fragment, and one of luck. These could grant him ascension, but were less compatible with his abilities.
The balance of the world, however, was far from stable. Drunai was divided into four great powers: the Beast Forest, where savage creatures remained confined in eternal frenzy; the Spiritual Village, made up of players summoned from other worlds; the Human Empire; and the Demon Empire.
In this setting, the awakening of the Demon of Death marked a new danger. After months in a coma, he revealed to his emperor the existence of the spirits and the growing power of the players. The demons were the first to react, preparing their attack against the newly formed kingdom. Driven by vengeance for the harm done to one of their own, they marched directly into the forest with their full power, caring little if they lost every soldier. In the past, they had used only half their strength and still managed to seize a few divine fragments. Now, instead of only five demigods like the humans, they had eight.
The reason they did not attack the humans was because they suspected those same humans also had something hidden.
The Demon Emperor, bearer of the Divinity of Destruction just like Lua, appeared as her equal, matching her level. He was the one who stole Silvia's fragment—or rather, stole it from the human who had nearly killed Silvia—obtaining his level 9 during the fight against Lila. Although both shared the same attribute, their power was not identical: Lua came from a superior lineage, while the Emperor had obtained his fragment on a different planet, making it less pure in the territory of Drunai, where a fragment's origin grew stronger when resting in its native land.
Meanwhile, Lila, Lua's mother, watched from above alongside five demigods, protecting and guiding her daughter's battle. The war turned into hell itself: the demon armies clashed against an enemy that could never truly die, for every fallen player would rise again. Attempting to break this cycle, the demons crossed the forest to strike at the Spiritual Village, but they made a fatal mistake: they attracted the semi-divine beasts confined within it, including an unexpected deity—a beast goddess of luck.
The struggle turned into a three-sided chaos. Lila contained the beast goddess of luck, while more than fifty demigods of all levels tore through barriers and the kingdom alike. Not even the kingdom's walls could withstand such force, and the destruction reached apocalyptic proportions.
Even so, the players did not give up as they continued to respawn. Even if the summoning totem was destroyed, they would still reappear at the kingdom's entrance as long as SIA remained connected to Lua.
The situation worsened with the arrival of the Human Emperor, the God of Light. He was the direct rival of Draven, the former demigod who had once used SIA and died earlier. His hatred for him in the past was not only because of their differences, but also his desire to "legally" obtain a divine fragment of light—though in the end he had acquired one from the forest. His entrance into the war turned the conflict into a duel between two gods—human and beast—against Lila, though the beast made no alliances and attacked both sides equally. The scale of the battle was so great it destroyed half of the Beast Forest, surpassing all devastation caused by the demigods.
In the midst of the chaos, Joe and other players reached the rank of demigod, wielding their divine fragments: Joe (Fire), Dean (Shadow), Edward (Water), Liora (Luck), Loli (Space), and Sig (Death) also joined. Though few, their arrival shifted the balance. Together with Lua, who managed to claim the missing fragment of Destruction, they succeeded in slaying the Demon Emperor. Lua finally ascended to the level of goddess and joined the battle of titans.
The Human Emperor, defeated and overwhelmed, fled back to his planet, abandoning his troops, who were mercilessly slaughtered by the demon beasts. The demons, for their part, fought with all their fury to avenge their fallen brethren, but with Lua as a goddess and the players blessed by both Destruction and Life, they could not prevail. The war dragged on for days until the last human and demon forces were annihilated.
In an unexpected turn, the beast goddess of luck, captivated by Lua in combat, surrendered and fell in love with her. The beast demigods seized the chance to absorb the divine fragments of the fallen. Upon ascending to godhood, they gained their own consciousness, along with fragments of memory from those who had carried the fragments before—the spiritual gods—thus ending the war between beasts and spirits.
With the fragments gathered from demons, humans, and beasts, Drunai changed forever: sixteen gods arose. Seven of them were players, three were Lua and her mothers, and the rest were divine beasts.
When Lua became a goddess, her clone on Earth was disconnected from her—as was SIA, who remained linked to that clone, retaining its body as well as the system's core. If she died, the player system itself would collapse.
On Earth, the transformation was equally radical. By becoming demigods, the players channeled vast amounts of mana back into their world, completely healing it. Their real bodies evolved, ceasing to be fully human. The union of both worlds opened a permanent portal. Now, avatars could merge with their real counterparts, though it meant losing immortality in exchange for total power. Most chose to wait, aware there was still much to do.
The first trial came when the elves finally answered the delayed signal. Confident in their strength, they sent a demigod to lead their fleet. But more than a dozen gods looked upon them as nothing but trash, and within minutes, their ship was reduced to ashes. The balance of power had shifted: Drunai and Earth fused into one of the greatest galactic powers.
In the galaxy, four great forces existed: humans, demons, tree-men, and celestials. The arrival of the Human Emperor with a fleet of ten gods sparked another great battle. Though they had more demigods and vast experience in conquering worlds to seize divine fragments, they now faced an immortal enemy: the players. For them, each victory meant more fragments.
Meanwhile, SIA was safeguarded on Earth, because if she died, the player system would end.
The final threat loomed on the horizon: the World Devourer. Ancient and colossal, it revealed SIA's origin: she had been sent by him as a tool, a mechanism to nurture a species until he could consume it. SIA did not know this, but when the Devourer arrived on Earth instead of Drunai, chaos broke loose.
It was discovered when SIA crossed the portal, and the Devourer turned back toward Drunai. From then on, it became a strategy: SIA would cross the portal every so often, buying time to prepare for the final battle.
Of course, he was eventually defeated using technology salvaged from earlier invasions and the immortal players armed with starships. A war was waged in space. They lost a few times, forcing them to try again and again—until finally, they succeeded.
The magic and power of this beast caused a definitive fusion of both worlds, sealing the era. The players merged with their avatars, unable to refuse any longer. Earth and Drunai became eternally connected, and a new civilization rose under the protection of its gods, ending this long journey.
—
In the epilogue, Lua found peace alongside Loli, with whom she had a daughter, also legally adopting Liora. The beast goddess, jealous, took SIA—who was essentially a copy of Lua—and decided to give her a daughter as well, intending to unite her future descendants with Lua's. Two worlds were saved, protected, and ultimately fused forever.
N/A: It is not the ending I imagined, but it is the ending this story needed: a glimpse of what could have been, and of how far we came together.