The illusion bled into his mind like poison.
At first, it was the laughter—soft, mocking, distant.
Then the screams.
Elaria's face, pale with horror, split open by claws. Ruby crushed under rubble. Lucas' body burned alive, his cheerful grin erased in silence. Kaelith's eyes wide with disbelief as a spear of black mana ripped through his chest. Marcus torn apart, his veins boiling into sludge.
And the children—those little ones who clung to him just hours ago—screamed as monsters dragged them, their tiny arms reaching out for him. For him.
Nex stumbled forward, his hand trembling, his katana slick with blood that wasn't his own. His breath tore at his throat. He tried to cut, to scream, to save. But no matter what he did, they died again. And again. And again.
The ground became a graveyard.
The sky, a ceiling of corpses.
He fell to his knees. His throat tore out a sound that wasn't human. His violet eyes flickered, shattering under the weight of guilt.
And then—silence.
The illusion twisted.
The sun dimmed until it was nothing but a dying ember in a sea of black. Nex was left alone. His body a wreck—legs mangled, one arm broken, his ribs jutting like broken glass through skin. His katana lay in his hand, cracked, dripping with his own blood.
From above—they descended.
Thousands. No—tens of thousands. A sky of wings, horns, fangs, halos of corrupted light. S-rank. SS-rank. The true apex predators of hell. Their eyes were embers. Their pressure was a tidal wave.
One demon raised his hand.
A beam of black fire lanced downward, slamming into Nex's face. His right eye exploded in gore, blood spilling down his cheek in a torrent. He staggered, his vision half-shattered, his face nothing but a ruin.
And yet.
He. Still. Stood.
A broken figure in a cosmic battlefield of despair.
He leaned on his blade. His knees shook, but his back remained unbowed. His remaining eye gleamed like a violet star in the void. Blood pooled at his feet, soaking the earth red, yet his lips curved into a grin.
The sky of demons sneered down at him.
"Human. You are done. What is left for you? All you loved is dust. All you built, erased. What will you gain, standing before us?"
Nex spat blood, thick and black-red, staining his cracked teeth. His voice was hoarse, but it carried like thunder.
"What will I gain?"
He raised his katana, pointing it at the endless sky of monsters. His hand trembled, but his gaze did not.
"I still have myself."
His laughter ripped out then—raw, guttural, soaked in blood. The laugh of a man who had lost everything, yet still found strength in his hollow chest.
"That's enough. Enough to try. Enough to rise. Enough to fail—" he staggered, choking, the words splintering through his bleeding throat, "—and enough… to do it all again. And again. AND AGAIN!"
The demons seethed, their aura blackening the heavens. The earth cracked under the weight of their fury.
But Nex only sneered, teeth bared. His violet eye burned brighter.
"You worthless bugs, sitting up there like kings of rot. You'll never understand. You'll never BE. Even if you kill me a thousand times—"
He pressed the edge of his katana to his own chest, directly over his heart. His body quaked, yet his grin widened into pure madness.
"—I'll still laugh in your faces."
He drove the blade inward.
The steel pierced his flesh, tearing through bone, through heart. Blood erupted, spraying across the ruined ground, cascading like a fountain of defiance.
The demons roared, their fury shaking the cosmos. But in that moment, in that final heartbeat—Nex's presence exploded.
Not power.
Not mana.
But something worse. Something heavier.
Defiance.
It bled from him, flooding the void, staining the vision itself. His death was not quiet—it was a scream, a proclamation carved into eternity. His blood spread like ink across the world, and with it came words that would never fade.
"I Am All I Need. Remember this."
His corpse fell forward, katana still lodged in his heart.
The ground beneath him became a red sea.
The sky burned with the wrath of demons.
But his grin, twisted and radiant, remained.
And in that grin, the cosmos itself saw a truth it could never erase.
The defiance of one broken man who refused to kneel.
The blade pierced deeper. His heart burst like overripe fruit, blood spraying in gouts. His body convulsed, but his laughter—his monstrous, broken laughter—still echoed through the void.
The sky of demons howled as one, their roars shaking the dying sun. Rage thundered through the illusion.
"He mocks us!"
"He dares—"
"Break him, tear him apart! Tear his soul!"
Their fury swelled like an ocean. Yet… the illusion faltered.
Cracks spread across the sky, like glass splintering under strain. The endless legions of demons flickered, their wings distorting, their halos shattering. Nex's blood, instead of vanishing, stained the very fabric of the illusion—soaking into it, corrupting it, undoing it.
And through it all, Nex's final words rang out like a curse carved into reality:
"I am all I need… and you will NEVER take that away."
His corpse hit the ground.
Silence.
Then—
CRASH.
The illusion shattered. The cosmic theatre dissolved into shards of black glass. Screams echoed as the false demons tore into mist, their shapes unraveling like smoke.
And Nex's real body jerked awake on the cold floor of containment. Blood dripped from his mouth, his chest heaving, his violet eye wide and blazing with something darker than despair. His right eye still bled from the beam—proof the illusion had crossed into reality—but he was alive.
The S-rank demon standing before him staggered.
For the first time since its release, it looked… unsettled. Its charred skin twitched, its wings crackling with unstable mana. The grin it had worn—the grin of a predator tormenting prey—trembled, bent at the edges.
It had shown Nex despair. It had shown him powerlessness. It had torn his heart, his mind, his hope into tatters.
And yet—
The human had chosen to kill himself rather than kneel.
The demon's lips curled back, not in amusement, but in fury.
"You filthy mortal… you dare call us bugs?"
Its voice thundered through the corridor, walls cracking as black blood seeped down like rivers.
"You bleed like cattle. You crawl like worms. And yet you think yourself enough? I will peel your skin, carve your bones, burn your soul until there is NOTHING left but ashes!"
Nex pushed himself up on shaking arms, coughing blood. His body was ruined. His heart felt torn even still. Yet his grin had not vanished—it was carved into his face like a scar.
"Good," he spat blood to the ground, staining it black-red. "Then try. You'll only prove me right."
The demon's aura exploded, the corridor shaking like an earthquake. Chains rattled, broken containment cells screamed, corpses on the floor began to twitch with foul resurrection.
But for the first time—
It wasn't Nex who looked broken.
It was the demon, whose illusion had been shattered by will alone.