"Fate is a funny thing…but unfairly so, it is also truly cruel. Because I am more than sure humanity was never meant to survive this…"
A man about twenty-three stared down at his own ruined body.
His torso was barely there, an utterly revolting sight.
Blood leaked from deep torn cavities, pooling beneath what remained of him.
Most of his limbs were missing, ripped clean from his living torso, and his shoulder had been shredded by bite marks far larger than anything a land creature from before the apocalypse could have ever created.
The air itself smelled wrong.
Thick with iron and smoke, it clung to his throat every time he tried to breathe.
It felt awry, like the resemblance of battlefield before the worlds ruin.
Where the smell of blood, gunpowder, and carbon dioxide came pressing down on your lungs forbidding even a blip of oxygen to be captured properly.
It felt no different in this moment. Just the same for this young man.
Around him lay thousands of monster corpses, twisted bodies and gaping maws sprawled in every direction.
Chitin, scales, too many eyes, blackened flesh, and shattered fangs turned the battlefield into a carpet of things that should never have been born.
All of them had been killed by him alone.
Somehow.
And what stood above him was a single system screen floating. Flickering, and loading endlessly.
The pale light of its display shivered in the smoky air. It looked tired, like everything else in this destroyed world, its glow stretched thin over exhausted code.
"Hahhh…"
A thin breath escaped him. He did not force it.
It seemed to leave him naturally, the kind of sound someone makes only when they finally accept that there is nothing left worth struggling for.
"We should have accepted our fates and betrayed those useless gods. Maybe then we could have survived."
His voice was strangely calm for someone dying like this.
There was a worn out clarity in his expression and no tension anywhere in his broken body, only something that looked like a corpse that had not finished dying yet.
He did not regret most of the choice in his life. What bothered him was much simpler.
'If only I had more time. If only I could have experimented more with this world.
If only I could have created something new out of it.
If only I allowed myself to feel the emotions I felt for her all those years ago...'
His thoughts drifted as his eyes fell to his remaining hand, half buried in rubble and blood, still clutching the same crystal from years ago.
His fingers barely twitched around it, but his grip never loosened.
It was strange how beautiful it looked now.
Its clandestine glow hid behind a kaleidoscope of colors, distorted further by the mingled blood of countless monsters.
Tiny reflections of the ruined sky and dead eyes around him warped across its surface.
The more he stared, the more it felt like the crystal was the only thing in the world that remained untouched by time, even while everything else rotted.
It was the very crystal he and his classmates had once tried to activate when the god at the beginning ordered them to find it.
They had spent months tapping it, pouring mana into it, experimenting in every way they could. Nothing ever happened. Eventually, they dismissed it entirely.
Five years later, near the end of Stage 2, with the monster raid closing in and no hope left, he grabbed it again as a last desperate lifeline, in hopes to use it as a final weapon of sorts.
Surprisingly though, within it, something unexpected happened.
An unknown fraction appeared.
「"1/300"」… and beneath it, a glitched word:「S*%#T」
It seemed that the characters in that word crawled and broke apart if he stared too long, not only that, interestingly it seemed like it tried to form the coherent word "start".
Though it would have been beneficial to be cautious, Iskael had not cared one bit. He pressed it without hesitation and fought with what remained of his life.
Now, staring at the crystal, he let a faint smile tug at his lips. He was honestly curious how this small stone had survived being smashed into so many monsters' skulls.
"Appraise…"
For a moment, nothing happened.
The wind quieted around him.
The distant crackle of fires, the settling groans of dead monsters collapsing in on themselves, even the low hum of the lingering mana storms seemed to mute, as if the world was holding its breath with him.
Then a second system window flickered to life beside the frozen main screen.
╭━━━━━「 ITEM 」━━━━━━╮
「R████████ Crystal」
「Classification: Consumable Item」
「***************
⠀***************」
「10 seconds remaining」
「2 / 300」
╰━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╯
"What? When did the number go up to two"
A familiar chime came from above. The same cheerful tone that used to make people excited in the early days, as they enjoyed the gifts that came from that loving system.
Ahh but now it felt hollow.
The message appeared on the previously floating loading screen.
Hilariously, its bright and enthusiastic appearance did not match the scene around Iskael at all. It felt completely out of place in this corpse-ridden wasteland that Earth had become.
╭━━━「 SYSTEM NOTICE 」━━━╮
「WELL CONGRATULATIONS!!!」
「Iskael, you have done an amazing job so far.」
「█▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒10%」
「████▒▒▒▒▒▒30%」
「█████▒▒▒▒▒50%」
「████████▒▒80%」
「██████████100%」
「Completing Calculations...」
「Please Wait...」
「Karma calculations complete...」
「As the last surviving human of the anti-Demonic forces...」
「A large amount of karma has been awarded.」
「Your contributions are greatly appreciated...」
「Please enjoy your spending time in the Akashic Karma Shop.」
「Additional rewards have been delivered to your inventory."」
╰━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╯
a tiny window screen appeared after the previous one minimized.
╭━━「 REWARD SUMMARY 」━━╮
「+1,343,222 Karma"」
「Do you wish to open the Akashic Karma Shop?」
「No」 / 「Yes」
╰━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╯
"hmm... I guess I won huh.."
"Ah well that's too bad I can't spend any of it.."
Another loading window unfolded next, to it soon its text stabilizing enough to be readable.
╭━━「CAMPEIGN BRIEFING」━━╮
「Stage 2 Completion: Survivors (One)」
「Preparation time for Stage 2.1:」
「75 days 12 hours」
「Campaign: Stage 2.1 – 3」
「A frozen husk and a beast that sleeps.
⠀Where daylight shivers and night forgets its name.
⠀The world will quiet beneath pale frost.
⠀Warmth will rot.
⠀Breath will turn to crystal.
⠀Seek the heart that does not beat.
⠀Fear the shadow that cannot move.
⠀When the sleeper dreams, the sky will fall again.」
「Good luck, Players.」
「May the blessing of the Akashic Record be with you...」
「And the fate of the universe remain in your hands.」
╰━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╯
Iskael returned his gaze to the rock wondering why the fraction had a mysterious increase in number.
"Whatever there's no point in thinking about that, I'm already a dead man I guess..."
"Ugh... this is such a tasteless death, I don't even get to spend my karma..."
As the countdown on the crystal reached zero, Iskael glanced at it one last time.
A faint, almost content look crossed his face as he watched his own body begin to fade. He let out a quiet breath, one that felt like utter disappointment pressed onto the realm itself.
And with that, light swallowed everything.
And his world ended.