The world around Richard slowed—no, froze. Not a single breeze stirred the air. His own breath echoed like a void screaming back at him. He stood at the center of a spiraling ring of darkness, each strand representing a death he'd lived, and was now being forced to relive.
A voice—low, grating, unforgiving—spoke in his ear:
"Loop 1749. Time to feel it again."
And he felt it.
A blade seared through his spine, slower than time itself. Not a strike. A carve. As if every vertebrae was being studied, memorized, then shattered. Richard screamed—not because of the pain, but because he remembered. The look on Reio's face when he killed him that loop. Smug. Silent. Void of mercy.
He dropped to his knees, blood pouring from his mouth, eyes twitching with the weight of trauma stacked a thousand times over.
Then it reset.
"Loop 1750."
He was flung into a pool of acid. His skin melted cell by cell. He tried clawing his way out, but every step forward burned his muscles to ash. Floating in agony, he screamed names—Arielle, Elsa, Reio, even Aethonix. But no one came. Just silence.
Reset.
"Loop 1751."
Crucified in the sky. Birds of shadow pecked his eyes out, again, again, again. Every second stretched into years. He couldn't faint. He wasn't allowed to die. The pain was the only thing keeping him conscious.
Reset.
"Loop 1752."
He was locked in a coffin, buried alive. Dirt crushed the box as pressure increased. He tried to punch, but the coffin laughed at his resistance. He suffocated slowly. Not from lack of air—but from his own screams filling the tight box.
Reset.
"Loop 1753."
This one… he didn't die. Not physically. But emotionally?
He watched Arielle die again, again, again. Sometimes Reio killed her. Sometimes Dark. Sometimes Richard himself—possessed, manipulated, broken. Each time, she reached out to him, whispered, "Why didn't you save me…?"
His heart shattered a thousand different ways.
Reset.
"Loop 1754."
He was forced to watch everyone laugh at him. His struggles were mocked. His failures glorified. As he sat bloodied, weak, breathing ragged, they clapped. They cheered. They celebrated his pain.
Reset.
"Loop 1755."
He couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Just lie there. Reio stepped forward and said:
"No one cares about you. Even your pain is useless."
The words stung deeper than any weapon.
Reset.
And it didn't stop.
Loop 1760… 1761… 1800… 1900… every single one worse than the last.
His bones learned new ways to snap. His heart learned new ways to shatter. His mind found new ways to break.
And yet…
Through all of it…
One thing stayed the same.
He never begged.
He never asked for help.
He endured.
Until Loop 2000…
His body was unrecognizable. Scars over scars. Pain beyond logic. But when the darkness whispered,
"Beg."
He looked up—bloodied, shaking, furious—and muttered,
"Is that all you got?"
"You wanted me to break. You should've known… I don't."
---
Loop 2001.
His lungs refused to breathe.
The air had become acidic. The ground, spikes.
His skin was missing in places, memories stripped from him.
Voices whispered in every direction—Reio, Elsa, Arielle, even the Divine God.
All of them saying the same thing:
"You were born to lose."
But this time...
He didn't scream.
He didn't resist.
He stood still. Eyes empty. A smile, cracking through blood.
"Loop 2002."
A blade tore through his jaw.
He didn't flinch.
He laughed.
A low, broken laugh—like glass being crushed.
The voice hesitated.
"...Loop 2003."
They threw him into a storm of blades.
But he didn't feel it.
Pain became normal.
Death became silent.
The loops had become a melody. A sick, twisted symphony he could now predict.
"Loop 2050… 2100… 2200…"
Richard no longer screamed.
He whispered back.
"More. Give me more."
The system cracked.
The tormentors faltered.
Even the voice began to sound… unsure.
"...Why aren't you breaking?"
Richard's head tilted.
Eyes hollow, glowing faint red.
His body—burnt, snapped, torn—still moved.
Still walked.
Still breathed.
Then something changed.
"Loop 3000."
Instead of pain, he stood in a white room.
Nothingness.
He walked forward. Alone.
For the first time… no whispers.
No torture.
Just a door.
He opened it.
Boom.
A rush of ALL 3000 deaths flooded his brain in a single second. Every scream, every tear, every death. His eyes rolled back. His hands trembled.
Then they steadied.
He stepped through.
And he saw it—
Reio standing over Arielle.
His sword dug into her stomach.
Blood poured like a cursed river.
Arielle reached out weakly, her last breath forming Richard's name.
Time unfroze.
Richard didn't blink.
He didn't scream.
He moved.
In that second, he wasn't a boy.
He wasn't a warrior.
He wasn't even human.
He was the consequence of suffering.
He grabbed Reio's sword mid-strike.
SNAP.
The blade shattered in his hand like dry glass.
Reio turned.
"What the—"
BAM.
Richard's punch hit with the weight of 3000 deaths.
Not just physical… but emotional. Mental.
It shattered space.
Reio coughed blood, stunned.
But Richard wasn't done.
He whispered,
"I died. 3000 times. Felt it all. And now… You feel it."
He touched Reio's chest.
And all the pain, the loops, the nightmares—transferred into him.
Reio screamed.
A scream so brutal, the void itself recoiled.
Richard turned to Arielle, who was fading fast.
He caught her. Held her. For the first time in ages, a tear slipped out.
"I won't let your story end like mine did."
But before he could do anything more—
Boom.
A shadow exploded in front of him. A figure in a cloak.
Red eyes. Voice like thunder.
"You broke the system, Richard Filver. Welcome to the other side."
Everything shattered.
Suddenly, Richard woke up in a bed not knowing what was happening.
Richard Filver lay on a creaky wooden bed inside a cabin that didn't belong to him — nor to any reality he remembered. His breath was shallow, his body still aching from a recent battle. The moon outside had no light. The stars were gone.
And then — everything cracked.
The walls shattered into black fragments, floating like glass in a void.
Darkness swallowed him.
He didn't scream.
He had seen worse. Or so he thought.
"Welcome back, Richard."
A voice — ancient, deep, and inhuman — echoed through the nothingness.
A silhouette formed ahead. Massive, cloaked in shadow, its face forever shifting like a fluid mask.
Richard narrowed his eyes. "...You must be the Darklord."
The figure laughed, not with joy, but with pity. "Still trying to sound brave, are you? Even now?"
Richard stood, fists clenched. "What do you want?"
The Darklord stepped forward.
And said the one thing that shattered Richard's soul.
"You were never special."
Richard froze.
"You weren't born with genius. You weren't chosen. You weren't crafted by fate or prophecy. You were just a mediocre child in a third-rate town with a mildly above-average IQ. That's it."
The words struck like iron. But Richard didn't speak.
"I made you. Every 'strategic move'... every 'outsmarted enemy'... every 'victory' you believed in — all part of a simulation I designed. A cage of success. You never fought. You were fed the results."
"Your memories? Erased. Your growth? Fabricated. Your power? Artificial."
"You were a puppet."
The world around Richard grew colder. His lips didn't move.
But his heart screamed.
"You're one of The UnReals, Richard. You were another eternal I picked to test. And you failed. You ran from regret. From emotion. From the truth."
The Darklord's voice dropped lower, almost a whisper.
"Tell me, Richard. What do you really have now?"
And then, for the first time...
Richard turned — and ran.
A black void ripped open — a portal — and without hesitation, he dove into it.
Richard crashed into solid earth, coughing, panting. The sky above him was plain. The moons were gone. The air was dull and empty.
He looked at his hands.
No energy. No aura. No glitching reality. No swirling code.
Just...
Him.
He tried casting a spell.
A small spark flickered. A weak flame hovered in his palm before fading out.
That was all.
His IQ, no longer godlike — but stable. 840. The average of an exceptional human mind from Lakhimpur.
And with it, some basic spells. Old, rusty. Barely useful.
His smirk? Gone.
His confidence? Shattered.
His legend?
Erased.
He was just Richard Filver now.
A cozy, dim room. Books stacked like towers. Candles flickering. An old man sits in a wooden chair, stroking his beard. A young boy — his student — listens, wide-eyed.
The old man speaks, his voice like time itself.
"Long ago… There were beings called the Eternals. They were not gods. They were... beyond."
"They didn't age. They didn't die. They didn't begin. They simply were."
The student leans closer. "Did they create everything?"
The old man nods slowly.
"One of them did. His name was Lloyd — the Creator of Origins. The first to bend nothing into something."
"But even among the Eternals... there were anomalies."
"There was one among them... who forgot what he was. Who was tested. Who fell."
He looked at the candle. Its flame flickered violently.
"And he will either awaken... or be devoured by what he used to be."
He sat beneath a dying tree, wind blowing through his messy hair.
No plan. No purpose. Just one thought in his mind:
"Was I ever even real?"