Chapter 187: [Flashbacks] (II)

“…That fucker was damn heavy.”

Dante cursed, walking down the dark and silent hallway of his apartment.

The floor even creaked at each step he took.

The faint scent of dust lingered in the stale air, mingling with the faint trace of alcohol and cigarette smoke that clung to his clothes.

Truthfully, his parents had been gone for years. He had grown up learning how to fend for himself, with no family, no safety net… just the cold streets and the underworld.

Yes, the underworld.

Due to some unpleasant encounters, Dante somehow turned into a drug dealer. And from then on, he kept the gig, making enough money to survive.

He made his way into his bedroom, his beautiful sanctuary, and sat at the small desk where his computer sat, blinking in the darkness.

He could hear the faint hum of the machine as it powered on.

With a sigh, he sat down in the worn-out chair, running a hand through his messy hair.

The glow of the screen illuminated his face in the otherwise dark room, and for a moment, he just stared at it, lost in thought.

“Let’s continue writing the novel, I guess…” Dante mumbled to himself as his fingers hovered over the keyboard.

Other than being a damn drug dealer, he was also a novelist. He wasn’t really popular, but he still got a few decent bucks from it.

If the drug dealing was for his rent, food, and stuff like that, the money that came from his novel was definitely for his personal interests, such as games, and other subscriptions for applications like XFlix, or Arazon Lime.

“Mhm… the novel is finally coming to an end,” he stretched his arms above his head as he prepared himself to write the last Chapter of the seven-hundred-Chapter-long novel.

The novel’s name was “The Last Resurgence Of Me“.

It was a trashy romance novel set in a prestigious academy, filled with drama, betrayal, and, of course, countless swooning heroines.

It wasn’t particularly good, coming from the author themselves, as it was full of cringy tropes, over-the-top villains, and absurdly dramatic love interests.

But to Dante and his followers, it was some kind of guilty satisfaction.

The actual premise was simple: a boy named Adrian had almost his whole family killed by the Witch of Greed, leaving only him and his sister alive.

Fortunately, they were found in their burning village and rescued by a pair of loving elders who took care of them until both of them had reached the golden age of seventeen.

After that, the brother and sister separated, each one going towards their own adventure, until they finally reunited at the prestigious academy called…

Gloria Academy.

Now, the actual plot twist about it was that Adrian was actually what was called “The Vessel of Nothingness“.

In other words, he was the Avatar of the All-Knowing God of Nothingness, which later would come to be one of the last bosses of his adventure.

Now, Dante planned to completely erase Adrian from his story, since, just like the title of the novel said, it was basically the last moment anyone would see Adrian.

However… there was a slight problem.

More specifically… a character that went by the name of Gray…

Gray Vireux D’Aurélion

.

And also, the ultimate villain of Adrian’s story, and the one who would undoubtedly be the one to kill him.

“Haagh… how am I supposed to write this?” Dante sighed deeply, furrowing his eyebrows as he looked at the little over a hundred words that he had written.

The problem was… Gray was simply TOO overpowered.

Dante decided so because he wanted to make someone so incredible to be “defeated” by the protagonist.

And because of that, Gray’s talent was maxed out.

Well… Adrian’s talent was also maxed out, but what differentiated him from Gray was that… Gray was a genius among geniuses.

For example… if a normal genius had 140 IQ, Gray easily had an IQ above 300.

Dante had simply created someone who could not be defeated at all, and hence his crisis, he didn’t know how to make the protagonist Adrian have a draw against the Gray.

“Tsk… how did I even write such an unkillable character?” Dante muttered to himself.

At first, he tried to debuff Gray by putting him as a playboy, but even with that, he noticed that if Gray was a genius…

There had to be a reason for every action.

So, he wrote that his family was simply using him, and even had thrown him off after his talent was stolen by the Crown Prince, which later came to light that it was part of the plan of his big sister, who actually was one of the main heroines of the novel.

She, too, would fight against Gray alongside Adrian, along with multiple other heroines like Adrian’s own sister, who wasn’t his blood sister at all!

After all, this was a stupid novel with every kind of cliché trope!

“Haah… Maybe I can make Adrian and the others kill Jasmine, who supposedly has a Soul Contract with him?” Danted hummed thoughtfully.

“I could make Adrian explode his own soul power, breaking their contract, and effectively killing both of them, and as a result, Adrian’s own soul power dissipated, killing him, and making the fight a complete draw between them.”

He sighed.

“The readers wouldn’t like that… Besides, it’s pretty crazy to believe that Adrian, who absorbed the power of ninety-two gods and even has a team of four highly talented heroines, each with her own contract with goddesses… especially Lyra, the avatar of the Four Main Gods, cannot fight against Gray, who only has a contract with Jasmine, the Goddess of Beauty & Destruction.”

“Arghhh…” he groaned.

“How come I made Gray this overpowered?” he exclaimed to himself.

Without any ideas, he simply decided to scroll through the comments of his last Chapter, where more than twenty comments could be seen.

“Mhm… I realized this before, but my community really loves Gray as a character…” he muttered lightly.

“Maybe… should I just let him win and simply give the story a bad ending?” his eyes brightened entirely.

That idea… it could work!

After all… if you can’t kill an unkillable character, you might as well make it win!

“Alright!” Dante rolled his neck.

Tap, tap, tap!

And almost immediately started writing the final fight scene where Gray would beat the crap out of five of them, and win the fight.

Three thousand words passed, and it still wasn’t over as Dante decided to make Adrian exhaust his potential, summoning every bit of his power just to be directly slapped aside by Gray himself.

And just after a little more than an hour…

“Agh… It’s finally done!” Dante smiled as he arched his back slighly, feeling a strong soreness all over his shoulders.

Nine thousand total words.

A complete battle displaying Gray’s dominance and power over them.

And the finale, showcasing Adrian’s little monologue about trying to beat an unkillable enemy, with his last words being:

“In the face of absolute strength, all schemes are useless.”

…It was simply perfect!

Click!

“Uploaded!”

Dante stood up from his chair, putting his arms on the headrest as he looked at the screen that showed:

[Chapter uploaded successfully!]

“I hope they like it,” Dante muttered before heading out towards the exit of his small apartment and taking out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

“Phew…”

A cloud of smoke seeped out of his mouth as he looked at the beautiful night sky full of shining stars, each brighter than the other.

“It was fun while it lasted,” Dante removed the cigarette from his lips before mumbling to himself as he recalled the first Chapter he wrote.

The grammar was all over the place, and he didn’t even know how to describe the basic clothes of a character.

But soon, he improved… and started enjoying writing more and more.

“I wonder if I should try to write another novel?” he took a drag of his cigarette before throwing it on the ground and stomping with his shoe.

“…I have time to think about it.”

He went back in and headed back to his sanctuary before sitting back in his chair.

“Oh?”

He raised an eyebrow.

It had been a bit over fifteen minutes since he had uploaded the Chapter, and he had already gotten a lot of responses from his readers.

“…Ah, just like I thought,” his lips curled up in satisfaction.

“They loved this ending.”

Just as he expected, most of the comments focused on how perfectly fitting the ending was, given that Gray had a one hundred percent chance of winning.

A few of them even expressed that they honestly liked Gray more as a character because he simply had one goal since he was presented to the readers.

And that was… to be the strongest.

But then…

There was a small comment that caught his interest.

[RidingTheHood: Author-samaaaaa! How about you create a novel for Gray’s adventure? We would love to see the story from Gray’s perspective!]

Beneath it, a few replies appeared, with other readers also agreeing on the idea.

And thinking about it, it wasn’t such a bad idea.

He was already used to the world-building, had all the characters written and everything! He just needed to organize and then put his thoughts into motion!

“…How about I… write a little premise?”

He opened a doc file and decided to create a little idea for the prologue, where it was the scene of Gray actually being thrown by his own family.

“…Done!”

It took him a little over fifteen minutes, but he was actually satisfied with this premise.

BAAAAM!

However, before he could actually save the document, the sound of his door being kicked away reached his ears as he instantly stood up.

He cautiously approached the entrance, just to see a familiar face…

“Caleb…?” he muttered in a confused tone.

He was pretty sure he had knocked him out, so normally, he wouldn’t be this crazy to barge into his apartment.

Bang!

“AAAARGHHHHHHH!”

However, before he could delve much into the situation, he was directly shot on chest. His vision blurred slighly, holding his chest as he crouched down in pain.

’…T-this motherfucker!!!’ Dante gritted his teeth.

“Hahaha… HAAHAHAAHAHA!!!!”

A deranged laugh came from Caleb’s lips as he quiveringly held the gun pointed at Dante’s head.

“How dare you steal my girlfriend! Because of you… She… she actually broke up with me!” he laughed in pure rage.

“Now… you should fucking pay for your sins!”

Bang, bang, bang!

Three consecutive shots rang out, each one landing squarely on Dante’s chest.

“See you in hell, bastard!”

Caleb quickly shot through the exit of Dante’s apartment, leaving his trembling body behind.

“Ahh… ughh…”

Dante groaned deeply as he looked at his bloodied hands that had been trying to cover his wound for the past few seconds.

He wanted to live… but he knew that he was going to die.

Creackk…

Still… he climbed to his chair, and since no one actually cared about his existence except his loyal readers, he slowly… typed out a final message from them in the community tab.

Drip…

“Kurgh…”

Blood freely flowed out of his wounds, but maybe because of the adrenaline he was feeling to write his last goodbyes, he hadn’t died yet.

And just like that… he finally pressed enter, and directly passed out as his soul slowly flew onto the river of reincarnation.

However… the world his soul had been sent to was a little familiar to him.

…Really.

It was just a little familiar to him.

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