Chapter 1235 (2/2)

Enamored with this story he didn’t remember writing, Roy flipped quickly through the panels. Although he had only had thirty-six panels arranged, no matter how many panels Roy flipped through, there were still more to read.

In the story, Roy barely managed to survive those first few days by utilizing improvised weapons from around the office and moving quickly to secure food. With a base, he began to gather companions to assist him. After assembling a team, Roy rescued an attractive young couple who would eventually become his left and right hands. Together, they pushed back the forces of monsters in the surrounding area.

They even managed to find a golden coin and create a Village, which gave them access to Classes. Entranced, Roy’s fingers flipped from the panel where he spoke to the Village Spirit to obtain his Class. Although Roy’s phone abruptly began to ring, he ignored it. His hands were trembling as he once more began to cry. These were silent tears that coursed down his cheeks.

Because this panel was probably epitomized the feeling that Roy had chased his entire life.

The panel was extremely simple. The main character selected his Class: Hero. For several seconds, Roy couldn’t breathe. Then he wiped away his tears and continued to flip through the post-its.

Everything was right with the world even as monsters continued to attack the Hero’s Village.

His eyes were bright as he eagerly continued to read. But suddenly his hands clenched with enough force to warp the post-its. After spending a few minutes confused, he finally remembered Carla. For a second, Roy had thought he had missed something because the main character underwent an abrupt transformation in the later panels. But the middle section of his comic had been thrown in the trash.

Something snapped inside of Roy. His eyes burned with malice. But that horrible desire to hurt began to push away some of the confusion in his mind.

Uncaring that his phone continued to insistently ring, Roy put his hand into the trashcan. Ignoring the slimy sensation of Carla’s partially dried snot, he pulled out the panels he was missing. After reorganizing them, Roy eagerly continued to read. But as he reached the panel exactly in the middle of the story he had drawn, Roy stuttered to a stop.

Roy looked down at the drawing depicting his own death. The Tribulation of his Village had taken the form of an attractive woman and snuck into the compound. It hadn’t really even needed to do anything; it had just make sure that Roy saw its fleshy exterior and he was instantly blinded by lust.

It had ridden on top of Roy, and when he had closed his eyes to orgasm, the Tribulation slid a dagger into his heart.

Still wearing the beautiful face of a raven haired woman, the Tribulation had leaned over him and whispered, “What a way for a Hero to die.”

Then it had twisted the knife. No matter how he had struggled, Roy hadn’t been able to make a sound. He died, bleeding out on his bed, his Village consumed by the Tribulation.

Roy stared solemnly at that pencil sketch on a post-it for so long that whoever had called him finally got fed up. Although there was the constant murmur of other people talking around him and other phones ringing, his cubicle became deathly silent.

“That’s right. I’m already…” The malicious energy in his chest quickly cooled. It became almost well-behaved in its madness as clarity began to arrive. Muttering to himself, Roy didn’t even hear the heavy steps as Carla stalked over toward his cubicle.

“ROY. What the actual FUCK!” Carla roared, sniffing to pull a oozing booger back into her nose. She slapped her pudgy hand against Roy’s desk, once, twice. “Did you think I was KIDDING? Get your things and go.”

Roy’s shivered and Carla laughed scornfully. “I tried to give you a chance; it’s too late to act sorry now.”

Of course, all this is just… heh. Roy couldn’t tear his eyes away from the satisfied expression on the Tribulation’s face as Roy died in the panel. Yet then he shivered again; as he stared at the picture of him dying, he remembered the sensation of passing on to the next life. The terrible lack of sensation, the suffocating inevitability. Right before he died, his Skill Trials of a Hero activated, giving him a slight edge. But it could only delay the inevitable.

Bit by bit, Roy had been frozen as his sanity was stripped away with a mechanical precision in preparation to be truly dead. Luckily, his allies moved quickly enough for some of him to remain. He had been revived with the same body, sure, but Roy would never have claimed that the ‘he’ who returned was the same as the one who had left. His Skill activation had delayed the degradation, but it hadn’t been stopped the process entirely.

The ‘he’ that returned was forever marked by the abyss that waited for them all.

That horrible, forbidden knowledge of the cessation of life strained Roy’s personality with an existential pain that was difficult to understand. But if Roy focused too long on the memories of that time, he would slip once more into that horrible sensation of falling. Within a few minutes, he probably would be nothing but an empty machine of flesh.

So Roy distracted himself from that horror. In the strange dream of his life before the System, Roy looked up at his shitty manager at the call center and smiled. “Carla, do you know what dying feels like?”

“What…?” Perhaps because of the sudden change of expression on Roy’s face, Carla instinctively took a step backward. Before she could respond further, Roy stood and walked briskly past her. He even had the decency to ignore the way she flinched. Then he went to the office manager’s desk, who was looking at him with widening eyes. There, he picked up a pair of scissors and walked back to Carla.”

“This is what it feels like.” Roy said as he drove the scissors into Carla’s left eye socket. She reeled backward and hot blood spurted out across her fleshy face. A split second later, she began screaming bloody murder and Roy stopped forward again. As she fell toward the ground, he placed both hands on the handle of the scissors and shoved to pierce into her brain.

Because in his dream he was just a normal human, Roy messed the attack up; the scissors couldn’t pierce deeply enough to make it into the brain. When he landed on Carla’s chest, the window was knocked out of him by her flailing arms. As she worked herself into a bloody lather, Roy rolled off of her and crawled away to catch his breath.

When he finally did, Roy began to laugh.

It was a slow process waking up from that dream and Roy could immediately sense that it was his Meaningful Visions Skill that had shown him those things. But even as he came back to himself, Roy remained extremely still.

He was being carried over someone’s shoulder and felt non-metallic armor shifting underneath his fingers.

“Why does it matter that they are creating a television network? It’s just constant movies, right?”

Roy didn’t recognize the throaty feminine voice, but he recognized the second voice when it answered.

“The channel itself doesn’t matter much. I bet the content will even be pretty decent. It’s more… the fact that there is a significant portion of Zone 1 that dedicated their time and effort to entertainment. Donnyton can be extreme sometimes, but I agree with them on this: we should be preparing for the Calamity, not trying to reclaim pre-System habits.”

Sydney…? I was… Sydney rescued me from the Toad Lord…?!? what the hell is going on…? Roy wondered as he continued to play dead.