A tall, well toned man with a bored expression wandered down the street with a sword in hand. The town around him is empty, with wrecked walls and empty buildings. All the stores and vending machines were already looted, with smashed glass and doors everywhere.
"Oh! A packet of gum." Mason knelt down and picked it up, sniffing it, "and it's still sort of fresh!"
He popped the whole packet, wrapper and all, in his mouth, chewing it.
"You do realise that the wrapper is in your mouth?" A similarly handsome male silhouette appeared behind him like a ghost.
"So? Even if I swallowed it I would be fine~" Mason drawled lazily while chewing, "Besides, I don't think the world will last much longer."
"How would you know?"
"We wrote this world, remember? The story ended here...do you think this is our fault?"
"No, it would have happened sooner or later. We may have failed, but that doesn't mean we can't try again." He pulled out a pocket watch, staring at it.
"We didn't have a chance from the start. A handful of humans and a deity dancing in the palm of gods. We lost even before the game started."
"A regressor, a reader and two authors. Not a bad lineup in my opinion." The pocket watch ticked.
"The ending has already been written."
"But we can rewrite it." The pocket watch ticked.
"How?"
[The Regressor is dead]
[The Stream is ending...the second round starts soon]
The pocket watch cracked and the ghostly figure vanished with the words, "We aren't losing, we are in the process of winning."
"What? Zen?" (Mason)
He looked around, alone in this empty shell of a city, before plopping down on the ground with a hopeless expression on his face.
"Doesn't matter...the game's over."
[10]
[9]
[8]
[7]
[6]
[5]
[4]
[3]
[2]
[1]
[The Human Race and civilisation has fell, Earth is now judged to be a dead zone]
[Congratulations! You have reached the bad ending, Alone in a Desolate World!]
[Closing the Stream...Thank you for playing!]
The sky turned dark, not that there were many left to see it.
[Skill [???] activated]
[Exporting memories...action successful]
[Admin backdoor destroyed, no evidence will be found]
Mason's body distorted and disappeared, only his sword remained.
-
A much younger looking Mason tossed in bed, reaching his hand up towards his ceiling.
"Space Rending...Sword." He muttered and woke up, "I never knew I was such a Chuuni."
He stretched a bit in bed before getting up. He remembered he had a very long and vivid dream. He ran, outsmarted and fought enemies, monsters this world has never seen and humans, sometimes worse than the monsters they fought. He watched friends and comrades die before him while he survived. He saw many fantastical sights, and walked through countless lands. Most prominently he remembered stealing a Divine Sword from the tomb of a dead God, and when the Divine Guardians of the dead god pursued him, he tore open space with the blade and fled.
"Tsk..let's see what's up today…" He plopped down on his chair and booted up his laptop.
"A new email..? That's rare." He opened the email and it read:
----------------------------------------
From: Sandedwords@sussy.baka
Subject: Lottery
Congratulations!
You have won the grand prize in our lucky draw!
The prize list is included below, and your prize will be sent to you soon.
Yours Sincerely,
Sanded Words Inc
---------------------------------------
"Huuu..quite short for a scam...and the address literally has the word "sus" in it. At least the grammar is good." (Mason)
He scrolled down and looked through the prize list, "Six Thousand dollars and a favour from a famous author 'Zen Ferox'? Wow."
In all honesty, such an obvious scam wouldn't have fooled him, but Mason's overwhelming boredom compelled him to click the attached link. It opened up his Discorn, and added him to a server with only Zen Ferox in it. Zen coincidentally popped online and started typing.
[Yo, you must be Mason. You've won the lucky draw, so what do you want from me?]
[I want...]
Mason stopped typing. What did he want? He had never asked himself that. Life was too boring for him, with nothing outstanding or interesting happening. Mason had once wished for a more interesting world, but of course, expecting the entire world to change from his wish was a bit too much. He tapped the backspace key…
[Write a novel with me]
He enjoyed reading as he could see different worlds and exciting action, as if he was living a different, better, and more interesting life. This way, he would have a smaller but more interesting world of his own.
[...]
[Ok]
("Wait what he agreed? Couldn't I just ask for a mansion or something? Or a car?")
Mason often had stupid thoughts.
-Behind a screen, in an unknown location-
"Such a long time…finally I can see you again. You forgot about me, but you will remember me soon." A male figure, covered by darkness, smiled and clicked his mouse a few times, sending Mason the link of a Google Doc he prepared the day before, "This time we will write it better."
-Back to Mason-
Mason opened the document, but ran an antivirus just in case. Nothing. He started to think of what to write.
"An apocalypse would be fun."
He started typing the idea and the first few lines into the document.
Setting: A world where earth has been used as a playing board by gods. Everyone dies :p
Zen followed up with: Stephen, Protagonist, Regressor.
Title: Regressor's First Rule
[Why Regressor?]
[The humans need some hope too.]
("Wow that sounded deep.")
The story followed Stephen, a small time Youtuber and Vlogger in college. The apocalypse began as he was going to school. The world flipped upside down in the course of a few minutes as the world was turned into a survival game, with monsters crawling out of holes that previously never existed. And even worse, some humans turned into 'monsters' as well.
He suffered. He suffered a lot. He suffered as the weak and confused Stephen was still an ordinary human. Betrayal, scheming, supernatural powers and monsters were far beyond him. But he never truly died, and each time the game ended he came back knowing a little more, and surviving a little longer.
He was mad. Furious at his own helplessness and weakness. Furious that he had to die dozens of times just to take one step forward in escaping this hellish game board. Furious at the gods that forced him through all of this, watching him suffer as entertainment. That rage was what fuelled him to push past the pain, the fear of death and the suffering. He forgot righteousness, morality and the loss of loved ones to pursue his own justice. Each death and wound seemed to chip away at his morality and his emotions.
In the end, he fell to his own hubris, realising that his regression was simply another tool of the gods, used to change the game a little every time it ended for amusement. He tried to kill himself to escape this hell, but found himself trapped in a time loop, forced to dance in the palms of the gods.
Mason didn't have much to do in his life. No social life, a slightly less than ideal family and little interest in or outside of school. So he invested most of his time and energy into this new outlet. He, for the first time in his life, knew what it was like to have a friend. As he jokingly put it, "60% of my life is devoted to writing, 30% to Zen and 10% to everything else."
Zen was only a few years older than him, and unlike him, seemed athletic, charismatic, brilliant etcetera etcetera. He encouraged Mason to improve himself physically and mentally. Exercise, (free) self defense classes and a few friends became a new normal in his life as he found it hard to refute Zen's suggestions.
Once, Zen raised a strange question.
"You are quite good at writing, have you written before?"
"Ye-no?" Mason doesn't know why, but he subconsciously said yes. A few dim memories of typing and planning resurface alongside a sense of deja vu, but they faded away, as if they were only a dream. (Hmmm)
"Hmm? Okay."
Mason had never met the legendary "Writer's Block", as he dreamt of the same things as he did on the day of the lucky draw email. The vivid dreams of swords and magic, monster slaying and daring adventure became the filler text for his novel.
The publication of the novel went well at first. On Wetnovel, the Prologue saw seven thousand hits, probably due to the clickbaity title. The first chapter...700 views. 70 on the second chapter, 7 on the third. By the fourth chapter, only 1 reader remained.
He scrolled down. No comments, no reviews, one collection and one vote. Better than nothing.
The novel was no longer his only concern. He had other things in his life, but he resolved himself to see it through to the end. A few years had passed, and three hundred plus chapters have already been published. In around ten more chapters, it would be the epilogue.
He scrolled through the statistics. Some of the earlier chapters hit the double digits in reads, but the latest chapter only had one.
[Don't worry. The first novel you write is supposed to be a test run anyways. This is actually good, once enough time has passed it will be famous.] Zen's Discorn message popped up.
"I hope so…"