Darkness covered the room as the heavy curtains blocked the gentle moonlight trying to seep in. The creaking sound of the ceiling fan echoed in the silent room, rotating lazily, cooling the messy space hidden by the darkness. The dim glow of a smartphone was the only source of light, as it faced a young man buried in blankets, surrounded by empty chip packets.

His average face, marred by slight acne, was adorned with a frown. Frustration was clearly visible in his brown eyes.

"...Where the fuck are the new novels?"

It had been a week, but not a single new book had appeared for Damon.

"Did all the authors die after COVID?"

Yeah, COVID — a cursed era for most, but undeniably a golden period for people like him, drowning in webnovels and wasting their lives.

Nostalgia hit him as he remembered the days when he was new to the world of anime, manga, and novels. It all felt so refreshing and unique back then, making him addicted to reading more and more.

Multiple novels with hundreds and thousands of chapters—no irritation with nationalist tropes, no specific genre or tag to follow—just curiosity to explore more of the fictional worlds contained in his phone.

Life felt so easy, so laid-back at that time. But now, it's been two years since COVID ended, and the world has gone back to its usual degrading path.

Closing his phone screen, Damon placed the phone on his chest as he took deep breaths, his eyes locked onto the rotating fan.

"Sigh..."

Damon couldn't help but sigh as he enjoyed the silence, the darkness calming his agitated mind, which was addicted to novels and craving something to satiate its boredom.

"It's not that there are no novels nowadays... It's just that there are no good novels for me."

Even though the craze for webnovels had died down a bit, or should he say considerably, there were still some good and enjoyable works becoming popular. But at the end of the day, none of them suited his taste.

Happy-go-lucky protagonists, the good ones filled with annoying degrees of righteousness. Horny idiots who could only think with their dicks. Nerfed bastards with dumb brains, ruining perfectly decent overpowered characters... and so on. Yeah, that sums up ninety percent of all protagonists and one hundred percent of what Damon hates in novels.

"A loner protagonist with an anti-hero or villainous mindset, someone who isn't just a horny teenager, can think with his brain, has overpowered abilities, and yeah, no cuckold backstory."

Quite edgy, isn't it?

But that's just me.

Ding!

As Damon was lost in his thoughts, a notification sound brought him back to reality.

[New Chapter Released!]

"Finally, something..."

Damon immediately clicked on the popup, which led him to the webpage of the book.

"...This one again, sigh."

All of Damon's excitement dropped the moment he saw the novel's front page.

Only I Adapt!

"Why haven't I dropped this shit yet?"

'Well, probably because of the update speed.'

Only I Adapt is set in a world where modern magical civilization and gates to other worlds suddenly begin to emerge, granting people the ability to obtain superpowers through various means.

'How original...'

Anyway, the main character is just a poor teenager living in the slums alone after his father's demise, somehow managing to get a chance to awaken.

As the name suggests, you can probably guess the power he awakens: Adaptation. An ability that lets him adapt to any type of skill or attack and evolve by gaining resistance and new skills, while increasing his overall capabilities.

Calling it an OP ability would be an understatement, and naturally, the title caught Damon's attention. But as usual, the novel turned out to be a disappointment.

Giving the MC an OP ability, the author had to balance the character to get some chapters in, and yeah, he did so by creating an idiot as the main character.

Good, righteous, and a complete fool who would trust anyone, has a no-killing rule, and never trains at all, wasting the full potential of his ability.

You might think there's something wrong with Damon's brain for thinking like this, but even if there is, Damon doesn't care.

He just doesn't like these kinds of characters and prefers more realistic and selfish protagonists, but that's just his preference.

Even though Damon hates the protagonist, he still continued reading the novel out of boredom and because of the adaptation ability, but it still irked him every time he saw the potential of this great power being wasted.

"...Now he also has a mother? What kind of drama is this?"

The latest chapter introduced a beautiful woman—or should Damon say, a bitch—who popped out of nowhere claiming to be the protagonist's mother. She had abandoned the protagonist and his father years ago after becoming a successful warrior and now wanted to re-enter his life, and he readily agreed?

'What the fuck is going on?'

The more Damon read, the more his head hurt as he began to skip past paragraphs, reading only the main parts.

"I've had enough of this bullshit."

With a click of his tongue, Damon exited the chapter once it ended and looked for the button to remove the novel from his library.

'Remove.'

As his thumb pressed on the button, a sudden vibration ran through his hand. The animated button released a strange clicking sound when clicked.

Damon's thumb passed through the screen, following the button, which, like a piece of a puzzle, was pushed backward, severing from the phone.

'The fuck?'

The event surprised Damon, and he sat up straight in fright, holding his phone, which began to fall apart into small puzzle pieces, collapsing in his hands.

'My phone...'

The pieces of the puzzle fell onto his blanket and bed, and like a domino effect, they too began collapsing into tiny pieces just like his phone.

Under Damon's panic-stricken eyes, the bed, the wrappers, the walls—everything around him—began collapsing. His entire reality began to change as he found himself slowly surrounded by a dark abyss.

DaMon

dAMoN

His mind was in shambles as the darkness surrounded him. His body refused to obey his commands as he floated in the void, the unknown voices making their way to his ears.

"Damon!"

A large, blinding flash suddenly exploded throughout the horrifying abyss, and Damon instinctively closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his vision was assaulted by the sun's rays high in the sky. Two unknown figures crouched beside him, calling his name.

Clarity slowly returned to Damon's eyes as a gentle breeze blew by. The figures became clearer with each passing second, and his eyes wandered around.

A man and a woman, both appearing middle-aged, were crouched beside him, checking his health. A giant green orb glowed faintly in the distance, and Damon could feel hundreds of eyes locked onto him as he lay on a stage.

'It was all fake...'

'My life... that life. It was all fake?'