He opened his eyes to a land of fire and ruin.
The ground was split open, revealing rivers of molten rock beneath. Everywhere he looked, the earth was charred and brittle, cracking under his steps
"What is this… a dream?"
His voice was rough, his throat already raw. The air wasn't just hot, it was thick, heavy, filling his lungs like liquid fire. He coughed and his spit sizzled when it hit the ground.
"It can't be. It feels too real."
Then the smell hit him.
Sulfur. Burning meat. Something metallic underneath... blood. He gagged, covering his nose, but it didn't help. The stench clung to his tongue, his teeth, the back of his throat.
A sound cut him off.
"W-What is that—?"
Distant screams. Not like humans nor an animal. Something warped, a chorus of voices twisted into a single, unending shriek. It rose and fell like something alive.
The ground shook.
At first, he thought it was an earthquake. Until he saw the thing on the horizon.
A massive, hunched shape lurched forward on four clawed limbs, each step splitting the earth. Its skin was blackened, cracked open in places where lava glowed beneath. No face, just an extra wide mouth dripping something thick and hot.
His stomach twisted.
"Gh—! Fu—!"
*bleeerrrghhhh
He threw up, bile burning his throat, but the thing kept moving. Closer now.
"N-no way… Am I dead?"
His hands tremble. He remembered nothing. No accident. No reason for this. Just the dull ache of life. The boredom of livings, the anger, and the quiet thoughts of destruction...
His eyebrow frown.
—Had he wanted this?
The titan roared, and the sound tore through the air. Above him, the crimson clouds churned, ash falling like black rain. Revealing there's no sun or stars. Just… endless darkness.
He ran.
His legs burned. His lungs ached. Every step sent pain shooting up his ankles as he stumbled over the broken ground.
The screams grew louder.
Not just one now, dozens. They came from the fissures, the cracks in the earth, like the world itself was howling.
"This isn't happening. This isn't—"
His boots kicked up black dust as he sprinted, lungs burning. The air tasted like poison. His vision blurred at the edges, but he didn't stop. No he couldn't stop or else he would just die on the spot.
Behind him, the titan's footsteps cracked the earth like thunder.
There, a skeletal ribcage, half-buried in the scorched earth, bulged from the ground like the remains of a dead god.
He dove inside, pressing himself against the curved bone. His body shivering, gasping his breath.
"This isn't Earth." His voice was barely a whisper.
"Did I die? Reincarnate? Hell... is this Hell?"
…
There's no answer. Just the distant, hungry shrieks of things he couldn't see.
"This is the worst…"
His stomach churned. His skin was slick with sweat and ash. Every instinct screamed at him to run, but where? There was no sun, no direction, just endless wasteland.
Calm down…
He forced a breath.
"Think. Just think…"
He clenched his fists. "Status. Menu. System. Whatever it is…"
…
Nothing happened.
No blue screens. No voice in his head. No cheat powers.
Then he held out a hand, focusing. "Fire. Light. Something please—!"
…
Nothing happened again.
No spark or anything. Just his own trembling fingers.
"Really..."
Suddenly a deafening crash shook the ground.
Two titans clashed in the distance. One a mass of blackened flesh and exposed muscle, the other a spined, insect-like horror with too many legs. They tore into each other, splattering thick, glowing fluid across the wasteland.
The smaller one screeched as its carapace cracked open, spilling steaming innards.
Watching this, he couldn't help himself but retched violently, his empty stomach convulsing as he dry-heaved again.
Ugh-
*bleeerrrghhhh
Acid burned his throat.
"No way…"
This wasn't a game. No respawns. No stats. Just...
A hopeless situation. Really...
It's Hell!
Suddenly, a wet clicking noise was heard. It's close.
It stood ten meters away. It had no fur, no skin, just raw muscle twitching over jagged bone. Its jaws hung open, dripping saliva that hissed when it hit the ground.
Yellow eyes locked onto him.
…
It lunged.
"Aaaaaahhhh-"
He bolted away.
The hound's snarls echoed behind him, gaining ground. His legs screamed. His vision tunneled.
Something loomed ahead. A fissure, but its length seemed unreachable.
"F*ck—!"
No choice.
He leaped.
His chest hit the other side of the fissure. His fingers clawed at the cracked earth, hauling himself up just as the hound's jaws snapped shut behind him. It skidded at the edge, snarling, but didn't jump.
"Lucky… or not." he gasped while watching the hound on the other side .
The beast paced, saliva sizzling on the rocks below. But for now, he was alive.
He rolled onto his back. His throat ached. Every muscle in his body felt like it was on fire.
Above him, the blood-red sky swirled, unchanging. No sun to mark time. No night to bring relief. Just endless, suffocating heat.
In a rather quiet moment, he asked himself.
"Why me?"
He thought of his old world. The cramped apartment, the never-ending task and the weight of others' expectations… The numb cycle of days. Had he prayed for this?
"...Did I deserve this?"
No tears came. Just a slow collapse, like a building crumbling under its own weight. Disappointment curdled into something hotter, sharper like rage without a target. The kind that should have set the world on fire… but here, in this wasteland, even his fury changed nothing.
Silence.
A gnawing ache twisted his gut. He hadn't eaten since—
Since when?
His memory is hazy.
He forced himself up, scanning the wasteland. The titan carcasses from earlier still steamed in the distance. Maybe there was something edible there.
Closer by, the remains of smaller creatures littered the ground. It looks like twisted things with too many limbs, their flesh blackened or oozing.
He picked up a charred chunk. The smell hit him first. Rotting and charred.
"Gh-"
*bleeerrrghhhh
No way I can eat this…
Wiping his mouth, he grabbed another piece bracing himself.
"But... Eat or die."
He took a bite, no he just sucked the charred flesh blood out of it to relieve his thirst. There's no way he can eat something disgusting like this.
The taste was worse than the smell. Like burnt hair and spoiled meat. His throat clenched, but he forced it down.
Who knows how long he will endure, after all time is useless here
Minutes? Hours?
The sky never changed. The heat never faded.
He "ate" until his stomach stopped screaming, then crawled into the shadow of a half-collapsed bone structure.
There it was again, that disgusting growl.
It came from behind him.
He turned. Another one, another f*cking hound. Bigger this time, its muscles glistening under its skinless body, jaws slack and dripping acid.
No way I can outrun that thing...
His body shivered. His breath came in ragged, burning gasps.
"I don't fear. I don't..."
His hands won't stop shaking.
He should run. He knew he should.
But his legs refused to obey.
—snap.
Something had broken inside him...
A grin twisted his lips. A laugh, raw and reckless, tore from his throat.
"Fine! Come on, then!" he roared.
"You want me? Then take me! But I won't make it easy!"
His fists clenched. His body screamed in protest, but his soul burned.
"Even a fish fights the hook before it dies!" he spat.
"So what does that make me?"
"If I'm going down… I'm dragging you with me."
He didn't wait for it to lunge. He charged, tears flowed down his cheek and screaming with everything he had, a jagged rock clutched in his grip.
"AAAAAaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh—"
The hound met him mid-leap.
Claws ripped across his ribs, yet he kept rushing forward, smashing the stone into its demon-like eyes.
The monster screeched, covering its face. But its sharp tail shot forward like a dark spike, piercing with terrifying speed.
He barely evaded, but not fast enough. The strike took his right eye, impaling it.
A brutal brawl ensues, he refuses to let go, clawing at the monster with his bare hands, biting like a wild animal as the hound tears into his body again and again.
The monster's body lay butchered like slaughterhouse meat, its ribs cracked open, one eye still wide and staring, the other half sheared away in a ruin of bone and brain matter.
Either way, it was dead.
And he was still standing. Barely.
Somehow, he emerges victorious.
Then, he realizes—
"W-what...?"
He stares at his hands, his nails.
"It's... regenerating...?"
He touches his right eye.
"I can see?!?"
"This..."
A new instinct surges through him, urging him to drink the hound's blood.
Then he tears into its flesh, devouring it in desperate gulps.
"Hah... hah..."
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing black-red across his cheek. His breath came in ragged bursts. His mind twisted in disgust.
"So that's it... This... means I'll slowly become one of them, doesn't it?"
"This really is hell… and is the price of a wish."
His eyes burn with defiance as he gazes at the horizon, at the distant sky, where a colossal entity stalks the land, shaking the earth with each step. His right eye now pierces the darkness, revealing the true form of the monstrosity.
"So what? F*ck this second world!"
Time passed in a blur of blood and survival.
He was hunted then fought it. A circle of cruelty happens.
Every monster he tore apart made him stronger and faster but the hunger gnawed at him. His body healed, yes, but each regeneration left his mind adapting to this hellish landscape.
And then, he saw it.
A city.
Neither a shelter nor a place of salvation.
But a nightmare given form.
Towers of fused, rotten limbs stretched toward a bleeding sky, their surfaces pulsing as if still alive. Buildings sagged like melted wax, their foundations a grotesque mosaic of charred bones and weeping flesh. The air reeked of decay and something worse like something conscious watching outside.
This wasn't architecture.
It was a sin made physical.
The streets writhed with figures like zombies, maybe. Like something fused together. Their bodies were mutations in progress, limbs fused with jagged metal, faces split open into too many teeth. Some dragged themselves on distended bellies; others twitched on too many legs, their spines bent at impossible angles.
Their hollow eyes turned toward him.
!!!
His instincts screamed.
Don't walk there. Absolutely!
He backed away, his right eye glowing as it pierced the gloom. There were worse things deeper in the city... Things that shaped this hell.
So he ran.
Some time passed. He had begun to think this world had no surprises left.
The endless hunt, the grotesque city, the way his body no longer felt like human. All of it had settled into a grim rhythm. Even the hunger was just another pulse in his veins now.
Then the sky burned.
A searing red light split the darkness, and for the first time, color flooded the hellscape. His head snapped up, just in time to see the meteor.
No. Not a meteor.
It was too vast, too deliberate, cutting through the crimson like a god's thrown spear.
BOOM—
The impact quaked the earth, sending fissures spiderwebbing through the ground reaching his feet from miles away. The explosion tore through the horizon, a firestorm that could swallow the monstrous city whole.
For a single, breathless moment, he stood there watching the painting unfold.
"Ah…"
It was cruelly beautiful.
Like a painting of the apocalypse he sees in a lot of movies.
Then reality caught up.
The shockwave hit.
A scorching wind slammed into him, hurling him backward. He barely managed to twist his body, shielding his eyes as debris screamed through the air. A boulder the size of a house cratered the ground where he'd stood seconds ago.
Gasping, he rolled behind its jagged bulk, the stone radiating heat like a furnace. His eye throbbed, its vision swimming with afterimages of that impossible fire.
What the hell was that?!
This wasn't natural. Not even in this damned world.
Something... or someone had aimed there.
The crater still smoldered in the distance far behind him, its heat licking at his back like a predator's breath. He chose to flee away from it.
This explosion was a beacon.
And in this hell, everything was hungry.
A guttural chorus of shrieks erupted around.
"Kiieee—khh"
"This… is bad news."
He ran away but, on the path he was going to take, there in front of him something emerged
A hydra, but not the kind from myths. This thing moved on four distended limbs, its body a pulsating mound of fused torsos, each sprouting a serpentine neck topped with a humanoid head. Their mouths split vertically, lined with fingers instead of teeth. Wriggling fingers grew where teeth should be, each tipped with sharp yellow nails that snapped together like knives.
One head sniffed the air. Another laughed.
The third locked its hollow eyes on him and screeched.
"Oh sh*t…"
He didn't wait for the hydra monsters to strike first.
His body moved before his mind could protest. His muscles coiled, then sprung. The claws that had grown from tearing through monster flesh gleamed as he lunged for the nearest thrashing head.
"Die!"
Its talons ripped through the thing's rubbery neck, black ichor spraying in thick ropes. The head screamed, its finger-teeth gnashing at empty air as it toppled.
For half a second, he thought—
I can do this.
Then the injured neck twitched.
Two new necks erupted from the wound, their newborn heads unfurling like grotesque flowers, wet membranes peeling back to reveal double the mouths.
"Uh... to have such mystical abilities..."
His eyes looked gloomy.
A powerful black tentacle slammed into him from the side. He barely felt the pain before he was sent flying through the air. His ribs screamed, probably broken.
It didn't matter. They would heal.
If he lived that long.
The hydra advanced, all its heads now swaying to a strange rhythm. One licked its lips with its tongue divided into several smaller sections. The others giggled.
He crawled up, raising his hand—
—just as the two heads collided at once.
The monster's fangs pierced his thigh, his shoulder, and his stomach.
"Aaaaaaaagghhhhhh—"
Pain seared through his nerves. Worse still, he could feel their venom boiling in his veins, halting his regeneration.
His claws severed the jaws of one head stopping it from biting him but the other head took its place.
Not good…
I can't move...
His strength was leaking out with his blood, the crimson puddle beneath him spreading too fast. The grotesque heads reared back for the killing blow, their finger-teeth twitching in anticipation.
"No—no, this isn't how it's supposed to go!" His voice cracked like a child's.
The realization hit him like a physical blow that... He was going to die here.
The nearest head's breath reeked of rotting meat as it hovered inches from his face.
"I don't want this! I don't want this!!!"
His claws scraped uselessly against its armored hide.
One head clamped onto his arm, another wrapping around his waist like a constrictor.
"Stop… please..." The plea slipped out before he could stop it. His vision was tunneling, the hydra's mocking laughter echoing from multiple throats.
"Make it stop, make it stop, MAKE IT STOP!"
—and then the world turned red.
The hydra froze mid-strike.
Its blood... was moving.
Not only does it flow from the wound but it rises to form a large, sharp needle.
The crimson pool beneath surged upward too in jagged spikes, impaling three heads simultaneously.
The hydra's screams became deafening as its own blood reversed direction in its veins, piercing grotesquely beneath its skin.
He gasped as understanding flooded him. Pain, fear, despair, it all mixed like fuel. Stretched out his trembling hand.
"Again," he growled.
This time, he didn't beg. He commanded.
The remaining heads thrashed wildly, but the blood needle sticking out of them fast.
With a roar that tore his throat raw, he clenched his fist.
The hydra's heads exploded in unison, a gruesome fireworks display of gore and fragmented bone. The decapitated necks flailed blindly before collapsing, their stumps flowing its boiling blood.
...
Silence fell.
His blood, redder now and thicker than before, crawled back into his wounds of its own volition. The venom that had crippled his regeneration dissolved before its advance.
He stared at his trembling hands, the claws now sheathed in a thin film of crimson and had shrunk back down.
He stared at the sky, looking lonely.
A hysterical laugh bubbled up from his chest. He hadn't survived through strength or skill.
The monsters had only taught him their language.
"Haa-"
"So this is the price…"
The more he fed on monsters… the more he became one.
But in this hell, he'd take every weapon he could get.