Crazy could indeed best describe Shai’s smile at this moment. Not manic, not excited… but crazy.

It was a hodgepodge of emotions that even he could not identify. From the forceful resignation of his own humanity, to the brutal deaths he had seen with his own eyes… He was forcefully suppressing it all through psychosis and hysterics.

Shai stepped outside. He had already devoured all the Hell’s Mana that had once suffocated the classroom, allowing him to create a single summon for himself, residing silently in his [Mark of the Undying Legion].

A choking Hark’suv demon was staggering in the hallway, aggravated by the lack ambient Hell’s Mana. Her prey had long escaped.

Her laughter was snuffed out like a candle.

Shai dashed forward, his approach sudden and forceful. The demon took notice of the slow-moving snail that made an attempt to threaten its life.

Hark’suv attacked, with her fingernail claws swiping out five lines in the air.

Yet, her attacks would hit nothing but indeed the air she had swiped through.

[—Grgh!]

Suffocating, the demon made another swipe of her claws. Yet, once again, Shai’s figure was just out of reach.

She attacked again. Desperate. With blood gurgling out of her throat.

Yet she would strike nothing but air.

She was much faster.

Much stronger.

How could she lose to a weak student like the one before her?

To Hark’suv, Shai’s presence was like a ghost. Standing there in silence, with a smile of mockery, disdaining her existence.

Again, Hark’suv would strike.

And again would she miss.

Again.

And again.

And again and again.

In an almost endless fashion, no matter how fast she struck.

Eventually, Shai would leave behind a dying demon. Suffocated by the lack of Hell’s Mana.

Weakened by the hostile environment.

—Kuhuhuhuhuhuhuhu

Shai’s laughter could be heard amidst the screams and the demonic guffaws.

Although he could not kill the demons directly, he knew their patterns. Long had he memorised this difficulty’s first boss. Avoiding each and every attack so long as the demon was in a state of desperation.

It was easy.

In fact, even a regular Hark’suv at its peak would be unable to scratch him. Although Shai wouldn’t be able to hit back, he could easily survive. Such was the reason he was able to make it into an empty classroom to absorb Hell’s Mana.

From the spawning system, the initial routes that the demons would take, their priority targets, and aggro management.

Shai had long mastered all of these things.

Much like a veteran of a certain game with a title involving souls and darkness.

As a veteran of his own favourite game, clearing the initial stage of hell-mode was a requirement… If only things didn’t go horribly wrong.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Shai gazed down the hallway.

Blood.

Limbs.

Corpses.

Shai grabbed his own throat. Forcing the acid down. Suffocating himself to counter his reflex to retch in disgust.

“Haha, everything’s fucked.”

His giggles were signs of the instability of his own mind. The breaking of his own psyche. Like the laughs of those in the psychiatric ward.

Arrogance would once again be the cause of his death.

His true death.

“I can’t even save a single important character.”

Shai had fully expected things to go as his plans dictated.

First, he would preserve the lives of those important to the game.

Second, through his support, they would rapidly gain strength.

And third, while he leeched off of their efforts, he could clear the game.

“DAMN IT ALL!” Shai pulled at his own hair, wanting to tear it all off.

Clearly, he was much too conceited.

Even after dying once, he had not learned his lesson.

***

Arthur was dead.

Levinas could feel the weight of his corpse on top of his limbless body. The lack of warmth. The blood-drenched uniform.

It was an unnerving blanket.

[KYAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA!]

The laughter of several Hark’suvs, incessant in his ears, was pure and unadulterated torment. Levinas felt despair well up within him. He had done everything he could. Fought with everything he had.

However, in the end, it had all come to this.

All he could feel was a vast emptiness.

The wounds that had deepened within Arthur’s body had summoned a whole horde of demons throughout the school. Nearly draining the boy of his very spirit.

Levinas imagined that, if Arthur had been a few levels higher in mana capacity, he wouldn’t have summoned a mere horde, but an ungodly swarm.

Yet even then…

The Myrlite guards were killed.

The professors were brutally slain.

And from the rumbling above his head, Levinas felt that even the school’s headmaster was embroiled in a duel.

There was no hope for survival.

No hope for them all.

All he could do now was feign his own death, walking the fine line between his life and eternal rest. For only children of the underworld had this talent. To know that they would never truly die, and only rest for eternity, was a solace that allowed them to skirt the edges of insanity.

Yet, blood was continuously draining out of the stumps from where his limbs once were.

He was living on a single hourglass of time.

‘Should I just give up?’

***

Aria was cowering in a corner of the library. Just minutes after Shai, Levinas, Arthur, and Alissa left her, havoc descended upon the school.

Clutching her stomach, she glanced at the several dead demons around her feet. She had lost an arm, and several holes went straight through her body. The claws of the demons had ravaged her skin. Slashing crevice after crevice, carving a canyon with her flesh.

Yet, there was still one more bastard out there. Looming over her with a menacing aura that rivalled that of a Level 3.

Another Hark’suv.

Another one of the insidious.

Thus, with a brandish of her demonic claws,

—Fwhip!

Aria’s death was almost painless.

Her beautiful head was severed from her body faster than anyone could blink.

Short and concise.

Such was her end.

***

Shai had walked past many of the dead, with three undead walking behind him, acting as guards.

“Dead, dead, dead…”

Thomas Veridias hung limply from a dark spire that pierced upwards from the marble floor. He was impaled on it like a skewered fish.

Alissa had been cut into six equal parts. Bits and pieces of her vibrant personality were littered across the hallway.

Synthia Ophseal… Her hated relatives… and other students he usually saw...

All of them were dead.

“The demons haven’t gone looking for me… Maybe because I am no longer human. So long as I don’t show myself, I will be fine.” Shai muttered to himself, lost in his thoughts. His hand still quaked from the horrific sights before him. The unsettling insanity that had befallen him had scarred his mind.

Seeing the Bad Ending in person, Shai could already hear the music that would usually play along with a black screen.

However, he was in reality.

Although all the important characters were most likely dead, Shai was still alive.

It was a combination of coincidences that led to his survival.

From avoiding the first onslaught of the demons by using his schoolmates a shield.

To instantly finding the right classroom to hide in and avoid detection.

Then his mutation into an Aberrant.

And then his suffocating of a Hark’suv.

After that, the tortured screams and the demonic laughter had been slowly dissipating, growing further and further away. The storm had moved elsewhere.

—Clack, clack, clack.

—Splash, splash, splash.

Shai’s footsteps echoed throughout the corpse-filled marble hallway. The previous pristine white structures were now stained with fresh crimson blood. The zombies behind him were on high alert, but when there was no imminent threat even after half an hour of carefully walking around, Shai cancelled their summonings.

He did not have the mana to sustain them, even after absorbing Hell's Mana with each moment he could get.

“I know I said that I would take my mark for a spin… But how else am I supposed to use it when there is nothing to use it against?”

Eventually, Shai discovered Arthur, Levinas, and Aria after going around once. He confirmed their gruesome deaths himself.

Myrlite Academy was empty, left only with Hell’s Mana continuously circulating.

Through his lonesomeness, Shai was able to calm down. His head cooled, and the unsettling feeling in his gut had eventually evaporated.

He returned to his dorm room, took a shower, put on some clean clothes…

And then fell asleep.

Thinking that, perhaps, this was all a bad dream.