The road whizzing past his car, the harsh wind caressing his face, and the blinding dots of car lights that outshone the brightest stars in the night sky... And even with all of these, he didn’t know what to feel. His heart didn’t contract in a suffocating manner, no, it was a very monotone beat. And the next one too, was also like that. He kept waiting, to feel like he was being strangled, to loosen his necktie in relief...

Then, he realized. None of that would happen, as he had lost the ability to feel that way long ago. Checking the rearview and door mirrors, he realized that the road had mostly emptied. Not many people were around this part of the town at 1 a.m.

He first tried to force his eyeballs beyond their rotatory capabilities to look right, he then slightly turned his head to take a glance at the trophy that lay bare on his car’s passenger seat. It was gold, probably mixed with some element he didn’t know. However, its impurity was something much deeper, much more resentful than that.

‘All that... For this?’ he thought to himself. Then, as if he was trying to hide his gaze from the trophy, his vision snapped back onto the road.

Sure, that trophy in itself would be worth a shit ton of money but just thinking about its monetary value caused him to exhale a contemptful snicker.

Taking a left turn and driving in a straight line for another three minutes, the rumbling engine of his car came to a stop. His ears, tired of contemplating upon the roars of his car, relaxed into a state of stupor, losing their ability to interpret sounds for but a brief moment.

Feeling his intracranial pressure increase, he grabbed his head with his palms to push back against whatever was trying to come out.

As the pressure subsided, he sat upright in his seat, enjoying the disappearance of his discomfort. Funnily enough, the joy he felt from things like this felt more genuine, more real than whatever had happened that night.

Flashing lights, people adorned in luxury clothing congratulating him for his success... No matter how insincere, how surface-level these were, he should’ve felt happier than he did.

Then, for a moment, he thought that the pain in his head was caused not by a physical disease, but by his soul, trying to feel something. To feel something, it would malfunction, just to fix itself right back up, so he could enjoy the feeling of being healthy again.

Pushing all these thoughts away, alongside the door of his car, he started walking on the gravel pathway of his mansion to reach the reinforced door. The door opened with a brief fingerprint scan, allowing him into the place where he felt the most comfortable in this world. Which was, not very comfortable. But it was something. Something enough to let him churn out more and more nonsense on the blank pages of his computer.

Throwing himself on his bed, he realized that he had forgotten to take his newly obtained, “Best Web Novel Author of the Year” trophy from his car. Chuckling at this title, he wondered if his books being popular made them good. Or was it vice versa? That was the hard part of being an author for most people. Knowing whether or not one’s writing skills were up to par was, improbable, to say the least. On the other hand, for him, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

‘After all... I know that I’m bad. Utterly untalented,’ he thought in anguish. His populist writing style was good enough to win him an award but he couldn’t bring himself to enjoy it while stepping over the corpses of thousands of other, more talented authors. The bitterness of the feeling could only be washed away by the safety brought by money.

Straightening up from his bed, he paced around his room for a good minute before going to his office room. They were placed two rooms —which were respectively a gaming room and a guest room— apart. Initially, he had placed a single computer in his room, doing every kind of activity there. However, he later separated his activities into a few different rooms to get over his habit of procrastinating, which was a huge success.

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Settling down in his chair, he decided to press the magical power button of his computer. For a moment, he felt like he could hear the electricity coursing through its circuits, yet, those were not the noises he heard.

They were screams, pleas for help, for salvation... The pressure in his head was back, this time stronger than ever. Having said that, funnily enough, the pressure wasn’t trying to break out of his skull, but to squeeze it, turn his brain into a mush. He couldn’t push back against the pressure like before. Left without any choice, he clamped his hands to the armrests of his chair and sat upright before closing his eyes.

Even so, the curtains being pulled over his vision didn’t leave him in darkness. The cacophony of weird lights and shapes one would see when they closed their eyes was there for him. This time, though, they didn’t aimlessly wander around in darkness. They slowly formed into a plethora of different visions, infusing him with strange but familiar memories.

Then, everything stopped.

As the relaxation settled in, he wondered if his drink had been spiked at the award ceremony. What were those visions? What was the pressure that threatened to crush his head?

When he opened his eyes, he was greeted by the familiar lights of his monitor. His desktop was covered with documents, each carrying information about his web novels. Right-clicking on an empty part of his desktop, he created a new document. He had to keep going, after all. This was his calling, the only thing he knew how to do.

Putting his elbows on the desk and holding his head between his hands, he strained his mind to find a title. A little gimmick, to add onto an already set template story. This had been the way he churned out his stories so far, and he wasn’t going to try and change a sure-fire way to success.

Tapping away at his keyboard, he saw a few titles appear and disappear in quick succession.

[That time I...-]

“Not this again...” he muttered, so silently that even he could barely hear himself.

[I Got Transported...-]

“Not this...”

[Academy’s...-]

“Can’t do the same story twice in a row, I have to buffer it with another...”

[Genius Regressor...-]

“Oh? This might be good...” He muttered again, this time a bit louder. As his fingers moved on their own, independent from what his mind ordered, more and more words started appearing. And with each word, the corners of his mouth fell and fell.

[Genius Regressor of the Academy Was An Assassin That Had to Save The World However, He Was Stuck At Level 2]

“Hah...” He chuckled to himself. This was it. His next hit web novel.

He didn’t actually know what would happen in the story, neither did he think about the world, the characters, or anything.

The story was nothing more than its title, a cliché, built upon other clichés, scrambled with a few gimmicks to give it character. He would, once again, build the story with its title as the foundation.

This was how he had written and completed 7 web novels in 3 years after all.

“This was supposed to be my passion...” He muttered to himself. For the first time in the last few years, he felt his cheeks warm up and his eyes swell. “I wanted to write something original, to inspire people...”

Then, his emotions were snuffed out in an instant, leaving their place to an empty feeling.

Yet, this state of emptiness didn’t last long, His fingers quickly moved on his keyboard to delete the title he had just written. His right hand tightened so hard that his fingernails stabbed into his palm. Not noticing the pain, he lifted both of his hands to hover over his keyboard.

His brain was on overdrive, straining, each capillary encroaching his brain pumping as much as they could without bursting, he tried to find something original. Unfortunately, each of his attempts was met with titles that looked like they were pulled straight out of the generic title hell.

His train of thought got more and more chaotic, losing control of his fingers as they smashed his keyboard with vigor, and later gently deleted whatever came out of them. At one unknown point, he regained control, finding that the document had been titled:

“StopWritingStopWritingStopWritingStopWritingStopWritingStopWritingStopWriting...”

Short for breath, he laid back on his chair and read the title silently. Each repeat he read, the more concrete a certain idea became in his head.

“I should stop writing...” He muttered. Suddenly, relaxation hit him. An unknown feeling he had been waiting for so long had finally come. He started chuckling, and then those chuckles became waves of laughter.

“I should...” He was about to say before he collapsed onto the ground. Suddenly, he had lost all feeling in his body. His arms, legs, and practically any muscle that he had no problem moving so far in his life had fallen into a stupor. He wanted to open his mouth and curse, to push himself off the ground and walk to his bed. However, none of that happened.

A short while after, everything around him faded to black as if he had closed his eyes.