'What a ridiculous way to ruin a masterpiece.'
I scrolled through the latest chapter on my phone, watching in real time as Saga of the Divine Swordsman plummeted off a literary cliff.
There had been a time—a glorious time—when this novel was the undisputed gold standard of modern fantasy. A masterful blend of Murim warriors, high-tier spellcasters, and a futuristic dystopia teetering on the edge of collapse. Every battle had been a meticulously crafted symphony, every twist woven through layers of clever foreshadowing.
Now, the protagonist was barely clinging to his sanity, and the narrative was barely clinging to coherence.
Characters were dying faster than background extras in a war film. Plot consistency had been abandoned like a malfunctioning hovercar on the side of the road. And vampires. Bloody vampires.
Extinct for over a hundred and sixty years, the author had said. Extinct, like the dinosaurs, like common sense, like my faith in this novel. And yet here they were, strutting out of an underground city no one had ever mentioned before, led by a so-called Vampire Monarch who had apparently managed to evade history, historians, and the basic fundamentals of storytelling.
The comment section was already a battlefield, a war zone of betrayed fans, enraged theorists, and desperate apologists trying to glue together the shattered remains of the plot. One reader had written a full essay outlining how this latest development contradicted Chapter 141. Another had given up entirely and was now posting AI-generated memes of Lucifer Windward crying into a bowl of instant noodles.
I had to agree. This wasn't just a decline. It was a full-scale literary disaster, a multi-car pileup where each vehicle involved had been carrying fireworks and a deeply confused circus elephant.
And it had all started so well.
Humanity, crushed under the heel of powerful non-human races, had clawed its way back through sheer grit, technological ingenuity, and just the right amount of reckless arrogance. Elves and dwarves had integrated into society. Magic beasts lurked in the mountains, watching with silent amusement as civilization tore itself apart. The demons had been exiled. The vampires had been annihilated. Or so we'd been led to believe.
And at the heart of it all was Lucifer Windward.
A prodigy. A force of nature. The kind of protagonist who made warlords rethink their life choices. He possessed a Yin-Yang body, absurd elemental affinities, and ocular abilities that could strip lesser warriors of their dignity, kneecaps, and in extreme cases, the will to live. He was untouchable. Unstoppable. He was ascending.
And then the author had decided what Lucifer really needed was suffering.
So suffering he received.
The Windward family fell. His father perished. His allies crumbled. The Kagu family—once an unshakable martial dynasty—was reduced to nothing, trampled under the heel of something far worse than what the original plot had ever intended.
And just when it seemed like things couldn't spiral further, they did.
Lucifer—an Immortal-rank warrior—was thrown against opponents that had no business existing yet. The pacing was obliterated, the stakes rendered absurd, and the careful balance of power that had once defined the novel was now a distant memory.
I exhaled sharply and shut my eyes.
I shouldn't be this irritated over a novel.
But this story had been an escape. A world of thrilling unpredictability, of grand designs and high stakes. Something that had, for a time, made me forget the utter monotony of my own life.
Wake up. Go through the motions. Rinse. Repeat.
Compared to that, even a catastrophically mismanaged storyline was something.
I yawned, exhaustion finally winning out over frustration.
And then, something strange happened.
The world around me dimmed—not just in the way a room darkens when you close your eyes, but as if light itself had been removed. Stripped from existence. A deep, endless void unfurled beneath me, vast and unfathomable, dragging me into something other.
Then a voice. Low. Distant. Cutting through the nothingness like a whisper in a place where whispers had never existed.
"I am sorry," it murmured, heavy with something final. "This was the only way."
I tried to move. To speak. To demand an explanation. But my thoughts unraveled like loose thread, dissolving into the abyss.