Life Of A Nobody - as a Villain

Chapter 348  Hell and Devil

After the wave of ripping and shredding pain that seemed to last for eternity, where he wished for that sweet second of peace and rest in darkness at every moment, passed on, Rio finally opened his eyes and silently hoping in his heart that it was all just a nightmare, and he'd now wake up in the soft lap of his mother and see the laughing face of his little sister, …. yet what greeted him was the harsh reality his actions and the gods had carved for him.

In front of his eyes were the same corroded clouds floating in the sky accompanied by the big red sun.

"I'm_     I'm _  I'm alive." He finished a little sentence in between his rugged breaths and pained throat.

He tried to move his body, yet couldn't feel a thing, then came the worst feeling of jitters of his life.

Let me paint a picture of how exactly did he feel or what he witnessed probably.

Imagine lying on a roller coaster, not sitting, lying, sleeping with eyes wide open, at the front row seat, staring at the changing scenery, motions, twists and turns, and getting your hardest to wrap your head around it. Ohh all the while, getting thrown here and there on the whole ride, crashing everywhere, breaking everything.

One moment you're on ground zero sleeping soundly like it's your baby's bed, then you're floating and flying till a giant building falls on your face, and now you're on gravity 10g with a mountain on your chest, but next you're suddenly freefalling from paradise and can see the fires of hell down below.

You pass through a cloud, catch its fog and feel the moisture and foam wash over your face, but next you're underwater, drowning at the deepest darkest parts of the ocean. Just when you try to catch a breath in struggle and flail your hands and feet, you're suddenly in outer space, watching stars explode and moons disappearing into pebbles.

And this journey goes on and on and on and on, for what felt like eternity to him, were just a few mere moments to the planet whose parts were getting detached from the bonds of Arcadia.

He didn't know how he was alive, about how he managed to bear through that pain and survive the process of planetary disalignment, but that didn't matter to him anymore.

He was alive, and that was all.

'The worst is over, I just need to survive and find a way back home.' He said to himself as he clenched his fists, while channeling his mana to fuel the blessings of gods, and trying to heal himself.

The extent of his injuries somehow took an entire day and night to heal, despite him pumping his mana constantly through the help of mana recovery potions and healing rations he had gathered for such life threatening scenarios.

Finally after two days of just lying in place, watching the sky changing colors and clouds turning shapes, he could finally feel himself capable enough to leave the ground and stand on his feet.

The detachment process had killed all the monsters and remaining people in entirety of the dungeon world, other than him, there simply was no other life present on that planet anymore.

So in the beginning of his 'lone survivor' days, all he had to do was just roam around in the sea of corpses and carcasses, surviving the nausea of bloodbath, and the wrenching putrid smell of pus and meat scattered everywhere.

But obviously his luck wasn't good enough that this situation would last forever. Just after a couple of weeks, the red sun and its inexhaustible corrosive energy finally started to heal all monsters and bring them back to life.

Rio had seen the signs of this recovery on his first day, so after he walked in the academy's escape portal's direction and found there was no way back home. He never chose to rest or find a house and sleep, all he did in those days was to roam all over he could, trying to find everything he can, that could help him in his fight to survive.

He gathered all the resources he could, sorted them out, made armor, weapons, and secured them in his rings. He made a map and looked for every corpse of students and teachers, to find their storage rings and steal other precious stuff.

He knew since the worlds broke apart and separated, it may take a while till someone finds him.

"Zenith, wouldn't let me die, I'm the angel, the Duke's son, the genius of a century and the hero of legends. It'll be a loss to the world and a slap to their faces and reputation to announce me dead. So the principal should get some help and ask the elders and leaders to try and find me."

The gods were bound to Arcadia and couldn't leave its boundaries, but he knew from the novel's knowledge that there were exceptions too. One such example of it, primordials.

"Nyx will find me, and she'll get me out. I just have to hold on till then."

"She loves me after all, she can't just sit back and watch me disappear from her game. She'll find me."

The days turned to weeks and weeks to months, the original empty world of silence and death, had turned lively now, once again filled with death and demons (monsters).

The undead creatures born from corrosion and mutation, chased after him every moment of every day, no matter where he hid, they would find him. Whatever he built, they would destroy. No walls, no boundaries, no amount of traps and tricks, were ever enough to stop the endless pursuit of death chasing him.

No matter how many he killed, slayed, captured or burned alive and reduced to ashes, the next hour of the next day, more of them would be after his life.

It was like his breath of life was a beacon of light, attracting their attention.

"An infinite number of hungry wolves after a single standing lion. - what a fucking reality." Rio cursed as he stood atop a mountain of corpses and felt the heat of smoke hit his nostrils as the air changed directions.

It had been six months since he had been trapped here. The hope of help from Zenith was something he gave up a long time ago.

He could feel a gaze upon him, following his every movement, he laughed for days thinking it was Nyx and she'd bring him out once she was ready. But after such a long time of solitude survival time, he had also started to doubt if Nyx wanted to save him or not at this point? Or was it even Nyx watching him and not someone else?

Or how was he even sure there was someone else here, and he wasn't just imagining them and going insane slowly.

Too many thoughts, too many doubts - yet never an answer and not a free moment to ponder on one for long.

Food and water were almost getting over these days, and despite what little and crude ration routine he prepared for himself, he knew they'd hold on for at best two month more. And then he'd have nothing left to help him live.

If not for his habits of always being prepared, or blackmailing his enemies, or looting their corpses after killing them, he'd already be dead from hunger.

The constant battles required him to always be on guard and battle ready, every time he even closed his eyes, he'd need to set several traps and barriers for hours to get some sleep. And this routine would have to be done on regular periods randomly, as he could never stay at one place for long, or he'd be surrounded and killed after attracting everyone together.

Mana and aura, the two energies he could control for now, were always getting used up at a swift rate everyday. And he needed to consume all the resources slowly to recover them.

Though the battles honed his senses, gave him experience, made his skills sharper and control better - he forgot to care about those things.

He used to laugh when his aura mastery broke through, when he reached a new level of perfection over some technique and skill, when he came up with some magic spell and it worked wonders against monsters - but over time everything became dull for him.

He hasn't even opened that page of the world system anymore, as the constant calendar and timer of arcadia on it, always dampened his mood.

His original clothes were all gone, armor broken and cracked in several pieces. Nowadays he himself didn't know what he was wearing anymore. As it's always just covered in some monster's blood and entails. The soft fabrics had ages ago turned hard after layers upon layers of dried blood and sweat.

Was he even wearing armor at this point, he didn't know.

Did I mention he can't hear anything from his left ear nowadays, some stupid mutated snake sprayed its crooked teeth like poison at him. One of them ended up passing through his eardrum, rupturing it and getting etched in God knows what comes after that.  Anyway yeah, he was deaf to the side now.

He wasn't completely blind tho, as after a couple of near death experiences he managed to find a way to spread his mana through his ears to act like a sonar.

It was a pathetic toned down disgusting version of his overall all encompassing mana sense. But whatever, with the amount of mana he had, this became another useful tool to survive. Though it was annoying to always hear so much without a filter, but he wasn't sure he actually hated it.

Maybe the unfiltered noise occupied his mind so much that it gave his soul a break from all the negative thoughts of loneliness.

Finally the day of calamity came, food was finally gonna be over tomorrow. He tried several methods to look for something edible on this rotten planet several times, yet never found anything at all. Whatever belonged here was always dead and cruel towards him. And whatever he tried to grow, always died under corrosion.

The rotten food placed in this broken failed apocalyptic world always brought the energy of corrosion to his body. Making chances of him being afflicted with EMMSY much higher.

At first he used to be picky, experimental, he tried to mix stuff, cook, fry, grill, burn and barbeque things - all in tries to finding a method that can at least reduce the rate of corrosion, yet everything failed and turned to waste.

Sense of taste was something he felt he lost for a while now. Probably don't even remember what that originally felt like to be honest. The tongue was just there to wet his lips when he's thirsty at this point.

Yet the energy he got from the corroded food was nowhere near enough, he needed more of it, yet in a failed world, where could he find a storage of food. All he could find were one stick here and one pick there, a dried up fruit here and a cracked seed there. n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Thus by the end of the tenth month of his trapped alone time, for the first time, he ate a monster to satiate his hunger.

When he started his fight for survival he told himself, that he'll never cross the limit, that he'll never lose himself, that he'll live, that he'll be sane and the same, that he'll go home to his family, to his sister, and at that time everything will be just the way how it was used to.

Yet at that day, at that moment, he realized nothing was ever gonna be the same, cause he will never be.

"So you finally feel it too huh, Shiva. The hunger for power, the feeling of fear, the need deep in your heart, that begs you, to do everything to increase your chances of victory. It's maddening, isn't it? We're finally one and the same, my dear friend. Accept your true self, like I always knew you should."

"You built the hell you're living in, so why not become the devil too."

Rio looked ahead at the illusion of Nashi and felt the mind of Shiva take over his thoughts.

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A/N - the ending line between Nashi and him was just an analogy as Shiva had a house called Hell, where he lived with Shweta,,while Nashi always saw him as the devil pretending to be human. As for his transformation from Rio to Shiva, well that was just his thoughts shifting from Rio, who's lively and loved, to Shiva who's lost and dead inside.

Simply like a shift of character who hit a realization and found his goal.