*Thwack! *
I woke up with a small yelp, acute pain at the top of my head. Laughter echoed. The battlefield from before was gone. I found dozens of familiar faces, the screeching sound of the metal chair behind my back, the smell of chalk, and nothing else.
Chalk?
Pain?
“How dare you sleep in my class?! This isn’t high school!” The teacher shouted.
I havdn’t felt this kind of pain in a long time. Because of my passive abilities, even the pain from the Demon King’s attacks barely lasted more than a sting. And yet I furiously scratched my head. It freaking hurt!
The teacher was fuming mad, shouting all kinds of insults at my lack of respect. I paid no attention to it, gazing at my smooth and thin hands, then around me, mouth agape, eyes opened as widely as possible.
The dull, grey walls, enormous glass window, small desks and modern architecture with several electronic devices. A scenery long forgotten, almost as if I was having a nostalgic dream of a bygone era.
My smartphone was hidden on the desk, still auto-farming my favorite gacha mobile game of the time, “Journey of The Bright Immortal”.
What was going on? Was this… college? What? I’m back in college? How was this possible?
The teacher stopped ranting, and my classmates stiffened at my reaction. I looked as if I had seen the God of Death. I had seen worse, lived through hell, and was suddenly back in a classroom. The teacher even worried the chalk caused brain damage. “… Are… are you okay? I didn’t throw it that hard…”
My eyes drifted outside, to the pale moon standing bright, and the stars accompanying the long night. In this life, I worked during the day and took classes at night, hoping for a better future. I was always sleepy and tired, but satisfied. I missed this beautiful and peaceful sight, one before calamity struck, and everything went to shit.
Was everything a nightmare?! A nasty and long-lasting dream?
No. That was impossible. The people who died. The monsters and enemies I have killed. Everything we had to go through. It could not have been a dream. No dream would have lasted that long. I slept and woke up through countless nights.
And the pain… it was real. My body was covered in scars. I have survived poison and assassination. Blades and claws tore my flesh more times than I could count.
Was I somehow sent back in time, like those novels I read?
Was I sent to another world for a second chance?
Or maybe I lived everything in my head. Time-space magic?
What other answer was there?
I remember how everything went crazy, and I fought those monsters. The skies suddenly turned a weird, metallic color, then bloody red. The moon shattered into profound darkness, seemingly about to engulf everything. The world of men still seemed to be there, except now long-armed demon-like monsters appeared everywhere.
They were anything but friendly, wanting nothing but to kill, destroy, and feast. Humans became their favorite meal.
We ran and hid, hoping for the army or the police to take them out. As buildings and the world we knew collapsed, people tried to survive. Yet we were already doomed. The moment everything started, humanity was already done for.
Why? We had guns. Tanks. Aircraft. Even nuclear bombs and missiles.
We had nothing. Nothing that could protect us against them.
We didn’t know those monsters appeared because parts of their world “ate” our world. Our land turned into parts of other worlds, and it wasn’t the same world seeping into our own everywhere. There were more worlds than we could count.
Some places fared better than others. Not all the newcomers were beings of destruction and death. However, everything north of here became home for those things. The Ath’Taren. We called them demons. That’s the only thing we could call them.
Those things straight out of nightmares and horror novels.
I could only think something out there truly hated humans. From the moment this shit started, everything humans built stopped working. The world itself would soon crumble away into nothingness. Only the living would remain.
Buildings? Guns? Cars? Airplanes? Peacemakers? Energy?
All gone. How? why? Who knows?
We became completely lost, unable to defend ourselves. Help wouldn’t come, no matter how much people waited. Some called it the Apocalypse. I called it “The Day The World Went To Shit.”
But humans were resilient. We survived. Well, some did. Even the clothes on our bodies disappeared with time, but we survived. Unknown diseases, hunger, demons, death, and pain. Survived them all. Communities rose and grew. The parts of the many worlds, now together, adapted.
Humans carried on. Lived.
But the Ath’Taren Demons still hunted us. They never stopped. We could never stop them. I fought and ran from them my entire life. I found a new kingdom to live in, a new King to serve, made a new home with the surviving humans of the Old Earth. I fell in love, leveled, hunted, lived on.
And in the end?
The demons always came again. Fucking demons. The traitor I once loved gave away our defensive plans and strategies. Probably fed them information all along, too. The cowardly king ran away, leaving us to die in vain. Me, Lanlia, and my entire squad died. And now I was sent back here.
Those nightmarish days were over. No more battlefields, weeks without a decent bath, shitting in the woods, or arduous training. Fuck, I was going to enjoy life this time!
“W-what what is that…?!” One of my classmate’s screams brought me back to reality.
I didn’t need to look. I already knew. First, the sky would turn metallic weird, then bleed as if the world itself was wounded, and the moon shatter into pure and somber darkness. The air would change, people would change, chaos and death would follow. Nothing would ever be the same.
That nightmare would happen again today. The [Timeless First Day].
Fuck.