00 - The Ending

Chapter Prologue - The End

Written By Dr Armstrong

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It's not like that.

In fact, why must it be like that?

Alexander was considering the ending of his beloved story. No, he's not going to commit suicide, this would be an end to his literal story.

He was an author, not much of a professional one, but it did give some fulfilment to his normally boring life.

His latest masterpiece was the one and only Rewrite Revengence, a web novel belonging to the rather overused isekai genre but with a little bit of twist.

The protagonist was the author of the story, no, not like where he would be reincarnated into his own story, but instead, the protagonist had the power to literally change the future with his trusty Rewrite System.

The System would usually give him some cryptic messages about the future with certain words being symbolism and such, and the protagonist could then mess around with these words and change the future, whether the new future became the one he intended or not was up to the true author, ie; Alexander.

Alexander sighed as he leaned back in his chair before taking a sip from his steaming cup of joe, the sweet caffeine flooding his body with vigour as he did so.

He didn't want to end the novel's three-year-long run with a meagre ending, but the problem was that there simply wasn't much he could do with the current state of the story as all of the conflicts from the previous chapters have been resolved.

There was the choice of simply pulling out a bullshit final villain straight from under his arse like what the Mangaka of Naruto did, but that wouldn't be satisfactory.

A villain who had been foreshadowed since the early days of the story would be preferable, but there was no such villain in the novel...

*DING-DING-DING-DING* *DING-DING-DING-DING*

"Huh...?" Alexander placed down the cup as he glanced to the side where his phone lay, vibrating whilst releasing an all-too-familiar dinging sound.

"Oh, it's this guy again..." Some guy called Harvard and his buddy Stanford had been ruthlessly pestering him about joining their little private club about boats or something.

He didn't really care, maybe it was a Chess club or something, but they chose the wrong time to call him.

Alexander promptly ignored the call as it rang aloud, letting it pass as he continued sipping his coffee.

Maybe he could just give the protagonist a happy ending. An epilogue with him married to the Demon King's daughter who is pregnant with their child...or...

"That's it!" As if a bolt of inspiration personally smitten down by Zeus had struck him, Alexander shouted out before he started mercilessly attacking his keyboard with the ferocity of a vicious hound, a grin etched into his face.

He would end Rewrite Revengence with a paradox, the protagonist would end up rewriting everything that had happened up until now to their 'baseline' parameters, essentially creating a new timeline where the cycle of rewriting the 'future' would just repeat over and over again with new incarnations of the protagonist.

It wasn't genius per se, nor was it particularly innovative, but one didn't need to be original to create a great story, they just needed to be good at executing that idea into practice.

But as he wrote a hundred words, and another hundred, and another...

"...Nah..." He stopped himself, this wasn't it!

He deleted the latest 100 words or so before he rewrote it in another direction, a complete 180 turn, and yet...

"No...no this is shit." He cursed before deleting the whole chapter and starting again from scratch.

It didn't take long before he again deleted the whole draft and started again, fueling the cycle of rewriting with coffee as he did so.

Hours passed like water in a stream, the ever so frustrated Alexander being an immovable rock desperate for inspiration in the middle of that stream.

Words, sentences, paragraphs, and even whole pages worth of content were being written rapidly, only to vanish in the next minute after his reconsideration.

Eventually, it had progressed to the point where the sunlight that had been spilling through the curtains had evolved Pokemon-style to moonlight, with Alexander looking like a Skunk who had just fought off a bunch of Feline gangsters.

*BAM*

Alexander slammed his fist against the table as he gritted his teeth in aggravation, the final chapter of his masterpiece, the ending, why must be it be so hard to create!?

*BUZZ*

"Hm...? Don't tell me it's that Harvard guy again..." Alexander muttered as he glanced toward his phone, it vibrated a little before stopping, probably a notification.

Notifications were an everyday thing for anyone with a phone, Alexander got one every three minutes or so, so it shouldn't be particularly eye-catching, but...

For some reason, he picked up his phone before unlocking it to see just what kind of notification he had gotten.

It was an email, one from someone he didn't recognize.

[Dr. Armstrong | I bet you eat Maggots for breakfast today.]

The fuck?

"Who the hell is Dr. Armstrong...?" Yeah, this wasn't someone he knew, not at all. Alexander had an old friend named Steven Armstrong, but that guy became a Chef, not a Doctor...

He decided to open the Email and see who this was, what exactly they were talking about, and how they knew about his Maggot-eating fascination.

[I bet you eat Maggots for breakfast today.]

From @Armstrong123420, to you:

Now that I've gotten your attention with that title, could you please help me with my current situation, mister SharkWhale?

I'm an avid reader of your stories, I even remember the good old days when you were primarily releasing edgy fanfiction, you've really progressed so much.

You probably don't know who I am, but my username on Webnovel is DaoistFateless, see if that rings any bells in your head.

Rewrite Revengence has inspired me to write my own story...it's a fanfiction, unfortunately. I'm still not confident enough to make an original work, I've tried, but my first attempt came out like a deformed Alaskan Dolphin...

Since you're a great guy and all, a much more experienced author than me, I wonder if you can help me with the draft, edit out any mistakes and give me some advice/tips.

Hell, you can even rewrite the whole thing if you want!

Here's the draft, it's a fanfic of the Chinese novel 'Custom Made Demon King', which is also a glorified fanfic...so it's a fan-inception, haha.

File Attached: Custom Made Archangel

Hope you actually read this!

---

Huh.

"This is a fanfic...and he wants me to review it...?" Alexander pondered as his finger hovered above the document.

Alexander actually remembered that username, DaoistFateless had been one consistent guy when it came to donating him money, after all.

And the draft, Custom Made Archangel...

He remembered Custom Made Demon King, it was one of the first novels he had ever read after he discovered the world of Internet literature. He had some good memories about it and vaguely remembered the plot.

So with a shrug of his shoulders, Alexander decided to open the document as he accessed his Gmail account through his computer.

His eyes quickly darted around as he skimmed the entire draft within mere minutes, rubbing his hands together after he did so.

'...It's unique...' That's certainly an appropriate word to describe it.

The intro was strong, hitting you with the plot straight away. However, the unique part came in how the protagonist died.

The protagonist, who hilariously shared the same name as Alexander, was just some regular run-of-the-mill retail worker with an appetite for reading.

Particularly, he was reading the very last chapters of CMDK, the last chapters that had been properly translated that is. But when he finally finished the last chapter, which wasn't very much an ending, like at all, he decided to check out some fanfics about CMDK.

He would then discover Custom Made Archangel and be alarmed as soon as he read it, because...

What was written on that fanfic was Alexander himself, up to the very moment he read the last chapter of CMDK, all the way to events that have not even occurred yet...

And when he read those future events, he would come to discover his brutal fate, his world consumed by the clutches of the Abyss and his head decapitated from his body by a Demon.

Frightened by this prophecy, Alexander rushed out from the store he worked at only to discover that it was far too late as the sky was already red, bleeding as if the very heavens were menstruating.

Then the next moment, his head was detached from his body.

It was a great opening, Alexander, the real-life one, approved very much. Though a few tweaks here and there could be made, it was honestly, quite the satisfactory of a read.

He sent a response email to Armstrong with some kind words and reassuring him that there wasn't that needed to be changed, although he did give some advice for the novice author before hitting the send button.

Surprisingly, he got another email from the novice author just seconds later.

[Thanks for the advice!]

From @Armstrong123420, to you:

Thanks for the advice man, I've managed to implement all of your wisdom and fixed all of the flaws.

File Attached: Custom Made Archangel, The Rewrite

Could you take a look at this one? It's the fixed version and I want to know if there's still something wrong with it before I hit the publish button.

---

"Well, that was fast..." Alexander couldn't help but mutter in amazement, if he was to become as fast and decisive as this guy then all of his problems would vanish in a heartbeat.

Without much thought, he clicked the attached Word document and started skimming the Rewrite.

"Huh...this is different." He had only suggested a few tweaks here and there, but the Rewrite seemed to be another storyline entirely...

"...Wait..." He couldn't help but widen his eyes as he read through the intro.

"It's not like that...why must it be like that...?" Alexander's heart briefly stopped beating as sweat pooled up in his brows.

"Alexander was considering the end of his beloved story...he was an author, not much of a professional one...his latest masterpiece was..." His latest masterpiece was the one and only Rewrite Revengence, a web novel belonging to the rather overused isekai genre but with a little bit of twist.

Oh, shit.

"Fuck...I think I know what happens next..." He muttered before glancing behind him at the window, the moonlight spilling through seemed normal, but he wasn't going to trust it.

He quickly scrolled down the document to confirm his suspicions, and...

"...Plunged deeply into his chest, the Demon leapt inside the bedroom and grinned as the monstrous beast stood over the dead Alexander..." He said gravely, a panicked tone evident in his trembling voice.

Swallowing a gulp, Alexander considered his next actions carefully as he breathed in and out to calm himself.

This draft is a prediction of the future and a record of the past, suffice to say it is his destiny, his fate. 

There are two possibilities regarding its true properties, one was the draft simply being a written account of what will occur...

The other is that the draft will decide what will happen, in other words, it is just like the system that Alexander gave to the protagonist of Rewrite Revengence...

If the second possibility is true, then...

There is a way for Alexander to avert his fate, and change its trajectory far away from that gruesome death.

Without hesitation, Alexander tried his best to cool his mind via deep breaths as he deleted hundreds of words from the document and rapidly started typing as if his life was at risk, which it certainly was.

Although it was RR's protagonist who had experience when it came to changing his own fate, Alexander was the man behind every word ever uttered and written by him, so he too had some experience with destiny.

It was unlikely that the strange powerful existence that gave him this draft would simply allow him to rewrite the past, it was much more ironic for him to acquire the same ability that he had given RR's protagonist, he could only rewrite the future!

He still tried to rewrite the past though, erasing the phone call from Harvard entirely, but seeing as he didn't lose the memory about the event, and the records in his phone still showed that he had been called by that guy...his theory was solidified into fact.

Now the best option would be to rewrite the story just enough that he would survive, but still not enough to outright erase the Demon that would kill him.

There was not much time between him reading the draft and his death in the document, so the Demon invasion had most likely already started, which was why he couldn't just prevent the Demons from descending...

'As the demonic arrow shot through the air and launched itself in Alexander's direction, he quickly knelt to the ground to pick up his phone that had fallen, just barely dodging the infernal bolt...' Alexander quickly typed as sweat trickled down from his forehead.

*THUD*

"...Huh?" He voiced out in confusion as he glanced downward, his phone had just fallen over from the table, how unlucky...

As the demonic arrow shot through the air and launched itself in Alexander's direction, he quickly knelt on the ground to pick up his phone that had fallen, just barely dodging the infernal bolt.

The beating of his heart accelerated as Alexander glanced up toward his monitor. The screen was completely shattered as what can only be described as an arrow of pure darkness was stabbed through it.

He gripped his phone strongly as his eyes wandered to the bedroom curtains, with a silent gulp, Alexander quickly got on his phone and desperately opened the document from there...

*THUD*

The sound of the window being open reverberated through the surroundings as a singular coal-black finger emerged from between the curtains, followed by another, then the whole hand.

It didn't take another second before the curtains were pushed aside, revealing the perpetrator of the monitor's destruction, a supernatural creature from beyond the mundane world, a veritable Demon of the Abyss.

The Demon was a strange thing, more like an incorporeal ghast than one of the Devil's fiends. It was a swirling mass of darkness, a sentient cloud of shadow that took on the form of a frightful humanoid.

It was floating, with the lower half being nothing more than a dark wisp that resembled a Serpent's tail, and the upper half being that of a man armoured with dark, withering scales.

The Demon probably didn't lift as its arms looked rather malnourished, it also didn't help that it had a skull for a face with little bits of dark flesh still attached to it.

A hood made of the same scales found on its body veiled its face in the darkness, yet how much darker a being made of shadow could be was left up to interpretation.

The single most striking feature of the Demon was the only part of it that wasn't obsidian black; its eyes, which were more like spheres of deep red light than actual irises.

Alexander peeked from below his bed as he saw the Demon in all of its sinister glory, he held his breath as the creature came closer and inspected the broken monitor with an unreadable expression that was characteristic of its skeletal face.

'...It's a Middle-rank, right?' Alexander swiped some of the sweat from his eyebrows as the Demon searched the room for any scent of freshly killed Alexanders.

He remembered a crucial bit of lore from CMDK, particularly about the ranking system that the Demons had.

If he remembered correctly, the Low-rank Demons shouldn't be able to wield Magic as their blood wasn't 'pure' enough to control their demonic power.

That meant that the Demon in this room was most likely Middle-rank since a High-rank would probably have no problem with instantly locating him.

A fully grown Low-rank Demon was already much stronger than a regular Human, strong enough to rip Alexander into shreds with little effort. But now, there's a Middle-rank here trying to kill him...!

He was lucky the Demon didn't just throw out an AOE attack to blow up his room, Alexander was on thin ice...

He quickly scrambled to open the document on his phone before trying to rewrite this grim fate of his.

'Wait...this is new!' He held his breath as he skimmed over the document because...there were new words!

After he had edited the draft so that he would survive the initial arrow, new words seemed to have sprung out of nowhere, completely changing the future...

But thinking about it again, it made sense. If this draft could decide the future, it probably just generated the appropriate events that would follow Alexander's distortion of fate.

Though the words written on the draft still described his death, unfortunately.

'Distracted by the loud sound, the Demon investigated the other direction as Alexander immediately took this opportunity to escape straight through the open window with a great leap to his backyard...' He quickly rewrote as he swallowed a breath. His bedroom was on the first floor, so this was a valid strategy.

Now, to enact the rewrite...

Alexander glanced around as he searched for any throwable item he could use to distract the Demon, he quickly found a Rubik's cube he had placed there months ago and promptly threw it to the side.

Distracted by the loud sound, the Demon investigated the other direction as Alexander immediately took this opportunity to escape straight through the open window with a great leap to his backyard.

*BUM*

His face met the gorgeous maiden that was the muddy ground with a nice romantic outing as slightly sharp strands of grass brushed up against his dirtied cheeks.

Alexander quickly scrambled with a panicked pace as he kept a tight grip on the phone in his right hand, the low rumble of a demonic roar filling his veins with flood waves of adrenaline.

A hurried step followed by another of the same kind quickly evolved into a manic sprint as Alexander zoomed across his lawn, the ghastly roar of the Middle-rank Demon behind him getting ever so closer.

Alexander winced in pain as he accidentally bit his own tongue whilst running. Ignoring the blood flowing in his mouth, he rushed to open his phone and promptly started to rewrite as quickly as possible.

'...The Demon's grinning face vanished for a split second before its entire body was crushed into a splatter of black bile.' Alexander didn't have much time and simply wrote on the last line the biggest form of plot armour he could quickly muster, which was to simply kill the Demon.

However, Alexander didn't specify how that would actually occur, as that would take too long to—

*SLASH*

"ARGH!" He screamed out in pure agony as an explosion of pain swelled up in his left calf, a tiny bolt of black matter plunging deeply into his flesh as blood was immediately turned to vapour upon contact.

Alexander collapsed onto the sidewalk as the phone fell a few feet away, he turned back with a frightened face as the darkness emanating from the Demon blotted out the very sun from his view.

Drops of liquid darkness dripped down onto his knee as the Demon's claws plunged deep into the sides of his legs. Alexander held his breath in terrified silence as he was rendered unable to flee, being held tightly by the legs.

He stared into the Demon's unblinking red eyes, there was utterly no emotion behind those scarlet lights. The Demon's skeletal underjaw unclenched from its skull as a serpentine forked tongue of shadow emerged from the back of its throat.

Alexander gritted his teeth before he moved in rapid speed and threw a quick haymaker directly to the Demon's jaw.

"FUCK!"

It didn't even flinch. Rather, it was actually Alexander's fist which broke upon impact, earning a whimper of pain from the doomed man.

"...He...He...He..." A dark chuckle was let out by the Demon, the sound resembling a hyena's mad laughter as its skeletal face somehow morphed into a deeply unsettling teeth-filled grin.

Alexander swallowed a silent gulp as he took a deep breath before closing his eyes, it was over, there was nothing he could do anymore.

But then...

The Demon's grinning face vanished for a split second before its entire body was crushed into a splatter of black bile.

"AAAAAAAAAH!" Alexander let out a blood-curdling scream as his entire lower half completely disappeared from view, crushed under the weight of a colossal foot.

Charcoal black ichor covered his face as Alexander coughed up a large portion of his own blood, an immediate headache crashing into his cranium like a heavy bag of Irish potatoes.

He could feel—nay, he could feel nothing down there aside from pain that would make even a tortured spirit from the depths of Tartarus impressed. But there was something down there...

With a blurry gaze, he looked up and realized just what kind of fate had befallen the Demon, literally. A tree bark-like foot had stomped onto the floor, utterly erasing both the Demon and Alexander's lower half into a mere puddle of blood.

He called it a foot, but it was more like a pillar of flesh, composed of thousands upon thousands of wire-like strands of exposed meat and hardened blood.

He looked up even further as his already bloodshot eyes widened. A monolithic figure of colossal stature stood with a featureless, non-existent face; it was yet another Demon.

The Giant Demon was a titan of flesh, much like a certain Colossal Titan. But all of the humanoid parts had been erased into non-existence, replaced by much more monstrous body parts.

It lacked a skull, the head being a featureless upside-down triangle of flesh. The limbs that were supposed to be on its sides were replaced by dozens of giant flesh tentacles, all of them being composed of smaller strands of meat.

Alexander stared at the monolithic Demon for a few seconds as it simply stood there in place, seeming awaiting something. The light gradually left his eyes as a vale of darkness covered his vision in a blur.

With the blood from his sliced tongue drowning his throat, and the crushed status of his lower half, the man soon passed away in silence.

For death was his one and only destiny.

---

Thought?

Power Stones = Cookies