The Extra's Rise

'What a ridiculous way to ruin a masterpiece,' I thought, scrolling through the latest chapter on my phone. The author of Saga of the Divine Swordsman had finally lost the plot—quite literally.

There had been a time when this novel was the gold standard of modern fantasy, an intricate blend of Murim warriors, spellcasters, and a futuristic dystopia wrapped in a world teetering on the brink of destruction. Now? Now it was a slow, torturous descent into chaos, with the protagonist barely clinging to his sanity and the narrative barely clinging to coherence.

This was not the story I had spent years following. Each battle had once been a symphony of perfectly crafted tension, every twist earned through clever foreshadowing. Now, characters were dropping dead faster than background extras in a war film, and logic had been taken out back and beaten senseless.

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, emerging from an underground city no one had ever mentioned before, led by a so-called Vampire Monarch who had apparently evaded history, historians, and basic storytelling structure.

The comment section was already on fire, a battlefield of betrayed fans and frustrated theorists. One reader fumed about the world-building contradictions. Another pointed out that the novel's immersive, gut-wrenching prose had been replaced with the literary equivalent of a particularly cynical AI writing fanfiction.

I had to agree. This wasn't just a decline—it was a catastrophe, a car crash where every vehicle involved had been carrying a shipment of fireworks and a single, deeply confused circus elephant.

It had all started so well. Humanity, crushed under the heel of powerful non-human races, had clawed its way back through sheer grit and technological ingenuity. Elves and dwarves had integrated into society, while magic beasts remained aloof, watching the power struggle from their mountain dens.

The demons had been exiled. The vampires had been annihilated—or so we had been led to believe. The protagonist, Lucifer Windward, had been the very embodiment of power, standing above a generation of monstrous prodigies with a Yin-Yang body, absurd elemental affinities, and ocular abilities that could strip lesser warriors of their dignity and their kneecaps in a single glance.

Then, just as he reached the cusp of greatness, the author had decided that what Lucifer really needed was suffering. And so, suffering he received.

The Windward family fell. His father perished. His allies crumbled. The Kagu family was wiped from existence, their once-great martial legacy trampled under the heel of something far worse than the original plot had ever intended.

And just when it seemed that things couldn't spiral further, they did.

Lucifer, an Immortal-rank, had been thrown against adversaries that had no business appearing at this stage of the story, facing calamities that should have been reserved for the final arc. The pacing was a mess, the stakes impossible, and the once-meticulously crafted balance had been replaced by sheer, unfiltered cruelty.

I exhaled sharply and shut my eyes. The last vestiges of irritation lingered at the edges of my thoughts, but exhaustion dulled them. Maybe I was getting too worked up about a novel. Maybe I should be worrying about my own life instead of the fate of fictional characters.

Then again, there wasn't much to worry about. My life had all the excitement of a damp rag left out in the sun. Wake up, go through the motions, rinse and repeat. This novel had been an escape—an unpredictable, exhilarating tale that had once made me forget the mundanity of reality.

As sleep crept in, something strange happened.

The world around me dimmed—not just in the way that darkness settles over a room when you close your eyes, but as if the very concept of light had been quietly ushered out the door. A deep, endless void unfurled beneath me, pulling me into something vast and unfathomable.

A voice, low and distant, spoke, threading its way through the nothingness. "I am sorry," it murmured, each syllable weighted with something unplaceable, something vast and heavy and absolute. "This was the only way."

I tried to move, to speak, to demand an explanation, but my thoughts unraveled like loose string, fraying at the edges until there was nothing left but silence.

Then, nothing at all.