"Boy, you really threw the world into sothing, didn’t you?" Rhys muttered, watching Adyr flap his wings and slip through the hoverjet’s open hatch.
They had waited here since the drop-off, just in case he ca back. And he did, leaving behind a chaos the world had never seen before.
Or rather, not chaos... sothing closer to order.
"They wanted a symbolic figurehead," Adyr said with a faint chuckle, folding his wings as he moved toward an empty seat. "I just gave them one."
Dizziness hit harder. As he sank into the seat, he fought off a wave of nausea.
"Well, I’ll admit," Rhys fixed his eyes on the young man who had just acted like a god in front of thousands, now slouched like a tired soldier, "even that so-called Mad Scientist—whoever he is—probably didn’t expect this."
Adyr’s power did more than inspire fear—it dealt judgnt with cold precision, like divine punishnt on the guilty. His Grace radiated healing energy, visibly touching the crowd and engraving itself on their minds.
Even now, Rhys scrolled through dia reports and live forums. The public mood was shifting faster than anyone imagined possible.
Just hours before, Adyr had been the enemy—widely condemned and blad for countless deaths caused by his Malice, which had induced fatal heart attacks in bystanders watching his fight with the mutant army. Families were raw with grief.
But now? The narrative flipped.
A strange, collective need for order and aning was reshaping the story. People began convincing themselves that those who died had brought it on themselves.
The prisoners who perished? Violent criminals who deserved their fate. The so-called innocent victims? Maybe they had secrets, dark pasts no one dared speak of.
Speculation spread like wildfire across forums and comnt sections. Sympathy twisted into cold rationalization.
"What if my brother wasn’t the man I thought?"
"She never told us what she did during the war."
"He always had a violent streak. Maybe he saw things we never did."
Judgnt had been passed, and the public was rewriting history to fit a harsher truth they could live with—an uncomfortable peace born of selective mory and denial.
"Do you know what people are calling you?" Rhys’ voice reached him again as Adyr shut his eyes, trying to suppress the spinning in his head.
"God?" he replied with a faint smile—half a joke, though it didn’t sound like one.
"Well, there’s that too. But also things like Harbinger, Angel of Death, Divine Retribution, Savior, Guardian, Fantastic 1... the list goes on."
"Stop... It’s getting worse the more you talk," Adyr muttered, raising a hand as if to signal him to shut up. Even in his previous life, he’d never had nicknas this cringeworthy.
"I was getting to the best part," Rhys laughed, clearly enjoying himself. He’d obviously taken the ti to go through all the titles people were throwing around.
"Well, there’s one that’s starting to stand out. There’s even a poll now on the local forums in Shelter City 9."
Adyr opened one eye and glanced at him. Denying his curiosity would’ve been a lie.
Rhys chuckled. "Long live hell for the wicked, huh? That’s quite the line."
Adyr closed his eyes again, already sensing where this was going.
He had only said the words to match the mood of the mont—to hype the crowd, to push them further. It didn’t an anything to him. He wasn’t even sure if hell or heaven existed in the first place.
"People are obsessed with it now," Rhys went on. "So of them have even started forming groups, calling themselves ’Wardens of Hell.’ They’re literally branding themselves as soldiers of the underworld."
Adyr didn’t react. He understood people too well—their need to believe, to feel part of sothing larger. They were always eager to be swept up in whatever gave them aning, no matter how dark or absurd.
"And now they’re calling you Hellcraft," Rhys added, grinning. "Creator of Hell. Owner of the gates. Honestly? That might even be better than my last na—Graves!" He laughed so hard he nearly dropped his tablet.
"Well..." Adyr allowed himself a faint smile. He rembered the nickna he’d once carried in his previous life—and compared to that, this one didn’t sound quite so wicked.
He had far bigger concerns to deal with right now, and what people called him behind his back didn’t even make the top 3.
The dizziness was gradually fading as his senses began to adapt to the enhanced vision, though the process was painfully slow, especially while his other body was still actively hunting Sparks in the other dinsion.
If his body had been in a safer area—sowhere he could sit down and rest—this wouldn’t have posed much of a problem. But in a world as perilous as that, where danger could erge from any direction at any mont, even a temporary vulnerability could prove fatal.
That was why Adyr made the decision: he burned through 400 energy points and registered Tactician (Lv.4), bringing his energy reserves down to 1,293. The move imdiately granted him 80 free stat points, increasing his total pool to 320.
He allocated 200 of them into [Resilience], knowing full well this stat governed both ntal and physical endurance, offering resistance to all manner of bodily and spiritual afflictions.
The effect was instant.
A sharp warmth flooded through his entire being.
Every cell in his body flared to life—twitching, adapting, mutating. His skin tingled first, tightening unnaturally, like a stretched mbrane under pressure. It almost looked like soone had overdone a botox injection, but on every inch of his flesh.
Then the sensation deepened. His nerves flared, muscles spasd, and joints popped as micro-adjustnts rippled through his fra. Even his internal organs began a silent tamorphosis, grinding and shifting within as if aligning to so unseen blueprint.
Rhys, who had been watching with concern, finally couldn’t stay quiet.
"What’s happening to you?" He asked, eyebrows drawing together. He had already noticed Adyr acting strangely, but now his skin looked like it was drying up, cracking like parched desert clay.
"Nothing. I just raised my stats." His eyes stayed closed, tone flat but honest.
"Fuck ... I wish I could try that stat shit at least once," Rhys muttered with genuine awe. The idea that soone could physically evolve in re seconds just by allocating sothing called ’stat points’ was beyond anything his world had ever known.
Adyr’s skin, after stretching to its limit, began to flake and peel. Large, dry layers fell away, revealing a smooth, luminous new layer beneath—tighter, tougher, and unmarred. The transformation wasn’t limited to his appearance. Beneath the surface, everything was in flux. His limbs subtly reshaped, tendons aligned, and his spine adjusted with quiet snaps. His eyes twitched repeatedly, reacting to the spasms coursing through his optic nerves.
And then—it stopped.
A wave of stillness settled over him. A calm warmth took hold where once there had been searing tension. The discomfort dissolved into a pleasant weightlessness, and when he finally opened his eyes again, the dizziness that had plagued him for minutes had nearly vanished.
His body had adapted and evolved, settling into its new state with an ease that felt completely natural.
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