The room was swathed in gloom, the faint glow of a monitor carving out a small pocket of light in the oppressive dark. A figure rose from the shadows, fingers clicking the mouse with a soft click—the screen's luminance spilled over a face both striking and inhuman: crimson irises, a mouth split into a grin revealing shark-like fangs, shaggy obsidian hair framing skin as pale as bone. He might have been twenty, save for the ancient wear in those blood-red eyes.
Lu Qiu F. Acate. Not a name born of parental whimsy, but a legacy—one he'd clung to through centuries of exile.
"I'm famished," he murmured, fangs scraping together with a faint scritch that split the silence. Hunger gnawed at him, but not the mortal kind; it was a hollow ache in his chest, a reminder of what he was: the last of his kind, a vampire surviving in a 22nd century that had long since forgotten magic… or sought to destroy it.
His gaze flicked to the monitor, where headlines scrolled like a requiem: "Nuclear Arms Proliferation," "Ecological Collapse," "Ethnic Cleansing," "Global Conflicts"—and beneath it all, the unspoken truth: "Annihilation."
"Filthy, rotten thing," he hissed, nails biting into his palms. Humanity had made its choice centuries ago, when they'd burned his sister on a pyre, screaming "monster" as smoke choked the sky. She'd never harmed a soul, yet they'd torn her apart for daring to exist.
Now he existed too, a ghost in their world—until the message flashed across his screen:
"Wish to destroy it all?"
His breath hitched. The words hummed in his skull, a siren's call to the rage he'd buried for decades. Destroy… Yes. Let them burn as she had. Let their cities crumble, their laws shatter, their precious order dissolve into chaos.
The cursor hovered over ACCEPT. A heartbeat. Two. Then—click.
Nothing happened.
He laughed, a raw, bitter sound. April Fool's? But the clock read 20:00, mid-May. No. This was no jest.
Then the hunger vanished.
Lu Qiu staggered, a surge of power crashing through him like a tidal wave—strength he hadn't felt since childhood, before the hunters came. His vision sharpened, the room's shadows resolving into crisp detail, his fangs throbbing with renewed vitality.
"Welcome, first participant of the Endgame."
The voice echoed in his mind, cold and mechanical, yet thrilling in its promise. "Scanning host biology… Species: Lesser Vampire, Nocturnal Subtype. Bloodline malleable. Base stats: 2. Post-system enhancement: 3. Despair quotient: 107%—suitable for annihilation protocol."
He sank onto the bed, head spinning. "What… are you?"
"I am the system. Your tool. Your ally in razing worlds. This planet's destruction progress: 30%—thanks to your kind's greed. But you desire more, do you not? Revenge… extinction…"
A grin spread across his face, feral and delighted. "Tell me how."
"Two paths, novice. First: 1,000 Despair Points for the Blacklight Virus—inhuman eyes lit up at the term—infected humans mutate into adaptive predators, evolving with each kill. Second"*
"Stop." Lu Qiu's voice was a growl, excitement thrumming in his veins. "Blacklight. Now."
"First-time discount applied. 1,000 Points deducted. Acquiring prototype…"
A vial materialized in his hand, scarlet liquid swirling like living fire. He recognized it from human nightmares—Prototype, they'd called their fiction. Now it was real, his, a key to unlock their undoing.
"Despair Points?" he asked, turning the vial in the light.
"The screams of the doomed, the terror of the dying. Fuel for your ascension. Strengthen your body, conjure weapons, reshape reality—all through their agony."
Lu Qiu laughed again, breathless, as images flooded his mind: cities in flames, humans fleeing before undead hordes, their precious "superpowers" and "exorcists" falling to knees bloodied by the same chaos they'd inflicted on his kind.
"You're a gift," he breathed, rising to his feet, the vial clutched like a holy relic. The night outside his window seemed to beckon, a vast stage for the carnage to come. "Whoever made you… I'll thank them by turning their creation into a graveyard."
The door slammed behind him, his form melting into the darkness—no longer a hunted thing, but the hunter. The Endbringer.
Let the game begin.