In a dimly lit, one of the many in the vast hotel, the mashing of key binds could easily be heard from even beyond the tightly sealed door. A lone boy, Yarisugi, was leaned forwards in his chair, completely focused on the game as if it decided his life and death.
At the top of the screen, the boss's health bar only had a sliver remaining, yet Yarisugi's eyes never parted from the screen that emanated a blue light that acted as the only Illuminating object.
The boss, The Demon King, Azrael, was slowly losing it's health due to a negative status effect that had been draining it's life and it wasn't long until it finally fell.
-You have defeated the Final Boss, Azrael. You have won.- The screen displayed.
Yarisugi let out a breath of relief. Finally, the text I've been waiting to see for months after grinding this game non-stop. He thought whilst the screen faded to black and began to play the cutscene he'd seen hundreds of times.
He'd seen it not because he'd beaten the game that much, no quite the opposite actually. While grinding through the game he got curious about the ending and looked it up, and to his shock all he saw was the Hero, the same one who swore to save the world, complete obliterate all life on it.
The ending made no sense. At all. Every player who loved this game for it's complex characters and close to infinite different options, eventually left because the ending was always bad no matter what. Lose to the Demon King and humanities gone, Kill the Demon King and humanities gone along with the demon race. There was no winning.
But many still played this game, because no matter how bad the ending may be, there were still so many possibilities that truly dedicated players explored, players like Yarisugi.
'First time for everything. First time actually taking the main route and winning, or I guess losing since the hero kills everything anyway.' Yarisugi stretched his arms ' Well, technically I did win even though I might've cheated; the dev's certainly didn't intend for one max stat to be constantly stacked and carried over, resulting in a level one Hero having beyond maxed out intellect at the very start.'
Suddenly a luminous light shone from Yarisugi's monitor causing his eyes to instantly become fixed on the screen once more.
Displayed on the screen were but a few simple words: May you ascend above the Hero.
Yarisugi hadn't seen these words mentioned or even hinted about in any of the hundreds of ending cutscenes he'd seen, one of which included the best player, or any of the official games forms.
Of course, those thoughts would swiftly be thrown out as the monitor only brightened to the point it could even outshine the sun, as the light grew it also warped the space around Yarisugi and, in an instant, sucked him into the monitor.
Yarisugi felt himself being dragged in and before he knew it, it was too late.
A cozy feeling enveloped Yarisugi as he awoke. The dim room was gone, his top-tier PC was gone and most heartbreaking of all, his mountain of garbage that had claimed the room's corner...gone.
What replaced that environment was the cold embrace of nature. Extremely cold. Yarisugi jumped up, still clueless to his current situation.
'I need to find a place to warm up or I'll freeze to death at this rate.' He began to run in a random direction, seemingly not having fully come to the realization he was in the middle of nowhere surround by lush trees, some of which held faint gash marks.
After running for a few seconds Yarisugi's brain seemed to have partially turned on. His gaze drifted to the star filled night sky that possessed two moons.
'WHAT THE HELL.' Wouldn't take a genius to realize this wasn't Earth. 'This isn't Earth.' Yarisugi eyes didn't linger though because alleviating the cold winds that assaulted his body came first. Luckily, he found what he was looking for.
Smoke. After all if he was this cold then obviously other people are as well, and the best way to get rid of the heat is with fire. His pace almost doubled as he realized he was, in fact, running for his life because by no means was the smoke close and at his previous pace he'd freeze just before reaching.
The thick foliage of the overgrowth trees made fast and hasty movement not just impractical but very noticeable. Yarisugi didn't care about that and maneuvered past the vines and between the packed up trees for what felt like 20 minutes before he eventually saw the orange light of the fire that had casted itself of the surrounding trees.
Without hesitation, and overcome by the feeling to experience warmth once more, Yarisugi darted past the group of people seated around the fire and took a seat mere inches from the fire.
His hands were slowly warmed as his body began heat up. Only moments after, exhaustion set in as he realized he'd been running at his top speed for well over 8 minutes.
Despite that, his mind instantly wondered about his whereabouts. Two moons, Extreme cold, and people who're clad in pristine steel armor with a star engraving, swords instead of guns and-
'Wait...' He'd seen that star, that star outlined in gold with a radiant rainbow interior that reflected off it's clear glass surface. The Luminous Star given to the seven most powerful prodigies of the Alverion Academy.
The Alverion Academy... I'm got sucked into Limitless Retries(LR). This definitely isn't good, not even bad... It's horrible.
A Hero who will destroy the world, a Demon King who will destroy the world, seven, yes seven, female leads who will protect the Hero with their life and then me, a guy who got shoved here and now has to find a solution to both problems.
Obviously just kill both of them, right. You can't kill the Hero because he has an ability that sends him back in time to a point where he can solve the problem he faced in 3 or more possible ways, luckily only his knowledge is carried over and not his strength.
This ability, gift to him by the goddess, everyone of them, isn't the only reason. His absurd cheat skill, traits and items he, some of which only he can get, make hi practically immortal.
And the Demon King? He happens to be the strongest Demon King in thousands of years and was able to find a way to stop the Hero from regression beyond a certain point which prevented him from saving all seven heroines, so beating him should obviously be no big deal.
This life's gonna suck, I can feel it.
The exhaustion temporally knocked him out, but at least he was warm.