"You bastard! You'll pay for that!" Luca yelled as he lunged at the tall, ashen demon in front of him. He slashed his sword at his neck, intending to kill.
The demon smirked and blocked his attack effortlessly before kicking him in the stomach, sending him flying.
"Why… even though I reached S rank, I'm still so weak? I still can't protect those that I love? WHY?" Luca yelled as runes ran down his arms. His eyes started glowing a yellow color unbeknown to him, and his magic power shot up. The core that was once shaking under the pressure of his spells stabilized, and–
"Bullshit."
Complete utter bullshit.
Where had he even gotten this power from?
It seems that every time he goes against a difficult enemy, he has some hidden power up his sleeve that even he doesn't know about.
I could already guess how this was going to go.
Luca realizes that this power was a secret power that was embedded into him all along from the Goddess of Light, and he had met all the conditions to awaken it at that exact moment. He then goes to completely destroy the high rank demon and save his friends.
I yawned.
"How predictable."
I looked at the time and it was still pretty early into the night, around 8:30 pm. I could have kept reading, but I decided that I didn't want to read this slop anymore. I'll finish it tomorrow, I thought to myself as I stretched and got up.
I left my room and went to the kitchen of my apartment. I lived with one other roommate, a tennis player named Ryan. He was a national champion and entered the school on scholarship. He currently wasn't home, staying on the courts late to practice his serves as he had told me.
What dedication.
I honestly wondered how it was like being so passionate about something. Passion that makes everything seem irrelevant and causes you to focus on that, and that alone.
It was admirable in my opinion.
I didn't have much I was passionate about, if not at all.
Money? My parents were very well off.
What about fame? I wasn't interested. It seemed like more trouble than anything.
Studies? My grades were good. I didn't do much, and college wasn't that hard at the moment as a sophomore.
Even girls weren't a big problem. I have an above average face which made it easy for me to get fleeting relationships or long term ones if I wanted.
I shook my head distracting myself from those thoughts and removed a pack of instant ramen from the shelf. I poured water into the cup and placed it in the microwave.
To pass time, I went on my phone and checked my messages. No messages in a whole day.
Honestly, this was unusual. I usually had hundreds of messages from my group chat of friends. It was a friend group I made during my freshman year of college, and I stuck with them until now, the end of the sophomore year.
We were all very close, and we practically always hung out. Four guys including me in the friend group, and three girls. You would think that a friend group that large wouldn't last a couple months, forget two years, but it did. We had our fights here and there, but things would quickly patch up and things would go back to normal. It was a beautiful sight to see honestly, and we all thought that we'd stay friends after college, no matter the distance. And considering the dynamic, that was probably true.
There wasn't a single day without someone typing something in the group chat.
Well, until today that is.
Not that I was surprised.
I was the one who caused this, after all.
I took one last look at my phone before I turned it off and shook my head. I grabbed the ramen cup from the microwave and carefully brought it down. But clearly not carefully enough as near boiling hot water spilled out ever so slightly.
"Ow! Fuck!!"
I yelled as I dropped the cup of ramen. It spilled in front of the counter in front of me and I quickly took a step back, avoiding the hot fluid.
"Oh what the hell, that was my last pack! God, why must you be so cruel!" I dramatically yelled at no one in particular while raising my hands up.
I must have looked very stupid at that very moment. I grumbled to myself as I slowly started to clean everything up.
Suddenly I heard a knock on my door.
No, it wasn't a knock, it was a loud banging. It sounded like someone was using their full force and trying to break down my door.
"Open up! Adam, open up god damn it! OPEN!" The banging continued without stopping.
I recognized that voice. It was my friend, Spencer. Why did he seem so mad however?
"I'm coming, stop banging!" I yelled back as I opened the door. "Holy fuck dude, you fucking splintered the door, how hard were you banging it? You know I'm going to make you pay for th-"
But right as I opened the door for Spencer, he pushed me immediately, causing me to stumble backwards against my couch.
"What the fuck are you doing?!" I questioned with a glare. I obviously knew he was angry from how he was banging at my door, but I didn't expect him to react with violence instantly.
"You're seriously asking that? You're actually asking me that question when you ruined our whole friend group?!" He was yelling so loud I was sure all my neighbors could hear.
My expression didn't change and I shot back
"What are you talking about? Calm down and explain to me what's going on."
Of course I knew what he was talking about.
The incident that happened a few days ago that caused irreversible damage to our friend group.
It was a single anonymous sender. Everyone in the group chat got messages from him.
And the messages weren't pretty.
"Stacy cheated on Ethan with Amare."
"Veronica has a secret OnlyBands, her username is _______ and all of her archived content can be found at _______"
"Adam thinks Veronica is ugly"
"Jasmine had sex with a dog."
"Spencer has a 3 inch dick."
"Amare used to fuck his cousin, and she gave him an STD."
"No one in the friend group likes Spencer."
Of course that wasn't the end of it. All types of secrets were told.
A lot were real.
Amare did fuck his cousin, and he did have an STD.
I knew this because he told me and Spencer one day freshman year while we were drinking. We both called him disgusting but promised to keep it a secret because if the girls found out it would be a problem.
Or the fact that Veronica did actually have an OnlyBands account.
But among those, there were also a number that were fake.
For example, Jasmine never had sex with a dog.
She was the nicest girl you'll know, someone who opened the door for people no matter what.
Someone who would come and help you regardless of her circumstances.
But of course people always wondered, someone like that must have a dark side. After all, people loved comparing others to themselves.
So amongst all the truths listed, people found it easy to believe that the kind, loving Jasmine would have such a dark secret.
How did I know this you ask?
Because this anonymous sender was me.
Why did I do it? Was it out of malice? Did I secretly hate all of them?
Not really.
Honestly I liked their company. They were easy to talk to, had pretty good humor, and they were all raging alcoholics like me.
But amidst all that, I didn't really feel attached to any of them.
They were all so close to each other, and I could tell they truly loved each other – and me – as friends.
But I only felt a surface level connection with them.
Honestly, it derived from curiosity.
Did they all really along as well as they did? Were their bonds actually THAT close? Were they pretending?
So I exposed their secrets.
Because I wanted to see how they would react.
But back to the situation at hand, Spencer was staring at me with a glare that could kill me if it had the ability to.
"Don't fucking pretend. I have proof!"
I frowned and raised my hands in surrender. "Proof of what? What is it that you think I did? Did that anonymous sender send you bullshit again? You know everything he sends is lies right?"
He grabbed my collar. Spencer was a big dude, 6'3, jacked, shredded out of his mind. Probably like 10% bodyfat if I had to guess, dude was a unit.
Must have been heartbreaking to find out his dick would only ever grow to 3 inches huh? Imagine how small it must look compared to-
"Shut the fuck up!" He yelled, I could practically feel spit flying in my face. "Anonymous sender my ass! It was you!"
My eyes widened.
Now that genuinely surprised me.
Had he seriously found out? But how? I covered all my tracks. I used a burner email, cheap burner laptop, I only used the university wifi so it couldn't be reliably tracked back to me, and I made sure to include enough lies about me that it shouldn't have been obvious.
So how did this dumbass figure out?
Regardless, I kept my hands up in the air in mock surrender and gave the default response.
"Bro what are you talking about?" I feigned confusion. That was the best approach, considering he could be bluffing. If you instantly get defensive, it can come off as suspicious, at least from my experience.
"You're still acting innocent?" He yelled and punched me in the face. I fell backwards against the sofa and instant pain surged in my left jaw. "I have proof you bastard!"
Then he showed me his "proof." It was my burner laptop. But how was that possible? I vividly remember burning it after deleting all the burner emails so there would be no proof.
So how was the laptop that I burned to a crisp sitting in Spencer's hand, looking as if it was brand new.
Spencer continued yelling.
"There's a document on here with profiles for 6 of us in the friend group, with all our secrets all organized! 6 of us, not 7 Adam. You know who's profile is missing?
He didn't specify, but I knew what he meant.
I mean, I was the one who wrote those profiles.
"Just relax, Spencer, that doesn't prove anything. I've never even owned a laptop like that, for all you know it could be the same anonymous sender trying to turn me into the scapegoat. I mean think about it, he knew secrets I wouldn't know!" I tried to reason with him, but his forehead was practically bulging with veins at this point.
"I fucking trusted you man. You were my best friend, and you went and outed me like that? Outed everyone? Even your own girlfriend? What the fuck is wrong with you?!"
Woah, 'best friend'? When did that happen?
"Spencer, listen to me, I don't kn-"
I was interrupted by his fist slamming into my face.
He had angry tears down his face, "Fuck dude, she broke up with me because of you. We were going to wait for marriage, but she just left. She said it's not because of what was said in the messages, but I know god damn well!"
Okay there was no reasoning with him at this point. I just had to let him vent, and then talk when he calms down.
However it didn't seem like that was going to happen.
"Veronica doesn't go out anymore! Jasmine's rumor was leaked and everyone thinks she's a freak now, and she's become a social outcast! Ethan is in jail because he assaulted Stacy and Amare! Was this all just some joke to you?
Did you not care about any of us?!"
I didn't say anything, deciding to be quiet.
But then he did something unexpected.
He pulled out a knife from his back pocket.
My eyes widened, and I tried to move away, but Spencer grabbed my face with his hand. It was big enough to completely palm my face, and I couldn't move.
I tried to kick at him but he grabbed my foot with one arm and pinned my other leg down with his knee.
I was completely overpowered.
"Spencer, calm down!! What the fuck are you doing?!" I yelled as I tried to thrash around, grabbing his hard holding my face, but it wouldn't budge. Spencer wasn't just strong, he was a genetic freak. Someone like me who only went to the gym once every two weeks performatively would never be able to escape his grasp.
Dread spread throughout me.
Was I going to die?
I looked Spencer in the eye and all I could see was overwhelming anger.
Was what I did really that bad?
Was he really going to kill me over it?
I was just curious.
Why did it turn out this way?
Suddenly, I felt a warm sensation in the side of my neck, and my vision started to get blurry.
As my vision faded, I saw a shadowy figure behind my friend. Not moving, not breathing, just… there. My vision grew darker and darker, but the figure didn't fade.
But I didn't have much time to think about it.
My vision turned dark.