《The man who stared at the Abyss》


 Chapter 1

    Hiromi. This name had spread through the entirety of Harth, a planet once constantly bathing in bloodshed.


    Through his actions, he brought peace and prosperity to a decaying world. Creating a lasting peace for the various races and nations, he was highly regarded by basically everyone, even the vicious undead, and the bloodthirsty devils


    Saving princesses, helping commoners, ending wars... His achievements were innumerable, and what was even more shocking was that it only took him 3 years to achieve this!


    Nonetheless, this is not a tale about how he achieved such things. All that is need to know is that he achieved them.


    Right now, Hiromi was in a strange, white room that resembled an office. A beautiful woman sat on a desk, looking at the standing Hiromi, who still harbored the goofy smile he had never lost.


    Sighing, she looked at him with strange, but relieved eyes. "Hiromi, you''ve really helped me. If you hadn''t come, Harth would have been destroyed by all the decay. Thank you." She said as she bowed.


    Seeing this, Hiromi quickly got flustered and shouted, "N-no need to thank me, Goddess-sama! It was my duty as a hero to help people!"


    Laughing, the goddess said, "Hehe, you''ve always been too kind for your own good, Hiromi. I guess that''s part of your charm..." She said as a slight blush ran up her cheeks.


    "Haha, thank you." Hiromi laughed as he nervously rubbed the back of his head whilst fidgeting. "So, what do you need me for? Are there some problems?" He finally decided to ask.


    "Oh, nothing like that. I simply decided that you need a reward for all you''ve done for me!" The Goddess said as she remembered. Standingup, she put on a dramatic pose as she pointed at Hiromi whilst shouting, "You have been granted three wishes by me, the mighty Goddess of Life, Ariel! Be grateful, mortal!"


    After a short moment of silence from both sides, they burst out laughing at the same time. After a while, Hiromi began to ponder out loud.


    "Hmm... So, what do I want... Ok, first, I want the world to be a better place! I want all the bad places to go away and be replaced with beautiful Japanese-like climate." He said after a while. The goddess couldn''t contain a stifle of laughter at his remark but still nodded and waved him on.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    "Ok, second of all, I want to be immortal. This way,I can forever enjoy the company of Maria-san, Yue-san and all of my friends!" He said. Again, Ariel nodded.


    "What else..." Hiromi murmured as he thought with a concentrated face, which paired with his weeb-like looks, made him look quite stupid and funny at the same time.


    "Oh, yes! I want to know the truth about everything!" Hiromi said after a while. Hearing this, Ariel''s face turned serious as she looked at Hiromi and asked, "Why? That''s... a dangerous thing to ask..."


    "Well, grandpa has always said that the truth is what all men should strive to know! He looked so sad when he said he wouldn''t be able to understand it in his lifetime..." Hiromi said with a sad face.


    Hearing this, Ariel knew that it would be impossible to convince Hiromi to choose something else. Besides, she herself didn''t know ''the truth''. After all, gods are not omnipotent. Powerful, yes, but they have had very severe limitations placed on them ever since their birth when this universe was created.


    Therefore, she only knew of ''the truth'' as a concept, but she didn''t actually know it. Therefore, she didn''t insist and gave Hiromi a small mirror that didn''t actually reflect anything and said, "Here. When you are ready to see ''it'', look into the mirror."


    Nodding, Hiromi took the mirror and put it in the breast pocket of his anime shirt. After another small chat, the Goddess finally sent the eager Hiromi back to the mortal world.


    Reappearing inside his little room in a large house in the countryside, Hiromi swiftly went into his bed that had covers with anime-girls drawn on them and a waifu-pillow.


    Sitting on the abomination, Hiromi took the mirror from his pocket and looked at it from all angles. "Huh... I can''t see anything..."


    But, just as he was about to put it away, he saw a small light on the dark side of the mirror. Putting it right before his eye, he tried to look at it.


    Suddenly, his whole consciousness was sucked into this small light. With wide eyes, he looked as the small light began to expand...


    "Aaaa... AaaAAaaA... AAAAAA!" A guttural, mad scream came from Hiroshi''s throat a moment later. Images of creation and destruction, life and death, pain and pleasure, love and h@?eD*@ a)¡Ö@?# ¨B(K(@¡ÌX ¡Ò%¡Ì??&#@¡ä?_+!@?¨B*%?^+@!*¡Ò...


    "AAAAAAAAAAAAA"Releasing a scream so pained, so insane that the very ground trembled, Hiromi clawed at his face as he fell from his bed, writhing and screaming.


    As several girls came from downstairs with panicked expressions, they all tried to help Hiromi, but it was a lost cause. His face began to bleed from how hard he clawed at himself, his eyes and ears began bleeding as his screams only intensified.


    What he saw in the mirror could not be described in words. Humans could simply never truly understand it through mere words, and looking at it would cause god knows what. No, not even gods would know.


    Despite that, Hiromi had looked. As he screamed like a dying animal, in between the mindless and weird noises, some insane phrases could be heard, but one outshined all the others...


    "iT StArEd BaCk"

 Chapter 2

    "Why... No... WHY... stares back... Infinite..." A man, laying on a bed inside of a beautifully decorated room mumbled as his body shook violently, veins bursting here and there, blood coming but quickly healing. His once white skin had turned purple, some spots even a reddish black.


    "Your majesty, how is he?" A woman nervously asked. She was extremely anxious as she held the shaking man''s hand and tried to coax him, to no avail.


    "I... have no idea, but I have a hypothesis." A man, no, a demon with two horns and a leathery tail said as he pulled his hand away from the man''s forehead. This demon was the Demon Lord, and the shaking man was Hiromi.


    After leaving the room, the Demon Lord sat at a round table, multiple important figures sitting in other chairs.


    "So? How is he?" A small girl with butterfly-like wings asked. She too was anxious as she twirled her hair nervously.


    Sighing, the Demon Lord shook his head. "I have an inkling of what happened. I asked the Goddess herself, and she said that she gave him the answer to the Truth. Perhaps, he couldn''t handle it, and his mind was shattered. That is the only explanation."


    Gasping, multiple girls and even men began yelling in rage at the Demon Lord. However, a low voice calmed them all down. "Silent. Lyon, I believe you are partially correct, however, that is not a shattered mind. What you are seeing is a shattered soul."


    A girl with a spirit-like body said as she floated on her chair instead of sitting on it. She was very beautiful, but the cold look in her eyes made her beauty seem dangerous instead of attractive. "I am very sensitive to souls, and the only reason I helped Hiromi in the first place was that he had an exceptional soul. I do not know what could shatter a soul as pure and strong as his, but now, I can only sense bits and pieces of it remaining, and the more time passes, the more they feel... corrupt." She said with a slight shiver.


    "How can you say that? Hiromi would never become corrupt...!" "Yeah, you''re just jealous because he hasn''t visited you for so long!"


    Meanwhile, as all of his harem members and friends discussed, unimaginable pain constantly racked Hiromi''s body. The last bits of sanity he had had been destroyed after he was left alone. Despite his seeming unconsciousness, he could still think and feel. He knew that he had been left alone, and the pain in his body and the unimaginable knowledge he possessed began to create a dangerous reaction...


    ''They left me... They left me... I did everything I could for them, but I was still abandoned, again...'' He thought whilst pain tried to smash his mind, however, a strange power prevented his very being from extinguishing. The forbidden knowledge in his body made his very soul burn and decay, but he would not die.


    As time went on, the more radical Hiromi''s thinking became. ''They betrayed me! Betrayed me!''


    After yet another hour of nobody visiting, unknown to Hiromi, because they all went out to find doctors across the world, the pain only intensified as negative thought after dangerous thought appeared. ''Was I not good enough?'', ''Did nobody love me?'', ''I am worthless...''This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    Just as he was about to give in to despair of loneliness, a voice came out from nowhere yet everywhere. "ThIs WoRld, iS It wOrTh sAvInG?"


    Hiromi had already gone far past what anybody could call sanity. His body that refused to die and his soul that kept wanting to die made him into something that could not be described. Hence, hearing this voice, Hiromi answered by instinct.


    "I will save this world..." Hiromi answered in his mind along with a bestial roar. Hearing this, the voice cackled in a distorted voice as it whispered, "SaVe A dEcAyInG wOrLd? wHy WoUld YoU dO tHaT?"


    These words were like the whispers of a devil. The already shaking Hiromi felt shivers run down his spine as he didn''t respond.


    "SaVe ThIs WoRld? DoN''t MaKe Me LaUgH! yOu ArE pAtHeTIc!" The voice laughed as a strange chorus of noises echoed withing Hiromi''s ears. Voices from all the people he met, friends, enemies, strangers and lovers alike began laughing at him mockingly, intensifying the already unbearable pain.


    Hiromi''s will that was as hard as will and as dense as granite suddenly shattered. An incoherent and primitive roar was all that answered the voices as the distorted voice''s laughter rang like thunder, "KeKeKe! YeS! BrEaK ThEm! WhY sAvE a ShItTy WoRlD? BREAK THEM!" The voices roared in unison as a strange phenomenon occurred.


    The abyss is something unspeakable. Looking at it will grant you limitless power, but at a price, nobody can pay.  The ''truth'' that Hiromi wished to see was simply too... it is not possible to speak about it, for one can only understand the abyss after staring at it.


    Hiromi''s body stopped trembling. His purple skin turned pitch black and his eyes lost all color, turning into an abyss of darkness. His shattered soul began to come back together into something far greater, and far, far scarier than before.


    Originally, a soul should be white for normal people, golden for the pure of heart and grey for evil people. However, Hiromi''s soul had directly become completely black, and unlike normal souls, it was far more powerful.


    With a roar louder than thunder, Hiromi got up from his bed as his abyss-like eyes revealed an insanity and bloodthirst never seen before. The voice inside his head was laughing madly as it yelled, "YeSsSsS! KiLl ThEm! DeStRoY ThIs WoRlD! TuRn It InTo ChAos AnD RebUilD iT! We WiLl SaVe ThE UnIvErSe! HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!"


    Since everybody but a couple maids had left, nobody knew what was happening. As the maids rushed up, Hiromi rushed down like an unstoppable meteor.


    Seeing him, one of the maids cried out in fear, but Hiromi didn''t stop as he shoved his hand into her chest and tearing her in two.


    "TaKe HeR SoUl! BrInG HeR To SalVaTiOn!" The voice roared and Hiromi obliged. His hands turned spectral as he shoved a hand into each of the two pieces of the maid, extracting a small blue figure that resembled the maid.


    This figure cried in pain the moment Hiromi touched it, but it was powerless to resist as Hiromi mercilessly threw it into his mouth and chomped on it, crushing it.


    The same fate befell upon the entire mansion, and soon enough, Hiromi left the building, a pile of corpses with empty eyes remaining behind him. All of them had been brutally killed, some ripped apart, some beheaded and some even having chunks of their flesh bitten out.


    Outside the mansion, Hiromi roared along with the voice in his head, "I AM THE ABYSSAL LORD! I WILL BRING PEACE AND LOVE TO EVERYONE!"


    As the voice in his head cackled madly, Hiromi vanished from the spot he was standing. The next day, when all the harem members returned, they were greeted with the sight of a thousand corpses randomly lying around, all of them with dead eyes...

 Chapter 3

    "What happened!?" Several gasps resounded as a number of beautiful girls frantically looked around the ruined mansion. Some even puked at the sight of the mangled corpses.


    "Hiromi! Where is Hiromi!? They took him!" One of them cried out, leading to everyone speculating and crying desperately. They didn''t even consider that Hiromi was the one who did all of this.


    As everyone cried uselessly, the girl with a spirit-like body floated up as she yelled out, "Calm down! Whatever happened, we cannot panic. We must rescue Hiromi." She said, however, her true feelings were very complicated.


    She wasn''t completely sure, but she had thoughts that Hiromi himself caused this. He saw his face during his pained moment, and it made her shiver. A madness so deep and furious that it could even send her, the Ghost Queen, shivering.


    She had dealt with corrupt beings before. Devils, Hellspawns, Darkness Kings... Although they were corrupt, even they couldn''t compare to what she saw in Hiromi''s eyes at that moment. For the purest and kindest person in the world to fall so deep, just what happened? She couldn''t fathom, but she knew it was nothing good.


    With a sigh, she looked into the distance as she silently cursed Hiromi for multiple reasons, one of them being that he had such an obsession with gathering troublesome women next to him...


    <hr>


    Inside a giant forest with trees over a hundred meters tall, a lone figure walked aimlessly, sometimes laughing maniacally and sometimes breaking down and crying.


    An almost invisible shadow constantly whispered next to his ear with a gleeful expression, the content of its whispers dark and corrupt.


    This was Hiromi. After his rampage at the mansion, he had fled into the forest, slaughtering any beast that dared bother him.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    "KeKeKe, WhAt AbOuT tHe GhOsT qUeEn? WiLl We KiLl hEr ToO?" The shadow laughed evilly as it whispered. Hiromi growled in hatred, "Yessss, eat her... Eat soul..." He said in a broken speech. Although the corruption of the Void had shattered his mind, rendering him insane, he was by no means stupid.


    In fact, now that he had seen the Void, he knew far, far more than before. The naive, perverted youth from before was no more. In its place stood the devil of devils, the king of chaos, the Abyssal Lord.


    "WeLl SaId, BuT wE nEeD mOrE pOwEr... ChAoS mUsT rAmPaGe..." The shadow frowned as it entered into Hiromi''s head. Hiromi groaned as he felt a pounding headache hit him.


    After an amount of time, Hiromi''s eyes darkened as he spat out a black, goo-like substance. This substance quickly expanded into another exact copy of Hiromi, much to his glee.


    "Kekeke, it worked. I''m free, bitches! Quick, give me more Chaos!" The new Hiromi laughed maniacally. The original Hiromi didn''t seem surprised, rather, he spat out some more black goo, that the new Hiromi called Chaos.


    "Good! Good! We can already start creating an army this way!" The new Hiromi smirked with an almost perverted face. The original Hiromi released a few devilish hisses, making the new Hiromi''s smile die down.


    "I know we need more Chaos. But how do we get it? We lost most of our strength during our enlightenment, so we cannot be too bold. Furthermore, acting in the shadows will be difficult due to our new form..." The clone said slowly as if explaining to a child.


    "Ssss... Slaughter forest... devour beasts... Dumb, easy..." The original Hiromi hissed, his body now become much weaker due to the creation of the clone. Naturally, this technique was one of the many he learned after his ''enlightenment'', but unfortunately, just like the Abyss, even it''s techniques had heavy prices.


    "Kekeke! You''re right, Main. We are so smart!" The clone said as its body melted back into the black goo before fusing into the ground, disappearing.


    Seeing this, the original Hiromi laughed softly. However, it was not a happy laugh, just a laugh of excitement. The laugh of a lunatic before a slaughter.


    "... World... Must end... Create... Better..." He repeated to himself as he clutched at his chest, his mad expression disappearing, only to be replaced by a softer, sadder one.


    Nonetheless, it disappeared almost instantaneously. With a mad grin, he roared out to the forest before charging forward, his direction unknown, his desires aligned with his corruption.