CHAPTER 249: WHAT THE HELL?

"Boy, you really threw the world into something, 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 came back. And he did, leaving behind a chaos the world had never seen before.

Or rather, not chaos... something 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 judgment with cold precision, like divine punishment on the guilty. His Grace radiated healing energy, visibly touching the crowd and engraving itself on their minds.

Even now, Rhys scrolled through media 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 blamed 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 meaning 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 comment 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."

Judgment had been passed, and the public was rewriting history to fit a harsher truth they could live with—an uncomfortable peace born of selective memory 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 nicknames this cringeworthy.

"I was getting to the best part," Rhys laughed, clearly enjoying himself. He’d obviously taken the time 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 moment—to hype the crowd, to push them further. It didn’t mean 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. "Some 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 something larger. They were always eager to be swept up in whatever gave them meaning, 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 name—Graves!" He laughed so hard he nearly dropped his tablet.

"Well..." Adyr allowed himself a faint smile. He remembered the nickname 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 dimension.

If his body had been in a safer area—somewhere 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 emerge from any direction at any moment, 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 immediately 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 mental 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 membrane under pressure. It almost looked like someone had overdone a botox injection, but on every inch of his flesh.

Then the sensation deepened. His nerves flared, muscles spasmed, and joints popped as micro-adjustments rippled through his frame. Even his internal organs began a silent metamorphosis, grinding and shifting within as if aligning to some 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 me... I wish I could try that stat shit at least once," Rhys muttered with genuine awe. The idea that someone could physically evolve in mere seconds just by allocating something 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.