Born in apocalypse

Before the sun could fully escape the horizon, a voice shattered the calm of the room, waking the person within, "Hey, brother, see what’s happening on the internet. The fight between Mom and the lady from yesterday has gone viral. There are hundreds of articles about it all over the news websites."

"Huh! What??" Even though he wasn’t surprised, Dhruv put up a surprised expression for someone within the room.

"Yes! See this!!" Saying these words, Surya quickly handed over his phone.

Looking at the phone in front of him, Dhruv wasn’t surprised to find that every website was milking the scenario.

[This rich kid Seems disrespecting elders in Her own Restaurant...]

[See, how her kindness was all a lie created for her image...]

[Watch the interview of the one who had captured this heinous act on her phone, exclusively on our channel...]

[The guests were even thrown away from the hotel after the incident...]

[The Tressy hotel franchise is getting backlash over the incident last afternoon...]

[....]

[....]

The more Dhruv was scrolling the sites the more he was seeing the same content. Somehow the whole incident has become a breaking news overnight... which wasn’t a surprising thing, to be honest.

The only daughter, whose father is a multi-billionaire and owns multiple successful businesses, has been caught behaving badly in public... is all the ingredients needed to make a piece of breaking news.

As he looked at the screen in front of him, an obvious distress began to appear on his face. The reason for his anguish was clear: Dhruv knew and had endured well how these headlines had affected his entire life.

Not wanting to look at those cursed headlines anymore, Dhruv gave the phone back to his brother and buried his head back in the pillow. No matter how much he thought, he ultimately arrived at a single conclusion.

’There is no point in me staying here anymore...’

’Sigh! Nothing good is going to happen from now on...’

’ugggg! This is it. There is no point in prolonging the inevitable. I should get out of here as soon as possible.’

Even though Dhruv knew this wasn’t the end, and he could continue staying here, observing his own life as it slowly unfolded in front of him... he was in the mood to do that... not anymore.

Sigh!

Sighing a deep breath, he began to form mana in his surroundings along with his own body. Something resisted this wish of his, but his own resistance was far stronger than the resistance resisting his wish.

In just a matter of seconds, the world witnessed an evolution as mana began to flow around. Even though there was limitless mana, nobody knew how to use it... except for one. No, two.

Focusing, Dhruv began to manipulate his mana to create a spell far...

Knock! Knock!

The moment the sound of knocking reached his ears, his mana became unstable, resulting in the blueprint falling apart instantly. A pained smile appeared on his face as he realized who might be the one knocking on his door.

Looking in that direction, he muttered, "It must be Mother and Rani... go open the door.’

Dhruv saw his brother’s head nodding as he walked out of bed and hurriedly went to open the door. Looking at his back, thoughts began to appear in his head, ’Let’s talk with them for the last time. There is no harm in doing that, right? It could send me back once again, but nothing more than that. Yes! I should talk with them... even though they aren’t real.’

It had been quite some time since Dhruv knew that he wasn’t in the real world... nor was he in a normal dream. To be precise, he had grasped everything from the moment he saw his mark... the Mark of Asteri.

Even though he learned the truth after the beach incident, from the very start, there had been a feeling inside him that something was wrong with him... the only problem was that he wasn’t aware of what it was.

The problem he faced wasn’t really a problem because the man possessed a skill whose value proved to be far greater than he had expected, and the name of the skill is... Illusion Resistance.

Even the very first feeling he had, about ’something is wrong’... is precisely because of the skill Illusion Resistance. From then on, the skill was constantly evolving with each second he spent in the weird realm.

For a skill like that, this place is a heaven-made opportunity... each second Dhruv was evolving to create a resistance to it.

If he didn’t have that skill, he wouldn’t even have a clue how he had been able to figure everything out and probably would have spent his life trapped in this weird reality.

The one responsible for bringing Dhruv here even tried to wipe his memory every time he got some type of clue about the real world or was on the verge of disrupting the flow.

It had to clear the memory every time Dhruv was about to disrupt the flow because the monster didn’t have the required memories to create the necessary environment to keep the victim.

It had even succeeded in clearing his memory a few times...

But everything changed when Dhruv’s skill evolved enough that he couldn’t be put into an illusion anymore—or, more precisely, he couldn’t be put into the illusion at the level created by the one responsible for this.

After numerous trials with changing the flow, he even found a way to get out of there.

The reason why Dhruv still chooses to spend time with his family despite knowing that they aren’t real is because he doesn’t entirely consider them unreal. Perhaps it was his own insecurity or maybe it was his own illusion, but what he believed was that they were as real as they could be...

...After all, they have been created from his own memory. And his memory of them was as real as it can get.

Removing his plain expression, Dhruv put a smile on his face as he saw his mother entering his field of vision. Before he could say anything, he heard his mother muttering in a worried tone.

"Dhruv, have you seen it? They made the tomorrow incident a breaking news. I don’t have a good feeling about it."

His mother was distressed because she knew very well that there wasn’t any good thing going to happen after getting entangled with this type of business person—certainly not when it had happened for a negative purpose.

"Yes, I have seen it Mother... But what can we even do? They have already published everything there was to publish. We can’t just ask them to take it down, can we? I mean we can but there isn’t any guarantee that they will listen to us without involving the courts in this..." Dhruv muttered, making a different point from his previous one.

He was trying his hardest to calm everyone, but to his surprise, his mom wasn’t getting any calmer. "We should get out of here, right? There is no point in being here anymore. We should get out of here... they won’t leave us alone here. I had told you this was a good plan to begin with, haven’t I, Dhruv?"

"Yes, that is right Mother... we won’t be spared by the reporters anymore to spend our vacation calmly." Clearly ignoring the last sentence, Dhruv nodded agreeing with his mother,

Dhruv was about to ponder on this weird behavior that his mother had shown but was forced to stop as something interrupted him.

Ring! Ring!

It didn’t take Dhruv long to figure out that his mother’s phone was ringing. The moment he noticed that even his forced smile faded.

’This isn’t right; there shouldn’t be any phone calls until the day after tomorrow. Sooo... It has begun to interrupt again, trying to bring everything forward before it had happened... well, I clearly know why it is trying to do that.’ Dhruv thought, fully aware of what was going on and whose call it was."

Looking towards his mother, he whispered, "Mother, someone is calling you."

"Uhhh! Yes!...." Before answering the phone, she looked at the number to check who it was. After finding out that it was an unknown number, she handed her phone directly to her son...

Picking up the phone with a smile on his face, he clicked on the green icon. Within a second, a reply came from the other side.

"Hello, this is Kruger Tressy, the father of Naina... the girl who misbehaved with you. Are you free at the moment? I would like to invite you to my hotel to offer a sincere apology." Without listening to Dhruv’s words, the other side continued to mumble on and on.

When he finally calmed down, Dhruv muttered, "Tressy, count your days down... because I, Dhruv, the King of All Asteris, will be coming for your head."

Without waiting for anyone’s reply, he walked toward the door and opened it...

Click.

It didn’t take him long to realize that he was once again in the White Void.