Why? || The Max-Level Player 100th Regression x F!Reader

This Curse We Call Survival

Through everything, the hardships and cruelty, there's still so much beauty.

The darker your surroundings are, the more the cracks of light shine.

Clinging onto those rays of warmth, in this cold...cold place.

Zuri.

The warmth of your hand in mine, while we would be sleeping next to one another. A comfort. Only to be separated by a curse placed upon humanity.

Blood, Betrayal, Lies, Survival.

Every round that ended, I would wake in cold sweat.

Are you alive?

Will I wake up to a corpse next to me?

But each time, I would wake next to you. An embrace waiting for me.

My dearest friend, dare I say my soulmate. 

The one who only once turned her back on me, to protect me.

Zuri...

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The regions had long since merged, and I had strength beyond what I once thought possible—but so did the threats. This world, once just a dream, a nightmare and unforgiving, now felt cruelly real. The dirt beneath my feet was warm from blood, not sun. The monsters had faces now—some familiar, some forgotten. Stronger, faster, smarter. Like us.

But I wasn't afraid.

Not until they came.

A party of seven corrupted players. Twisted by the greed of survival, driven by the promise of power. One of them wore the face of someone we used to fight side to side with.

We fought. We bled. We burned the air with magic and played a symphony with steel. 

Until I tripped.

A slip—barely a crack in the earth—but enough to open me up to the blade flying my way.

And then—

"NO!"

Zuri.

She was faster than the death that spelled out my name.

I heard the sound before I saw it. That thud. The kind that echoed through bone. Flesh meeting steel. The sickening silence that followed.

Her back arched, blood blooming like a flower from her chest.

Time didn't stop, it shattered.

Her knees hit the ground first, then her hands. She turned to look at me, mouth twitching like it wanted to smile, like it always had a joke ready to break the tension.

But this time, her lips were trembling too much.

She coughed once, crimson spilling down her chin. Her voice, softer than I'd ever heard it, rasped out between shallow breaths.

"You're... safe, right?"

I crawled to her, arms shaking. My hands cupped her face. Warm—still warm. That warmth I clung to through sleepless nights. The warmth that got me through this cursed game.

"Why... why would you do that, Zuri? How am I supposed to survive....without you...?" My voice cracked like glass, grief boiling in my throat.

She blinked, slow. Her brown eyes so full of light even as they dimmed. "'Cause I chose you. I always have." Her hand reached up, trembling, brushing away a tear that slipped from my eye.