A viciously pungent chemical odor stabbed into his nose. It wasn't the ordinary stench of a monster. The rank reek of beasts, the bloody stink of rotting flesh, and the nauseating chemical fumes one might expect only in an alchemist's illegal underground workshop had all mingled together, pressing down heavily on the air in every direction.
That foul, heavy air clawing at his lungs reminded him with bone-deep clarity that this was Vertus's hardcore hell on earth, a place where mercy did not exist. Antonio and Kyle burst out from the muddy forest floor beneath the thick darkness.
But the two enormous mutant monsters, raging as they tore through the mercenary corpses strewn in every direction with bloodshot eyes, had no chance of missing the presence of foreign prey trespassing in their territory.
"Grrrraaaaargh!"
A hideous roar, seemingly capable of shredding eardrums to pieces, shook the forest thick with ancient trees. Deep, scorched brands bearing the grotesque designations R-21 and R-20 were burned into their broad shoulder blades. The brands themselves seemed to glow red from the beastly heat radiating off them. Across their hideous, bulging muscles, black veins writhed grotesquely like earthworms, a result of the artificially injected drugs.
"Damn it. The arena rumors were true. What the hell did those lunatics do to the monsters?"
Antonio hurriedly ducked behind an oak trunk and spat the curse through clenched teeth. Their sheer, overwhelming violence seemed capable of stealing the oxygen from the surrounding air and warping gravity simply by standing still—far too much for an ordinary human being to bear. One of them, the enormous orc marked R-20, raised a crude log club and charged straight at them.
Boom!
When the massive club came crashing down like lightning through the darkness and slammed into the ground, Antonio and Kyle threw themselves aside on reflex, scattering in opposite directions. Rocks and sharp splinters of wood flew up and grazed their cheeks, leaving shallow cuts, but neither paid them any attention as they rolled and burrowed in beside the thick roots of the great oak. Antonio suppressed his ragged breathing, which had risen to his chin, and turned his head toward Kyle, crouched on the opposite side. His eyes flashed as fiercely as a beast's.
"Kid."
Antonio called to Kyle in a low, restrained voice. Kyle turned his head and stared at him blankly. Those were not the eyes of a fifteen-year-old orphan who should have been trembling in terror.
"I won't explain this at length. Listen carefully. Even at a glance, you can tell those things have been soaked in drugs until their intelligence has fallen below that of beasts. But remember this. Even scraps like that retain one instinct with grotesque tenacity: the primitive urge to protect their kind and tear their enemies apart. If one of them is wounded and starts bleeding, the other will charge straight toward it without thinking. Do you understand me?"
Instead of answering, Kyle lightly tapped the mud with the tip of his bloodstained steel sword. It was the cold affirmation unique to a boy whose vocal cords were ruined and who could no longer speak. Antonio let out a hollow laugh at those mechanical, emotionless eyes.
"Crazy little bastard. Did you cut off your nerve along with your umbilical cord?"
Antonio swept a sidelong glance across the ancient trees and vines scattered all around them. The perfect survival insight he'd acquired over thirty-one years of crossing blood-soaked killing grounds flashed rapidly through his mind.
"We'll use this tangled forest terrain to split them up. Their hides are like steel, so don't even think about striking bone or thick muscle! You'll only break your sword. I'll draw the R-20's attention first and completely tie down its mobility. You target only the soft gaps between the joints that aren't protected by muscle and finish it. Hesitate for even an inch, and we'll both be ground into meat paste by that club. Got it?"
Kyle silently nodded once more. The primitive fear of death and the psychological pressure had already been erased completely. Right now, the only thing turning through his mind was an anatomical calculation of how to butcher the prey before him as efficiently as possible.
"Let's go!"
After confirming Kyle's silent assent, Antonio explosively kicked off the muddy ground and burst forward. The heavy footfalls of the fifty-one-year-old mercenary leaping from the cover of the oak like a starving old hunting hound made the R-20 orc's red eyes snap toward him.
"Raaaargh!"
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The forest shook as if struck by a massive earthquake with every step the orc took, nearly three hundred kilograms of weight behind it. With a terrifying whistle that tore through the air, a house-sized club came crashing straight down toward the crown of Antonio's head.
"You slow, bloated bastard!"
Antonio bared his teeth and screamed. Craaaash! The hard ground several meters around them split like a spiderweb and caved in deeply. The destructive force was so terrible that a mere graze would have ruptured his organs. But just before the attack reached the ground, Antonio had already used the thick base of the great tree as a foothold, launched himself into the air, and twisted his body fluidly. The orc's clumsy downward swing inevitably created a blind spot beneath it. Antonio slipped into that opening like a snake.
Slice!
Antonio's keen slash, sliding in behind it, flashed through the darkness. He couldn't sheath the blade in mana, but the old sword, carrying thirty-one years of hard-won practical strength and rotational force, bit precisely into the soft joint behind the orc's right knee—the most vulnerable defensive point in its lower body. Tough, crude hide split open, and the thick tendon beneath it tore more than halfway through with a sharp snap.
"Raaaargh!"
With one of its vital pillars collapsing, the enormous orc staggered with a terrible scream. Antonio did not miss the instant opening. He brought both feet together and drove a savage kick into the intact thigh on the opposite side of the collapsing orc. Driven back by the blow carrying his full weight, the orc's foot became horribly tangled in the dense, resilient mass of vines Antonio had guided it toward beforehand.
Crash!
Its foot caught, the orc toppled hard with an ugly tearing sound. Antonio crawled onto its back like a beast. He pressed the flat of his sword against the thick back of its neck, pinning it completely to the ground as the monster thrashed.
"Grrk! Raaaargh!"
The orc fought to fling him off with monstrous strength, and the muscles in both of Antonio's arms bulged as if they might burst. Veins standing out across his forehead, he forced the creature down and roared until his throat tore.
"Now, kid! Strike!!"
Tap!
The instant his words left his mouth, Kyle exploded from behind the oak where he'd been hiding, like an arrow loosed from a bow. His movements were those of a controlled assassin, utterly stripped of wasted motion—impossible to believe they belonged to a scrawny orphan boy wielding a heavy steel sword. Kyle's emotionless eyes scanned the orc's anatomy in real time as it flailed like a beast sinking into a swamp. When Antonio's seasoned knowledge and Kyle's cheating-level talent combined, a clear anatomical killing route emerged: bypass the creature's steel-like major muscles and strike only the soft tissue.
Squelch!
The first strike. Kyle's sword drove vertically through the thin ligament between the bones of the orc's left wrist joint as it desperately struggled to hold on to its club, then twisted viciously.
"Gh, grrr……!"
The orc's grip slackened with a smack. The first suppression: its primary weapon neutralized. But the vitality granted by the drugs was tenacious. Even as blood poured from its wrist, the enraged creature jerked its head up and opened its jaws, trying to bite through Kyle's lower body.
Even that desperate struggle fell within Kyle's calculations. At the exact instant the creature lifted its head, the thick skin along the side of its folded neck pulled taut, fully exposing the lethal weak point hidden beneath it. The vital passage beneath the thick sternocleidomastoid muscle, where the carotid artery ran thickest.
Gush!
Kyle put his entire weight behind the blade and drove it without hesitation into the taut side of the creature's neck. The steel-like hide split, and the sword sank deep, tearing through the gap at the base of its skull.
"Ggh, uhrr…… kh!"
A torrent of blood erupted and drenched Kyle's face. It was unquestionably a fatal wound, yet the monster charged forward with the sword still buried in its neck, reaching out with its exposed-bone right hand to snap Kyle's neck in one motion. But Kyle didn't even blink. He didn't try to wrench the sword free, either. Just before the orc's right hand reached him, he put his weight into both hands gripping the hilt and twisted hard clockwise, using the blade as a lever.
Crack! Crunch! Crack-crack!
The blade rotated violently inside the neck, grinding through tough muscle fibers and cervical vertebrae like a blender. Only after its central nervous system had been reduced to pulp did the enormous monster let its hand drop and die completely.
"Hah… hah… damn it. We actually got it."
Antonio tumbled from the creature's back, breathing heavily. It had been an easy hunt, made possible by skilled battlefield setup and mechanical exploitation of weaknesses. But for Kyle, his truly grotesque evolution was only beginning.
Fwoosh!
A massive crimson haze invisible to ordinary eyes burst from the dead orc's body. The hidden trait coiled around Kyle's soul—Greed—had activated, ravenously devouring the enemy's immense vitality.
"Ggh……!"
A suppressed metallic rasp escaped Kyle's lips. The tiny amount of mana that had been no more than a speck instantly ran wild, forcibly boring through the narrow, blocked channels throughout his body. As growing pains burned through him as though his entire body were being incinerated alive, Kyle's experience surged in an instant, and the mana in his lower core swelled into a red mass the size of a fist.
But it wasn't merely an increase in mana. A sticky, heavy, alien energy burrowed into Kyle's body. Kyle instinctively realized that the essence of the orc's unique trait—the absolute physical strength of the monster he'd just killed with his own hands—was being forced into his body.
Hiss……! Crack, crack!
Deformed cracking sounds erupted beneath his skin. His gaunt, weak muscle cells and fibers accepted the orc's strength and transformed, becoming tough and dense like a beast's. Outwardly, he was still a painfully thin boy, but the muscle within him had been compressed without a single gap, like steel cable.
In an instant, his pure physical abilities rose vertically by roughly fifty percent. When he clenched his fist, the joints twisted, bursting the air with a sharp pop. A wild strength capable of shattering even a log barehanded took control of Kyle.
"Grrrraaaaaaaaaaagh!!"
That was when it happened. Having witnessed its kin butchered, the remaining orc, R-21, completely lost its reason as the arena drugs mixed with its primal fury, sending it into a terrifying frenzy. Its eyes rolled grotesquely, and acidic vapor poured from its jaws. Its muscles swelled past their limits, tearing through the outer skin as black blood burst out.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
R-21 charged at Antonio like an uncontrollable tank.
"What the hell……! Who charges the bloodied one first?!"
Cursing, Antonio hurriedly rolled away, seized his old sword, and assumed a defensive stance. The very next moment, the frenzied orc gripped the club in both hands like a cannon and brought it crashing down at Antonio's upper body with the force of a thunderbolt.
Boom! Clang!!
"Guh, hhk……!"
Even though he turned the flat of his sword and deflected the blow, the kinetic energy pouring through his entire body surpassed human limits. Antonio's feet dug into the mud as he was driven back several meters, and dark-red blood gurgled from his mouth, unable to withstand the impact to his organs. The skin of his palms split, and both hands gripping the sword trembled like aspens.
"Raaaargh!"
A furious, monstrous barrage rained down without pause. Antonio abandoned all dignity and rolled desperately through the mud, narrowly evading death, but at last a massive wall of rock behind him blocked his escape.
With death's shadow gripping his neck in a desperate crisis, Antonio bit down on his blood-smeared lips and began squeezing out the last handful of mana within him to its limit.
Whoosh!
Blue mana surged backward and rushed into Antonio's blade. A hazy blue veil of mana thinly wrapped the chipped sword's surface. It was a crude mana manifestation wrung out at the lower limit of a Sword Runner's ability, lacking finesse and dispersing almost immediately—but by exploding it only at the instant of impact, it prevented the weapon from breaking and offset some of the blow's destructive force. It was a tenacious survival technique forged from thirty-one years of blood and sweat.
"Come on, you mongrel bastard!"
Clang! Clang!
Blue light flashed every time club and sword collided, bleeding off the orc's strength. And in the deep darkness, Kyle's pupils, which had been silently watching the desperate struggle, widened slightly. The cheating-level talent sleeping within him began to spin furiously in real time.
As Antonio risked his life to deploy one fleeting burst of mana after another, the laws of physics and time within Kyle's vision split apart and slowed to a perfect crawl. A precise trajectory of power: a handful of mana drawn from the veteran's lower core, forcing its way through thick channels, traveling down through his shoulder and across the fine muscle fibers of his wrist, then condensing explosively into the center of the blade in exactly 0.1 seconds.
That astonishing process was etched perfectly into Kyle's mind like a transparent anatomical diagram through which every flow of mana was visible. There was no need to analyze it intellectually. The body of the Heavenly Martial Physique absorbed the principles of thirty-one years of mana manipulation first, cell by cell, like a dry sponge, and completely made them its own. Kyle closed and opened his cold, sunken eyes. He drew the fist-sized mass of red mana newly settled in his lower core up to the surface. Through the narrow channels of his underdeveloped body, it was the maximum amount he could release in a single burst, in a single instant.
Without a moment's hesitation, Kyle violently forced that mass of mana into the steel sword clenched in his hands.
Gooooo……!
"……What?!"
Antonio's eyes, clouded by despair and breathless pain, widened until they seemed ready to split from shock. A chillingly alien, overwhelming energy had erupted from the blind spot behind him. Over the ordinary steel sword in Kyle's hands, a blade of pure, high-density crimson mana—on an entirely different level from Antonio's dispersing, crude energy—was being honed like a massive needle. Though they stood within the same realm of Sword Runners, its purity and density overwhelmed Antonio's achievement of thirty-one years, mocking it by comparison.
Boom!
Having gained the orc's muscle and physical strength, Kyle explosively kicked off the muddy ground and burst forward. The ground caved in beneath his fifty-percent-amplified thrust, and Kyle flew through the air like an arrow loosed from a bow, slicing the air with a piercing whistle. The orc, about to smash Antonio to pieces, reacted to the lethal killing intent and redirected the club's trajectory, swinging it at Kyle.
Swoosh!
Kyle twisted his body in midair with the grotesquely strengthened power in his waist, narrowly evading the club's path. The wind from the club sliced open his cheek, and blood ran down his face, but his abyssal gaze did not waver by a hair.
Slash!
Kyle's sword, sheathed in crimson mana, tore viciously into the orc's fully exposed right shoulder joint. Tough hide and bone were cleaved halfway through as easily as rotten wood.
"Graaaargh!"
Even through the pain of its ruined right shoulder, the frenzied creature reached out with its intact left hand, trying to seize Kyle's neck in one motion. But Kyle was as cold as a machine incapable of emotion. Rather than dodge the enormous forearm reaching for him, he stepped onto it as a foothold and vaulted into the air.
Tap!
At the peak of his ascent, Kyle used centrifugal force to spin his body once. The overwhelming physical strength amplified by fifty percent, his falling body weight, and the crimson mana condensed perfectly into a single sword tip combined into one deadly trajectory that shot fiercely upward toward the open space beneath the creature's jaw.
Sliiice! Crunch!!
The crimson tip pierced straight through the flesh beneath its jaw, tore through its brain, and drove vertically through to the bone of the skull's roof without allowing even the slightest resistance. For an instant, a strange, oppressive silence swallowed everything. The monster that had been rampaging madly stopped dead as if someone had flipped a switch, and an enormous torrent of blood gushed from its pierced crown and jaw like a waterfall.
Boom!
The massive body, its brain destroyed, collapsed miserably onto the muddy ground. At the same time, a tidal wave of vitality poured madly out of the second orc and into Kyle's body.
Rumble!!
An enormous amount of experience, nearing its peak, exploded and slammed into every part of Kyle's body. A dizzying catharsis, as intense as leveling up repeatedly past his limits, violently shook his soul. The vessel of his soul split and expanded with loud cracks, while the crimson mana in his lower core, once the size of a fist, rapidly swelled to one and a half fists in a single instant, pulsing hot and heavy in his stomach like a blast furnace. He had finally stepped into the entry level of a Sword Runner—the realm where mana could be loaded into a sword and unleashed in a fleeting instant.
The exhaustion in his muscles and bones, worked nearly to the point of tearing apart, melted away like snow under a wave of vitality, replaced by an abundance of explosive wild energy. It was a grotesque, wondrous evolution wrought by only two desperate battles.
Tap, tap.
Kyle landed on the blood-soaked ground as silently as a feather. He casually flicked the steel sword dripping with brain matter and blood once through the air, then slowly turned toward Antonio.
"……Hah. Fuck me."
Antonio sank helplessly onto the floor, which was a ruin of blood and mud. He stared blankly up at the unreal slaughter before him, his mind completely gone, and muttered in a cracked voice. The hand that had been holding his old sword had dropped the weapon and now trembled like an aspen as it braced against the mud.
Thirty-one years spent rolling through life as a mercenary. He had crossed bloody battlefields and brutal wilderness for his entire life, witnessing countless renowned knights, geniuses, and grotesque monsters. But the gaunt fifteen-year-old boy looking down at him with a dry gaze was something that violated every piece of common sense and every law of survival Antonio had carved into his bones over a lifetime.
"You…… that was my technique, wasn't it……?"
Antonio asked hollowly, unable to believe it, but Kyle offered no answer. The combat intelligence to perfectly understand and coordinate a strategy that exploited the orc's traits and the forest terrain. The cheating-level talent to absorb a mana manipulation method no one had taught him, soaking it up like a sponge after only a few sidelong glances in the split seconds between life and death.
The overwhelming comprehension to filter out the impurities in a thirty-one-year-old, weathered technique in a single instant, evolve it into a far purer and more destructive crimson form, and unleash it in an explosion. The bizarre phenomenon of his bones and muscles swelling in real time every time he cut an enemy's lifeline, absorbing even a monster's traits and growing stronger.
Antonio's lips, dried and cracked with fear, trembled soundlessly as he swallowed thick, dry saliva. A profound shiver and near-awe at Kyle's almost-sublime talent rose within him. But following that awe, something else coiled around his nape: a primal fear that froze him to the marrow.
There was no thrill of victory. Not even the slightest guilt over the slaughter. No disgust at being drenched in blood, nor the slightest emotional disturbance. A perfect emptiness. The boy's hollow, abyss-like pupils watched him dryly, the boy slaughtering life as naturally as breathing. The instant he met that pitch-black abyss, a bitterly cold shiver clung to the old mercenary's spine like a leech.
This is a catastrophe.
In this mad hellscape, they hadn't survived by mere luck. A chilling intuition seized him: he had helped give birth to the world's most perfect and horrifying catastrophe, a demon that would soon stain the entire harsh continent of Vertus crimson and ultimately devour it.
"God…… what kind of monster did I wake up……?"
Only Antonio's dry, hollow laugh echoed emptily through the blood-soaked forest as silence descended. That despairing, grotesque terror had bleached the old veteran hunting hound's reason white.