Its rocky, fractured visage was laden with lava. Sweeping a fatigued glance all around, it searched for something until it spotted Zayn.
The vacantness in its eyes went through several shifts before shifting into an incandescent wrath. With a guttural roar, it began rising out of the ground. The land quaked and tore apart as its massive body shifted out.
The cracks exhaled heat and death.
Zayn watched the cracks slowly reach towards him and felt a sense of doom. He was frozen and betrayed by his own limbs, unable to recede a step.
Had he run straight into his limits? After all that?
‘Undying Cockroach’ in effect!
He breathed the fiery heat in, allowing it to burn his lungs. The sloth from devouring so many gravefruits had long started to blur his sense of self, but the pain anchored him back to reality. Enough for him to move.
So, he stepped forward.
Ba-dump!
It was…weird.
His class, Red Rager, didn’t like it when he retreated. Not one bit. He had felt it when facing the knightlike golem earlier. Something was stopping him from taking a step back.
Now, the same thing whispered to move forward, and he knew—there was no going against it.
Your understanding of ‘Red Rager’ grows!
A primordial will clawed out of his chest, roaring back. It became a dull, piercing pain and hammered at his chest like a nail.
Ba-dump!
The world began to take a shade red. Inside his ribcage, his heart spluttered, a rusted cog attempting one final ignition.
Ba-dump!
Ba-dump!
Ba-dump!
It wasn’t possible; he’d already used Bloodflare earlier. He’d burned all the charges. His heart was an empty can. Every other pump was a tinge slower, as though it was attempting to kickstart an engine with no fuel.
He watched the cracks and leapt to avoid the heat. Getting killed by his own stubborn class…might just be the worst way to die: even worse than dying from something falling on your head.
This was certainly not what he meant when he said he wanted to listen to his heart. Rushing to the stone ape like this was a surefire way to death…
He’d be swatted like a fly.
And yet…despite that, why in the hells was he grinning so hard?!
Right.
Maybe, somewhere inside, he hated it all along. He hated running away. Running in circles. He’d done that his entire life. And even after changing worlds, that was all he'd been doing.
Escaping, surviving, jumping from one problem to another.
He was tired. Tired of it all.
Instead, what his heart sought was the warmth of battle. Skirting on the edge of life and death. The inevitability of marching on despite facing an impossible adversary.
Class quest II –Understand the First Law of Rager—completed!
The final bits of energy in his body scraped towards his heart like a flock of fireflies flickering on and off. They burned molten streaks through him, boiling his insides.
BA-DUMP!
But it wasn’t enough. A spark wasn’t enough to light dead wood.
“MORE!”
Something heeded the call. A unholy, cursed thing. He felt it in his soul, crawling out. A string of impure mana poured inside his body from the golden sphere. Filled him with a vigorous river of mana.
A wisp of light was born.
'Bloodflare' activated!
All the cells in his body greedily devoured the mana, lighting themselves to summon a raw burst of power from who knows where.
Error!
Covenant 3 —Cooldown— broken!
Right. By all logic, with it’s twenty four hour cooldown, Bloodflare shouldn’t have activated before tomorrow at the latest.
He was breaking logic.
All stats 15+ for the next twenty seconds.
Additionally, for holding more than 20% Fae (E) bloodline, your constitution and vitality are now boosted by 50%.
Grinning, Zayn shot at the stone ape.
Right as Bloodflare became active, his muddled head cleared up. Like breaking out of a trance after being drunk for his whole life.
Side-stepping, he avoided a magma spike rushing out of the ground. Then another, a bunch. Awfully easy to predict for this version of him.
The stone ape roared, its pride wounded that the bug-equivalent existence—him—avoided its attacks. Half of its torso burst out of the ground, and it rammed at him with its hand.
Even as the building-sized arm grew closer, Zayn felt no fear. Instead, he calculated the trajectory of the hand and vaulted high up, landing atop its arm at the perfect moment, like a cockroach that wouldn't die.
He surged towards its head, where its vital point was.
[Undying cockroach] grows stronger!
Stone golems were weak around the head and heart; this one was no different.
The ape understood his intention right away and showed a humanlike annoyance on its face. Like a human would when seeing an ant rushing towards them. Attempting to swat him off, the ape broke its own hand with its other deformed fist. Dumb of it. He guessed that the dumbness of golems and turtles had been passed down generationally.
With Bloodflare active, every move was the same as having [Reinforced Fist] on all the time.
[Undying cockroach] grows stronger.
His skin charred, but [Graveborn vitality] shot back, healing him with a burst of white, pure mana. Powered by his ridiculous vitality and a heart full of arrogance, he stood right in front of it, dumb face, sailing a scarlet fist at its face.
In its molten, glaring eyes, he saw a hint of fear.
Activating Crimson Claw, he made his fist burst out, throwing a punch, two, three, an entire combo right in its face. That was only the first phase. Each punch made the gauntlet of energy in his hand grow thicker. With each strike, the claws grew longer. And when they were big enough to extend up to his knees, he slammed down on the dumb ape. Taking off a large chunk of its nose.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Charge has been regained!
Charge: 3
He even sent a couple of Reinforced Fists without a care, just enjoying the madness.
Something clicked as he hammered at its face.
Until now, he’d been using it without much technique. The energy was mismatched, and he couldn’t time his physical movement to it. In this state, that changed.
Energy in his hands dispersed to his entire fist properly this time.
Then...he punched out.
His fists were a hammer striking down, always forward, no retreat.
Skill Reinforced Fist(High) has ranked up to Reinforced Fist(Peak)!
Skill evolution quest unlocked!
He grinned, but the next moment, all the light in his body receded.
“What?”
‘Bloodflare’ has ended!
He stopped functioning, like a speeding vehicle crashing on a tree. In the heat of battle, he’d totally forgotten about the cooldown.
He groggily stared at the scars he’d left on the ape. It was large chunks to him, but to it, it was but a scratch.
All that... for a scratch?
To be honest, he was a bit disappointed.
Still, he smirked at the stone ape.
“Next round...I won’t let you off so easily.”
The stone ape finally realised that he had run out of fuel; that he’d run out of time—the fear in its eyes was slowly replaced with rage and madness. Magma spikes burst out of the ground and pin towards him from all sides.
Watching them get closer, Zayn calmly proclaimed in the air, “You’re not going to get it if I die!”
Faeria could hear him; she was with him. He had felt her presence when he was in Bloodflare. And he’d bet his life she didn’t want him dead.
Not yet.
“You underestimate me.” Faeria walked out of his shadow, knocking him on the back of his head for being so preposterous. “But I’ll allow it for now.”
The next thing he knew, he was being dragged away.
His swaying consciousness turned pitch black.
***
Nova Rain lay sprawled on the white floors of the endless chamber, trying her best to ignore the floating bar of golden metal. She was once again drained of mana, devoid of will.
How inconvenient.
“Welcome back to Ein and Morgan. This is Astral 35.8, we’re back here with this week’s ‘Divers down’. We got a couple of interesting stories going on. Let’s start with Apollo. He and his team, ‘Crack Crawlers’, went on an incursion at a C-grade gate about a month ago. According to him, the dive went pretty well, but his teammates have since then gotten a new healer and refused to contact him. Even after he begged for an explanation, they didn't respond. Today, we’re going to try to see if we can at least learn what he did. So that Apollo can avoid it in future dives. You ready, Apollo?”
She wondered why she was even listening to this stupid, scripted show. She certainly had a lot of time to waste while her mana reserves restored, but they had better uses than…this.
“Yes, Morgan.”
She ignored the following conversation, turning it into background noise to keep her spiralling thoughts in bay. But the doomscrolling didn’t stop. Down, down, and down she went, until her fingers froze at a particular video.
[The Azure Marchant] humiliates the daughter of Northwalker!
She saw...herself.
Being humiliated by Aman in front of the entire Rain clan on her birthday. It had gone viral on AstralSpace, turning her a topic for gossip in the Amber dust cluster.
A laughing stock.
She unblinkingly stared at the comments before scrolling away.
“I’ll show them.” She muttered softly.
They allowed Aman to do anything to her because her dad wasn’t around. They thought her useless. Assumed she had no potential.
She’ll show them all.
Pierce a rare-grade or higher metal using ≤1mm3 of the Element [Water] (57/100)
Reward: Feat [Water Savant]
Just a bit more, and then she’ll be done. She won’t fail next time. Closing her eyes, her focus shifted to absorbing mana once more; the task was made relatively easier by the paleness of the chamber.
Tiny, transparent threads of mana scooted towards her and ran to her mana organs. The strands of mana here were at least tens of times thicker than the ones in the training halls of the Rain clan, making it much easier to recover mana.
It was the sole positive aspect of this entire ordeal.
Ding!
Your sponsee, Zayn H. King, is currently under 10% health. Send a new gift?
She scowled. Nope; she wasn’t wasting another crystal on this dead fish. How inconceivable, this dude was always on the verge of death. Theoretically, it should be impossible to go back and forth so many times. He should have died by now.
Might he be attempting to piss her off with all these notifications?
Her frown deepened once she took a look at his profile.
User: Zayn H. King (7% Health)
Affiliation: Earth (E grade)
Race: Human
Class: [Red rager]
That class—[Red Rager]—from the initial description, she assumed it to be a generic blood-based class of a higher tier. The kind that allowed a quick increase in power but nosedived later on.
The actions one must take to advance these types of class were cruel to oneself and others; no different from the demonic paths. Organisations in the federation often refused to associate with someone from the blood-based classes, unless they had a useful talent that was worth nurturing.
She didn’t believe he would be so lucky again.
She tried to help him with her knowledge, given her interest in his potential—but the system stopped her, and he was too dumb to take the hint. Oh well, what else could she expect from someone who had ‘Stoneheaded’?
Later on, though, she realised she had missed something important. How could someone with a Legacy Feat fragment get a regular ‘blood-based’ class? That simply seemed…illogical.
Thus, she searched it up on the Index. To her surprise, she found no mention of the class far and wide, even on astralspace.
How could there be no trace of it at all? Astralspace records everything.
[An interesting thought!]
[Given ‘The Index’ contains all information on all known class paths, and astralspace records everything, not having even a hint of the class path could mean either of the following:
- It is an entirely Novel class path - Impossible. The system and federation wouldn’t allow it.
- It's from outside the bounds of the greater universe - Very Unlikely.
- Someone has intentionally erased all mentions of it. - Likely.
Do you want me to list the names of the people with access to such a level of authority?]
Digging for a worm, she had found a serpent instead. She could smell its rotten breath on her face, but she knew her limits. She dropped the matter altogether. She didn’t care, and even if she did, she wouldn’t change a damn thing.
But there was comfort in the fact that [Analyse] had become much more digestible.
After failing to assess Zayn, it had grown frantic to prove itself, which rendered it much less menacing compared to an ‘all-seeing’ skill with unlimited access to her thoughts.
Another problem was that the guy wasn’t livestreaming; she suspected he didn’t know about the feature, given he had no guide and no connection to the rest of the world.
She wasn’t going to tell him either.
She had discovered him. And she didn’t like sharing.
She did plan to help him out to her fullest before anyone caught the scent of him. As long as she got him to sign a contract with her, her path to becoming the clan head would be one step smoother.
Only problem was…the guy seemed to be too addicted to dying. She was afraid he'd die before her dreams could come to fruition.
“Aight, let’s see what you are up to.” She’d been musing on it for a while. “Astral, provide me the weekly recap on contestant Zayn H. King.”
Request accepted!
73 hours of footage will be condensed into a ten-minute recap to keep the most important parts. High-tension scenes will get priority, while low-tension and resting scenes will be cut. Adult materials will be blurred as per the user's settings to ensure user rights.
She blinked, and it took a moment for her to figure out what it meant by ‘Adult materials’. Then she snorted out loud. She knew adults did that kind of stuff! She, too, was an adult now!
“No, keep it!”
Bring it on!
When the recap finally began, however, she found herself terribly disappointed. Instead of the ‘promised’ adult stuff, all she got was a snobby guy in tattered clothes.
No signs of any mating over here.
Oh right. He was alone in the hell zone.
What was she thinking?
Got her all worked up over nothing…
The more she kept watching, however, the more her face changed. At first, she thought he was just getting lucky.
The first time he killed the golem, it was pure, nonsensical luck—he had just fallen on top of it. The second was lucky, too; he caught it off guard. The third, she could still stretch it and call it lucky, but the fourth?
That’s when she started doubting whether it was something as simple as luck.
Over and over, wherever he should have died, he kept persisting and surviving, and even when he faced certain death, he didn’t give up. The moments she thought he was a lost cause, he pulled off something nonsensical and saved his life. Just barely.
Was that luck? Or just madness?
Even she might not successfully pull that off.
[Interesting thought! If user ‘Nova Rain' was at the same level, had similar feats–]
“Shut up for once!” She shouted. Her expression sank right after, realising where she was right now.
Overseer Sun had surely heard her yell at the air out of nowhere and without any reason.
Would that make her look mentally ill?
Afterwards, her expression loosened slowly. The overseer didn’t respond, probably used to people acting weird in the vast expanse. Staying in a white space for a prolonged period of time got even the strongest ascendants acting up.
Though it was a bit surprising that [Analyze] could really be stopped like that.
All this time, all she had to do was just ask it to stop?
She watched the recap a second time. Then the third time. Watching him struggle, she found herself faintly smirking in amusement. Say, [Analyze], what are the chances this guy makes it out alive?
Seconds passed until a response was finally scribbled in front of her.
[Analyze can’t peer at his essence, so Analyze will go off what we have seen and known about Zayn King. Based on his previous action patterns, on-the-moment decisions, reactions, resilience, and taking other probable events into account, there is a 95.78% chance that Zayn King will leave the dungeon alive.]
She didn’t believe it. Especially since the dungeon boss had yet to make an appearance. How the hell would he even defeat that stone monster? That thing---
[He’ll figure a way out.]