Chapter 21 – Awakening of Chaos

  The creature leapt from the trees.

  Steve saw the multiple eyes fix directly on him — yellow-green, glowing in the dim light like sick lanterns. Up close, the body was larger. Much larger. Limbs too long, bending at angles bones shouldn’t allow.

  — RUN! — Dagon shouted.

  No one hesitated.

  Steve spun and ran. Branches lashed across his face. Roots tried to trap him. Behind, the creature moved through the dense vegetation as if it didn’t exist — breaking, crushing, passing through.

  The sound of pursuit was worse than the sight. Wood snapping. A guttural breathing that didn’t come from lungs. The cracking of joints moving too fast.

  Dagon stopped abruptly, turning.

  — You all keep going! I’ll hold it!

  The sword cut the air. It struck one of the creature’s limbs. The impact sounded metallic — like hitting steel, not flesh.

  The creature didn’t even slow down. It threw Dagon aside with casual force. His body passed through three bushes before smashing into a tree with the sound of ribs breaking.

  — DAGON! — Keara screamed.

  More sounds. Not behind. From the sides.

  Two more creatures emerged from between the trees. Identical to the first. Multiple eyes. Impossible limbs.

  — Shit... — Jelím muttered.

  Dagon struggled to stand, spitting blood.

  — Change of plans. We split. Divide the targets.

  — But— — Steve started.

  — NOW! — Dagon cut him off. — Meet back at the starting point!

  Keara ran to the right. Jelím floated to the left. Dagon faced the second creature.

  Steve looked at the third. It stared back. All eyes focused on him.

  He turned and ran.

  The forest grew denser as Steve pressed forward.

  His heart pounded so hard it hurt. Lungs burned. Legs began to fail — he tripped on a root, nearly fell, recovered at the last second.

  He looked back.

  The creature was there. Closer. Always closer.

  It wasn’t running. Just… coming. Relentless as a rising tide.

  Steve forced his legs to move faster. His foot slipped on wet leaves.

  He fell.

  The ground came fast. He hit hard, the air ripped from his lungs in a strangled sound. He rolled, tried to get up —

  His legs didn’t respond.

  Exhaustion. Pure and simple. The body had reached its absolute limit.

  The creature stopped ten meters away. Tilting its head. Studying him like a curious specimen.

  Steve gripped his sword with trembling hands. Tried to rise. His legs failed again. He fell to his knees, the sword nearly slipping from his sweaty hands.

  Useless. Always useless.

  The creature took a step. Then another. Slow. Savoring.

  Steve looked at the sword. At his own shaking hands.

  And something broke.

  Not physical. Something deeper. Fundamental.

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  Every time. Every moment. Like a sped-up film running through his mind:

  His father stepping on his face in the living room. "Useless."

  The principal punching his stomach in the alley. "Weak."

  Classmates laughing while he cried.

  Dagon saving him from the first creature in the forest.

  Keara healing him after every battle.

  Jelím protecting him when he couldn’t defend himself.

  Always protected. Always saved. Always weak.

  The rage came. Not explosive. Cold. Deep. Like ice burning from within.

  Steve stood. Slowly. Trembling. But he stood.

  The creature paused, seemingly surprised by the audacity.

  Steve began walking toward it.

  Not out of courage. Out of exhaustion. Out of rage. Tired of running, of being saved, of being weak.

  If I’m going to die, let it be standing. Fighting.

  He gripped the sword. Didn’t shout. Just walked.

  The creature hesitated.

  Then the world broke.

  The HUD didn’t blink. It exploded.

  Messages overlapped, violent, like a virus consuming the system:

  [CRITICAL_FAILURE]

  [CRITICAL_FAILURE]

  [CRITICAL_FAILURE]

  [USER: INCOMPATIBLE]

  [LEVELING_SYSTEM: REJECTED]

  [LEVEL: 0 / CLASS: NONEXISTENT]

  [SHUTDOWN_IMMINENT]

  The letters flickered so fast it made the eyes bleed. Steve fell to his knees again, hands on his head.

  Then… silence.

  Absolute emptiness.

  Then SHE spoke.

  Not a voice. Choir. A thousand women singing in impossible unison, each voice at a different frequency yet perfectly synchronized, creating a harmony that shouldn’t exist in the physical world.

  "Percentage System: Activated."

  The new interface tore through reality.

  It didn’t appear. It imposed itself. Deep purple bleeding into absolute black. The edges weren’t lines — they were fissures, cracking space itself, pulsing like a living, diseased heart.

  ╔═══════════════════════════╗

  ║ USER: Steve Matsinhe ║

  ║ ATTRIBUTE: CHAOS ║

  ║ PERCENTAGE: 3% ║

  ║ COMPATIBILITY: Limited ║

  ╚═══════════════════════════╝

  Steve felt it.

  Not pain. Transformation.

  Every cell exploding and reconstituting. DNA being rewritten in real time. The body rejecting what it was, accepting what it would be.

  He screamed. A torn, inhuman sound.

  The body pulsed. Not a heartbeat. A pulse of raw, chaotic energy.

  Purple. Black. Forbidden colors blending impossibly.

  And the senses ascended.

  Sight: The world collapsed in layers. He saw through the trees. Saw energy flowing in everything like rivers of light — soft green pulsing in roots, faint blue dancing in the wind, intense red and hungry burning in the creature.

  Hearing: He heard everything. The creature’s heartbeat — irregular, unnatural. Sap rising in the trees. Insects burrowing underground. His own blood roaring in his veins.

  Touch: He felt every atom of air touching his skin. The weight of gravity shifting. The pressure of existence itself becoming more — denser, more real, more present.

  His right hand didn’t tingle.

  It burned.

  Fire purple consumed the skin without leaving marks. Steve screamed again, trying to shake his hand —

  Something was born.

  It didn’t materialize. Didn’t appear. Grew from inside his own flesh and bone, tearing reality to exist.

  A scythe.

  A long handle carved from solidified void — blacker than the absence of light, with purple runes breathing along its surface, pulsating in patterns that hurt the eyes, that made the mind understand things it shouldn’t.

  The curved blade defied perception. It had no color. It had all colors and none simultaneously. Purple bleeding to black bleeding to beyond — absence of color, absence of light, absence of existence.

  Steve held it.

  Impossible weight. Impossible lightness. Both at once.

  Connection. Deep. Absolute. As if the weapon had always been part of him, a missing limb finally restored, a hole in the soul finally filled.

  The body became light.

  Not normal lightness. Lightness of no longer being fully bound to gravity, the laws of physics, reality itself.

  I can move.

  No. More than that.

  I can fly.

  The creature noticed the change.

  All its eyes — six, eight, ten — widened simultaneously. Recognition. Fear. For the first time, the predator recognized prey that had become predator.

  It backed off.

  Too late.

  Steve exploded.

  He didn’t run. He didn’t jump. He traversed the space between them as if distance were suggestion, not law.

  The world slowed visibly. He saw each leaf falling in slow motion. Each muscle twitch of the creature before it happened. Each particle of dust suspended in the air.

  He leapt impossibly. Three meters. Five. Ten. Rising as if gravity had forgotten he existed.

  The scythe rose. Both hands on the pulsating handle. The body spun in the air — a perfect lethal movement he had never trained but somehow knew, as if the memory of a thousand dead warriors had been downloaded directly into his brain.

  Time stopped.

  For an eternal fraction of a second, Steve saw everything: the creature trying to flee, the frozen trees, even the wind caught in the air.

  The blade descended.

  And the world tore.

  Not a cut. Fundamental separation of reality.

  The scythe passed through the creature without resistance, splitting not only flesh but existence. The creature divided vertically, the two halves falling in opposite directions, revealing an interior that shouldn’t exist — not organs, but pulsating void and impossible geometries.

  But Steve didn’t stop.

  The momentum continued. The scythe continued its perfect, deadly arc.

  It cut through three century-old trees behind the creature.

  Not with difficulty. As if they were mist.

  CRASH. CRASH. CRASH.

  The huge trees fell in sequence, raising clouds of dust and dead leaves, the sound echoing through the forest like thunder.

  Steve landed.

  His knees bent perfectly, absorbing an impact that should have pulverized human bones. The scythe dug into the ground beside him, sinking deeply into the earth.

  For an eternal second, he felt.

  Power. Absolute.

  Like a newborn god looking at his creation.

  Then reality exacted its price.

  The scythe began to dissolve. It didn’t vanish — it died. Purple particles peeled off the blade like blood, floating briefly before vanishing like dying stars.

  The HUD blinked red:

  [PERCENTAGE_SYSTEM: DEACTIVATED]

  [ENERGY: EXHAUSTED]

  [RECHARGE: UNDEFINED]

  The new interface ripped itself, disappearing into a purple-black fissure that closed with the sound of breaking bones.

  The broken Leveling System returned, indifferent:

  [USER: UNIDENTIFIED]

  [CLASS: UNIDENTIFIED]

  [LEVEL: 0]

  [COMPATIBILITY: NONE]

  Steve fell to his knees.

  Not from physical exhaustion. From existential emptiness. As if something had been torn from inside him, leaving a pulsating void.

  He looked at his own hands. Trembling violently, covered in cold sweat.

  I… I did that.

  He looked at the split creature — already rotting rapidly, dissolving into black dust. At the three fallen trees. At the perfect cut in the ground where the scythe had been.

  I killed. Alone. For the first time.

  And it was… easy.

  That terrified him more than the transformation.

  — STEVE! WHERE ARE YOU?!

  Voices. Distant. Dagon. Keara.

  Steve looked at the scene. Too much evidence. Too much destruction. Power he shouldn’t have.

  I can’t tell them. Not yet.

  He found the group five minutes later.

  Dagon ran, grabbing his shoulders. Dried blood at the corner of his mouth.

  — You’re okay?! And the monster?!

  Steve forced a smile he didn’t feel.

  — Managed to lose it. Ran until I couldn’t anymore.

  Jelím watched. Long. Piercingly.

  — Are you sure?

  — Yes.

  Lie. Easy as breathing.

  Keara hugged him. — Thank the gods.

  Guilt tightened his chest.

  Sorry.

  The parasitic tree appeared twenty minutes later.

  Black. Pulsing. Victims tied to the top.

  — Parasitic tree — Dagon explained. — Feeds on life energy.

  Keara detected the correct roots. They cut simultaneously.

  The tree screamed — an almost human sound.

  They rescued the victims. Returned to Thornvale by nightfall.

  —Guild. Fifty gold coins.

  — Rank C mission with Rank F... impressive.

  Steve looked away.

  If they knew.

  Room. Night.

  Steve tried to activate the Percentage System.

  Nothing.

  He looked at the HUD:

  [CONNECTION: 5%]

  Before it had been 3%.

  It grows when I use the power.

  He closed his eyes. Slept.

  And dreamed.

  White plain.

  Nessira was closer.

  Fifteen meters. Not the impossible distance from before.

  She turned her head. Profile visible.

  Smiled.

  "3% has become 5%. Good progress, Steve."

  "Keep using it. Keep growing."

  "Soon… we will be complete."

  Steve woke up, sweating.

  [MESSAGE_RECEIVED]

  He opened it trembling.

  "Come. North."

  Sender: FRAGMENT_001

  He looked out the window. North.

  She is calling me.

  And part of me… wants to go.

  That scared him more than any monster.