Surviving as a Broken Hero

‘Another fool, like the Paladin,’ she thought to herself.

She hoped he’d at least buy her some time to recover before, like the Paladin, he died due to his overconfidence.

‘Does the system make a clown out of everyone it touches or something?’ she wondered.

There was no more heat to Pull from the air around her, and she didn’t want to risk losing more of her body for a human. There was only so much of her to go around, after all.

Her breathing started to calm.

Every single stride from the monstrosity shook the earth around it from the sheer weight of the thing. Aizen’s comparatively small form and flimsy-looking blade extending from the device on his arm in the face of the beast didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

It roared from its tentacles and beak-like mouth, bringing one of its meaty appendages down on Aizen.

At the last moment, he dodged to the side in a superhuman movement, clearly relying on the system’s stats. She’d faced enough demons to know that stats weren’t enough to overpower them.

The Awakener, Aizen, slipped past the tentacle in a smooth step, and his blade blurred downward onto the tentacle with all the speed she expected of a system skill.

It was faster than her eyes could follow, but it was a skill she recognized, «Strike».

The blade cut partway into the thick trunk of the tentacle before slowing to a stop against the toughened flesh.

Aizen pulled the blade back in time to dodge another tentacle, which thudded into the ground next to him and kicked up a cloud of dust.

The creature, undaunted by its failed attacks, surged forward and attempted to encompass Aizen in its bulk.

Particles of earth swirled around Aizen and condensed over his arm. He reared back, coiling his muscles, and in the next moment, unleashed all of his power.

His fist struck the creature’s center mass with such ferocious force that the lingering motes of dust were blown away,

A shockwave of wind tugged Eve’s hair and cloak back.

She squinted her eyes against the gale and saw a spark of something bright upon impact. Whatever he’d used, it was far more than a simple «Strike».

Against all odds, the demon monstrosity, which looked to weigh at least two tons, judging from its condensed muscles and the way each of its steps shook the earth, was lifted into the air at least half a meter.

Its flesh rippled over its body, and blood spurted from its beak from the damage the punch did to its internal organs.

Still, the creature didn’t give in quite yet.

Instead, it did something that made Eve’s heart drop.

She’d only encountered it once, but the moment the purple mist exploded from the pores in the tentacle-thing’s skin, spraying outward in a haze, she prepared for the worst.

That purple haze couldn’t do anything to her, but she’d once seen her kindred elves, powerful Awakeners, slaughtered after a similar haze, somehow cut them off from their previous system.

‘Shit… Come on…’

She reached out for warmth in the air. Thankfully, the shockwave had blown the front of cold she’d created away, and she found enough to at least stave the shivering for the time being.

It still wasn’t nearly enough.

“Get back!” she yelled.

It was too late.

The wave of purple expanded with unnatural speed and completely engulfed the area, even reaching her. Though it did not affect her, other than assaulting her nose with a reek like something that’d died and been left to rot in the sun, she was more afraid of the effect it’d have on Aizen.

Sure enough, the moment the mist crossed over his skin, Aizen paused for a moment.

The demon thumped back into the ground mere steps from him and scrabbled backward, letting out a shriek of complaint in its panicked retreat.

For a moment, they stared each other down.

The thing’s beady, fish-like eyes darted around, taking in Aizen, Eve, and the haze it’d just emitted.

One might question if a smile could be possible for something with a beak for a mouth, but if such a creature could smile, then the demon was smiling at Aizen with all the malice in the world.

Eve tried to Pull in more heat.

Following an Eruption-powered «Strike» to the demon-thing’s abdomen, a purple mist hissed from its pores and quickly engulfed us. Eve shouted something from a distance, but I was too distracted by the system window.

[#$*@&^]

The moment the fog enveloped me and I received that message, I felt a moment of pure shock.

Everything sort of ‘snapped’ at once.

My senses of the world dulled.

The clarity of each movement and minute detail on even the trees behind the creature blurred together.

The demon’s pungent odor and the iron tang of blood in the air faded to a whisper.

Each heartbeat rebounded with a light pulse rather than with the thunderous boom I’d naturally blocked out in the same way one always sees their nose but naturally filters it out.

Even the pain of striking the creature, its skin as hard as steel, only became a numb throbbing.

Just like my senses, my movements were equally affected. It felt as if I were moving through a sea of viscous air.

In a moment of dread, I attempted to reach for my mana and activate a simple «Strike» to catch up with the demon during its brief retreat.

I was met with nothing. At that moment, I realized I was as powerless as the Unawakened I’d recently escorted from the northern mountains.

At least, from the light glinting in the creature’s eyes, that’s what it believed.

Below all of that numbness, below my slowness and being cut off from the system-given stats, flowing through my veins was another system.

The second system, perhaps due to it being the only system affecting me at that moment, felt stronger than ever.

In that period of power, I had a burst of intuition.

‘Come at me,’ I thought, staring the creature down.

It might’ve been faster, bigger, and heavier at that moment, but I somehow knew, even despite its massive frame, that it wasn’t stronger.

The demon had no such knowledge and charged at me with the certainty of a lion pouncing on a baby deer. Its form was shrouded through the fog, but I didn’t need my eyes to see it anymore.

I closed my eyes and saw it in my mind’s eye, each of the vibrations through the ground and its hungering pants giving it away in more minute detail than even the normal system would’ve granted me.

The second system’s energy flowed through me, completely unimpeded.

Surely, it saw my swing, slow as molasses compared to my previous attack, but it didn’t make any attempt to defend.

Instead, it leaped at me beak-first to close the gap and devour me whole.

That was its final mistake.

⟬«Piercing Eruption»⟭

All of my stamina surged through me in a tidal wave of absolute, undeniable force.

No doubt, you already know what happens when an unstoppable force meets a very much movable target.

The earth moved with me, amplifying and changing the effect of the hit.

Rather than merely forming around my fist, it surged from my feet and over my legs, twirling around my body in extremely rapid revolutions and surging up into my hand, solidifying and extending to reinforce my body in a sort of earthen frame, constantly repairing and reinforcing itself.

My fist met the creature’s beak.

CRACK—

Its face tore apart, and the entire concussive shockwave of my hit flowed in a single direction rather than in a radial blast like before.

Even strengthened, the demon’s skin peeled apart, and its bones shook into fragments, the fragments into particles, and the particles into rapidly dispersing signatures of heat on the wind.

From head, to shoulders, to abdomen, to toes, nothing of the beast was spared.

One moment, a giant monstrosity hulking over me, its beak poised to swallow me whole; the next moment, a mere aura of heat and light.

Even that faint trace soon vanished.

The mist dispersed, I felt the empowering energy within me dwindle again, and my senses sharpened, bringing a wave of agony through me.

Had I broken my arm in multiple places? It hung by my side, useless.

⟬Dungeon Cleared

Reward Calculated…

+1000 XP⟭

⟬Solo Clear!⟭

⟬Level Up!⟭

⟬Level 6⟭

⟬XP: 0/32,000⟭

⟬Skill Upgrade Unlocked⟭

⟬Upgrade a skill of your choice to be twice as efficient.⟭

I wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I wondered why I only received experience for the second system.

Was it because the other system had been blocked by that strange purple mist?

On top of the skill upgrade, I was still sitting on the previous skill selection for the second system as well. Since that was merely the boss of a local dungeon, I could only imagine how much stronger the demons were getting.

What would the demon boss of a larger dungeon look like? How powerful would the previous city lord of Karfana have become if I hadn’t stopped him?

If other cities had fallen, how strong would their demons already be?

More importantly… just where were the demons getting all of their power for such rapid growth?

Putting all of that out of my mind for when the situation was less pressing, I looked over at Eve.

Her hand was extended toward me, flickering with a faint flame, and she spoke in a cold tone.

“What are you?”