A few months ago.
An apartment in the top floor of a noodle shop in an underground sector, a few kilometers away from Nexus city...
The apartment reeked of stale alcohol, smoke, and decay.
Varen Kellis lay sprawled across a filthy couch, naked except for torn pants, his body covered in a sheen of sweat and god-knows-what-else. Empty bottles littered the floor around him—whiskey, cheap wine, energy drinks mixed with black market stimulants. His skin had taken on a sickly pallor, marked with track marks and bruises from injecting Berserker's Blood directly into his veins.
A woman—he couldn't remember her name—slept in his bed in the next room. She'd come home with him three nights ago. Or was it four? Time had become slippery, unreliable.
He didn't care.
Varen reached for another bottle, found it empty, and hurled it across the room. It shattered against the wall with satisfying violence.
His C-rank shadow manipulation talent flared involuntarily, shadows writhing across the walls like living things. The black marks they left wouldn't fade. Neither would the stains from the last girl, or the one before that.
"Pathetic," he muttered to no one. Then, after a moment: "No. Strong. Getting stronger."
He stood on shaking legs, stumbled to the table where his supplies waited. The vials of Berserker's Blood glowed like rubies—or like blood. He could never decide which they resembled more.
Eleven left. He'd been using them faster lately. One every two days instead of one every three.
Doesn't matter. He grabbed one, uncapped it with his teeth, and drank it down.
The effect hit like a sledgehammer—heat, aggression, his aura and pheromones flaring so violently that the woman in the bedroom woke and screamed. He heard her scrambling for clothes, heard the door slam as she fled his apartment.
His muscles tensed, veins bulging, vision sharpening to predatory clarity. This was power. This was strength.
He flexed his hands, shadows dancing between his fingers. With enough of these, he'd be unstoppable.
Jade won't know what hit him.
....
....
The dungeon run that afternoon should never have happened.
His body was still burning from the Berserker's Blood, judgment compromised, reflexes unreliable despite the drug's amplifications. He shouldn't have pushed deeper. Shouldn't have ignored the warning signs.
But Varen pushed anyway, because caution felt like weakness and he couldn't afford weakness.
The B-rank spawn came out of nowhere—a twisted amalgamation of limbs and teeth, moving faster than anything that size should move. It caught one of his crew members—a beta named Tess—and tore her arm clean off before anyone could react.
She screamed. Blood sprayed across the crystalline walls.
"Fall back!" someone shouted.
Varen laughed.
Actually laughed.
He threw shadows at the thing, wild and unfocused, more aggression than technique. The spawn dodged easily, moving like smoke, and he realized with distant alarm that his coordination was shot.
Doesn't matter. I'm strong enough.
He wasn't.
The spawn's claws raked across his ribs, opening wounds deep enough to show bone. Varen barely felt it—the Berserker's Blood numbing pain into something distant and irrelevant.
He lashed out again, shadows wrapping around the spawn's limbs. For a moment, he had it. For one glorious moment, he 'controlled' it.
Then his concentration wavered and the shadows dispersed.
The spawn pivoted and slammed him into the wall hard enough to crack bone.
"Retreat!" another crew member screamed. "Everyone out! Now!"
They ran. Even Varen managed to drag himself back toward the exit, leaving Tess behind—still screaming, still bleeding, already a corpse walking.
By the time they emerged from the rift, three crew members were dead or dying.
Varen laughed again, blood streaming down his side, ribs screaming with each breath.
"Got away," he said stupidly. "Told you I'm strong."
The survivors just stared at him like he was insane.
'Maybe I am.'
Back in his apartment, stitching his own wounds with shaking hands because he couldn't afford proper medical attention, Varen stared at what remained of his vials.
Ten.
He'd wasted one and lost three crew members because of his overconfidence.
Doesn't matter. He drank another vial, despite his body's screaming protests. Despite the way his hands were shaking, the way his vision kept swimming, the way his heart felt like it was beating too fast, too hard, like it might explode.
Jade's been getting stronger. I have to keep up.
The logic was circular. Broken. The kind of thinking that came from someone whose judgment had been corroded by substances and ego.
But Varen couldn't see it anymore.
---------------------------------
The next week blurred together.
Illegal dungeon runs that got progressively more reckless. Parties in underground clubs where people did things they'd regret in the morning—things Varen participated in with increasing desperation, as if he could fill some hollow void inside himself with bodies and substances and violence.
He spent money like it would run out tomorrow. Bought weapons he didn't need. Paid for sex with women who looked at him like he was a walking warning sign. Drank so much he'd black out entire days.
And between it all, he took the Berserker's Blood.
Seven vials left.
His reflection in the mirror was becoming unrecognizable—gaunt, hollowed out, covered in bruises and needle marks. His eyes had taken on a feverish intensity that looked less like determination and more like madness.
But he kept telling himself it was strength.
I'm getting stronger. I'm almost ready. Soon I'll have my revenge.
The lie had become comfortable.
....
One night, in a club so deep in the underworld that the city didn't acknowledge it existed, Varen found himself cornered by another alpha.
A real one. Someone with actual power, not just chemical enhancement and delusion.
"You've been pissing off the wrong people," the alpha said, his aura blazing with legitimate strength. "Taking jobs that don't belong to you. Operating in territories that aren't yours."
Varen's Berserker's Blood-enhanced pheromones flared aggressively. "I don't answer to—"
The alpha moved.
Varen found himself slammed against a wall, the other man's hand around his throat. Real power. Real skill. Everything Varen thought he'd gained with the drugs and the desperation evaporated in an instant.
"You're pathetic," the alpha said. "All that aggression and nothing behind it. You're a child playing with fire."
He released Varen, who slid down the wall gasping.
"Get your shit together or get out of the underworld," the alpha continued. "Because if I see you again, I'm not going to be so nice."
He walked away, leaving Varen on the floor, face flushed with shame and rage.
He's right, a small voice whispered. *You're not strong. You're just broken.*
Varen shoved the voice away.
No. I'll show him. I'll show all of them.
He pulled another vial from his pocket—his movements jerky, desperate.
Five left.
He drank it, despite the way his body convulsed in protest, despite the way his vision tunneled and his heartbeat became irregular.
For Jade, he told himself. I need to be strong for Jade.
The lie was all he had left.
----
Days passed. Or weeks. Time had become unreliable, slipping between his fingers like water.
He barely ate. Barely slept. Spent most of his time either high, drunk, or desperately trying to be both simultaneously.
His crew had abandoned him—all except for one desperate bastard named Kaso who was equally spiraled and equally delusional. They took jobs that were suicide runs. Jobs they should never have survived.
And somehow, they did. Not through skill. Through sheer blind luck and the kind of reckless aggression that made even criminals nervous.
Varen took it as proof that he was destined for this.
Destined to kill Jade. Destined to have his revenge.
The reality—that he was a self-destructing addict with maybe three months before his body gave out from Berserker's Blood overuse—never penetrated the fog of chemicals and obsession.
In a squalid room above a noodle shop, Varen stood before the wall of his obsession.
Jade's face stared back at him from dozens of images. News clippings. Printed photos. Sketches drawn from memory.
"Soon," Varen whispered. His voice was hoarse from smoking, drinking, screaming in the dark. "Soon, you'll pay."
He reached for another vial.
Three left.
His hands were shaking so badly he could barely hold it. His ribs still ached from the dungeon accident. His heart felt wrong—skipping beats, racing, doing things a heart shouldn't do.
Doesn't matter.
He drank it anyway.
The rush was less intense now. His body was building tolerance. Or breaking down. He couldn't tell the difference anymore.
Soon.
Very soon.
He won't know what hit him.
The thought was almost comforting—the way every addict's delusions were comforting. The belief that the next high, the next score, the next revenge would somehow make everything okay.
It wouldn't.
But Varen couldn't see that anymore.
All he could see was Jade's face.
All he could feel was the rage.
And all he could do was count down the remaining vials like they were the days left until his redemption.
Unaware that they were actually counting down to his destruction.
....