The creature jumped from the trees.
Steve saw the multiple eyes focus directly on him — yellow-green gleaming in the gloom like sickly lanterns. The body was larger up close. Much larger. Limbs too long bending at angles bones shouldn't allow.
— **RUN!** — Dagon shouted.
No one hesitated.
Steve spun and bolted. Branches whipped 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 splitting. Guttural breathing that didn't seem to come from lungs. The grinding of joints moving too fast.
Dagon stopped abruptly, turning.
— You keep going! I'll hold it!
The sword cut the air. Hit one of the creature's limbs. The impact produced a metallic sound — like hitting steel, not flesh.
The creature didn't even slow down. It threw Dagon aside with casual force. His body went through three bushes before hitting a tree with the sound of ribs breaking.
— DAGON! — Keara screamed.
More sounds. Not behind. From the sides.
Two other creatures emerged from among the trees. Identical to the first. Multiple eyes. Impossible limbs.
— Shit... — Jelím murmured.
Dagon stood with difficulty, spitting blood.
— Change of plans. We split up. We divide the targets.
— But— — Steve began.
— **NOW!** — Dagon cut him off. — We meet at the starting point!
Keara ran right. Jelím floated left. Dagon faced the second creature.
Steve looked at the third. It looked back at him. All eyes focused on him.
He turned and ran.
---
The forest became denser as Steve advanced.
His heart beat so hard it hurt. His lungs burned. His legs began to fail — he stumbled on a root, almost fell, managed to recover at the last second.
He looked back.
The creature was there. Closer. Always closer.
It didn't run. Just... came. Relentless as rising tide.
Steve forced his legs to move faster. His foot slipped on wet leaves.
He fell.
The ground came fast. He hit hard, air being 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 absolute limit.
The creature stopped ten meters away. Tilting its head. Studying him like a curious specimen.
Steve grabbed the sword with trembling hands. Tried to stand. His legs failed again. He fell to his knees, the sword almost escaping from sweaty hands.
*Useless. Always useless.*
The creature took a step. Then another. Slow. Savoring.
Steve looked at the sword. At his own trembling hands.
And something broke.
Not physical. Something deeper. Something fundamental.
Every time. Every moment. Like a fast-forwarded film passing 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 each battle.
Jelím protecting him when he couldn't defend himself.
*Always protected. Always saved. Always weak.*
Rage came. Not explosive. Cold. Deep. Like ice burning from inside out.
Steve stood up. Slowly. Trembling. But he stood.
The creature stopped, as if surprised by the audacity.
Steve began walking toward it.
Not from courage. From exhaustion. From rage. From being too 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.
That's when the world broke.
---
The HUD didn't blink. **Exploded**.
Overlapping messages, 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 blinked so fast they made his eyes bleed. Steve fell to his knees again, hands on his head.
Then... silence.
Absolute void.
Then **SHE** spoke.
Not a voice. **Choir**. A thousand women singing in impossible unison, each voice at a different frequency but perfectly synchronized, creating harmony that shouldn't exist in the physical world.
**"Percentage System: Activated."**
The new interface **tore** visual reality.
It didn't appear. **Imposed itself**. Deep purple bleeding to absolute black. The edges weren't lines — they were **fissures**, cracking space itself, pulsing like a living and sick heart.
╔═══════════════════════════╗
║ USER: Steve Matsinhe ║
║ ATTRIBUTE: **CHAOS** ║
║ PERCENTAGE: 3% ║
║ COMPATIBILITY: Limited ║
╚═══════════════════════════╝
Steve felt it.
Not pain. **Transformation**.
Every cell exploding and reconstructing. DNA being rewritten in real time. The body rejecting what it was, accepting what it **would be**.
He screamed. Torn sound, inhuman.
The body pulsed. Not heartbeat. Pulse of raw and chaotic energy.
Purple. Black. Forbidden colors mixing impossibly.
And the senses **ascended**.
**Vision**: The world collapsed into 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 and **hungry** red burning in the creature.
**Hearing**: He heard everything. The creature's heartbeat — irregular, unnatural. Sap rising through trees. Insects digging under the earth. His own blood roaring in his veins.
**Touch**: He felt every atom of air touching his skin. The weight of gravity changing. The pressure of existence itself becoming **more** — more dense, more real, more **present**.
His right hand didn't tingle.
**Burned**.
Purple fire 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 within his own flesh and bone, tearing reality to exist.
A scythe.
Long handle carved in solidified void — black deeper than absence of light, with purple runes **breathing** along the surface, pulsing in patterns that made eyes hurt, that made the mind **understand** things it shouldn't.
The curved blade defied perception. Had no color. Had **all** colors and **none** simultaneously. Purple bleeding to black bleeding to something beyond — absence of color, absence of light, absence of **existence**.
Steve held it.
Impossible weight. Impossible lightness. Both at the same time.
Connection. Deep. **Absolute**. As if the weapon were the part of him that had always been missing, amputated limb finally reconnected, hole in the soul finally filled.
The body became **light**.
Not normal lightness. Lightness of no longer being completely bound to gravity, to physical laws, to **reality** itself.
*I can move.*
No. More than that.
*I can **fly**.*
The creature perceived the change.
All eyes — six, eight, **ten** — widened simultaneously. Recognition. **Fear**. For the first time, the predator recognized prey that had become predator.
It backed away.
Too late.
Steve **exploded**.
He didn't run. Didn't jump. **Crossed** the space between them as if distance were suggestion, not law.
The world visibly slowed down. He saw each leaf falling in slow motion. Each muscle contraction of the creature before it happened. Each particle of dust suspended in the air.
He leaped impossibly. Three meters. Five. **Ten**. Rising as if gravity had forgotten he existed.
The scythe rose. Both hands on the handle pulsing in his palms. The body spun in the air — **perfect** movement he'd never trained but **knew** how to execute, as if 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 trapped 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, dividing not just flesh but **existence**. The creature split vertically, the two halves falling in opposite directions, revealing interior that shouldn't exist — not organs, but pulsing void and impossible geometries.
But Steve didn't stop.
The momentum continued. The scythe continued its perfect and deadly arc.
It cut three centennial trees behind the creature.
Not with difficulty. As if they were mist.
**CRASH. CRASH. CRASH.**
The enormous trees fell in sequence, raising a cloud of dust and dead leaves, the sound echoing through the forest like thunder.
Steve landed.
Knees flexed perfectly, absorbing impact that should have pulverized human bones. The scythe embedded in the ground beside him, sinking deeply into the earth.
For one eternal second, he felt it.
**Power. Absolute.**
Like a newborn god looking at his creation.
Then reality collected the price.
The scythe began to dissolve. It didn't disappear — **died**. Purple particles detached from the blade like blood, floating briefly before extinguishing like dying stars.
The HUD blinked red:
**[PERCENTAGE_SYSTEM: DEACTIVATED]**
**[ENERGY: DEPLETED]**
**[RECHARGE: INDEFINITE]**
The new interface **tore**, disappearing into a purple-black fissure that closed with the sound of bone breaking.
The broken Leveling System returned, indifferent:
**[USER: NOT_IDENTIFIED]**
**[CLASS: NOT_IDENTIFIED]**
**[LEVEL: 0]**
**[COMPATIBILITY: NONE]**
Steve fell to his knees.
Not from physical exhaustion. From existential **void**. As if something had been ripped from inside him, leaving a hole pulsing with absence.
He looked at his own hands. They trembled 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. Not yet.*
He stood with difficulty. Moved away quickly.
---
He found the group five minutes later.
Dagon ran, grabbed his shoulders. Dried blood at the corner of his mouth.
— Are you okay?! What about the monster?!
Steve forced a smile he didn't feel.
— I managed to lose it. Ran until I lost it.
Jelím observed. Long. **Penetrating**.
— Are you sure?
— Yes.
Lie. As easy as breathing.
Keara hugged him. — Thank the gods.
Guilt squeezed his chest.
*Sorry.*
---
The parasite tree appeared twenty minutes later.
Black. Pulsing. Victims tied at the top.
— Parasite tree — Dagon explained. — Feeds on life energy.
Keara detected the correct roots. They cut simultaneously.
The tree **screamed** — almost human sound.
They rescued the victims. Returned to Thornvale at nightfall.
---
Guild. Fifty gold coins.
— Rank C mission with Rank F... impressive.
Steve looked away.
*If they only knew.*
---
Room. Night.
Steve tried to activate the Percentage System.
Nothing.
He looked at the HUD:
**[CONNECTION: 5%]**
Before it was 3%.
*It grows when I use the power.*
He closed his eyes. Slept.
And dreamed.
---
White plain.
The Nessira was **closer**.
Fifteen meters. Not the impossible distance from before.
She turned her head. Profile visible.
She smiled.
**"3% became 5%. Good progress, Steve."**
**"Keep using it. Keep growing."**
**"Soon... we'll be complete."**
---
Steve woke sweating.
**[MESSAGE_RECEIVED]**
He opened it trembling.
**"Come. North."**
**Sender: FRAGMENT_001**
He looked at the window. North.
*She's calling me.*
*And part of me... wants to go.*
That frightened him more than any monster.