Time was a funny thing. When I stood beside Fang Mei and stared up at the same stars as her, I felt as if years could pass without notice. If that moment could have lasted an eternity, I would have been happy. Rarely in my life after the system have I known such peace as standing with her watching the stars. Even If I was able to stay, that happiness wouldn’t have lasted.

For a system, user life rarely stood still in the beginning. Like freshly formed molecules after the big bang, we were all fast-moving, spreading out and slamming against each other. Sometimes we came into conflict with one another, and someone had to die. A rare few of us managed to live centuries without finding another human from old earth.

Those lucky few were heard about only from what they left behind. Some dragons believe in the word of Allah, pray five times a day, and who eat cosher foods. Whole bands of militant vegan elves had to be put down to stop their genocide of the uncivilized races. Communist dwarves have caused no end of trouble for their wealthier brethren, and the Nazi Dryads are the worst. The system users of earth quickly left their mark on the Grey Omniverse even I have corrupted many despite my best intentions.

…

Ding!

Teleportation Ready!

System Message: Leave within the next 15-20minutes, or the time dilation effect will distort. If you don’t leave this world soon, your questline will reset, and the other world will lock. This world has been added to your future locations.

I closed the system message torn, my time in this world was over already, and the otherworld called me home. Who knew when I’d have a chance to return? But, leaving behind Silent and Kale wasn’t an option. King had to be brought down.

“I’m going to leave soon, and we might not see each other for a while. Someday I’ll return. Will you wait for me.” I asked.

“Nope!” I opened my mouth and closed it. “What, we barely know each other. Your cultivation is pitiful, and you haven’t even been formally admitted into the sect. If I meet someone I like better than you, I’ll be sweet on him.” She winked at me. “This is where you say you’ll duel any suitor I have to the death on your return, sweep me off my feet, and carry me on a magical flight through the stars.” Fang Mei said.

“Then I’ll be back soon. I have a rival to put down.” I hit teleportation.

Blue light overtook my form, and Fang Mei grabbed, ran up, and hugged me.

Ding!

System Message: Passenger detected adjusting teleportation…

Teleportation Adjusted.

Teleporting.

Just like that, Fang Mei and I were teleported halfway across the omniverse. The Berzerker’s fist came down, and I blocked it with spectral arms. However, I still held Fang Mei in my arms, and I wouldn’t let her be touched by the Berzerker.

I punched the creature’s arm, driving curse into it before leaping back and delivering a powerful fireball. King’s Berzerker tanked the fireball and charged forward. Its tentacles shot out at incredible speeds. I blocked with Cursed Blow infecting the tentacles the creature used with curses. Even as it drove me back, I began planning an escape.

Fang Mei chose that moment to come to and turned her head to see King’s Berzerker. “What the hell is that thing?” She screamed. Her flailing nearly threw off my concentration. A tentacle grazed my shoulder and sent us hurtling through a building. By wrapping her in my spectral arms, I was just able to save her from the impact.

“That’s the thing that slurps people out of its skin.” I nodded and struggled to get up. My wanking arm wasn’t responding. She glared at my shoulder, and I guessed by her expression it was dislocated. Then, with the hands of an expert, she pushed my shoulder with a crunch. It tickled a little.

Twin fireballs appeared grasped by my spectral arms before they threw them. Both fireballs exploded against the creature’s chest. Through the smoke, I heard an ear-shattering roar. It hadn’t said a word since my return. Either King no longer cared about the creature, or King expected me to beat it. There was also the chance King believed the deck was so stacked in his favor that watching the battle was moot.

Somehow the last option seemed the most likely. I pulled my machete from my inventory. It wasn’t really even a machete, but a single piece of steel wrapped in leather. The blade itself was a replica of the one made by Rambo. From the movie Rambo, not the epic first blood trilogy. I pushed cursed energy through the weapon and watched as the edge glowed with a faint white light.

Force Body, Force Aura, Haymaker, Sprint, Cursed Blow, Timing and Target, Mortal Telekinesis, Steady Knife, Beginner’s Focus, and Beginner’s Guts would have to see me through this fight. There were other clones in the area. My spectral hands formed fireballs and launched them to the edge, or my senses annihilating or discouraging any clones.

My mana pool began to drop even as every breath refilled it. There were so many clones, and if I didn’t destroy them, they’d either get me from behind or kill and replace Fang Mei when I couldn’t spare her any focus.

Having Fang Mei at my back made me feel nervous for her. She was here because of me; I should have left earlier before she decided to tag along. I could feel the satisfied grin on her face from seeing my display and felt a shiver crawl up my spine. Why was every waifu crazy? It was clearly the system and the current year’s fault.

The monster shot forward tentacles leading with its fist as a follow-up. I deflected the tentacles with my spectral fists and moved in close. King’s Berzerker punched with the force of a machine press. Even when I thought I moved out of the way, I felt four wounds open on my chest. Those claws were a problem.

My machete slashed between them; I grabbed an end and yanked, but the bones wouldn’t break even against my strength and steel. Then, finally, a spiked knee caught me in the stomach and took my breath away.

It followed up with a hook. The bones on its knuckles sliced through the flesh above my eyebrow. Blood seeped down, blinding me in one eye. The monster continued its onslaught without an opening insight. Every time one seems to appear, tentacles or a rebounding fist got in the way.

King’s Berzerker

HP 9,800,000/9,800,000

Status: X455 Cursed

My curses had taken effect, and every second it lost 455 of its HP permanently. In a day, it would die. That wouldn’t do me any good if it killed me now. The fire didn’t bother it, and curses were too slow. With the beast’s strength, speed, and attacking options, I couldn’t keep up. The fight had barely begun, and already I was running out of ideas to kill it directly.

If it didn’t have that damned carapace, I’d burn it to cinders. So, I started looking for weaknesses in the creature’s armor between blocks and deadly follow-ups.

When I could least afford it, my spectral arms were all distracted, raining death on the clones. Finally, King’s Berzerker slipped into my personal space and punched me dead in the chest through my blind spot. At that moment, my vision went orange. Somehow it missed my heart, but my lungs were fair game.

My mind registered that at that moment, it was open. I slashed through the tendons unarmored below the shoulder before burying the machete in the monster’s gut and pulled down. I tore at its armor with two of my spectral arms while cutting through it.

The armor was tough, but I hit where it met the chest plate. It was the sacrifice the monster had to make for freedom of movement.

Its armor was excellent at stopping attacks from the outside. But I cut right at the seam where the armor initially connected. To my working eye, it was as obvious as the sun.

Even as I cut it open, the creature’s mana enters me and tried to alter my flesh. I defied it with my own mana pool. While the creature was powerful, its mana was sluggish. Somehow I didn’t think this was King’s masterpiece.

The second my incision opened, my hand shot into its stomach while my spectral arms held both of its arms in place. Fireball condensed before rapidly expanding like a red giant. While I was touching the fireball, a controlled expansion could be done. It wasn’t like an explosion of sudden heat; this was a constant burn that swallowed up internal organs and spread to fill out the body.

The shell kept the creature’s body from expanding, forcing it to endure the full force of my entire mana pool’s worth of fireball. Bloody lumps of flesh burst from the seems in the creature’s armored hide as it tried to compensate for the expanding fire in its guts. It was too late.

Pink steam exploded out from the seams in the creature’s armor. For a moment, it sounded like a train’s whistle.

I pulled the serrated knuckle blades from my chest and popped another two pills. “I bet you feel terrific about this victory,” King said.

My foot quickly rose over the Berzerker’s head before I stomped down, crushing the creature’s skull. “No, I’m unsatisfied,” I said.

Ding!

Fire Manipulation lvl10

Rank: C

Type: MAG/QI

Description – Supernatural control over fire through raw manipulation, mediums, or summons. Through Mantra, fire can gain properties it usually doesn’t possess. The repeated belief either from the user or others will influence this element if triggered.

ATL – Manipulating fire in its many forms to create various effects.

Abilities

Amateur Condensing – Fire can be drawn in upon itself to simulate the gravity well of a star through mana and maintained through the mantra fireball. Once that gravity well is released, the flames condensed will spread rapidly. Fireball – Once triggered, this mantra gathers flames into an artificial gravity well perfect for firing. Its range is based on the user’s Fire Manipulation and Perception. Revenge Of The Fireflies – After blasting a target with fire, embers of your flame remain to deal continuous damage to defenses unless smothered out. 10% chance to cause a burning debuff. Will O Wisp – Lesser spirits of fire are attracted to you and will come to demand contracts. +10% chance of attracting a contractable lesser spirit.

Ding!

Fire Manipulation has reached lvl5

MAG/QI +1

MAG 27

QI 61

Ding!

Fire Manipulation has reached lvl10

MAG/QI +2

MAG 29

QI 63

Ding!

STR/CON +1

STR 12 (18.3) (36.6) (45.6)

CON 23 (29.3) (58.6)

My body shook a little at the sudden increase of my parameters. While it wasn’t a huge jump, a few points went a long way.

Fang Mei only stared at the corpse of King’s Berzerker. She must not have believed this could happen.

I kicked the corpse sending it rolling into a nearby building, and chased it down with a fireball. The building, it, and the clones in the building exploded together. Sensing those things was getting easier. It was almost like the world itself pointed them out to me.

“Was that your rival?” Fang Mei asked.

“No, that was just one of his tougher clones.” She watched the burning remains as if, at any moment, the monster could rise again. Even dead, its chitinous body didn’t burn easily. The clones crawled through the flames, only for the fallen remains of the building to trap them.

One manipulated its flesh flowing out from under a section of flooring like flowing water. My flames caught a clone in the act and quickly burned it up. It seemed these creatures were never more vulnerable than when they molded their flesh. That was good to know. I raised my hand and launched a few more fireballs for good measure.

This slight burning wasn’t enough to level my Root Of Black Dragons even once, but it felt satisfying all the same.

“What are we going to do now?” Fang Mei asked.

“We’ll go to the nicer part of town and regroup. I have some allies there, and….” I heard a crack and turned my head to the east. Shining a brilliant white and poking out over the skyscrapers in the distance was the communications tower. It was the only way to send messages to the other towns in Taur Country. A black seam had opened in the center of the tower-like someone had split with an ax. The halves of the great tower leaned on each other for a moment before crumbling and sliding apart. I watched dozens of people fall out of the building as the two halves fell.

I grabbed her hand and took off. She kept up with my breakneck pace better than I expected. That’s when I saw the clones out in the open attacking people. It was chaos in the streets. Slaves, lovers, and even children attacked the shocked citizens of Flank town.

Only now did I realize that the sky tower was only a sleight of hand. King had led me by the nose into a fight that felt real while he prepared his finishing gambit. With the communication tower gone, he could consume the whole town in peace. Who really knew anything about this? Silent’s mother only sent for one sorceress and seemed too embarrassed by needing help to ask for more assistance. She asked for a foreigner to keep this from getting out.

I turned and saw Kale galloping down the road, lightning crackling from her hooves and several centaur King clones hot on her tail. Without a second thought, my hand raised, and fireballs exploded into them. My spectral arms glowed with so much cursed qi they appeared visible.

This was no time to admire another user’s finishing gambit. My hands raced, dispensing fireballs to every clone out of friendly fire range. Finally, Kale came to a stop beside me.

The centaur woman stared at me in a mix of shock and awe. For a moment, she remained silent, only staring at me as I dispensed fiery death to the clones. I had to be careful to control my flames and even snuff them out to prevent them from catching friendlies on fire.

Kale spoke with the biting bitterness of a lover scorned. “Was it all an act? Were you ever even mine?” But, of course, to Kale, our relationship was more important than the flesh-drinking clones.

I rounded on her, ready to tell her off, only to stop at the tears streaking her face. My proud grumpy centaur waifu was crying in the middle of a nightmare. It wasn’t fair that I should be dealing with King’s assault instead of Kale’s shit. But she pulled at my heart, and the shit had already hit the fan anyway.

“No, my power increase was recent.” I placed a hand on my collar. She actually reached for my hand to stop me. But only managed to grab my hand after I’d touched the collar. Her muscles flexed in preparation for a shock that never came. “I kept my collar on because I wanted to continue my adventure with you,” I said.

Ding!

RP +5 with Kale

Kale 24/100 She sees you as more than a slave and closer to something more. However, Kale feels terrible about bringing you here and wishes you’d both left after being resupplied.

“Fang Mei, stay with Kale. Hopefully, the two of you together can stay out of trouble. The building behind me is clear of clones. Go inside and barricade yourselves in. I’ll deal with the clones here before I take the fight to their master.” I said.

Kale grabbed my once lame arm and pulled it into her hands. “Answer me, Red. Can you beat this, or should we leave?” I looked into her eyes, and words started spilling out of me. For the life of me, I didn’t know why she made me want to talk.

“The thing behind this healed my arm after that; I’ve been making things up as I went along. I think I have a good chance to beat him, but it's going to be close. This isn’t about feeding or expanding his clone army. It doesn’t have anything to do with sustainability. He’s either making something, performing some ritual, or killing for the lols.” I said.

She shook my shoulders. “When this is over, will you really continue to travel with me? You made a promise to protect me.” Kale said. My words before seemed like they came from a lifetime ago, but I wouldn’t take them back for the world.

“Our journey isn’t over, Kale. So why would I end it here?” I said.

Kale released her grip on my arm, and Fang Mei nearly carried the centaur into the abandoned bar. But, instead, she stopped and turned to me. “I can sense a massive amount of qi focused beneath the city. You might want to check the sewers.” Fang Mei said.

I rushed into the crowd striking the clones with my curse technique. As I fought, my mind shifted over to ask questions.

Why would King center his operation in the sewers? Was it a 4d chess move? Having a secret base in the sewers was so cliché; that said, it’s the first place I’d look. Was he betting on the fact it was a cliché to ensure no one would look there? Or was there another purpose behind it?

A blow from a minotaur clone knocked me into a nearby building. King wasn’t speaking through his clones. I surveyed the battlefield to see a steady trickle of liquid clones flowing through a nearby drain. Efficiency might be the answer to my question after all. His clones could flow to him without wasting much energy.

I sucked in a breath and felt my mana return from all the burning clones. I felt a smile stretch across my face. The chaos from this fight felt like home. A part of me felt overjoyed by this battle. When I saw the death and destruction around me, I wanted to feel sick. But all I felt was euphoria and determination.

I was excited like I’d just drank two red bulls. How messed up did I have to be for that? The worst part was I didn’t have time to deal with these feelings. If King needed a constant supply of flesh, then these clones had to die.

Unlike the newer models, these were common clones designed to appear as civilians. Whatever King was doing had left his attention strained. The clones attacked and fed more like wild animals than an intelligent force. I swept through the mob and tagged them all dozens of times.

Ding!

White/Black Hawk Assassination lvl5

Rank: B+

Type: DEX/QI

Description – A terrifying strike used by cultivators of the white hawk clan. They strike with deadly speed and precision to deliver a single death blow, steal the core of their prey, and escape. It’s a striking skill all about precision and timing combined with an indomitable qi flow.

ATL – Assassinate and steal the treasures of your targets as viciously as a true hawk.

Abilities

Flow Of The Hawk – The user’s qi has gained a pattern to copy and empower the body. Though it is young with the training, you will become much faster. AGL increases by 5% of QI for every ability in WHA. Timing And Target – The user’s qi has adapted to the views of a hawk on the wing. PER increases by 10% of QI when monitoring a target. Cursed Blow – A corruptive qi gathers around your fist for a single devastating blow. Once struck, the target suffers the status cursed. Once cursed, the target suffers irreparable damage to their lifeforce. If the corruptive qi isn’t expelled quickly, the curse will build until the target expires. Stolen Years – Every 10,000,000HP destroyed by the curse increases the user’s QI by 1. Precision Strike – Cursed blow can target organs for increased curse damage. Enfeeblement – Those struck with the curse are slowly weakened until they are entirely debilitated.

Ding!

WHA has reached lvl4

DEX/QI +2

DEX 39 (45.5)

QI 65

Ding!

WHA has reached lvl5

DEX/QI +3

DEX 42 (48.8)

QI 68

This was the power to destroy him once and for all. I could think of no better counter to his abilities. Unless he’d already thought of this and purchased a curse immunity ring or medallion from the shop. I’ve checked the shop, and enchantment penetrators were expensive. Unfortunately, so were guns that could reliably kill these creatures. So I had to hit them with my curses and hope I killed enough of them.

I found a larger sewer entrance and followed the flowing flesh. Down below, I noticed a few things. First, the sewer walls were matted with pulsing red flesh. Second, sphincters appeared around me, and I threw myself to the side to dodge a spray of acid.

When all you had was a hammer, every problem became a nail. So I blasted fireballs in every direction before a wall of acid sprayed down over my flames.

An eye and mouth appeared on one of the fleshy walls.

“Good game, you lost; all of my preparations are complete. I can collapse the city at any time and claim the lives above at my leisure. My clones are distracting anyone who could stand against me, and you are hours away when I need minutes to complete my plan.” So, his plan still wasn’t complete, and I was enough of a nuisance that he couldn’t give his entire focus to his plan. “I’m prepared to give you a final offer for old times sake. You can leave with your hyenoid bitch and her whole pack and even take any other bitches you like. I don’t need much more flesh. This is your chance you can walk away knowing you tried your best; you were just too late.” King wasn’t the type to hand out deals for no reason. Either he didn’t have a reliable counter to my curses like an enchanted item, or he was in a very delicate position and couldn’t afford to concentrate on stopping me.

“I’ll see you in five minutes.” I saw through the flesh in the walls and watched where the liquid flesh flowed. That’s the thing about supply lines; they had to link up with the army or, in this case, King.

I activated sprint and shot off through King’s flesh labyrinth.

All the while, I dodged acid, flesh pits, and lubricated surfaces. The tunnels made loops, turned 90-degree angles, and blocked my entry with false walls. To my higher perception, these traps were child’s play.

With every victory, I gained speed and crossed the distance between myself and King. Arms and tentacles burst from the walls sealing the way the King’s inner sanctum. Four fireballs shot out from my spectral hands, lighting the tunnel and blasting the limbs apart. Finally, I threw myself through the gate and dodged the punch of a Berzerker.

Ding!

Sprint lvl25

Type: AGL

Rank: D

Description – A skill designed to improve running capabilities.

ATL – Use Sprint

Abilities

Beginners Accelerate – An active ability that drains energy in exchange for greater speed. +30% movement speed while active. Qi Cooling System – Qi circulates through the body to ease oxygen transport and resist heat stroke. -20% energy usage. Traction – The user can run on slippery materials without losing speed. Free Hands – The user can run at top speed with both hands-frees. Accelerator +1% movement speed per Sprint ability. Intermediate Accelerate – An active ability that drains energy in exchange for greater speed. +50% Movement speed while active.

Ding!

Sprint has reached lvl10

AGL +2

Sprint has reached lvl15

AGL +3

Sprint has reached lvl20

AGL +4

Sprint has reached lvl25

AGL +5

AGL 31 (51.4) (102.8)

“I collected the battle data from your previous fight and uploaded it into these beasts. They’ll keep you busy while I finish up.” King said.

He sounded tired; all the fire had left his voice. Whatever he was doing taxed him of his attention and took all his focus. That lack of focus shown on the Berzerkers.

Each of the Berzerkers looked half-formed. Some only had a single eye in their armored skulls. Two of them couldn’t move their neck or torso. One was lightly armored but looked quick. It was probably here to keep me from simply outrunning the Berzerkers. After all, why fight them when my target was just up ahead.

If I wanted to fight King, then these things had to die.