Kang Min’s breathing was ragged as he stared at the commander.
『Left Hand of Ruin has been equipped!』
The black, volcanic glove materialized over his left hand, its blue magma veins pulsing with a violent, hungry heat.
The Commander didn’t wait and lunged across the blood-stained gravel, his Right Glove trailing silver-white light that cut through the smoke like a razor.
Kang Min t the strike with the Left Hand of Ruin, the collision sending a shockwave that flattened the surrounding burning tents.
The two moved with a speed that defied the physics of the world.
Blue mana trails left jagged streaks in the air as they flashed from one spot to another.
The sound of their blades clashing was like a continuous roll of thunder.
Kang Min’s swordsmanship was a frantic, high-level dance of survival and precision.
The Commander matched him blow for blow, his eyes filled with a battle-maniac’s gleam.
His movents were no longer disciplined and were now fueled by a raw, terrifying bloodlust.
Suddenly, a system window flickered into existence, bleeding a bruised crimson light.
『 ??? has used Skill-Blood Lust Lv.2 [Taunt]! 』
Kang Min’s vision suddenly blurred, a hot, tallic wash of red drowning out the blue of the world.
His heart hamred a frantic, uneven beat against his ribs.
His conscience slipped away like sand through a sieve, leaving only a void of primal rage.
He felt an overwhelming, agonizing necessity to kill the man in front of him.
His pupils dilated until his eyes were twin orbs of liquid ruby.
He roared, a sound that wasn’t human, and launched himself at the Commander without a shred of defense.
They fought like animals, their blades sparking in a frenzy of iron and mana.
Each counter was a desperate gamble for blood.
Kang Min’s thoughts were a chaotic static of kill and destroy.
The effect of the skill was a psychological poison that turned a master swordsman into a mindless beast.
Slowly, the crimson haze began to recede from the edges of his vision.
Kang Min gasped for air as his clarity returned, his body trembling from the sudden drop in adrenaline.
He realized with a jolt of horror that he had been fighting without any tactical awareness.
’His skill made it so that any opponent he faced would be taunted into a mindless, suicidal charge...’
’...but the Commander had used it...I don’t understand why...
Why did the system label the commander as [???] ?’
’Did the world itself no longer recognize the Commander’s identity?’
[??? Has Yet to Reveal Himself]
"What..."
Kang Min parried a heavy blow that nearly shattered his wrist.
"Why are you so bent on getting this glove?"
Kang Min demanded, his voice a guttural rasp.
The Commander threw his head back and laughed, a sound so jagged and maniacal it vibrated in Min’s marrow.
"Give back what belongs to , Otherworlder!" he man scread.
The laughter didn’t stop and only grew darker and more disturbing.
"Ahh...I’m tired of keeping this going on...it irks as it is...
It is I... Varkas!"
He said smiling, his bloodlust reaching a fever pitch.
Kang Min’s mind reeled as if he had been struck by a physical blow.
Varkas was supposed to be a corpse, a legend lost to the story of a decade past.
Nothing in the Old World records ntioned the Hero of Valeria being alive.
"But how...the duchy says you died..."
"I didn’t die...god...are the dukes of this place still mindless idiots?"
He hissed, his face contorting into a mask of pure malice
"I lived in the marrow of my own successor, eating his soul from the inside out until nothing remained but this shell."
"I hollowed out Kaelen’s mind and stitched my consciousness into his nerves."
"I felt every pulse of his dying terror as I took his skin for my own."
The story was a sickening crawl of necro-parasitism that made the air feel foul.
"And you..."
Varkas said, his voice dropping to a predatory whisper.
"I recognized you from the mont you stepped into the capital."
"Otherworlders were the only ones who could access my Left Hand of Ruin after my fall."
"I’ve been waiting for a rat like you to fetch it for ."
Kang Min was taken aback, his focus shattering under the weight of the revelation.
He couldn’t reconcile the hero of the fables with the monster standing before him.
In his mont of hesitation, Varkas struck.
A heavy fist slamd into Kang Min’s chest, cracking ribs and launching him backward.
He tried to recover his stance, but his mind was a storm of doubt and confusion.
Varkas followed up with a brutal series of strikes that treated Kang Min like a training dummy.
He was beaten across the camp, his body bouncing off the charred ruins like a ragdoll.
Every ti he tried to focus, the image of Toby and the children flickered in his mind.
’Wasn’t this supposed to be a simulation...?’
He felt like his body was subrged in deep, icy waters, falling into an endless dark.
The pain felt too visceral.
Varkas lunged forward and grabbed Kang Min’s left wrist with a grip of iron.
"It’s ti to return the favor!"
Varkas grinned.
A complex magic circle erupted around the Left Hand of Ruin.
Multiple rings of light began to turn in opposing directions going clockwise and anti-clockwise.
The sound was like gears of light grinding against bone.
Kang Min’s left hand began to smoke as the celestial seal reacted to the true owner.
The heat was unbearable, a white-hot agony that bypassed his nerves and scorched his soul.
The glove didn’t detached and burned its way off his skin.
Kang Min’s hand was scorched black, the flesh charred and ruined beyond any hope of repair.
He let out a strangled groan of pain as he slumped to the ground.
Varkas didn’t even look at him as he slid the Left Hand of Ruin onto his own hand.
The mont both gloves were equipped, they ceased their blue glow.
They turned a violent, screaming red.
The entire camp shook as a geyser of red mana erupted from the ground beneath Varkas.
The energy devoured his being, swirling in a cyclone of crimson light.
Kang Min watched from the dirt, his vision swimming in pain.
Varkas’s human facade began to lt away in the heat of the mana.
Long, obsidian horns sprouted from the sides of his head, curving sharply backward.
The white part of his eyes turned as black as the void itself.
His pupils burned like glowing embers of pure, unadulterated hate.
He bared teeth that had sharpened into serrated needles of bone.
Suddenly, the sky above the capital was torn asunder.
A massive, jagged gate split the firmant, bleeding a deep, bruised red into the night.
The stars were blotted out by the sheer weight of the rift.
A few monts later, shadowy, multi-limbed monsters began to pour from the gate.
They screeched as they descended upon the burning city like a plague of crows.
Varkas looked down at Kang Min with a smile that was nothing more than a jagged line of death.
He raised his sword high, the red light of the gloves reflecting in the cold steel.
The demonic being took a single, heavy step forward.
Varkas swung the sword down toward Kang Min’s neck.
User Comments
0 comments from readers