Jester steadied his breathing as the next wave of Varkhul surged over the ridge, their guttural roars echoing across the battlefield like thunder. He fired again and with each kill, a faint pulse stirred inside his chest.
At first, he thought it was just an illusion of imrsion, but then, as the corpses piled up and he noticed his physical capabilities and mana were increasing.
Yet the improvent was strangely limited.
It beca clearer with every battle movent: this "ga" didn't want its players to rely on supernatural power. Everything here demanded skill. It wanted mastery, not brute force.
But Jester wasn't truly thinking about ga balance.
Because as his mana stirred and strength grew, sothing else awoke within him.
The faint coppery gleam of the simulated blood splashing across his vision seed to stir sothing primal in him. His pupils dilated, his breathing slowed, and for the first ti since entering the pod, his calm smile deepened into sothing feral.
A pulse of hunger.
A desire he didn't understand-or maybe he did, but refused to acknowledge.
He lowered his rifle as he drew the sleek, Federation-issued energy sword at his side.
Then, with a voice low and trembling with excitent, he muttered, "Let's see how this body holds up."
The mana inside him swirled. Jester's stance shifted, his muscles tightening in anticipation. A familiar flow coursed through him-the sa pattern used in his real body's knight technique.
Energy burst through his limbs, faint light streaking across his veins. The next second, he vanished from his squad's line of sight.
The air cracked.
"Wha-where'd he-" IronDog42 started, but his words were cut off by the echo of tal clashing bone.
Jester was already in the enemy ranks.
He landed among the Varkhul like a dark storm, his sword carving a half-circle through the air. The blade cleaved cleanly through the neck of one warrior, bisected another across the torso, and spun in a reverse arc that sent three more staggering back.
Simulated blood sprayed across his visor. His body reacted instinctively, his strikes elegant and monstrous all at once.
Even though the sight of blood here was fake, sothing inside him stirred violently. The deeper shade of red spreading in his vision made him feel alive, too alive.
Lily, still crouched behind cover, could only stare in horror and awe as Jester's avatar blurred through the battlefield.
On HexaNova's stream, the audience erupted.
"He switched to lee?!"
"That speed-holy crap, he's glowing!"
"Do the phantom move!"
"Chat, he's literally destroying them!"
"Is that... bloodlust? Why does he look like he's smiling?"
While others watched in awe as Jester tore through the battlefield, his strikes grew sharper, more vicious, more... hungry.
Every swing painted the air in red light. The Varkhul warriors fell one after another, their heavy bodies thudding into the mud with hollow weight.
Lily's hands trembled as she watched from behind her barricade.
The players beside her, IronDog42 and Mira_Shotz, stopped shooting entirely. They simply stared as Jester's glowing silhouette moved through the chaos like a specter.
"Is he... enjoying this?" Mira_Shotz muttered under her breath.
Then it happened.
Jester caught one of the Varkhul by the throat-a hulking brute twice his size. The alien roared and swung its jagged blade, but Jester's hand tightened like an iron vice.
The creature struggled violently, clawing at his arm, but Jester's smile only deepened.
ILily's breath caught. "Jester... what are you—"
Before she could finish, the Varkhul's body began to shrivel. Its skin
sank against its bones, its vibrant blue veins dimming to gray. Within seconds, the massive warrior crumpled like paper, its body reduced to a brittle husk.
Jester exhaled softly. The fatigue that had been showing on his face monts ago vanished completely. His back straightened. His stance steadied. He looked... rejuvenated.
"What the hell..." IronDog42 whispered, stepping back in alarm.
The live stream chat exploded.
"WHAT DID HE JUST DO?!"
"Bro just absorbed that thing!"
It was at that exact mont that the system alert rang through every
player's comms.
[Mission Complete: Sector A-9 Secured]
[Simulation Terminated - End of Session]
The world around them dissolved into cascading light. The
blood-soaked dirt, the fire, the corpses-all gone in an instant.
Unknown to most players, inside a quiet operations room in the company that partnered with the Federation to launch Front War, a supervisor watched a red banner crawl across his console.
[Demonic Pattern Detected]
He clicked the alert, scrubbed the replay twice, and frowned. "Who is foolish enough to try that in a monitored sim," he muttered.
The detection module had been added at the Federation's request. It was a net thrown into the water to see what it might catch. In the first few days it had snagged a handful of reckless strays who tried to replicate so special dark arts inside the ga. Even so, the supervisor still felt a jolt of surprise each ti the red banner
appeared.
"Protocol Twelve," he said to the room. "Forward the packet. Keep our hands off."
His team moved without fuss. They bundled everything, including the location trace from the ho network with an auto-generated note attached to the file.
[To Federation Liaison: Unusual drain behavior consistent with proscribed techniques. Player coordinates attached.]
"Send it," the supervisor said.
He leaned back, already doing sothing else. To him it was just
another alert cleared from his screen.
anwhile in the land of origin, Michael who was unaware of the
actions of his undead in the real world was currently seated in front
of knight Darius.
Before he laid eyes on Knight Darius, Michael had been shown
politely into the knight's study.
The guard bowed, nudged the door open, and left them there with a
silver tray of steaming tea. There was no one to attend to him.
The room itself was tidy and old.
Michael crossed to a case, plucked a volu at random- The Iron
Valleys-and took the central chair as if it were his own. He read in silence, turning pages at an even pace.
User Comments
0 comments from readers