He rembered a sumr night, a dark room, a broken fan, the monitor screen illuminating his face. He was playing a souls-like RPG, one of those that punish the player as if it were personal. He had reached that classic part: the "level up shrine," with a giant skill tree, each node with a price. The cheaper nodes were basic things. The expensive ones were the broken ones.
Haru always did the sa thing. He ignored the cheap ones. He picked the most expensive one he could buy, even knowing it would take a long ti to use, even knowing it was "inefficient."
"If I get this... when I finally use it, nobody can stop ." He spent everything on a single OP skill, beca weak for dozens of hours, died a thousand tis, but when the skill finally activated, he beca a god.
The pleasure of "winning" wasn’t killing the boss, it was the mont the skill activated for the first ti and the enemy turned to dust... He used to laugh alone in the dark room, mouse in hand, thinking: "It was worth every death. It was worth every rage quit."
Now looking at the prices in front of him, Haru saw the sa pattern repeating itself...
Without hesitating, he clicked...
►[10,000Xp used]◄
[SKILL SELECTED]
[DEVOURING COVENANT: ACTIVATING]
[Processing...]
[Spirit Assimilation: In Progress]
[Synchronization - 3%]
◊ Note: This type of skill activates gradually
◊◊ Evolution occurs through use or quests, not instant upgrade
The system showed that skills like this one activated in the first phase to begin evolution over ti; they didn’t grant instant power but grew. It made sense; the spirits within him needed to synchronize better before releasing their full potential.
anwhile, skeletons continued to appear from all the tunnels around the chamber, five, six, eight at the sa ti now, as if the dungeon had realized that one was too easy and decided to increase the difficulty.
But now Haru was more aggressive.
He shut down the system with a quick gesture and charged at them without hesitation, using everything he had available to turn it into an intensive training session.
He used [Shadow Step], taking himself from one side of the chamber to the other instantly. He ripped off heads with his hands or exploded them with concentrated fire. He released small spheres that pierced the skeletons. Kicks that broke columns...
He was no longer fighting to survive, he was testing limits, calibrating strength, experinting with combinations of skills that he hadn’t had ti to explore properly before.
He destroyed five more skeletons in quick succession, teleporting between them so fast that it seed like there were three Harus in the chamber at the sa ti, and when he turned to look for the next target he noticed sothing strange.
The skeletons had stopped advancing.
They stood at the tunnel entrances, staring at him with those empty eye sockets, and then began to slowly retreat, dragging their feet backward as if instinctively recognizing danger, as if sothing primal etched into their bones scread not to co near.
Haru stopped too, observing this with growing attention.
And then they began to co together.
Bones that had been destroyed began to crawl across the floor back to the main bodies, but not to reconstruct the individual skeletons, they began to rge. Three skeletons beca one, then five joined with that one, then eight more ca from different tunnels dragging broken parts that fit into the wrong places, forming a larger and denser structure.
CLACK CLACK CLACK
The sound of bones hitting each other echoed throughout the chamber as the mass of skeletons grew, arms multiplying, legs fusing to form a more stable base, skulls piling up to create a grotesque torso with multiple bony faces staring in different directions.
In less than thirty seconds, a creature four ters tall had ford, with six arms wielding various rusty weapons and a base of three legs that moved in unnatural synchronicity.
The creature turned all its heads toward Haru at once and roared, a hollow, dragging sound that ca from multiple bony throats simultaneously.
Haru looked up at the thing, then looked at his own fists, still slightly smoldering from the flas he had used, and smiled.
"Now it’s interesting."
The fight quickly intensified and beca more frustrating.
Haru destroyed parts of the monster, ripped off arms, exploded heads, split ribs in half with powerful kicks, but the bones kept rebuilding themselves. Fragnts scattered across the ground crawled back to the main body, reassembled, and the creature returned with full force in seconds.
He teleported behind it, grabbed one of the Amalgamation’s arms with both hands, and concentrated Valtherion fire directly on the point of contact. The entire arm turned to black ashes that crumbled to the ground, and when he waited to see if it would rebuild itself... nothing happened.
The creature used parts of its own body to replace the lost arm, becoming visibly smaller.
Haru paused for half a second, processing it.
He rembered that Valtherion fire was no ordinary fire. It didn’t just burn surfaces; it completely extinguished everything it touched, leaving permanent wounds that wouldn’t regenerate. Exactly like the scar he carried.
He looked at his own right arm, where bandages covered the skin from his fingers almost to his shoulder, and rembered the first ti he had used Valtherion fire back in the stable.
The burn still stung slightly across his entire arm; it wasn’t unbearable pain, but it was constant, always present as a reminder of the cost of using that power.
That’s why he wore the bandages, and only now did he realize that it was the only thing Yukihi’s Essence hadn’t completely healed when it regenerated his body. It had taken away the sharp pain, yes, but the burn itself remained.
He murmured, looking at his covered arm: "Right... this fla doesn’t forgive."
Then he increased the intensity.
Haru enveloped his entire body in Valtherion flas, a brilliant red that illuminated the entire chamber, transforming shadows into dancing light, the heat so intense that the air around him began to visually distort.
He charged straight at Bone Amalgamation, no longer dodging but charging with everything he had, each touch consuming bones and turning them into ashes that wouldn’t return, wouldn’t rebuild, they just vanished.
The creature tried to retreat, tried to defend itself with its remaining arms, but Haru pierced through all the defenses, setting fire to every part he touched. In less than twenty seconds, the entire structure collapsed, crumbling as the body turned into black ashes that spread across the ground, forming a perfect circle around it.
Absolute silence in the labyrinth.
No skeleton rose again. No bone moved, the labyrinth was completely quiet.
Suddenly, Haru’s head ached.
It wasn’t normal pain, it was as if sothing had pierced his skull from the inside, sharp and penetrating, concentrated on the right side. He fell to his knees in the middle of the still-warm ashes, his hands instinctively going to his face, and felt sothing wet running down.
His right eye was bleeding.
He covered it with his right hand, pressing hard, the pain so intense that he almost scread but held back, his breath escaping through clenched teeth. His heart pounded uncontrollably in his chest, each beat pulsing in his head, making the pain worse.
After about thirty seconds, the pain had almost completely subsided, leaving only a strange feeling of pressure behind his eye.
Haru took a few deep breaths to calm himself, and when he began to remove his hand from his face, he noticed sothing: a glint reflected between his fingers, a faint but visible light.
He removed his hand, looking at his blood-covered palm, then looked at the ground where a few drops had fallen, forming a small puddle that reflected light. In the reflection of the blood on the ground, he could see his own right eye.
Everything was dark; the sclera had turned completely black, as had happened when the spirits first entered it. But the pupil was different now. It looked like a bright center with roots spreading from it in fractal patterns that ran across the entire iris, still light gray but shining with its own light that pulsed faintly in rhythm with his heart.
[DEVOURING COVENANT: Stabilized]
[Synchronization: completed]
◊ New Perception: Unlocked
Haru stood up slowly, testing his balance, and realized that he felt strong and light at the sa ti, as if the weight of his own body had decreased but the strength in his muscles had increased.
His right eye remained altered, and when he blinked he could see normally with it despite its strange appearance.
He looked at the ashes of the fallen skeleton scattered on the ground around him, deliberately closed his left eye to see only with his altered right eye, and saw sothing he hadn’t seen before.
A kind of thin, transparent smoke rose from the ashes, slowly rising, and when it got close to him it was pulled towards his right eye, entering through the glowing roots that spread across the iris and disappearing inside.
The spirits within him were consuming it through the altered eye.
The sa thing was happening around him; much of the smoke rising from the ashes rose and was pulled towards the roots on the wall.
Haru observed the process for a few seconds, then opened his left eye again, regaining normal vision, and murmured to himself with a mixture of understanding and resignation.
"I think I understand this now...".
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