The silence was uncanny.
Not peaceful – never that – but eerie, like the world was holding its breath.
Orion stood among twisted rebar, shattered concrete, and puddles of drying blood. The air was thick with iron and residual Mana. Dust and ash floated lazily in the stagnant air, like motes of time frozen mid-fall.
He could feel it the cravings were gone. That unbearable torment he'd carried his whole life had vanished. His hunger had finally gone Silent. Yet his face betrayed no joy. Even with the raw power surging through his newly formed body, it was hard to manifest anything close to excitement.
The things he had done during the time he went mad with hunger were all coming back to him.
How he had eaten his own body and worse yet how he had cannibalized on the corpse of his friend.
"What good does this control do me now… that I've already eaten my friend?"
Orion questioned out loud in a mocking tone. His voice hung heavy in the air.
He had gotten great power but at what cost?
He crouched down next to a puddle of blood – Her blood. He knew this because of the information – the records he had received when he ate her, and he loathed this information being in his brain, but he refused to delete them as they were the only proof left of her existence.
He held no grand ambitions of bringing her back to life, he knew it was impossible, the records he got from the system told him so. Once dead that person will never come back.
The reason he kept her records was simply because he wasn't man enough to let her go. His guilt wouldn't allow him this release.
Tears flooded from his eyes his cheeks getting wet. He sobbed, crying like a little boy.
Orion didn't know how long he sat there; he had never missed his mom more than he did at this moment. And it was this thought that finally got him to stop and stand up.
He still needed to find his mom. "I'm coming, Mom," Orion whispered, standing to his feet. His voice steadied with resolve. "I won't let you die. No matter what."
With a melancholic look plastered on his face and a strange determination in his eyes, he turned towards the pool of blood one last time.
Orion was mature enough to know that he can't keep blaming himself for what happened as it was out of his control. He knew that living in self-blame and constant regret, calling himself a monster was no solution. He knew there was nothing he could do about it, that he should try to move on…
And so, he did.
He opened his mouth and spoke with a determined certainty, his voice laced with Gratitude.
"Hi, Mia… It's me. Orion. I wanted to thank you for saving me—not once, but twice. And I'm sorry. I know this doesn't make it right… but I promise I'll find any family you may have and take care of them. I swear it… with my life."
He paused. "So, you can rest in peace now. Goodbye, Mia"
He made a promise, the only thing he could think of, and prepared to move on.
Orion stood there in silence for a few minutes before turning around and moving away never looking back, a fire burning in his eyes.
…
Orion traversed the tight underground cavern that had formed by the collapsed building and reached a new place.
He took a deep breath.
Now that he had gotten rid of his emotional burden his attention shifted to his body, and he could feel the power coursing through him.
He took another breath, Excitement finally filling his eyes.
The air tasted different. The world felt smaller, slower. Orion reached down and touched a rock—and it crumbled to ash in his grasp, absorbed into his palm without effort.
[Predation Successful. Stone Essence Acquired: Inorganic Base Energy +0.01]
A prompt flashed briefly before fading. His senses were sharper than ever—he could feel the iron in the dirt, the Mana in the air, the life force of something crawling a hundred meters underground. His new power didn't hunger aimlessly—it was a weapon, preying on his enemies.
He took a step forward, rubble crunching beneath his bare feet. A black golden gimmer trailed behind him – thin slithering lines of chains of greed, retracting into his back like living things.
"I need to test this"
His voice was calm but layered with a child's enthusiasm. As he moved forward the dirt around his feet crumbled into motes, absorbed instantly. He tasted the composition of the earth, felt its essence, and knew how to shape it. His power wasn't just consumption anymore—it was assimilation, adaptation, and evolution.
[ Ability detected: Earth Manipulation (S) (0.000…001%)]
He could feel it. He was no longer a slave to Hunger.
Now, he was the predator of reality itself.
Crack.
Followed by a cracking sound a wooden ramp snapped, tumbling down with all that it supported above it. Orion using his newly enhanced agility jumped aside dodging the avalanche. With a rumbling sound, the area before Orion fully collapsed greatly restricting whatever little space he had.
Orion realized he couldn't unleash predation unrestrained in this unstable space, one wrong move and the whole building could collapse again trapping him again. He wasn't strong enough to devour a mass that huge with the required speed, to be unafraid of the collapsing building. After all, he was only level Zero right now.
He needs to find the perfect spot to start breaking through this prison of stone and steel.
Orion took a step back and expanded his senses, analyzing the structure and the part where it was most stable. It would've been a lot easier if he could use his domain but unfortunately, he wasn't strong enough.
Predation was different from Greed or Gluttony; it was born of Orion being one with him. It came to him as naturally as breathing and he knew all about it without even looking at the system.
Thus, he was aware that if he used his domain right now, he would collapse from lack of energy within less than a second.
After a few minutes Orion with a rough idea in mind moved again, this time upward, pressing through a diagonal tunnel of concrete, steel rods snapping beneath his hands. With each step, his Predation surged, devouring only the things in his way with planned precision. As he kept devouring energy kept accumulating in his core instinctively reinforcing his bones, his joints, his lungs.
As he neared the top Orion moved faster, his bare hands gaining a greyish hue, hardening, clawing through splintered concrete his muscles soaked with mana-enhanced endurance.
> [Adaptive Mutation – Skill Stone skin (Rank E) acquired.]
[Increase the hardness of your skin, 5 MP per minute.]
He was nearly out.
Thud.
With a breaking sound the collapsed wall cracked open with a final heave, Moonlight showered him as he burst free of the ruined hallway, emerging into what was once the hospital's third floor—now angled and broken like a collapsed lung.
What remained of the building slumped diagonally, leaning into itself, steel beams poking skyward like broken ribs.
Orion paused.
For the first time in a while, he saw the sky.
It wasn't the sky he remembered. Clouds thick in mana covered most of the night. Ash fell like snow, and the moon shone brighter than ever.
He wasn't the only one who had changed
The world had changed along with him.
He stood tall on the angled surface, naked, his black and violet eyes reflecting the chaos around him.
Below, through the tilted window shafts, the mangled courtyard lay covered in wreckage, corpses, and… movement.
Orion took a deep breath, the new fresh air filling his lungs, and a grin slowly tugged at his lips.
He was finally free.