CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Hello World
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
Snow fell in heavy sheets, blurring the yard and stinging Abo's skin. The air was cold, sharp enough to hurt his lungs with each breath. He stood in the shattered cattle pen, blood drying on his hands, Lira's body motionless in the snow just beyond the fence. His torn onesie clung to his small frame, stiff with gore and freezing in the wind.
Most of the monsters seemed just above the treeline from Abo's low vantage point, but they were much higher, soaring in the blizzard sky far above. Gargoyles with stone wings, grotesques with twitching claws, and stone basilisks with glowing eyes flew in formation, their heavy forms drifting steadily toward his position.
Abo's red eyes tracked their movement, senses sharpened. One gargoyle flew ahead of the others, it was one of the few he'd spotted earlier. Now it dipped lower, wings slicing through the wind with a deep hum. It wasn't faster than the grotesques, just farther along the approach. Its eyes locked onto him. Unlike before, they could see him clearly now.
He scooped up snow, packed it into a tight ball, and hurled it. The gargoyle twisted left, the projectile grazing its wing. Abo threw again, then a third, each one dodged with ease as the creature mirrored his movements. He gritted his teeth, by now, his jaw had fully healed and locked into place.
He packed another snowball, tighter this time, and waited for the gargoyle to dive closer. It swooped low, claws outstretched. Abo hurled the ball with all his strength. He had three stacks, giving him a 20% boost to Power. The snowball struck the gargoyle's chest, cracking stone and sending it spinning into a tree with a heavy thud. Ever since earlier, he'd been targeting the monsters' vital points. As gamified as the world had become, hitting something where it matters still meant it died, so long as his Power outmatched their defense.
With a 30% Power boost, he was back to human-railgun level. He aimed carefully, hurling the shot to drive the grotesques toward the basilisks—herding them into a tighter formation. The compressed ice detonated the instant it left his fingers. The shot tore through the air in a straight line, punching a hole through three grotesques. One crashed down, its wings shredded. The blast forced the grotesques into the basilisks' path, compressing both groups together and disrupting their movement as they scattered.
But, of course, the recoil pureed Abo's arm.
Is this why Defense exists? Abo muttered to himself. It made sense to him now—Power needed something to hold it up. Normally, Defense scaled naturally with Speed and Strength; that was just how the body worked. Pushing Power without any Defense was basically suicide, but his skill set demanded that he leave it behind.
"System," he muttered, scooping more snow with his left arm. His other arm was gone, and what remained was still fighting to stop the bleeding, flesh knitting itself back together." Split the last five stat points between Power and Speed. I don't have time to push buttons. I'm a little busy trying to hit these bastards."
He fired again, hands moving fast, snowballs streaking toward the incoming swarm. Using his non-dominant hand, he couldn't draw out his full stat Power. That means no shockwave, no devastating recoil. The monsters were closing in, their numbers overwhelming. He waited for the System's response, but nothing came.
"System?" Abo kept throwing, his arm a blur as the creatures flew closer.
No response came from the System.
"Are you upgrading again now? This is a bad time for it." Abo's eye caught a basilisk left unguarded, still far. It would be a waste to cash out his 40% Power boost on anything else, basilisks had the highest defense, and were the hardest to kill. He fired, the shot tore through its vital point.
Abo threw as fast as he could, but the monsters were quicker; his speed was only half of theirs, and his stack had been consumed. Three gargoyles broke from the swarm, using Stone Dive, their claws aimed to deal 180% damage and knock him down. Abo reacted instantly, triggering Shadow Step, no—Noble's Phasing.
His body blurred into black mist, teleporting from the pen to the back of a basilisk high in the sky. He clung to its rough hide, the wind whipping past. Below, the three gargoyles slammed into the ground where he'd stood, their dives colliding. Their stone bodies cracked against each other, halving their HP in an instant, and completely obliterating his snowball pile in the process.
Abo closed his eyes the moment he landed on the basilisk's back. Right, he was inside their formation now. One wrong glance, and his Speed would drop to 30%. There were twenty of these bastards; he could turn into a turtle at any second. Blindness was his edge, he didn't need to see to fight. The monsters were heading straight for the orphanage. This was the only way to disrupt them is by slipping into the middle of the basilisks' formation.
The basilisks had only two limbs, positioned near the center of their long, serpentine bodies. From where Abo clung to its neck, it couldn't reach him, not with claws, and not with its fangs either. He pulled the fang from his onesie and drove it into the basilisk's neck, stabbing again and again until it finally broke through the stone hide. The fang shattered under the strain. The basilisk shrieked, unintentionally triggering its skill: Petrifying Glare. The grotesques, now bunched up near the basilisks from Abo's earlier throw, instinctively turned toward the sound. The moment their eyes met the basilisk's gaze, their SPD dropped by 30%. Abo drank the black blood gushing from the wound, gulping it down before the others could reach him. As the blood spread through his system, his missing arm began to regenerate, bone forming first, followed by muscle twisting around it, then skin sealing over the raw flesh. Fingers twitched as sensation returned.
He waited for the usual messages—the stack reset after drinking blood, the updated count, his health, the hem he'd gained, but nothing appeared. No updates, no numbers, no feedback from the System. Puzzled, he tried to call up the status window, but it didn't respond. Nothing appeared, not even a flicker. Then the realization came; he wasn't a player, he never had been, he was just a low-tier monster. Everything he'd seen: the skills, the stats, the interface, the ability to see them, to make sense of them, only existed because the System allowed it.
"Does that mean the maggot visual effects for regeneration are back?" Abo's baby hair strands stood up. He drained the basilisk's blood until it was dead, its body plummeting. His HP was likely restored, but without the System, he couldn't be sure how much. As the basilisk fell, Abo triggered Shadow Step, no, wait—Noble's Phasing, again. "Why call it Shadow Step before? " he thought, annoyed at the naming shift. He vanished in a black cloud, reappearing on a grotesque's back.
He should be targeting the basilisks, their debuff is deadly, but the quest demands he focus on the grotesques. They're too fast and that means, they'll reach the orphanage in no time. Even with a 30% speed drop, only a few were hit by the glare. Their damage was low, their debuff only hit his defense, which was already zero. Their weaker defense compared to the other races made them easier to kill, but their speed was a problem. Abo grabbed the grotesque's neck, but it was too fast, biting his arm for 40 damage. He lost 40% of his HP, pushing his stack to four, +30% damage. He twisted its neck with both his arms, knowing a blade would be useless against its hide. Blood sprayed from his shoulder as he dealt the killing blow, mentally noting five stacks.
The monsters charged, their wings shifting the air with a single flap. Abo used Noble's Phasing, teleporting to the furthest grotesque, the one closest to the orphanage and farthest from the flock. Instead of landing on its back, he grabbed its wings, using its momentum to swing it in a circle. With his +40% power, he hurled the grotesque like a bowling ball toward the others. It crashed into the swarm, killing some and scattering the rest, though a few at the edges dodged.
His stacks were gone now, and the speedy grotesques near the orphanage had been disrupted and thinned out. He shifted his focus to a basilisk. Activating Noble's Phasing once more, he used its synergy with Heart Piercer—formerly Assassinate—to strike. The skill required stealth to trigger, and his Vampire evolution had upgraded it: now, in addition to ignoring defense, it silenced the enemy for one second, preventing retaliation.
Phasing behind the creature, Abo grabbed its neck with ease. This time, it didn't manage to bite him. His infant muscles tensed as he squeezed, bypassing 40% of the basilisk's defense. He extended his fang again, reached into its mouth, and yanked out its largest serrated molar. A crack formed along the basilisk's neck, and without hesitation, he drove his fang-blade into it. Blood gushed out in thick, black spurts.
Abo, lunatic as ever, had taken the cow's stomach earlier, esophagus still attached. He punched through the stomach lining to flush out the acid, then shoved the intact tube under the basilisk's neck, filling it like a grotesque water bottle. In a rush, he squeezed its neck and even punched it a few more times to force out extra blood, ignoring the fact that it was already dying. He couldn't flush it all, but it was enough. The other basilisks were charging toward him.
Without pause, Abo grabbed the dying basilisk by the tail. His infant body lifted off the ground, swinging wide as momentum built, centrifugal force pulling him outward as the weight of the corpse spun. Then, with a grunt, he hurled the basilisk's body straight into the incoming flock.
Abo sensed a gargoyle nearing the orphanage gates; he could hear its claws scraping against the metal. In a flash, he vanished, teleporting straight to it. He kicked its head mid-appearance, snapping its neck as Heart Piercer triggered on impact.
Then he felt it—more than five grotesques, flying straight toward him at high speed. Shit. They were too fast; they passed him in an instant. The wind from their flight blew him off the already-falling gargoyle. He couldn't use Noble's Phasing, they were already beyond four meters, and the ten-second Petrifying Glare debuff? That had worn off minutes ago.
He had no choice; the fall would deal enough damage to gain some stacks. He dropped to the snowy ground, the three-meter fall shattering his infant bones. Pain exploded through his body, his regeneration was slower than usual. He extended his fangs, ripping them out one by one, fitting them between his fingers like daggers.
He opened his eyes. Until now, he'd kept them shut, avoiding even the chance of locking eyes with a basilisk. But they were behind him now, out of sight. Ahead, only grotesques. He'd fought blind his whole life, but now he needed every edge. His eyes focused onto the grotesques, just meters from the orphanage walls. He hurled the fang-daggers with precision, each one streaking through the air. The grotesques didn't have time to react. The daggers hit their vital points: throats, eyes, hearts, and they dropped, dead on impact.
But the force of the throw sent a shockwave ripping through the air, windows shattered, and cracks spiderwebbed across the orphanage's walls.
"Shit," Abo coughed, blood splattering from his mouth. The fall was meant to build his Sacrifice stacks, but this kind of damage output meant Desperation had kicked in. His HP was below 10%, maybe even kissing 2%. One wrong move, and he'd be respawning in the Saiyan produce aisle.
He turned his back from the orphanage, and tilted his head upwards, eyes squinting through the snow. The monsters were clearing the perimeter, closing in on the building fast. He was failing the quest, and those flying bastards were seconds from turning the kids inside into minced meat. Two options: chuck something: snow, rocks, maybe rip out his own teeth again, and let Desperation's 40-50% boost to Power and Speed one-shot the pricks, or chug the basilisk blood from the cow stomach he'd rigged. The blood would patch him up, maybe enough to keep his HP above the death line, but it would cancel Desperation.
He was confident the monsters would die instantly if he attacked, the skill was overpowered. With that much speed and power, it wouldn't take much. But there was one problem. He remembered that critical detail about Desperation. His Sacrifice skill, which normally reduced his health by 5% per attack, was now only costing 2%. And with the boost being multiplicative with his Sacrifice stacks, it all sounded great on paper.
But...
Who's to tell him if his HP was already at 2% or lower? If it did, he was fucked. And dead.
Abo gave up; he didn't want to waste energy weighing options that both led to nothing. He loosened his muscles, ready to tip backward and fall into the snow, maybe stare up at the sky one last time, with stone-carved monsters flying overhead. The quest was doomed. If the people in the bunker got torn apart, so be it. He hadn't cared in the first place.
But just as his back was about to hit the ground, a blue glow flickered in front of his face.
System: Hello World.
The System's interface glitched, then vanished in a burst of static. In its place, a cluster of faintly glowing blue runes materialized, hovering in the air.
⋗ INSCRIBE
ᚠᚨᛚᛃ ᛋᛏᚨᚱᚲ ᚹᛁᚱᛃ ᚢᛏᛖᚾ ᛗᚨᚷᚨ ᚾᛟᚱᛁ ↯⟁⟁⟊⟁ Ϫ⇂Ϙ⟁ ᛉ⇌𐌰 ᛇ⟁ϟ⟁ 𐍈⟁⟁⇌ ᚷᛟᛁᚾ ᚱᚨᚾᚷᛖ ᚨᚠᛏᛖᚱ ᛋᛏᚱᛁᚲᛖ 𐍉𐌽𐌻𐌵𐌰 ⇅ 𐌼𐌰𐌲𐌴𐌷 𐌿𐌽𐌳 ᛚᚨᛉ ᛞᚱᚨ ᛋᛁᚾᛖ ᛖᚲᛟᚱ ᛃᚨᚱᛞ
⋗ TRIGGER
He couldn't read the symbols—none of them made sense. Except two words: inscribe, then trigger. The moment trigger lit up, everything shifted. Glowing blue lines burst from the air, shaping into floating cubes that lined up horizontally on his sides. The blue shapes shook as they compressed toward their own cores, then pulsed with energy. It all happened in less than a second while he was still mid-fall. For a moment, it felt like time had stopped.
Then they fired. The lights broke into fragments, launching upward in chaotic arcs that ignored gravity. Each line curved mid-air, zigzagging toward the monsters with unerring precision. When they hit, they detonated, bursting on impact, and blue explosions lit up the sky. The blasts punched clean through stone flesh and scale, raining chunks of monster across the snow.
By the time the last explosion faded, Abo was already on the ground. For the first time, Abo saw fireworks; bright blue lights shot into the sky in quick bursts. They moved fast, made a loud crack, and vanished right after. Each one ended in a flash of white with blue edges that broke apart and scattered. He didn't know what they were, but they looked like something between lightning and a weapon. The monsters—gargoyles, grotesques, basilisks, were all dead. Their bodies hit the ground and landed on the snow.
Abo blinked slowly as his vision was starting to blur. Something warm slid down his nose, then he wiped it with the back of his hand, it was blood. The last thing he saw was the red on his palm before everything went black.
✦ ✦ ✦
End of Chapter