Chapter 2 – Tragedy and Promise
The first thing Kimura felt was the cold.
It wasn't the kind of cold that made you shiver, but the deep, empty chill of stone walls and forgotten ruins. His eyelids fluttered open, and he found himself lying on a broken concrete floor, the faint smell of rust and mildew clawing at his nose. His body screamed with pain, every bone reminding him of the battle he hadn't chosen.
He blinked, disoriented, staring up at a ceiling so fractured it barely held itself together. Faded beams hung overhead like ribs of a giant corpse. The air was thick with dust, every shallow breath burning his lungs.
Slowly, he tried to move his wrist. Agony shot up his arm. His face twisted as he forced himself upright, propping his trembling body against a cracked wall.
"What… what just happened?" he rasped, his voice a broken whisper.
He glanced at his hands. One was torn, bleeding, trembling uncontrollably. He raised it to his face, smearing blood across his cheek as if to remind himself he was still alive. His heart twisted. Memories crashed against him like tidal waves, merciless and cruel.
"My daughter… my wife… our lives…" His voice cracked into silence.
The images wouldn't stop. His wife's gentle smile, his daughter's laughter—suddenly replaced by screams, blood, and the looming shadow of a man encased in black armor. The monster. The nightmare.
"Vanko…" His teeth clenched, his entire body trembling with rage and despair.
Tears blurred his vision, but they couldn't wash away the image of Saki and Airi suffering. The grief was unbearable, a crushing weight on his chest. His throat tightened.
"There is no need for me to live," he whispered to the darkness. "I can't handle this pain, Saki, Airi…"
But then… a flash. Not of them alive, but of them broken, crying, reaching out to him while the armored figure stood towering over their fragile bodies. The memory felt carved into his skull, impossible to erase.
Something inside him cracked.
A guttural growl tore from his throat, low at first, then rising like a beast unchained.
"Grrr…! Ha… ha… ha…!" The sound twisted into maniacal laughter, echoing off the ruined walls.
"Oh, how can I forget? The source of my suffering… the cause of all this pain." His lips stretched into a bloodied grin, his eyes wide and shining with something unholy. "If I am dying… then they should also die. I will not go alone."
His hand dragged across his face, fingers digging into his skin. His eyes burned with bloodlust, glowing faintly in the dark. A malicious aura seeped from his battered body, staining the air with something primal.
He staggered to his feet, broken but unbending. His voice dropped to a demonic whisper, almost a promise etched into reality itself.
"I will be their bad luck. I will be their suffering. I will be their… death."
The grin never left his face. The aura thickened, crawling over his body like a living shadow. His voice thundered in madness and conviction alike:
"He will feel the pain I felt— a hundred times more, a million times more! He will die, and I will be the one who takes his soul!"
And then, like a cruel reminder of fate, Vanko's voice replayed in his mind—his last words before Kimura had been thrown into this hell.
*"The dungeon rift: Scaletron City."*
His jaw clenched. His body shook with fury.
And that was when it happened.
"Phwew!"
A sound like air tearing apart screamed past his cheek. A bone-tipped arrow streaked by, grazing his skin and embedding itself into a rusted iron wall. For a second, silence—then a deafening explosion.
"BOOM!"
The wall ruptured, the force blasting dust and shards across the ruin. A crater nearly ten meters wide opened in the ground where the arrow had landed.
Kimura's head whipped toward the source. His blood ran cold.
Towering in the dim light was a skeleton unlike anything he had ever seen. It stood nearly three and a half meters tall, its bones gleaming golden under the flickering shafts of sunlight. Its skull bore two massive horns, curved like the devil's crown. Its hollow sockets burned with eldritch light, fixated on him like a predator eyeing prey.
Clad in a tattered hunter's attire, it raised a massive bow of bone and string, drawing another arrow of pure golden marrow. Its presence was suffocating, otherworldly.
"What the hell—!?" Kimura's breath hitched, panic ripping through him.
The creature loosed its arrows in a blur.
"Shpew! Shpew! Shpew!"
Each shot split the air with terrifying speed, explosions detonating in rapid succession.
Kimura's instincts screamed. His body moved before thought. He darted between broken walls and pillars, his battered frame moving at five meters a second, faster than his injuries should have allowed. Pain tore at him, but adrenaline burned it away. Survival was all that mattered.
His lungs burned. His legs threatened to collapse. Yet he kept moving, weaving between cover as arrows detonated around him. Dust and fire bit into his skin.
Then, silence.
He risked a glance. The golden skeleton lowered its bow, both hands reaching toward a hunting knife strapped to its bony waist.
The purple, heart-shaped gem embedded in its chest flared with sinister light. Power surged through its frame, coating its body in shimmering aura, the blade's edge glowing with deathly energy.
"Shit—!"
The skeleton moved. It wasn't walking. It was running—no, charging—at more than twice his speed. The ground shook under its steps, each motion unnervingly precise.
Kimura's soldier instincts roared. He dove sideways, narrowly dodging the slash that split the air where his head had been. Dust and sparks erupted from the strike's impact.
He landed hard, his ribs screaming. But his hand found something—an old steel bar among the rubble. His grip tightened around the improvised weapon.
As the skeleton lunged again, Kimura twisted, using the rod with every ounce of strength left in his body.
"Bang!"
The blow slammed into the monster's jaw with brutal force. Bone cracked, its jaw snapping half out of place. The purple aura flickered, sputtering as the force rattled through its frame.
Kimura staggered, panting, chest heaving.
"You think… I'm scared of you!?" he growled, spit and blood flying from his mouth.
The skeleton hissed in silence, its eldritch sockets narrowing.
Kimura's face twisted in fury. He raised the bar again, his voice breaking into a scream that tore his throat raw.
"DIE, YOU SPARKLING PILE OF SHITTY BONES!"
With a desperate surge, he drove the sharp end of the steel bar into the monster's neck joint. Bone snapped. The head separated cleanly, falling with a hollow *clunk.* The aura bled away from its body, dissipating like smoke in the wind.
The towering frame collapsed, nothing more than lifeless golden remains.
"Thump!"
Kimura's knees buckled. He fell to the ground, the rod slipping from his bloody hands. His chest rose and fell violently, every breath a battle of its own. Sweat and blood drenched him, his vision blurring at the edges.
"Huff… huff… huff…" He stared at the ceiling, the broken sky peeking through the cracks. For a long moment, there was only silence.
Then, slowly, with trembling fingers, he clenched his fist. The motion was weak, yet filled with fire. He raised it toward the sky, his body sprawled among dust and rubble.
His lips curled into a grin—broken, bloodied, but unyielding. His voice carried like a vow carved into the bones of the world.
"Just you wait, Vanko… you will be my final kill. Before I meet my Saki and Airi in heaven."
The words lingered in the ruin. His fist trembled but did not fall. His grin never left his face.
The promise of tragedy had become the promise of vengeance.
[End of Chapter 2]
Chapter 3 – Death?
**Section 1: Collapse & Realization**
Kimura lay sprawled across the fractured ground, every ragged breath dragging molten fire through his lungs. His fingers twitched against the rubble, slick with blood that no longer gushed, but oozed sluggishly—thick, dark, and clotting against his torn skin. He raised his ruined hands before his eyes. The knuckles were split, skin peeled back, nails cracked to the root. His left wrist bent at an angle no living man's wrist should bend. The sight was grotesque, yet his battered mind barely registered it. Pain had long since numbed into something duller, heavier, a creeping shadow that promised only one end.
Where the golden skeleton's corpse should have lain, there was nothing. Only blackish-golden wisps of energy drifted upward, dissolving into the violet sky like smoke from a dying fire. The creature that had nearly ended him, that had stripped his flesh with every strike and arrow, was gone—as if it had never existed at all. He wanted to feel pride. Triumph. Relief. But all he could summon was a hollow laugh, cracked and pitiful.
"Heh… I guess I won, though," he whispered, his voice a rasp of torn vocal cords. "Not that there's anything to be proud of."
His head lolled to the side, eyes drawn to the strange, alien heavens above. The sky pulsed with hues of purple and deep indigo, swirling as though mocking his survival. Stars—or what looked like stars—winked faintly, but none carried the warmth of the night skies he once shared with Saki, when they would walk hand-in-hand down the quiet streets after his deployment, whispering dreams for their future. That sky was gone. This one only laughed.
Blood bubbled at the edge of his mouth as he coughed. He spat it out, the metallic tang biting his tongue. His vision swam, dark spots closing in around the edges. He pressed his palm against his chest, feeling the jagged shards of broken ribs grind beneath his skin. Each breath felt like a knife drawn slowly through his lungs.
"Heh… guess my revenge won't be completed anymore," he muttered, and another wet cough shook him, spraying his chin with fresh crimson.
His body screamed its protest in every nerve. He cataloged the damage, soldier's instinct tallying what a medic would have called catastrophic: shattered bones, torn muscles, punctured organs, rivers of blood spilled with no replacements left in him. His body was a sinking ship riddled with holes. No treatment. No salvation. Just the slow drowning in his own red tide.
"I can feel them…" His voice trembled, but he forced the words out, as though speaking them could carve them into memory. "Broken bones. Damaged organs. Lungs full of blood. Muscles torn apart. Veins shredded. Even my blood… it's turning to jelly inside me."
He laughed again, a bitter, broken sound that quickly warped into a sob. The laugh didn't belong to a man anymore—it belonged to something at the edge of madness.
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A/N:
HELLO GUYS!! 😃😁
I hope you're all doing well and living a lovely life with your loved ones.
So, I recently finished reading Solo Leveling (English version), and honestly, I really liked the format. Even when the writing wasn't perfect, it was super easy to follow and made the story enjoyable. That gave me an idea—why not try a similar style for my own work?
So here it is! Just a few samples for now, but I hope you all enjoy what I've put together.
That's all for today—see you in the next chapter!
DmoonNo1, peace out. ✌️✌️✌️✌️