The air around the high school courtyard grew unnaturally heavy. The ambient sounds of the burning city—the screams, the roaring fires, the screeches of monsters—seemed to mute.
"Stay back," Kael ordered, his voice brooking no argument. He pushed Elara and the group of trembling students back toward the shattered glass doors of the school entrance.
"Kael, what's up there?" Elara asked, her knuckles white as she gripped a rusty iron sword.
Before Kael could answer, a streak of silver lightning crashed into the pavement fifty feet in front of them, throwing up a cloud of pulverized asphalt and dust. The shockwave knocked several students off their feet.
As the dust settled, the System Hunter stood up to its full, eight-foot height. It wasn't human. It was a humanoid construct of liquid silver, wielding a massive executioner's broadsword that hummed with volatile blue energy. Its featureless face had only one defining trait: a glowing red visor that locked dead onto Kael.
[System Hunter (Execution Class) - Level ???][Directive: Erase Anomaly 'Kael'.]
"A Level ??? Executioner in the Tutorial. The System really wants me dead," Kael chuckled darkly, spinning the Monarch's Dagger in his hand.
The Hunter didn't speak. It simply vanished.
Fast! Kael's combat instincts, honed over ten years of bloody survival, flared. He didn't try to block; he activated his newly acquired B-Rank skill.
Shadow Step.
Kael sank seamlessly into the elongated shadow cast by a burning car just as the Hunter's massive broadsword cleaved through the exact space his neck had occupied a millisecond before. The sheer wind pressure from the swing shattered the remaining windows of the school.
Elara gasped, watching Kael disappear and reappear twenty feet behind the terrifying silver knight.
Kael didn't hesitate. He lunged forward, thrusting the Monarch's Dagger toward the joint behind the Hunter's knee. The obsidian blade sparked against the silver armor, barely leaving a scratch.
Tch. High physical resistance. It's a golem variant, Kael analyzed instantly. If I can't cut the armor, I have to fry the core.
The Hunter spun with mechanical perfection, bringing its broadsword around in a devastating horizontal arc. Kael ducked under the humming blue blade, feeling the heat singe his hair. He kicked off the ground, activating Goblin's Leap to propel himself upward, landing lightly on the flat side of the Hunter's massive sword.
Using the sword as a springboard, Kael launched himself straight at the Hunter's featureless face. He channeled his +7 enhanced Strength and drove the Monarch's Dagger directly into the glowing red visor.
CRACK!
The blade bit deep. The Hunter let out a distorted, synthesized shriek of static.
"Die, glitch," Kael spat.
He didn't wait to pull his dagger out. He pressed his left hand against the cracked visor and screamed, "Devour!"
Normally, 'Devour' only worked on corpses. But Kael's Mythic Class had no limits. The black aura of his skill forced its way through the cracks in the armor, latching directly onto the Hunter's mana core while it was still alive.
The silver construct thrashed violently, but Kael held on like a parasite. Gold and blue energy violently clashed, illuminating the courtyard in a blinding flash.
[Warning! Target is still alive. Devour sequence is highly unstable!][Overriding System parameters...]
"I said... DEVOUR!" Kael roared, his eyes glowing a furious, blinding gold.
With a final, explosive crack, the Hunter's silver armor shattered into a million pieces of digital dust. Kael fell to the pavement, landing heavily on one knee, gasping for air.
[Impossible Achievement Unlocked: Anomaly Survivor!][You have successfully devoured a System Hunter.]
[All Stats +10][Skill Acquired: 'System Interference' (A-Rank Passive)][Description: You are a ghost in the machine. Your exact coordinates, level, and stats are hidden from all Constellations, Gods, and System Scans unless you choose to reveal them.]
Kael stood up slowly, a monstrous grin spreading across his face. An A-Rank passive skill that granted him complete anonymity from the gods? It was the ultimate cheat code for a regressor.
Behind him, Elara and the students were staring at him as if he were the monster. And maybe, in a way, he was.