Chapter 23: The destroyer

It felt like his body had been set on fire from the inside out, his blood was boiling and he could see steam leaving his skin and wafting into the air. The sound of his pain filled groans grew as he writhed on the ground clenching every body part available but the burning sensation wasn't on the surface, his actions were useless and the sensation was slowly growing, He felt like he was about to die.

\[-15 HP\]

He needed to do something, he needed to subside this feeling, but how—an answer that should have been his first resort crossed his mind. He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply and focused his Arkana on the lines of the mothlights markings and the pain slowly turned from an unbearable burn to a uncomfortable heat. He stared at the tattoo once the pain was completely dull and studied it, How had he been able to use it, He'd tried focusing his arkana on the tattoos but that had done nothing, he'd even tried forcing the energy out of himself but still it did nothing but when he'd just given his body a command, it activated, did that mean that it wasn't an extension of Arkana but rather an extension of himself, like a phantom limb, A smile curved his lips, now all that was left was to master it.

He stood to his feet and looked around, Monsters still loitered around, Destroying property and actively chasing down humans that tried to run away, Chaos, and it would remain like this for a while, he walked to the corps of the beast and picturing what he'd seen Vrey do, he plunged his arm into it and searched for it's core, He couldn't absorb it but they were surely other uses. After a while of digging roughly he finally made contact and immediately pulled it out, As he held the sphere in his palm he could feel the energy pulsating in it, wild and unstable, a vortex of uncontrollable energy that called to him, Called to him and before he knew he was in trance, the words—Let me in—Let me in—Let me in— Playing consistently in mind till he was in a trance, his grip was tightening on the orb, just like Vrey had, then he remembered, vivid flashes of the crazed look in the eyes of Callum Vrey made him pull away and snap back into his senses, As much as he would like to get stronger he'd like to retain his sense alot more. He put the orb in his pack, however it was very had been using to store the core when they had met, he wasn't able to do it yet. He walked away from the chaos and into a barely standing building, He'd just remembered something, his exp gain which would mean he had a stat point that he could distribute. He opened up his system and there if was staring back at him.

\[Exp : 56\]

Nothing else no added stat points, no nothing. Through the game even though it was freakishly hard to gain exp points, one thing had remained consistent, after every gain a stat point was given for free allocation but if this was no longer being treated as a game would that mean that each stat would need manual work to actually grow them and if so, what was now the use of Exp….the roar of something so loud it shook the building sounded from outside a and interrupted his thoughts so he postponed that dilemma for a later time and walked out of the building to inspect the source of the sound and there it stood. A collosal beast, almost fifty meters tall, dwarfing the buildings that still stood around it, It was the most humane looking beast he'd ever seen, he wasn't sure whether that was a good or bad thing, no mouth or nose, just dead eyes and scattered black hair, a mass of muscle and spike and a the way light bounced off it's skin indicated the irregularity of the material that was it's skin. It's massive hand gripped onto a building and the concrete immediately crushed under it's palm, sending debris flying and slamming into the ground beneath, It lifted it's leg to take a step forward but paused and turned it's head to the rhythmic beating sounds of blades cutting through the air, Helicopters, ten of them.

“ CIVILIANS TAKE SHELTER!!” They issued a warning, there would not be another, Rylan understood immediately as he ran as fast as he could and ducked behind the most stable structure he could find, whatever was about to happen would determine if the world could actually fight against this new disaster that had been born into it.

They released a flurry of shots, even from this distance the sound could be heard clearly, Rylan peaked his head out to look at what was unfolding and as much as the scene saddened him, he'd knew this would be how it would end. There was no reaction from the beast, their bullets were doing as much damage as the wind, it stretched it's hand out faster than it should have been able to, grabbed onto the tail of one of the helicopters and like a bat used it slam the nine others away before tossing it down to the ground like rubbish made of crumpled metal and ragging flames, the others spun out of control crashing into each other and into buildings but the one it had thrown down, slammed into the road, Rylan's eyes widened as it speedily approached him, it's blade spinning out of control, slashing into the ground breaking and sending it's parts flying violently, Rylan managed to somehow avoid them but as if in slow motion the body few right past him, mere inches away from his body, he could see the burning remains of the men inside and once it completely passed it, the world reverted to it's normal speed, bouncing of the hard floor and eventually erupting into an explosion of flames.

“Fucking hell.” He exclaimed and as if on cue, a message popped up.

\[Level 3 Ashfen Giant\]

\[Unique scenarios : Escape\]

He didn't need to be told, He ran as fast as he could, rushing past people and beast alike without slowing down until he saw a beast behind a boy, it's arms stretched to attack and without another thought his body acted.