Chapter 3 0.00%
Abyssal Direwolf.
Ren didn't need to know its name to understand one thing — this creature was not supposed to be here, and they were not supposed to still be alive. Its body was the size of a small house, fur black as the void itself, and every breath it released shook the air like a minor earthquake.
One swipe of its claw.
The stone wall to their left exploded — not cracked, exploded — showering the corridor with chunks of rock the size of human heads. Kael threw both hands up, and a circle of pale green light formed a thin shield in the air. Heal Shield — his only defensive skill.
The second claw struck the shield. The green light flickered, cracked like glass, then shattered. Kael was hurled into the back wall with a sound that made Ren want to vomit. His friend's body slid to the ground — mouth full of blood, left ribs clearly broken from the way his torso bent wrong.
But the first thing Kael did wasn't groan.
"REN! GO! I'LL HOLD HIM OFF FOR THIRTY SECONDS! RUN!"
The Direwolf lowered its head. Those red eyes locked onto Kael — prey that could no longer move. Thirty seconds? Kael didn't have three.
Ren stared at his best friend. The second person in twenty-four hours willing to die for him.
"No."
Something broke.
Not outside — inside. Like an iron chain that had been coiled around something at the bottom of his being for seventeen years had finally lost a single link. The first crack in the Void Core's seal.
The pain surpassed anything Ren had ever imagined. Blood poured from his nose, from the corners of his eyes, from his ears — not dripping, but flowing, as though his body was wringing itself dry from the inside out. His bones felt like they were being ground to dust and reassembled by hands that knew nothing of mercy.
Lyra screamed — and for the first time, her voice wasn't sarcasm. It was panic.
「NO! NOT YET! YOUR BODY ISN'T—」
The Void Core didn't care.
Before Ren's darkening eyes, lines of text appeared — not holograms like the Crystal Orb at the Academy. This was more primitive. More ancient. Letters of darkness that burned directly into his consciousness:
「Void Core — Emergency Awakening」 「Threat Level: A-Rank」 「Host Integrity: 12%」 「Forced Evolution: Stage 0 → Stage 1」 「Survival Probability: 0.00%」
0.00%.
The same number. The number that had destroyed his life in front of a thousand people just this morning. The number Sera had used to measure his worth. The number that should have been his tombstone.
Ren smiled.
"0.00%? I already heard that number today. And I'm still here."
Darkness radiated from his body.
Void Step — active. The world around Ren shifted. Color vanished, sound drowned away, and for ten seconds he stood in a dimension that didn't belong to the living. He couldn't attack — his body was too broken for that. But he could move.
Ten seconds. Enough to sprint to Kael, drag his bleeding body into the safest crevice of rock at the corner of the corridor.
The dimension collapsed. Reality returned.
The Direwolf was already waiting.
A claw struck Ren from the side — his body was launched twenty meters, bounced once off the ground, then slammed into the stone wall with a wet sound that made Kael scream. Spine broken. Ren landed like a puppet with its strings cut.
「Host Integrity: 3%」
The world darkened at the edges of his vision. The Direwolf stepped closer — slow, because a predator never needs to hurry toward prey that's already dead.
「Devour Function: UNLOCKED」
Ren's right hand — a hand that shouldn't have been able to move, with bones already broken in three places — rose. His fingers touched the Direwolf's front leg.
One word. Not spoken. Not thought. Felt — from the darkest place inside him.
「Devour.」
Darkness crept from Ren's hand onto the monster's body. Like ink dropped onto wet paper — slow at first, then spreading at a speed that couldn't be stopped. The Direwolf's black fur turned blacker still — a black that swallowed light.
The Grade-A monster roared. Not a roar of attack. A roar of terror.
The predator became the prey.
「Devour Complete」 「Acquired: Beast Warrior Core (Mutated) — Grade D」 「Grade Elevation: NULL → E」 「Skill: Predator's Instinct (Passive) — detect living beings within 50m radius」 「Skill: Shadow Claw (Active) — darkness-based physical attack」 「Body Reconstruction: In Progress...」
Ren lay in a pool of his own blood. Inside his body, broken bones fused back together — every joint snapping with a crack that made teeth clench. Muscle wove itself back like thread pulled by an invisible needle.
Kael crawled toward him. His face was soaked — tears mixed with blood, and he was laughing. The laugh of a man who had just witnessed a miracle in a room that should have been their grave.
"You're insane. You're absolutely insane."
Ren raised his right hand. On the back of it — the spot that just this morning had still been bare, the spot the Crystal Orb had refused to mark — a black tattoo formed. The Void symbol, pulsing gently like a second heartbeat.
"Kael... my Grade isn't zero anymore."
Lyra spoke. Her voice was trembling — and Ren had only known this voice for a few hours, but he knew: Lyra never trembled.
「Ren... a first absorption should give Grade-F at most. You absorbed an A-Rank monster and only got E — not because your Core is weak. But because ninety-five percent of the energy was spent reconstructing your body from the edge of death.」
"So?"
「If you absorb an A-Rank while healthy... you jump straight to B. Maybe A.」A pause.「This Core shouldn't exist. The last time a Core like this appeared—」
"What happened?"
A long pause. Longer than anything Lyra had ever given.
「...the civilization that housed it was erased from history. That's what your people call The Collapse.」
Far to the north, in a dark room with an obsidian floor that had never been touched by sunlight, a crystal ball that had been dead for a thousand years began to glow.
Its light was deep blue — the same shade as the darkness that had just swallowed a Direwolf in that remote dungeon.
The robed figure before the crystal ball lifted its face. Smiled — a smile that looked more like an open wound than a human expression.
"The Void has returned."
At that same moment, inside the Sentinel Corps headquarters in Eryndal, Commander Voss received a report. The paper trembled in his hands — not because of the wind.
Anomaly signal detected from the Fractured Lands. Signal type: Void-class.
The teacup slipped from his fingers. Shattered on the marble floor. He didn't hear it.
"...impossible. Gareth already—"
His sentence never finished. His eyes hardened — fear replaced by something far more dangerous: determination.
"Send a reconnaissance unit. Now." His voice was low, like a blade drawn from its sheath. "And do not report this to the High Council. Not yet."