2026-01-29 19:27:11The party moved like ghosts. Under Axel’s silent direction, they approached the remains of the ten-meter Titan. Normally, there would be cheering, high-fives, and the greedy tallying of loot. Today, there was only the sound of boots on stone and the occasional sob from Stacy, the mage who realized the power dynamic of their city had just been decapitated.
Axel walked to the center of the rubble. The Titan had dropped a significant haul. There were over fifty Rank\ C Aether Shards and—most importantly—two items that pulsed with a deep, royal purple light.
The first was a skill book: [B-Rank]\ [Titan’s\ Roar]. It was an area-of-effect skill that paralyzed enemies and boosted the user's defense. The second was a heavy, obsidian chest-piece: [B-Rank]\ [Heart\ of\ the\ Fortress].
Axel picked up the items. He felt the weight of the Titan’s\ Roar tome. To any other hunter, this was the holy grail. To him, it was just another layer for his armor. He looked at the veterans.
"Dina, Stacy," Axel called out. The two mages flinched. "Take the Shards. Split them between the four of you. It’s more than you usually get, right?"
"We... we can't," Dina stammered. "Drago usually takes sixty percent..."
"Drago isn't in charge anymore," Axel said, his eyes flashing. "Take them. Go home to your families. And don't ever follow a man like that into a hole again."
He handed the Heart\ of\ the\ Fortress to Gwen. "This matches your set. You stood up when nobody else would. You’ve earned it."
Gwen stared at the Rank B armor in her hands, then at Axel. "And the skill book? That’s a B-Rank, Axel. That’s worth millions. More than this whole city."
"I have enough," Axel said, and for the first time, he gave her a genuine, tired smile. He pressed the tome to his own chest.
[Skill: Titan’s Roar (Rank B) Learned]
As the knowledge etched itself into his mind, Axel felt his [Focus]—that blank, infinite void—react. It was as if the infinite well was expanding to accommodate the higher-tier logic of the B-Rank skill. He didn't feel the drain. He didn't feel the "Great Cost" mentioned in the description.
He looked at his status screen one last time before heading for the exit crystal.
[Axel Jetters] [Occupation: Hunter]
[Vitality: 150]
[Focus: — ]
[Strength: 150]
[Active Skills: Arcanist’s Sphere (93), Arctic Armor (100), Aura of Haste (23), Life Essence (22), Regeneration (1), Titan’s Roar (1)]
[Equipment: King’s Valor (D), Heart of the Fortress (B - Shared with Gwen), Ring of Storage (C)]
They stepped into the green crystal.
The transition back to the surface was jarring. They appeared outside the monolith, in the middle of the military exclusion zone. The sun was setting, casting long, orange shadows over the tanks and the soldiers.
The guards immediately noticed the party. They also noticed that the "Hero of the City," Drago Richmond, was being carried out over the shoulder of a Behemoth tank, missing an arm and unconscious.
"What happened?" a commander barked, rushing forward with his rifle raised. "Was there a break? Where is Mr. Richmond?"
Axel didn't stop walking. He kept his [Camouflage] and [Arcanist’s\ Sphere] active, moving through the crowd like a ripple in water. The soldiers felt a cold wind pass them by, a pressure that made their knees weak, but they saw nothing.
Gwen watched him go, the Rank B armor shimmering on her chest. She knew that by tomorrow, the story of what happened inHelion’s Castle would spread. The "King" was dead—not in body, but in spirit. And a new, silent god was walking the streets of Outer Bank X.
Axel returned to his apartment, not the luxury lodge. He needed the familiar smell of his old home to ground him. He sat at his small kitchen table, the [Ring\ of\ Storage] glinting on his finger. Inside were the Rank C cores he’d harvested, along with the remains of his old life.
He knew what was coming. The Butler, Vax, would come looking. The government would send investigators from the capital. A B-Rank hunter being crippled was a national incident.
But as Axel looked at his hand, he realized he wasn't worried. He had hit the Rank\ D cap for his physical stats. To go further, to reach Rank\ C and Rank\ B attributes, he needed higher-tier cores—the kind only found in the most dangerous Rifts in the Empire.
"I need to leave Outer Bank X," he whispered.
The city was too small now. The dungeons here couldn't feed his growth. He needed the United\ Federation. He needed to see if the world truly was as "Blessed" as the propaganda claimed.
Suddenly, [Danger\ Sense] hummed. It wasn't the screaming alarm of a boulder falling, but a steady, rhythmic pulse. Someone was outside his door.
Axel didn't reach for his flames. He didn't activate his shield. He just sat there.
"Come in, Vax," Axel said.
The door creaked open. The butler, dressed in his immaculate black suit, stepped inside. He didn't look angry. He looked... relieved. He bowed deeply, his forehead nearly touching the floor.
"Mr. Jetters," Vax said. "I have spent twenty years serving a man who mistook cruelty for strength. Today, you showed me the difference. I am not here to fight you. I am here to offer you the keys to the city."
Axel leaned back, crossing his arms. "I don't want the city, Vax. I want the truth. Tell me about the Inland\ Rifts. Tell me about the hunters who don't show up on the news."
Vax looked up, a thin smile on his face. "Then we have much to discuss. But first... you should know that you aren't the only 'glitch' in the system. The Empire has been hiding others like you. And they are coming."
Axel felt a thrill of genuine excitement. The fear was gone, replaced by a hunger for the unknown.
"Let them come," Axel said. "I'm just getting started."
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 133
The silence left behind by the Administrator's death followed Axel and the hybrid girl long after they departed from the colossal corpse.Neither of them spoke much during the journey.The warning continued lingering in their minds.The Architects had vanished.The systems had become corrupted.And something called the Silence was apparently responsible.The information created more questions than answers.For now, however, Axel focused on something more immediate.Survival.The void beyond reality was far larger than he had originally imagined.Every direction revealed new ruins, dead worlds, abandoned structures, and fragments of broken systems drifting endlessly through the darkness.Some regions appeared peaceful.Others radiated enough instability to make even Axel avoid them.Several days passed.The pair explored cautiously, gathering information wherever possible.During one expedition, they entered a fragmented reality cluster made from pieces of multiple destroyed worlds sti
Chapter 132
The corpse remained motionless.Axel and the hybrid girl floated in the darkness beyond reality, staring at the enormous remains of the World Administrator. The being was so large that even standing near its shoulder felt like standing beside a continent. Ancient fractures covered its body. Entire pieces of reality drifted around it like broken satellites trapped in its gravity.Neither of them spoke immediately.The sight alone was difficult to process.This was something that had once governed worlds.Entire realities.And now it was dead.Or at least that was what Axel believed.Then he felt it.A pulse.Small.Weak.But real.The energy spread through the void like a distant heartbeat.The hybrid girl noticed it too.Her eyes widened slightly."You felt that?"Axel nodded.The pulse came again.This time stronger.The massive corpse remained motionless, yet ancient energy began moving beneath its surface. Faint streams of silver light appeared across its shattered body, illuminati
Chapter 131
The darkness beyond the System had no clear direction.There was no sun, no horizon, and no familiar laws to guide movement. Yet as Axel drifted through the endless void, he slowly began to understand that this place was not empty at all.It only appeared empty from a distance.The closer he moved toward the floating structures scattered throughout the darkness, the more details became visible.The first ruined world they reached looked like a shattered continent suspended in space.Massive pieces of land floated separately from one another, connected by faint streams of blue energy. Mountains hung upside down. Oceans drifted through the air in enormous spheres, held together by forces Axel couldn't understand.The hybrid girl stared at the scene with open disbelief."Was this really a world?""It was," Axel said.Even he could feel the traces of life that had once existed there.Ruined cities covered the floating landmasses. Broken towers stretched toward a sky that no longer existed
Chapter 130
The moment Axel chose his irreversible evolution path, something fundamental changed.The confrontation between him and the Core System did not end with victory or defeat. It ended with incompatibility.The Core continued trying to process him. Every correction protocol, every classification sequence, every rewrite pathway activated simultaneously. The system searched for a way to define him, contain him, or reduce him into something it could understand.It failed.Axel felt the pressure of countless calculations moving through him. The Core examined every version of his existence. It analyzed Human Axel, Throne Axel, the System Fragment, and every contradiction that had formed between them.The result never stabilized.Every answer created new questions. Every classification generated new inconsistencies.For the first time since the System's creation, it encountered something it could not place inside any category.The Origin Layer trembled around him. The collapse accelerated.
Chapter 129
The Origin Layer was no longer behaving like a place that could be observed or measured. It had collapsed into something closer to a living correction field, where every piece of reality was being forced toward a single final outcome. Not destruction, not survival, but rewrite. Everything that had ever existed across all layers was being compressed into one controlled version of existence, and Axel was standing directly inside the pressure point of that process.The Core System was no longer separate from the environment.It was the environment.Every structure, every layer of collapsed space, every fragment of logic in the Origin Layer carried its presence. It did not need a body or form. It was already embedded in the rules themselves, rewriting them as it advanced.Axel stood still at the center of it.The system interface inside him flickered continuously without stability.ALL LAYERS SYNCHRONIZED FOR FINAL CORRECTION.FINAL REWRITE SEQUENCE: ACTIVE.His eyes stayed forward.Huma
Chapter 128
The moment Axel’s contradiction structure fractured the Core’s stability, the Origin Layer stopped behaving like a layered space entirely.It became something else.A single pressure system.Axel felt it first as silence.Not absence of sound, but absence of variation. Every layer, every framework, every background process that had been running across existence suddenly aligned into one unified state, as if reality itself had taken a breath and decided not to exhale.Then it began collapsing inward.Not physically.Structurally.The system did not attack Axel directly at first. It removed everything around him that could define him by contrast, as though existence itself needed witnesses erased before the correction could begin.Markus disappeared first.There was no resistance, no reaction spike, no final message. One moment he was standing at the edge of the convergence field, still partially stable after his earlier alignment shift. The next moment, his presence simply stopped bein
You may also like
The Legend Of Sword God
Djisamsoe 20.2K viewsThe Hero of Vengeance
DovahKean17.6K viewsWelcome back Transmigrator
MaryahLu20.6K viewsHero In The Cultivator World
Shin Novel 80.9K viewsFrozen Rebirth: My Infinite Storage in the Apocalypse
Lord G222 viewsIMPERFECT STRAIN
Fefe120 viewsThe son in law with a God level system
Ashford 207 viewsTo Walk The Mist
Mfonemana Uduak202 views