Breath of the Idle King

The smell of rust, suffocating cement dust, and the   stench of rancid oil wafting from the concrete floor.

To Garou, this wasn't just a workplace, it was a minimum wage hellhole. 

"Garou! Move it! Block C needs extra bracing! Don't slack off, the boss is watching us!". 

The foreman shouted from the end of the factory corridor, his voice muffled by the 

roar of an old, dilapidated industrial shredder. 

Garou just snorted, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his grimy sleeve. "Yeah, yeah, keep your shirt on. My life isn't just yours to squeeze dry," he muttered under his breath, though he didn't slow his pace. 

The factory was a death trap. The walls were cracked like an old snake’s skin, and the steel support beams in the ceiling creaked every time a strong wind blew. Garou hoisted a wooden support beam onto his shoulder, his back aching under the weight that should have been handled by a crane that had been dead since last month. 

He approached the area of Block C that was undergoing a forced renovation. Suddenly, the shrill screech of metal pierced his eardrums. Screee... Crash! 

It wasn’t the sound of a machine. It was the sound of a building giving up. 

Garou looked up. Above him, a massive steel beam that should have been bolted firmly into the concrete broke loose, swinging like a lethal pendulum before smashing into the floor right in front of him. The domino effect was instant. The decaying concrete roof collapsed in one massive motion. 

He approached the area of Block C that was undergoing a forced renovation. Suddenly, the shrill screech of metal pierced his eardrums. Screee... Crash!

It wasn’t the sound of a machine, It was the sound of a building giving up.

Garou looked up. Above him, a massive steel beam that should have been bolted firmly into the concrete broke loose, swinging like a 

lethal pendulum before smashing into the floor right in front of him.

The domino effect was instant. The decaying concrete roof collapsed in one massive 

motion.

"Damn it!" Garou lunged, but he was too 

late. The falling weight wasn't just debris... it was half the factory floor coming down on him.

 The world suddenly went dark. The pain didn't hit him immediately. It was a shockwave that slammed into his nerves, followed by a cold sensation creeping from his waist down. Garou was trapped. His legs were buried under chunks of concrete the size of a car, and a large steel pipe pressed against his chest, making every breath a struggle.

"Hey! Anyone! Help!" his voice was hoarse, 

choked by the swirling dust.

No answer. Only the sound of water dripping from a burst pipe somewhere in the darkness. Garou tried to move, but every inch of effort only forced the steel pipe deeper into his ribs. Crack... He could hear his sternum snap. It was the most horrific sound he had ever heard.

His breath began to shorten. The oxygen beneath the rubble grew thin, replaced by cement dust that burned his lungs. He felt his heart skip beats like an engine running out of gas. He knew this was the end. 

How stupid, to die in a place like this, buried under the trash of a corporation that didn't even know he existed.

Thump.

Thump.

 Thump.

Just as his consciousness began to fade into absolute darkness, a strange sensation crept into the base of his brain, It wasn't pain. 

It was like a cold static electricity crawling along his spine.

[SYSTEM INITIALIZING...]

[DETECTING VITAL FUNCTION FAILURE...]

[RESCUE PROTOCOL: ACTIVE...]

Garou blinked, trying to make sense of the faint holographic text appearing behind his closed eyelids. 

"Hallucinating?" he whispered, though his voice sounded like sandpaper.

[SYNCHRONIZING BREATH WITH HEARTBEAT...]

[FOCUS: REPAIRING TISSUE DAMAGE...]

Suddenly, his chest felt hot. Not a burning heat, but a heat like metal fresh from a forge. Every time he tried to inhale the thin remaining air, the sensation exploded. His lungs, which had felt collapsed, now felt like they were being forcibly expanded. He could feel the muscles behind his broken ribs twitching, as if invisible hands were piecing the shattered bone fragments back together.

"Argh!" Garou groaned, but his voice now had a different resonance. Deeper. More powerful. 

He felt his energy no longer fading, but pumping.

A warm liquid coursed beneath his skin not blood, but something that felt far thicker and purer. The system was working inside him, converting every atom of his dying cells into fuel.

One hour passed. Or maybe three? Garou didn't know. He only focused on one thing the rhythm. Inhale deep, compress, release.

Every time he breathed in, the steel pipe pressing against his chest felt lighter. Not because the pipe moved, but because his sternum, now fused back together at an impossible speed, could withstand the pressure without pain. His skin, once torn by concrete, now felt smooth and resilient, as if he had never been injured at all.

 This wasn't a miracle. It was biological coercion. His body was being forced to adapt so it wouldn't die here.

"I'm not dying here," Garou hissed. His eyes snapped open, staring into the darkness above with an unnatural intensity. His focus was sharp, incredibly sharp.

He placed his palms against the concrete slab pinning him down. He no longer felt tired. He felt... fully charged. With one explosive motion, he pushed.

Boom!

The several hundred kilogram slab was lifted easily, shifted aside like a piece of fragile clay. Garou pulled his legs from the ruins, moving with an agility that made his muscles scream, only to recover instantly. He crawled out of the small remaining gap, his breath coming in long exhales that released wisps of steam into the cold factory air.

He stood tall amidst the wreckage. Dust clung to his tattered clothes, but as he brushed his hand over his arm, the dust fell away to reveal skin that was clean, taut, and without a single scratch.

Garou stared at his own hands. His fingers trembled, not from fear, but from a surplus of energy that felt like it wanted to explode outward. He could see clearly in the dimness of the factory every crack in the walls, every dust particle dancing in the air, even the hum of electricity in the wires dangling from the ceiling.

"What... what just happened?" his voice echoed through the empty space.

He tried to take a deep breath. As the air entered, he felt that sensation again. His heart beat with a new rhythm strong, steady, and rhythmic like the precision of a ticking clock.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. 

It wasn't the heartbeat of an ordinary human. It felt like a mechanical engine operating harmoniously inside his chest.

Garou walked out of the ruins toward the moonlight streaming through the hole in the roof. Every step he took felt lighter, more controlled. He turned toward a large steel beam that had fallen beside him. On a whim, he gripped the edge of the steel.

The metal buckled under the pressure of his fingers, leaving deep prints as if he were squeezing soft clay. Garou pulled his hand back, his eyes widening.

A cold sweat began to roll down his neck. The fear that had briefly vanished returned, but this time it wasn't from the threat of death.

The fear came from the realization that he had just understood one thing. He was no longer the man who had walked into this factory this morning. Something had taken over, or perhaps, something had awakened within him and it wasn't going to let him go back to being human.

In the silence of the night, amidst the factory ruins, Garou clutched his chest. He could feel something alien, something pulsing in sync with his breath. It was the system. And the system had only just begun its work.

Just as he was about to step away, a shadow moved outside the factory window. Swift, silent, and incredibly precise. Someone or something was watching him from the darkness outside. Garou froze, His heart gave one powerful thud that made his internal organs vibrate.

System detected.

The voice echoed in his head, not as an external sound, but as a command rising from the very center of his own consciousness.

Status: Threatened.

Recommendation: Vacate current location immediately.

Garou turned toward the window, staring at a shadow that was beginning to vanish behind a stack of containers. He didn’t know who it was, but he knew one thing the hunt had just begun. He took a deep breath, letting the mechanical rhythm in his chest calm his frayed nerves.

"Okay," he whispered to the darkness. "If you want to play games, let’s see how far I can go."

He stepped forward, and with an incredible surge of power, he burst out of the factory, leaving the ruins of his old life behind without looking back. Yet, with every step he took, his heart continued to beat with a strange rhythm a cadence that had now become the only compass in a life that had completely changed.