Breath of the Idle King

Chapter 10: The Word Starst Hunting Back

Time seemed to freeze, trapped between a heartbeat pounding wildly in my throat.

[FATAL ERROR: CONTRACT DETECTED].

The words floated in the air, glowing with a red hue that made my eyes sting. The man in front of me the mercenary who looked cornered just moments ago was now grinning wide, revealing a row of teeth far too perfect for someone who had just taken a massive blow.

"Thank you, kid," he whispered, his voice sounding like sandpaper scraping against concrete. "I needed full synchronization access to activate this seal."

My instincts screamed. Without waiting for the system prompt to finish processing, I pulled back my arm, which was frozen in mid air. My muscles shrieked, the fibers feeling as though they were being forced to stretch beyond the limits of human elasticity. I wasn't just fighting the man I was fighting my own system, which had suddenly become incredibly heavy, as if gravity itself had doubled.

Boom!

The floor beneath my feet shattered into pieces. Not because of my punch, but because of the pressure of the energy I failed to channel outward. I was thrown backward, slamming into the wooden wall of the crumbling safe house.

"Irae!" I shouted, my voice hoarse from the air that felt like shards of glass in my lungs.

Irae had already moved before I even called out. She didn't waste time with complex spells or flashy stances. She slammed her hands against the floor, triggering a plume of thick, black smoke that smelled foul the scent of a long sealed tomb. "Don't look back! Run to the back door, now!"

"But this system!"

"That system is trying to steal control of your nerves!" Irae interrupted, her eyes wide. "That's not a protocol to kill it's a protocol to take over. If you give in, you'll just become a soul less puppet for them!"

I didn't need to hear it twice. I scrambled up, ignoring the stabbing pain in my ribs. The man the mercenary was now shrouded in that same black aura, but his aura felt "empty," like a shell being controlled by an invisible puppeteer.

We ran through the darkness of the room. Just before we reached the threshold, the safe house roof vanished. It didn't collapse, it was completely erased by a beam of blue light falling from the sky. An orbital weapon. Precise, cold, and utterly merciless.

"Damn it, they've locked onto the coordinates!" Irae cursed, pulling my arm with unexpected strength.

Explosion after explosion rocked the building. The sound was deafening, creating shockwaves that hurled us out through a second story window. We landed in a narrow alley, my body hitting a pile of wet trash. It felt like my bones were grinding against each other, but I couldn't stop.

"They know our location from every breath you take," Irae said as she got up, gasping for air. She reached into a small pouch at her waist, pulling out a cracked obsidian crystal. "Garou, listen to me. I don't know what their plan is, but if we die here, this world belongs to them forever."

I looked back. In the night sky, small bird-sized drones began to swarm, firing scanning lasers that swept the streets. It wasn't just one faction. One drone bore the Helix symbol, while another displayed a winged skull. They were working together. A coalition of hunters.

"Why do they want me so badly?" I asked, my voice trembling as the adrenaline began to wear off.

"Because you're the purest 'Vessel Class,'" Irae replied curtly. She began drawing a circle on the asphalt using blood from her own wound. "You don't just have a system, Garou. You're the host for a aaaprotocol that can rewrite the rules of this world. That's why they're panicking."

"Perform the ritual," I urged, as I saw the shadow of the mercenary appear at the end of the alley, moving with an inhuman gait jerky yet incredibly fast.

Irae nodded and pressed her palm to my forehead. "This is going to hurt like hell. Don't even try to breathe during this process, or your lungs will explode from the backpressure."

"Do it!"

She shouted something in a language I didn't understand a tongue that felt cold and heavy, like an echo from the depths of the earth. Instantly, the shadows in the alley came to life. They crawled up my legs, then my body, binding me with a temperature so low that I felt numb. My vision slowly faded to black not from the darkness, but because my soul was being forcibly pulled into the shadow layer.

In the final moments before my consciousness completely cut out, I heard the noise of thousands of electronic devices powering on at once.

Beep.

I forced my eyes to stay slightly open. On the wall of the building across the alley, a massive advertising screen that had been showing a drink promo suddenly changed. Everything changed.

It wasn't just that screen. Everywhere I looked, every screen in the city the phones of people passing by, digital billboards, the monitors inside buses all of them displayed my face. A black-and-white photo with a large red 'X' over it.

[GLOBAL HUNT PROTOCOL: ACTIVE]

[TARGET: ANOMALY ID-001]

[REWARD: PERMANENT SYSTEM INTEGRATION]

"It's started," Irae whispered, her voice weak as the ritual drained the last of her energy. "Now, the whole world is hunting us."

The cold enveloping me grew stronger. I tried to take a breath, but my system forbade it. I was trapped. No longer just physically surrounded, but trapped by status. I looked at the mercenary, who now stood only a few meters away. He didn't attack again. He just stared, waiting. Waiting for my system to reach its saturation point, waiting for me to surrender to exhaustion, or perhaps... waiting for me to evolve into something they wanted.

"Irae," I whispered, trying to fight the pull of the shadows. "If I change... kill me."

Irae looked at me, her eyes that were once full of manipulation now appeared dim, almost regretful. "I can't promise you that, Garou. But I promise I'll be the last person you see before you turn into the monster they want."

Darkness swallowed us completely. Moments before my world went pitch black, I felt something strange. Not fear. Not despair either.

Something inside my chest something that had been called the 'System' all this time began to beat with a new rhythm. A rhythm that no longer followed a human heartbeat.

This was the rhythm of a King.

And for the first time since the factory accident, I didn't feel like a victim. I felt like a predator waiting for its prey to step into its hunting grounds.

But before I could understand what was happening, a sharp pain struck my head. The system prompt that was previously red slowly turned gold.

[SYSTEM UPDATING: IDLE KING PROTOCOL ACTIVATED]

[PROGRESS: 0.1%]

[WARNING: OXYGEN SUPPORT NO LONGER REQUIRED]

I felt my lungs stop working, but I didn't feel short of breath. Instead, I felt more powerful than ever. Pure energy surged into every vein, searing my exhausted muscles and repairing them into stronger, denser, and deadlier fibers.

The mercenary stepped forward, his hand manifesting a blade of energy that glowed a brilliant blue. "He's starting to evolve," he muttered, his voice sounding impatient.

I didn't answer. I couldn't answer. My mouth was locked shut by Irae's ritual, but my eyes... my eyes began to glow with the same light as the system prompt.

0.2%

I was no longer the Garou trapped under the iron ruins. I was something else. And as that percentage ticked upward, I knew that when I finally opened my eyes, this world would never be the same again.

Suddenly, the sound of sirens wailed from every corner of the city. Not the sound of ordinary police, but the wail of sirens only heard during an existential-level crisis.

"Garou," Irae’s voice sounded incredibly distant, like a voice coming from beneath the water. "Hold on. Don’t let them take control of your breath. Because once they have full control over your rhythm, they have full control over this reality."

I closed my eyes, focusing every last shred of my will to stop my own heartbeat.

0.5%

The world around me began to crack. Not physically, but logically. The light from the streetlamps warped, and the wail of the sirens slowed until it became a low hum that vibrated through my very bones. I was altering the reality around me, simply by holding my breath.

The man tried to swing his energy blade at my head, but his movements looked as though he were moving through frozen honey. Slow. So incredibly slow.

I didn't let myself feel the pressure. I released a single short breath my first in a long time and the resulting shockwave was powerful enough to pulverize the asphalt beneath us into dust.

The man was hurled backward, his energy blade shattering into a thousand pieces.

"You damn brat!" he screamed, his previously calm face now twisted with sheer panic.

I stood up. My body felt light, yet every inch of my muscle stored energy capable of toppling a tower. I didn't know what I was supposed to do; I had no plan, and I had no allies other than the dying shadow mage at my feet.

But as I looked toward the sky, toward the thousands of drones still scanning the streets, I finally understood.

Running was no longer an option. If this world wanted a hunt, then I would give them something that would make them regret ever starting it.

I stared at the nearest drone. My eyes locked onto the target.

[STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS DETECTED]

[INITIATING HACK: HUNTER SYSTEM]

With a single unconscious flick of my hand, the drone exploded in mid-air, triggering a chain reaction that destroyed every drone within a one kilometer radius. The light from the explosions in the night sky looked like fireworks of death.

And at that exact moment, on the city's massive screens still broadcasting my face, the text changed again. It was no longer 'Global Hunt,' but a simple message written in digital blood:

[THE HUNT IS REVERSED. WELCOME TO THE NEW WORLD.]

Irae stared at me, her face pale, her mouth hanging wide open. "What have you done, Garou?"

I didn't answer. I only turned toward the mercenary who was now crawling backward in terror. For the first time, I felt... hungry.

Not hungry for food, but hungry for defiance.

"They started it," I said, my voice sounding cold and foreign, even to my own ears. "But I will be the one to end it."

Suddenly, a deep voice echoed through the entire city a voice that didn't come from any speakers, but directly from the core of the world system.

[KING PROTOCOL AWAKENED]

[WORLD SEAL OPENED]

At the end of the alley, figures dressed in black far more numerous and professional than the previous mercenaries emerged from the shadows. They were The Watchers. They didn't carry weapons; they carried something far more dangerous: Reality Erasers.

The fight had only just begun, and this time, I had no intention of running. I stepped forward, letting the golden energy across my entire body radiate freely, turning the asphalt I trod upon into black crystal.

I am Garou. And this is the last day for those who dared to hunt me.