My Divine System Gives Rewards for Losing

Chapter 7: Sacrificial Lambs

The acid rain had thinned to a greasy mist by the time they reached the edge of the scavenged settlement—a cluster of rusted corrugated iron shacks huddled beneath a collapsed bridge. The air tasted of burnt copper and desperation.

André stopped abruptly, the sigil on his palm throbbing with a sickening, rhythmic heat. He held up a hand, signaling Clara to stay low in the muddy drainage ditch.

"You hear that?" André asked, his voice low.

Clara leaned in, her ear toward the settlement. "Sounds like screaming. A lot of it. And gunfire. Crude, homemade stuff. Not military grade."

"Bandits," André muttered, his eyes tracking the interface flickering to life in his peripheral vision. It wasn't the usual white text. It was glowing a brilliant, mocking gold.

[Quest Initiated: The Cost of Ambition.]

[Objective: Allow the settlement to be overrun.]

[Calculated Reward: Legendary Blueprint - Gravity Core.]

[Current Probability of Settlement Destruction: 98.7%.]

"Legendary," André whispered, a cold sweat breaking out across his neck. "Clara, look at this. It wants me to watch them burn. It’s offering me a Gravity Core for just... standing here."

Clara grabbed his shoulder, her eyes wide with shock. "A Gravity Core? André, that’s a power source capable of running a city block for a decade. But those are families in there. People who’ve spent years building those walls."

"I know," André said, his fingers digging into the mud. "But if I intervene, I mess with the 'catastrophe.' If I save them, I get nothing. If I let them die, I walk away with the key to becoming a god."

"Is that what we are now?" Clara snapped, her voice trembling with barely suppressed rage. "We’re just collectors of loot, weighing human lives against gear stats?"

"It’s not my choice!" André shouted, then checked himself, his breath hitching. "I mean, it is. That’s the joke, right? The system makes me the architect of the disaster. If I choose to be a hero, I’m failing the mission. If I choose the mission, I’m failing them."

"Then fail the mission," Clara said, her voice dropping to a steely whisper. "I didn't follow a glitch across the wasteland to watch you turn into a monster for a piece of tech."

André stared at the settlement. A woman was dragged out of a shack, her arm held by a scarred brute in a patchwork leather vest. The bandit raised a jagged machete.

"If we go in," André said, his mind racing through the math of his abilities, "we’re going to be outnumbered ten to one. We won't save everyone. We’ll be lucky to save anyone."

"Then let’s start being lucky," Clara said, drawing her blade.

André took a deep breath, the sigil on his palm burning hot enough to blister. "Fine. We do this, but I’m doing it the only way I know how. I’m going to be a complete mess."

They burst from the shadows. André didn't charge like a hero; he sprinted, tripped over a loose cable, and went skidding headfirst through the wooden support beam of a watchtower. The tower groaned, wobbled, and collapsed in a shower of sparks and debris, pinning three of the bandits in the mud.

"Oops," André shouted, scrambling to his feet as the remaining bandits turned, eyes wide with confusion. "My bad! I definitely meant to do that!"

"You're an idiot!" Clara laughed, her knife finding the throat of the nearest attacker before he could even raise his weapon. She moved like smoke, dancing around the heavy strikes of the raiders, her movements efficient and deadly.

André threw himself into the fray. He didn't use finesse. He swung his rebar spear with such wild, uncontrolled momentum that he ended up spinning in a circle, accidentally smashing a bandit in the back of the head with the butt of the weapon.

[Processing failure...]

[Detection: Uncoordinated combat maneuvers.]

[Skill Acquired: Berserker’s Clumsiness (Passive)]

[Description: Your flailing strikes carry 30% more kinetic force due to complete lack of form.]

"Clara, behind you!" André yelled, but he slipped in the mud again, his fall acting as a perfect parry. He slammed into the bandit’s knees, sending him flying into a stack of oil barrels.

The chaos escalated. The bandits, rattled by the bizarre, unpredictable way the two newcomers were tearing through their ranks, began to break.

"They're not even fighting!" one of the bandits screamed, backing away. "They're just... they're falling on us!"

André was sweating, his lungs burning. He reached the woman they had cornered earlier, but a bandit leader—a hulking monster of a man with a pneumatic nail gun—stepped between them.

"You think you’re funny?" the leader growled, raising the weapon.

André panicked. He didn't have a plan. He shoved his glowing, sigil-marked hand toward the leader. The air snapped with the smell of ozone.

"I'm just a guy who can't keep his balance!" André yelled, throwing his entire body weight into a tackle. He tripped over his own heel, his forehead slamming into the leader’s chin with the force of a wrecking ball.

The man dropped like a stone, the nail gun clattering to the floor.

But the relief was short-lived. A massive explosion rocked the bridge above, and a shower of burning timber began to rain down on the settlement. The bandits were retreating, but they had set the shacks on fire as they left.

André looked around. The settlement was a tomb of flames. He had saved the woman, but the rest of the families were trapped, the fire moving too fast to breach.

"We have to go!" Clara shouted, grabbing his collar and hauling him back. "The structure is going to come down!"

"I could save them!" André screamed, looking at his palm. The sigil was pulsing, taunting him with the promise of the Gravity Core. "If I used the Kinetic Anchor... if I pushed the flames back... I could do it!"

"Then do it!"

"I can't!" André’s voice broke. "It won't let me! The system—it’s locked! It’s waiting for me to leave them to burn! It’s calculating the reward!"

"To hell with the reward!" Clara shoved him toward the perimeter.

André collapsed, his heart hammering against his ribs. He watched as the center of the settlement vanished into a roaring inferno. He had succeeded in the fight, but he had failed the village. He had failed the very people he had tried to save.

He felt a familiar, cold chime in his skull.

[Quest Failed: Settlement Overrun.]

[Penalty: System Integrity Adjustment.]

[Reward: None.]

André stood in the ashes, his clothes singed, his face covered in soot. He didn't feel like a hero. He felt hollow.

"We saved one," Clara whispered, her voice cracking as she checked the woman they had pulled from the fire. She was alive, breathing, but the settlement was gone.

André looked at his palm. The sigil was fading, its glow replaced by a dull, permanent scar. He had saved one life, but the cost was etched into his skin forever.

"I hate this game," André whispered, staring into the flickering embers of the life he couldn't save. "I really, truly hate this game."

Clara stood up and walked over to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. She didn't offer comfort; there was none to give. "We keep moving, Mahesa. If we stop, we become part of the ash."

André took one last look at the ruins of the settlement. He hadn't received the Gravity Core. He hadn't received anything. He had just been a disaster, and for the first time, he realized that being a disaster didn't make him a winner. It just left more things broken in his wake.

"Yeah," André said, his voice flat. "Let's move."

As they trudged away into the darkening mist of the ruins, the interface flickered one last time, a cruel, mocking reminder of the choice he had made.

[Current Status: Survivalist.]

[Next Directive: Spectacle required for survival.]

André didn't look at the screen. He kept walking, his footsteps dragging in the mud, a shadow leading an enigma into the dark, silent heart of a world that refused to let him be anything but a catastrophe.