2026-04-05 18:15:22"They’ve surrounded us," Satria whispered. His voice was barely audible, yet in the stifling silence of the clinic, the words rang out like a funeral bell.
Beyond the shattered iron door and through the cracks in the concrete ceiling, the sounds became clearer. It was no longer just the growl of one or two predators, it was an orchestra of death. The sound of metallic claws scraping against hard surfaces, breaths heavy with static electricity, and a hum of energy that made the hair on his neck stand on end. The Hounds of Light didn't just hunt by scent, they tracked life frequencies.
Kirana was deathly pale, the color drained from her face until she resembled a sheet of crumpled white paper. She clutched her medical bag tightly, the only thing connecting her to her former identity as a human who helped others. "We can’t fight that many... there are too many of them. This corridor is narrow; we’re trapped!"
Satria didn't answer. His eyes were fixed on the system screen floating before him, glowing with a demanding red light. His soul balance was minimal, and the pain from the repairs to his leg was starting to demand compensation. He needed something more than mere passive physical strength. He needed speed. He needed to become a storm capable of snuffing out those hunting lights before they could touch him.
"System," Satria muttered internally, "Give me a micro,loan. Anything that can let me slaughter them in an instant without completely destroying my body right now!"
A new notification appeared, vibrating with an intensity that stung his eyes.
[MICRO-LOAN AVAILABLE: NEURAL OVERCLOCK (DURATION: 1 MINUTE)]
[EFFECT: 500% INCREASE IN REFLEXES AND SYNAPTIC SPEED. THE WORLD WILL SLOW DOWN IN THE HOST'S PERCEPTION.]
[COST: 50 SOULS + PERMANENT NERVE CELL DAMAGE (LOW LEVEL).]
[WARNING: THE BOUNDARIES OF SANITY WILL THIN. RISK OF PSYCHOSIS.]
"Do it!" Satria no longer cared about nerve cells or sanity. In a world this mad, sanity was a burden.
Thump... thump!
Satria’s heart gave one massive, violent beat, and then everything suddenly went silent.
Instantly, the world in Satria’s eyes slowed down in a surreal fashion. Water droplets falling from the leaking roof seemed to freeze in mid air, hanging like lazy, clear crystals. The dust kicked up by the Hounds' footsteps drifted in place.
Satria could see everything in gruesome detail.
He saw the snout of a Hound just as it leapt through a narrow gap in the ceiling. He could see every fiber of light, muscle pulsing beneath the creature’s transparent skin. He saw the sparks of electricity slowly crawling along its fangs.
To Kirana, Satria simply vanished. The young man became a blurred black shadow, an anomaly moving beyond the limits of human biological speed.
Satria moved. Every step felt weightless yet destructive. He no longer used efficient human movements. He twisted his body at impossible angles, as if his joints were lubricated by pure darkness.
Under the influence of the Neural Overclock, his iron pipe was no longer just a blunt instrument, it became a surgical tool of death.
Thrust! Crack! Slash!
Satria pierced the soft spot beneath the first Hound’s jaw, using the creature's own momentum to rip its throat open. Before the carcass could even hit the ground in slow motion, Satria had already moved behind the second Hound, snapping its neck with a jerk so powerful the creature's light, spine shattered into fragments.
Golden blood rained through the room, but to Satria, the liquid looked like a thick syrup dancing in the air.
In the midst of the slaughter, something terrifying happened within Satria’s soul. As he tore through the bodies of these creatures, he no longer felt nauseous. Instead of fear, a warm, highly addictive sensation began to creep through his chest. He felt "full." Every soul he ripped away felt like an extract of pure bliss injected directly into his spirit.
Satria began to chuckle. His voice sounded heavy and distorted, echoing through the cramped clinic. He began to enjoy the way the Hounds' light, armor shattered under his hands. He savored the way his enemies' shrieks slowed down into long, low groans.
In what felt to Kirana like only a few blinks of an eye, 58 seconds, to be exact, twelve Hounds of Light lay sprawled across the clinic floor. They were no longer majestic predators. They were merely heaps of fading light, flesh, torn to pieces by the hands of a young man who was losing his humanity.
Satria stood in the middle of a pool of dim, glowing golden blood. His hand gripped the severed leg of one of the Hounds, ready to tear at it again even though the creature was lifeless. His solid white eyes flashed with an irrational hunger.
"Satria... enough... please, stop..." Kirana’s voice shook violently. She cowered in the corner, staring at Satria with a fear greater than when she had looked at the monsters. To her, the man before her now seemed far more alien and dangerous.
Satria turned his head slowly. His neck cracked as he moved. His expression was blank, but a remnant of madness danced at the corners of his lips. At that moment, the Micro Loan duration expired.
CRASH!
The forced withdrawal effect of the system hit Satria like a freight train. The world that had been moving in slow motion suddenly snapped back to a painful, normal speed. Satria fell to his knees, his hands hitting the cement floor until they bled.
He coughed violently, spitting up thick globs of fresh blood mixed with bits of dark red tissue, shreds of his stomach lining or lungs destroyed by the sheer neural pressure and internal barometric stress of the overclocking. His entire body convulsed with static electricity leaking from his pores. His nerves felt like they were being scorched by blue fire.
"W... we have to go..." Satria forced the words from his damaged throat, his voice raspy and broken. "This place... has been marked. The energy I released... they can feel it from above."
Kirana, though consumed by fear, quickly rose and tried to help Satria up. She used her shoulder to support him. "You killed them all... but you’re destroying yourself, Satria. If we keep this up, you won't survive until morning."
Satria didn't answer. He saw his soul balance increase, but his debt was also ballooning with increasingly irrational interest. The system wasn't giving him power, it was renting him death at an exorbitant price.
They limped out of the underground clinic, passing through the corridor now filled with light, carcasses slowly evaporating into black ash. As they reached the exit at the end of the dark, narrow alley, Satria suddenly stopped.
"What is it?" Kirana asked anxiously.
Satria didn't answer. He stared ahead at the Sudirman street, which was now illuminated by a bizarre light. It didn't come from fire or streetlamps, but a pale, ice-cold blue light.
At the mouth of the alley stood a figure entirely different from the Vanguards or the Hounds. The figure was human, sized, wearing a long silver cloak that appeared to be made of thousands of tiny, constantly moving wings. Its face was covered by a porcelain mask with one large eye in the center.
It didn't carry a spear of light, instead, a massive ledger was chained to its waist, and it held a short scythe whose tip dripped with a black liquid.
Satria felt a chill. The system screen in his eyes suddenly turned a deep dark purple, a color he had never seen before.
[SPECIAL ENTITY DETECTED: THE HEAVENLY COLLECTOR.]
[DESCRIPTION: AN ADMINISTRATIVE UNIT TASKED WITH RECLAIMING STOLEN SOULS.]
[WARNING: THIS ENTITY CANNOT BE KILLED WITH LOW-LEVEL LOANS.]
The figure raised its head, staring at Satria with the single eye on its mask, which began to glow.
"Satria..." the figure spoke, and its voice sounded exactly like Satria’s dead father. "You possess something that does not belong to you. Return your soul, or I shall take it along with the interest you carry."
Kirana gasped as she saw the figure step forward, and with every step, the reality around the alley seemed to fold and disintegrate. Satria gripped his iron pipe, but he knew that this time, he wasn't facing a soldier of the apocalypse.
He was facing the true debt collector. And the price demanded this time was no longer a hundred souls, but his very existence.
"Dad...?" Satria whispered, his sanity teetering on the edge of collapse.
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OVERDRAFT! THE EMPEROR’S CURSE
"AAAAAARRGGHHH!"Satria’s roar shattered the deathly silence in the depths of the Bundaran HI MRT Station. His body was hurled back, slamming into the cold iron tracks with a heavy thud. Viscous black blood sprayed from his left shoulder, now a gaping wound of mangled flesh and exposed nerve endings twitching in agony. His left arm, the part of him he used to hold his sister, the limb that had worked grueling hours every day, now lay several meters away, nothing more than a cooling slab of meat on the concrete.Kirana let out a scream, a sound of pure, raw terror born of unimaginable horror. She tried to run to him, ignoring her own safety for the sake of the man who had saved her time and again. But before she could take more than a few steps, a massive wave of air pressure from the Guardian Angel’s golden wings slammed into her.Kirana collapsed, her breath stolen by a "holy" aura that felt like an invisible hand crushing her throat."Is this all you are?" the Guardian Angel, a high
MERCILESS EXECUTION
Dawn in the new world brought no hope, it only illuminated the destruction in finer, more agonizing detail. Deep within the Bundaran HI MRT Station, the first light of morning filtered through massive, shattered ventilation shafts. The stale air of the station suddenly hummed with a low frequency that made teeth rattle.Three figures, Guardian Angels, descended with a terrifying grace. These celestial entities stood three meters tall, clad in gold armor that encased them completely, wielding greatswords that radiated the searing heat of the sun. Their very presence seemed to suck the oxygen from the room, leaving the refugees gasping in pure, unadulterated terror."They’re here! They’ve finally come!" Bimo shrieked, his voice pitchy with glee amidst the mass hysteria.The corrupt cop, whose skin now possessed an eerie glow from the 'Light Injection' he had taken earlier, threw himself onto the filthy concrete floor. He knelt before the angels, arms spread wide as if welcoming saviors.
DWELLERS OF THE QUARANTINE SECTOR
"Just a little further, Satria... hang in there," Kirana whispered, her voice raspy from the dust.Somehow, Kirana had managed to help Satria escape the Debt Collector.They reached the mouth of the Bundaran HI MRT tunnel. What was once a symbol of Jakarta's modernity had mutated into a makeshift refugee camp, a pocket of passive resistance the survivors called the "Quarantine Sector." The air here changed drastically, from the smell of ozone and sulfur on the surface to the suffocating stench of sweat, human waste, and fear."Halt! Who are you? Hands up!"A high powered flashlight beamed into their faces, momentarily blinding them. A middle aged man in a filthy police uniform, buttons nearly popping off, stood behind a barricade of concrete tables and haphazardly welded iron fences. He held a Glock with steady hands, but his eyes held a glint of excessive suspicion, the kind of look possessed by someone who feared their fellow man more than the monsters in the sky."I'm a doctor...
DEATH’S EXTRACT AND THE BOUNDARIES OF SANITY
"They’ve surrounded us," Satria whispered. His voice was barely audible, yet in the stifling silence of the clinic, the words rang out like a funeral bell.Beyond the shattered iron door and through the cracks in the concrete ceiling, the sounds became clearer. It was no longer just the growl of one or two predators, it was an orchestra of death. The sound of metallic claws scraping against hard surfaces, breaths heavy with static electricity, and a hum of energy that made the hair on his neck stand on end. The Hounds of Light didn't just hunt by scent, they tracked life frequencies.Kirana was deathly pale, the color drained from her face until she resembled a sheet of crumpled white paper. She clutched her medical bag tightly, the only thing connecting her to her former identity as a human who helped others. "We can’t fight that many... there are too many of them. This corridor is narrow; we’re trapped!"Satria didn't answer. His eyes were fixed on the system screen floating before
THE DEBTOR’S FIRST HUNT
CRASH! The rusted iron door of the clinic buckled inward with an ear, splitting metallic bang. The top hinge snapped off, leaving a gap wide enough for the searing heat from outside to crawl in. Kirana let out a stifled scream, scrambling backward until her back hit the wall beneath a rotting wooden table. Her entire body shook violently, she was a medical student trained to save lives, not to witness a cosmic predator collecting them.Satria stood tall before the nearly collapsed door. His breathing was heavy and shallow. The iron pipe in his right hand felt leaden, while his left hand pressed against a pulsing wound in his abdomen. He knew that in his current shattered state, using a "High, Tier Debt" would be a one way ticket to the grave. If he borrowed god, like power again now, his blood vessels would burst before he could even land a single blow."Just physical... just use the passive buff," Satria whispered to himself, trying to steady his racing heart. "Don’t let this system
THE LOAN SHARK’S BLOOD INTEREST
"Hey! Calm down! You’re going to kill yourself!"Kirana’s voice shrieked through the sound of cracking concrete and the hiss of thermal steam rising from Satria’s body. Ignoring the fear that nearly paralyzed her nerves, the medical student lunged forward. She threw her arms around Satria as he writhed on the floor, attempting to act as an anchor for his consciousness as it was tossed about by a storm of agony.The touch of Kirana’s cold, trembling hands provided a small spark of light in the darkness swallowing Satria. His breath came in ragged gasps, every lungful of air felt like inhaling shards of glass. Inside his throbbing skull, the raspy baritone of the War Emperor echoed once more, drowning out the sound of Kirana’s sobbing."Debt cannot be paid with tears, boy. The universe knows no mercy, it only knows equivalent exchange," the ancient heart chuckled, a sound like the grinding of gravestones. "Pay your interest on time, or I shall make you the main course at my banquet tabl
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