SOVEREIGN OF BLOOD: The Emperor's Debt System

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 eat more of my lifespan than it has to."

[ACTIVATING PASSIVE FEATURE: STRENGTH ENHANCEMENT (LEVEL 1)]

[CONSUMPTION: 0.5 SOULS / MINUTE]

[WARNING: YOUR BALANCE IS NEGATIVE. EVERY MINUTE WILL BE CONVERTED INTO PERMANENT MUSCLE MASS DEPLETION.]

Satria ignored the warning. Pain was the new currency of this world.

Suddenly, the iron door was ripped completely from its hinges, hurled into the room like a giant coin. From behind the rising dust emerged a creature born from the most primordial of nightmares, a Hound of Light.

The creature looked like a gargantuan Doberman that had been skinned alive. Its muscles were not made of red meat, but a lattice of white light fibers that pulsed and throbbed like high,voltage fiber, optic cables. Its head lacked conventional eyes, possessing only two elongated slits that emitted pale blue laser beams.

Without warning, the Hound lunged. It moved so fast it left nothing but a white blur on Satria’s corneas. Satria rolled to the side, crashing into a medicine rack and sending glass bottles shattering everywhere.

However, the razor-sharp claws of solidified light still managed to tear into his left shoulder.

"Damn it!" Satria hissed. The new wound felt searing, as if his flesh hadn't just been torn, but cauterized.

The creature was far more agile and intelligent than the Heavenly Vanguard he had fought at Bundaran HI. The winged angels were soldiers, but this was a hunter. The Hound spun in place with predatory grace, its claws scraping sparks off the cement floor.

Satria tried to thrust his iron pipe as the creature lunged a second time. But the tip of the pipe merely deflected off the Hound's light-skin, which was as hard as steel. The creature retaliated with an ultrasonic roar that made Satria’s ears ring violently and his balance waver. In that moment of weakness, the hunting dog leapt, snapping its jaws, filled with teeth of light onto Satria’s right leg.

CRACK!

"AAARRRGGGHHH!" Satria roared as he felt his shinbone splinter under the pressure of the creature’s jaws.

"Satria!" Kirana, who had been frozen in terror, saw Satria about to be torn apart. In her pure panic, her hands fumbled across a nearby shelf until they found a large, intact glass bottle of concentrated sulfuric acid. Without a second thought, she hurled the bottle with all her might at the creature’s face.

SPLASH!

The bottle shattered directly against the hound’s snout. The harsh chemical reacted instantly with the creature's organic light, energy. A small explosion erupted, releasing a plume of foul-smelling black smoke. The creature released its grip on Satria’s leg, howling in pain with a sound like broken radio interference. The light on its face dimmed momentarily as its eyes were compromised by the acid's corrosion.

That opening was more than enough for Satria.

Ignoring the paralyzing pain in his leg, Satria used the momentum to leap onto the Hound’s back. He locked his muscular arm around the creature’s neck in a death grip. With the last of the strength from the enhancement, which was already beginning to erode his muscle tissue he raised the iron pipe high.

"Die... die... DIE!"

Satria drove the sharp end of the iron pipe repeatedly into the same spot on the creature’s skull. Every strike sprayed thick, hot golden blood, drenching Satria’s face and clothes. He kept striking with the madness of a man who had nothing left to lose.

After the tenth brutal blow, the Hound’s skull finally shattered completely. The creature convulsed violently before finally dying in a heap of fading light. Satria didn't stop there, he reached his hand into the creature's mangled head and ripped out a small, pulsing, glowing crystal from within its brain, the Light Core.

[LIGHT CORE DETECTED.]

[CONVERTING TO SOUL BALANCE... COMPLETE.]

[BALANCE ADDED: 15 SOULS.]

[INTEREST PAID. STATUS: SAFE (GRACE PERIOD: 90 MINUTES).]

Satria collapsed, sitting atop the carcass as it slowly evaporated into dust particles. His breath came in gasps, his chest heaving irregularly. A strange warmth began to spread from his hand holding the light core, traveling to his wounded shoulder and leg. The energy from the soul he had absorbed began emergency repairs on his damaged cells, a small compensation from the system to ensure its host didn't die too soon.

He turned toward Kirana, who was still huddled trembling in the corner, looking at him with an expression that was hard to read. There was gratitude, but also a deep-seated horror. In Kirana’s eyes, Satria was no longer the young man she had saved in the alley. Satria was something else, a man who was beginning to enjoy the scent of blood and destruction.

"You... you’re badly hurt," Kirana whispered, her voice nearly gone.

"I’ll be fine," Satria replied curtly, trying to stand. His leg still throbbed with pain, but the bone had somehow fused back together, even if the alignment wasn't perfect. "Thanks for the sulfuric acid. You saved my life."

A strange chemistry began to form between them in that stifling room, a medical student trying to maintain the last remnants of her sanity, and a "debtor" who was slowly losing his humanity for the sake of power.

But the moment of silence lasted only a few seconds.

Satria’s ears, now more sensitive, caught another sound. Not from the corridor, but from the ventilation shafts and the ceiling. The same growl... the same scratching... but this time, it wasn't alone.

Grrr... Hrrr... Grrr...

The sounds called out to each other, creating a terrifying predatory harmony in the dark Jakarta night. Satria walked slowly toward the ruined door and looked out into the corridor. His eyes widened. Along the dimly lit hallway, dozens of pairs of pale blue laser eyes began to ignite one by one.

One Hound he could handle. But there were a dozen... maybe more. They moved in a pack formation, surrounding the clinic as if they knew their primary prey was trapped inside a concrete box with no way out.

"One kill bought me fifteen souls," Satria muttered, his lips curling into a thin, crazed smile under the wash of laser light from outside. "If there are twenty of them out there... I can buy myself a lot of time."

"Satria, what are you doing? Don't go out there!" Kirana screamed as she saw Satria begin to step out of the room.

Satria paused briefly at the threshold, staring at the pack of light-hounds closing in, energy, saliva dripping from their jaws. Inside his head, a system notification flickered in a tempting golden yellow.

[PACK DETECTION: 24 TARGETS.]

[ESTIMATED REVENUE: 360 SOULS.]

[WOULD YOU LIKE TO TAKE AN ADDITIONAL LOAN: "THE SLAUGHTERER’S SCYTHE"?]

Satria gripped his iron pipe, his eyes turning a solid, stark white once more. He realized one terrifying thing, he was no longer afraid of them. He was hungry.

"Stay inside, Kirana. Close your eyes and don’t come out until the scratching stops," Satria said coldly.

Just as the pack of Hounds leapt simultaneously from the darkness of the hallway to maul him, Satria didn't retreat. He lunged forward into the center of that death,

trap, laughing. However, the moment his body made contact with the lead dog, a massive explosion of silver light struck the building from outside, collapsing the clinic's ceiling and burying everything in rubble.

Amidst the falling debris, a six winged shadow descended slowly from the split Jakarta sky. This was no longer a low level soldier. This time, what had arrived was something much higher in the celestial hierarchy.

"Anomaly detected," a voice that sounded like thousands of echoing bells boomed through the ruins. "Execution commences."

Satria was buried under concrete, Kirana’s hand was pinned by rubble, and the pack of Hounds bowed in submission. Satria's hunt had just turned into an impossible life, or death escape.