The Strongest Human

A blinding flash of purplish light stabbed at Alden Vance's eyes. His head throbbed violently, as if hit repeatedly by a sledgehammer. Grunting, he tried to force his body up, but the heavy iron chains binding his wrists and ankles clanked loudly, slamming him back down onto the ice-cold stone floor.

"Wake up, trash!"

A heavy armored boot slammed directly into his solar plexus, sending a sharp, stabbing pain through him.

Alden coughed violently, spitting thick red blood mixed with bile onto the grey stone floor. Wiping his lips, his eyes narrowed as sharp as daggers, glaring straight at a tall, pointy-eared figure standing arrogantly in glistening golden armor. All around him, a massive cathedral-like chamber seemed to float freely in midair, its walls adorned with strange magical runes pulsing with a blinding purple light.

"Where the fuck am I?!" Alden growled. His voice was hoarse and raspy, yet dripping with a cold, murderous intent. "Who the hell are you to kick me?!"

The golden-armored guard merely sneered. Behind him, an old man clad in white silk robes stepped forward with thick arrogance. He tightly gripped a crystal staff that continuously radiated a suffocating magical aura, making the surrounding air suddenly feel incredibly heavy and hard to breathe.

"Mind your filthy tongue, lowly creature," the robed man hissed flatly. His eyes looked down on Alden coldly, as if staring at a disgusting insect crawling on the ground. "The magic core examination is complete. The results are exactly as I suspected."

"What is the result, Inquisitor?" the golden-armored guard asked, quickly bowing his head low.

"Zero. Empty. He does not possess an Aetherium core in his body at all. Just a disgusting, defective human from the lower dimension. The Sovereign Concord has no use for such useless trash. Cast him into the Abyssal Chasm immediately."

Alden bared his teeth in a wild grin, exposing gums coated in thick, dark blood. His eyes flared with the raw, savage fury of a street fighter who refused to submit.

"Throw me away? Just fucking try it, bastards. I'll snap your necks one by one before your filthy hands can touch me again."

"A lot of mouth for a head of cattle," the golden-armored guard sneered.

He stepped forward with long strides, drawing a longsword that crackled instantly with a lethal flow of blue electricity. "Let me sever both his legs before we throw him down, just so he doesn't struggle so much."

As the sword began to swing through the air, Alden's feral instincts exploded. Years of surviving the brutal underground street-fighting circuits of Earth had forged his mind into iron—he didn't know the meaning of panic, even on the brink of death. Instead of dodging, he yanked the heavy iron chains on his right wrist with sheer, brutal force, deliberately leveraging the momentum of the guard's swing.

The brutal jerk instantly shattered the guard's balance, dragging his arm forward by force. Before the electrified blade could graze his skin, Alden moved like lightning, wrapping the thick iron chain directly around the guard's neck.

"Die, motherfucker!" Alden roared, pouring every ounce of his strength into it.

With one ruthless pull in the opposite direction and a brutal knee strike driven deep into the guard's spine, a sickening crack echoed through the cathedral hall.

CRACK!

The golden-armored guard's body immediately went limp and collapsed lifelessly, his eyes wide in shock as they stared blankly at the cathedral ceiling. His electric sword slipped from his grasp, clattering loudly against the grey stone floor.

"How dare you, filthy dog!" the Inquisitor screamed, his face flushed red with exploding fury at the lightning-fast, brutal execution. "Kill him! Break his limbs, right now!"

Three other armored guards immediately rushed out from behind the massive pillars. Their mouths muttered incantations in rapid succession, summoning a dozen blazing fire spears that hovered in the air. Yet, Alden didn't back down an inch. With his hands still bound by chains, he snatched the electric sword from the floor, then kicked the corpse of the dead guard toward them to use as a meat shield.

Explosion after explosion rang out as the fire spears slammed into their own comrade's corpse, blasting flesh and golden armor into charred, smoking fragments. Utilizing the thick plume of black smoke as a cover, Alden lunged forward like a guided missile.

"Eat shit, you bastards!" Alden roared, swinging his stolen sword in a lethal horizontal slash.

The high-voltage blue blade tore right through the chest of the second guard, spraying warm blood that instantly drenched Alden's face and shoulders. Without wasting a single heartbeat, Alden spun, dodging the swing of the third guard's axe with agile precision. In the same motion, he drove his left elbow hard into his opponent's jaw, shattering the metal helmet and crushing the bone beneath in one devastating, brutal strike.

The white-robed Inquisitor stumbled back a step, his eyes wide with profound disbelief as he witnessed the bloody slaughter unfolding before him. "How is this possible...? A human without a magic core moving this fast?! This... this makes no sense!"

"In my world, your magic is nothing but fucking trash!" Alden spat to the side, locking his eyes on the Inquisitor like a predator sizing up its prey. "Now it's your turn to despair."

Alden lunged forward, aiming directly for the Inquisitor's neck. But right before his blade could tear into the robed man's flesh, an overwhelmingly massive, invisible pressure suddenly hammered down on him from the cathedral ceiling.

BAM!

The grey stone floor beneath cracked and shattered as Alden's body was forced to its knees by an absolute, crushing gravity. The surrounding air grew thick and heavy, as if multiplied a hundredfold. His joints and bones groaned and popped under the weight of pure magical force pinning him in place. The electric sword in his hand shattered into countless fragments, unable to withstand the overwhelming pressure.

From the deep shadows behind the cathedral's high altar, a colossal figure slowly stepped into view. The aura radiating from it was so thick, ancient, and terrifying that the remaining air in the room seemed to freeze instantly.

"Enough games," a deep, majestic voice boomed, shaking every pillar in the cathedral. "This disgusting anomaly is beginning to defile my throne room."

The Inquisitor immediately threw himself down, trembling violently as he pressed his forehead against the stone floor. "Forgive my oversight, Arch-Sovereign Malakor! This human... he moves far beyond the limits of reason, yet he doesn't possess a single drop of magic!"

Arch-Sovereign Malakor lazily flicked his left hand, a simple gesture carrying cold-blooded cruelty. Instantly, the gravity crushing Alden's back intensified. Alden's lungs felt as though they were about to burst from the inside, while fresh blood began to seep from his nose, mouth, and ears.

Yet, the stubborn bastard from Earth refused to bow his head completely. With the last of his strength, he forced his head up millimeter by millimeter, staring directly into the burning eyes of the Daemonicus ruler with a gaze of endless, burning hatred.

"Is this... all you got, huh?" Alden hissed, forcing a mocking grin that showed his blood-soaked teeth. "Weak... piece of shit."

Malakor narrowed his smoldering purple eyes. "An intriguing physical resilience for a filthy insect. But you are an insect nonetheless. Vanish into the endless dark and turn to ash, human."

With a flick of Malakor's fingers, the stone floor beneath Alden split wide open. Below gaped an endless, pitch-black abyss, spewing a thick purple mist that reeked of pure death.

It was the Abyssal Chasm—the cosmic landfill and dumping ground for the cursed entities of Eos-Vaelhart.

Alden's body, still locked tight by the crushing gravity, was instantly sucked down into the bottomless void of the chasm.

"I'll be back, you bastards! I'll rip your fucking throats out!"

Alden's final roar echoed wildly against the chasm walls before his figure was completely swallowed by the dense, heavy fog of the Abyss.

The roaring wind whipped violently against Alden's body as he plummeted into the endless depths of the Abyssal Chasm. A thick purple mist of raw Aetherium—highly toxic to ordinary living things—began to envelop him, aggressively eating away at his cells. This was pure, primordial energy meant to dissolve the flesh and bones of any creature lacking magical protection within seconds.

An excruciating pain instantly set every inch of his skin on fire. Alden shrieked hoarsely, fighting the unbearable agony; the veins along his neck and arms bulged and throbbed like worms on a hot pan.

Am I going to die here? In this fucking cosmic trash heap?

he thought, the fury burning in his chest fiercely refusing to yield to the encroaching despair.

No. There's no way in hell I'm dying at the hands of those arrogant bastards!

Suddenly, something impossible—something that shattered the very laws of magic—occurred.

Instead of dissolving into ash, the unique biological structure of Alden's human cells reacted violently. The deadly energy that had been tearing his skin apart was suddenly vacuumed into his pores. His muscles convulsed, swallowing the raw Aetherium mist like a ravenous, insatiable black hole. The agonizing pain slowly morphed into a searing heat, pumping limitless, brutal power directly into his heart and bloodstream.

Without a conventional magic core to store energy, his entire physical vessel was forced to evolve radically into the perfect god-slaying weapon. His muscle density multiplied within seconds, and his gaping wounds sealed shut with horrifying speed. The heavy iron chains binding his wrists and ankles glowed cherry-red and liquefied, melted by a body temperature boiling like magma.

Alden Vance was not dead. In fact, in the depths of the deadliest chasm, the true apex predator had just broken his chains and was born anew.

"Just you fucking wait," he whispered softly mid-fall. A demonic grin spread across his face, now glowing brilliantly with the luminescence of pure energy. "I'll be back. And I'll burn your world to fucking ash."