Chapter 63: Exposure
Jagger lay where he had fallen, rain striking his face in cold, relentless rhythm. Blood pooled beneath him, spreading thin across broken asphalt before the storm diluted it into pink rivers that crawled toward the gutters. The world above him was fractured light and shadow, flashes of fire reflecting off shattered windows, the distant silhouette of the Troll King tearing through what remained of the street.
His chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven pulls.
His left arm was no longer an arm. It hung beside him like a butchered thing, swollen and misshapen, skin stretched grotesquely over jagged shapes that pressed from within. Each twitch of regeneration shifted bone fragnts with wet, grinding clicks that vibrated through his entire body.
He stared at it, detached for a mont, as if it belonged to soone else.
"Fuck..." he whispered, the word breaking apart in his throat.
A translucent panel flickered in his vision.
[Critical wounds detected!]
His vision blurred at the edges. The adrenaline that had carried him through Yuki’s death drained away, leaving behind sothing colder and far more dangerous.
Exposure.
He closed his eyes for a second, trying to isolate the pain, trying to separate it from the noise of battle. If he could focus, if he could will the regeneration to speed up, force it to prioritize, redirect, compress. He felt the bone shards grinding as they attempted alignnt. Muscle fibers are pulled together in uneven strands. Skin tightened in hot, nauseating waves.
He forced himself to move.
His good arm pressed against the asphalt, palm slipping in rain and blood as he shoved his body upright. White agony tore up his side. His vision flared and dimd. His legs buckled, but he stayed on his feet long enough to grab his dagger from the ground and clutch it tight.
He scanned the battlefield.
Chaos had consud everything.
The Troll King rampaged without direction now. Its massive club smashed through vehicles and hunters alike, no longer distinguishing between Bastion and Bloodclaw. Every swing reshaped the street. Every step cratered the asphalt. Its regeneration glowed faintly beneath torn flesh, steam rising where fla arrows struck exposed muscle.
Bloodclaws were no longer laughing.
So still fought with manic desperation, but others were retreating in sharp bursts, faces twisted with sothing closer to unease than rage. They had co to hunt. Now they were being hunted.
Bastion’s formation was fracturing.
Inexperience showed in the worst possible way. Lower-level hunters faltered when lines broke. So fled toward the mall entrance, others stood their ground too long and were crushed beneath debris or monster claws. He saw one Bastion shield shatter under the Troll King’s downward blow, the hunter beneath it vanishing beneath splintered tal and stone.
Their numbers were thinning.
Fast.
Shin Lu stood at the edge of the chaos, spear held tight, posture rigid and calculating. Rain stread down his scarred face as he assessed the battlefield with surgical coldness, also with a grim expression on his face.
Reika stood not far from him.
Her posture had changed. The manic amusent was gone. In its place was sothing darker, colder. Her gaze cut across the battlefield until it found Jagger.
Even from this distance, he felt it.
The bloodlust, along with the silent promise.
When this ended, if they both survived, she would co for him.
He staggered toward an overturned bus thirty ters away. Each step jarred his ruined arm, sending flares of white through his skull. His boots slipped in rainwater and blood. Twice, he nearly collapsed. The world tilted violently around him, but he forced himself forward until he reached the mangled vehicle.
He fell behind it, back slamming against cold tal.
For a mont, he just sat there, breathing hard, rain dripping through shattered windows and pattering against the rusted fra.
He looked down at his arm.
Up close, it was worse. The shape of it was wrong, swollen beyond proportion. His fingers twitched weakly, not by command but by misfiring nerve impulses.
His stomach churned.
He tore at his sleeve with his teeth and right hand, ripping fabric free. He tried to wrap it high around his upper arm, trying to compress the damage, to slow the bleeding.
"UGH!"
It did nothing.
The blood kept coming, dark and steady, slipping through soaked cloth.
"Holy shit, that hurts," he said aloud, voice shaking despite himself.
’That was stupid,’ Ophilia’s voice cut through him, cold and razor thin. ’You allowed her to cripple you for a gamble.’
"Not now," he muttered. "I don’t need your fucking nagging, I need to concentrate."
’You are fortunate you are not dead.’
"I know, now fuck off."
The battlefield thundered beyond the bus. tal scread. Soone shouted in agony. The Troll King roared again, closer this ti, the vibration traveling through the bus fra and into his spine.
He swallowed hard.
"Add all points to Stamina."
The panel flickered into place.
-
[Stat Allocation Confird]
10 Stamina Applied
Stamina: 20 ( 7)
-
The confirmation hit him like a secondary pulse. The change was not explosive.
His breathing deepened involuntarily. His heart stabilized. The frantic fluttering beneath his ribs slowed into sothing stronger, more deliberate. Energy pooled lower in his body, less volatile than Strength, less sharp than Corrupted Surge.
Endurance.
He closed his eyes and focused on the sensation inside his arm. Instead of trying to force regeneration violently, he shifted his approach. He imagined the process as a slow compression rather than a flood. Less chaos. More structure.
He inhaled slowly, deliberately, focusing on the flow of blood.
The bone fragnts began aligning with more intention now, grinding less erratically. Muscle fibers wove together in thicker strands. The swelling reduced by a fraction. The bleeding slowed from a steady pour to a heavy seep.
The pain intensified briefly as tissues reorganized, a deep, nauseating burn beneath the skin.
He gritted his teeth and did not open his eyes
It was still slow.
Still agonizing.
But it was working.
---
"These fucking idiots can’t even take one Elite monster down."
The words left Reika’s mouth like a blade thrown in disgust.
Shin Lu stood a few paces away, spear grounded lightly against the pavent. Rain traced the scar across his face, but his posture remained straight, controlled.
"You’re awfully vocal now. Frustrated, are we?" he asked, gaze fixed on the Troll King as it hurled a Bastion hunter across the street. "That troll is going to kill all of us. The Bloodclaws and the Bastion. Your little war is only hurting us."
The Troll King’s club ca down again, crushing a stretch of asphalt and sending debris outward like shrapnel. Several hunters rolled clear. One did not. The impact swallowed him.
Shin Lu’s voice did not waver.
"How about we agree to drop this petty squabble for now? You and I are leaders, aren’t we? Think of the bigger picture. For our people."
Reika turned slowly, rain dripping from the ends of her blue hair. A sneer twisted across her lips.
"Don’t act all high and mighty. You’re no better than us. You just hide it behind your rules and regulations. At least we’re honest about what we want."
"And what’s that?" Shin Lu asked, eyes narrowing slightly. "Power? Glory? Blood? That’s all you can think of?"
"Survival," Reika shot back instantly. "Unlike you, we know the world doesn’t reward the weak. It crushes them. And we’d rather be the crushers than the crushed."
Lightning flickered sowhere beyond the skyline, briefly illuminating the Troll King’s towering fra as it backhanded a Bloodclaw through a shop window. The man’s scream was cut short by shattering glass.
Shin Lu’s expression hardened, steel settling into his features.
"There’s no honor in that."
"Honor won’t keep you alive when even greater threats co falling from the sky," Reika countered. "You think your little guild can protect all the weak from what’s out there? The more of them you gather, the larger the target you paint on your back. It’s only a matter of ti before you get them all killed."
The Troll King swept its arm sideways in a devastating arc. Most hunters managed to evade, boots skidding through rain and blood. A Bastion hunter was not fast enough. The blow caught him mid-step and hurled him into the side of a building with enough force to crack stone.
Shin Lu watched it happen without flinching.
"That is where you are wrong," he said quietly. "The world has already fallen into chaos. The more people we gather, the greater our chances of survival. We will learn to protect each other. We will learn to adapt. We will learn to fight back. Unlike you, we will not sit by and let our own die a aningless death."
Reika did not answer imdiately.
Her eyes were no longer on him.
They were locked onto the Troll King.
The monster staggered briefly as fla arrows embedded into exposed muscle. Black blood stead in the rain. Its wounds crawled closed in grotesque defiance. Around its legs, Bastion and Bloodclaw hunters circled like insects around a storm.
Her mind was already moving ahead, calculating angles, casualties, and timing.
Then the air shimred.
A translucent panel flared into existence before both leaders, visible even through the curtain of rain.
-
[Global Quest: The Great Filter]
[Objective: Eliminate all hostile creatures designated as ’Heralds of Collapse’.]
[Targets Remaining: 47/50]
-
Three Heralds had fallen. Sowhere beyond this shattered street and beyond the wreckage of Orchard Road, other battles raged. In distant corners of Singapore, other hunters were locked in desperate struggles against their own towering nightmares.
The battlefield seed to contract beneath the weight of that realization.
This battle was not confined to this street alone, it was a nationwide culling.
A quiet dread settled over even the most hardened fighters. The Troll King was only one of fifty. Now forty-seven.
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