CRACK. CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
The ground trembled.
The earth beneath Ali's feet shuddered and began to split apart in a violent line that tore through roots, dirt, and stone. He stood between two massive trees, eyes narrowing as he watched the ground split in a clean, jagged fissure that raced toward him.
Then—
BOOOOOOOOOOM.
The forest floor exploded.
Chunks of dirt, shattered stone, and ancient roots were blasted skyward in a tidal wave of debris. Ali raised an arm to shield his eyes as soil rained down around him like dark snow. When the dust finally settled, the silhouette of a massive beast stood in the clearing ahead.
And what emerged from the explosion was no ordinary monster.
It was a Kobold—but one like Ali had never seen.
Seventeen meters tall, its muscular frame was wrapped in hardened leather armour that looked to have been stitched together from the hides of various monsters. Its fur was dark brown, but patterned with jagged black zig-zag lines that looked like nature's version of tribal war paint. Power radiated from its hulking body like heat off volcanic stone.
In its massive right hand, it wielded an enormous ten-meter battle axe, forged from a gleaming, alien metal. The weapon's edge glowed with a muted brown aura, like a reflection of the earth itself, covering every inch from the base of its handle to the razor-sharp crescent blade.
Ali's gaze locked on the weapon.
'Aura. It's using aura,' he noted, recognising the familiar shimmer that coated the weapon with supernatural density and weight.
His eyes traveled upward—just in time to see the beast raise its head, revealing a horrific sight. The Kobold Captain's jagged teeth were chewing through the bodies of four regular kobolds, their limbs flailing and voices shrieking as they were devoured alive. Blood soaked its fangs. One corpse dangled grotesquely from its mouth, half-swallowed.
Ali's lip curled.
'No intelligence. Just raw, feral power. But what the fuck is the interface waiting on with my mission…'
The creature scanned its surroundings, clearly agitated. It didn't seem to notice Ali—who was cloaking his presence with precision. The beast's eyes passed over him multiple times without pause.
Then—
[Personal Mission: Kill the Kobold Captain (0/1)]
[Personal Mission: Wipe Out the Kobold Colony (0/1)]
Ali's interface flickered to life. He smiled and snapped his fingers once.
'Confirmed. No reward listed? That means it's not even a real threat. Just clean-up work.'
He turned.
VOOOOOOOOOOOOM.
A shadow passed over the treetops.
The Kobold looked up—and froze.
Above it, descending fast and hard, was a massive dragon, body wreathed in smoke and fire. Abeloth, in all his terrible majesty, crashed through the canopy like a meteor, black smoke gushing from his nostrils and wings spread wide enough to block out the sun.
The Kobold Captain's eyes widened. Fear hit it like a physical blow.
Its instincts screamed a single word:
Run.
But there was nowhere to run.
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH.
Abeloth opened his jaws, and a torrent of hellfire surged forward. The flames weren't red—they were deep crimson, lined with dark streaks of black and molten orange, like a living river of lava infused with ancient wrath. The fire cascaded from the dragon's throat and struck the ground with a roar that shook the sky.
The Kobold raised its axe, brown aura igniting around the weapon's surface. It planted its feet and blocked—barely. Its knees buckled under the force. The weapon glowed with strain as it tried desperately to shield its wielder from incineration.
But Abeloth didn't stop.
He kept breathing—a continuous stream of dragon-fire, forcing the Kobold back step by agonising step. The aura around the axe trembled under the heat, warping visibly from the pressure.
The flames of a descendant of the Ancient Fire Lord were not simply hot.
They were destructive beyond comprehension.
Suddenly—
WOOOOOOOOOOOSH.
A second dragon descended at blinding speed.
Eldora, cutting through the air like a spear, circled high and then dove with predatory grace. She channeled her wind affinity to compress a gust of hurricane-force air, then released it directly behind the Kobold.
The impact was surgical.
The wind slammed into the Kobold Captain's exposed back, launching it forward into the ongoing flame stream.
The captain screamed as its arms were scorched, the skin peeling from its knuckles as it dropped the massive axe. The weapon clanged and rolled, glowing faintly, into a ditch beside the battlefield.
The beast staggered forward, still standing—but only just.
Then, suddenly, Abeloth closed his jaws. The fire cut off. Smoke hissed from his fangs.
The Kobold Captain gasped and dropped to one knee, hands blackened and trembling. It looked up in disbelief. Why had the dragons stopped?
Before it could move—
"Power."
The voice echoed from above.
A man was falling from the sky.
He was diving directly toward the Kobold like a living meteor. His body was engulfed in silvery-white flames, thick and twisting like cosmic fog. They shimmered with soft tones of starlight and void-light, an ethereal power unlike any elemental fire.
A fire that did not belong to this world.
His descent carved a line of displaced wind, and the weight of his power created a shockwave even before he landed.
And the Kobold Captain looked up at him—
The closer Ali drew to the Kobold Captain, the more the flames that cloaked his body began to converge. In a split second, they flowed across his form like rivers reversing direction—funnelling into his right arm.
The limb ignited, glowing white-hot.
The heat radiating off it warped the air around him like a sun melting reality. It looked as if the arm would detonate at any moment.
The Kobold raised its scorched head—only to be greeted by blinding light.
A blinding, absolute white.
It had no time to think. No time to scream. Its final sensation was the terrifying feeling of its own skull melting, its jaw folding into its ribcage under the pressure of celestial fire.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM.
The beam ripped out from Ali's arm, a column of pure annihilation, erasing the Kobold from existence in an instant. It didn't burn—it unmade.
The blast carved a channel of destruction straight through the clearing, turning trees to ash midair, vaporising stone, and burrowing deep into the underground cave system with such force that the forest floor caved in.
When the beam vanished, silence fell—followed by a faint hiss as the scorched ground tried to breathe again.
Ali floated in the air for a second longer, suspended by the backlash of energy still swirling around him. Then he dropped—gracefully, silently—landing on the edge of the crater.
His right arm, charred and shrivelled, detached from his shoulder like dried bark and dissolved into ash, carried away on the residual heat.
It regenerated instantly, fresh and whole—skin knitting, bone re-forming, nerves aligning in perfect succession. He flexed the fingers, testing it.
'More stable this time…' he thought, examining his body for collateral damage.
'I poured my entire Spirit pool into that strike… and it worked. I let it build, let it flow instead of forcing it out. I channeled, not exploded. My shoulder's intact. Full control…'
His interface flickered in response:
[Personal Mission: Kill the Kobold Captain — COMPLETE (1/1)]
[Reward: +0.2 Strength]
[Personal Mission: Wipe Out the Kobold Colony — COMPLETE (1/1)]
[Reward: +0.1 Body]
Free Attribute Points: 0
Strength: 0.4 → 0.6
Body: 0.2 → 0.3
Speed: 0.6
Spirit: 5.1
Intelligence: 0
Luck: 0
Passive Skills:
– Tengen's Blessing
Ali exhaled, his eyes scanning the empty crater.
'0.2 in Strength… Finally, something that matters. If I get one more "Body" boost and still feel nothing, I swear—'
"HEY, YOU! DON'T FUCKING MOVE!"
Ali turned his head slowly, eyes narrowing.
From beyond a thick patch of bushes about fifty meters away, a massive man stomped forward. Bald, towering at six-foot-five, his muscles bulged under a set of battered light armour. A huge two-handed sword rested on his shoulder, though it trembled slightly now.
His face twisted with forced anger, but his eyes were betraying him. They kept drifting to the crater, to the scorched earth, to the smoking absence of the Kobold Captain.
Behind him, another man emerged, smaller—five-foot-four, masked with forest-green fabric and a longbow slung over his shoulder. His eyes narrowed as he scanned the ruins of the battlefield.
"…Where are all the Kobolds?" he muttered, real unease creeping into his voice.
Trailing behind them, awkward and out of place, came a thin, scared man with dirty-blond hair and sweat-soaked white robes. He kept glancing around like the trees might attack him.
"The bounty's ours!" the bald man barked. "We took it from the guild-house this morning. Are you trying to steal our bounty?"
He took a few steps forward, his sword beginning to glow—a faint blue flicker of aura dancing along the blade's edge. It sputtered. Faded. Reappeared.
Ali said nothing.
'That aura… pathetically unstable. He can't sustain it for more than a second at a time. These guys are weak.'
He flexed his newly regenerated right arm, feeling the strength from his recent gains ripple through the muscle. His knuckles cracked.
The bald man's voice rose again—this time, shakier.
"Why aren't you answering?" he demanded.
Ali took a step forward.
All three men stiffened.
The bald man backed up a half step on instinct before correcting himself. The archer's hand dropped toward his quiver. The thin priest muttered something under his breath.
Another step. And another.
Ali's eyes were still black—void black—and they locked onto the leader without blinking.
The man tried again.
"You come any closer, I'm gonna kill you!"
"Y-You're outnumbered, don't be stupid!"
"No one's gonna save you out here!"
Ali said nothing. His face was stone. His stride was measured.
To anyone else, this would've looked ridiculous—a man with no visible weapon walking slowly toward three armed adventurers. But to them, it felt like a natural disaster was getting closer.
And the fear bled through.
Their leader's voice cracked.
"HEY! I SAID STOP—HEY, HEY!"
But Ali kept walking.
One unarmed man.
And three bounty hunters backing away.
It was almost pathetic.
And they all knew it.
POW. POW.
THUD. THUD.
Their bodies hit the ground in sync—two perfect headshots.
The air went still.
HA HA… HAAH HAH HAAH!
The thin blond priest, his white staff slipping from his trembling fingers, collapsed to the forest floor. His laughter turned to ragged gasps as his companions—both hardened bounty hunters—lay lifeless beside him, each with a clean, cauterised hole in the centre of their foreheads.
Both hits, the exact same spot.
Precision. Mastery. Zero hesitation.
Ali calmly lowered his still-smoking Desert Eagle, then vanished it into his inventory without a word. His expression hadn't changed.
He began walking.
Each step was slow, measured.
The priest scrambled backward, clawing at the dirt with his hands, eyes wide and white with terror.
"P-Please! I didn't want to hurt anyone—please, I-I swear, they forced me out here!" he stammered.
"It was over a debt, I lost a game of dice, I never meant to… Please, have mercy on a poor priest…"
Ali stood over him, still silent, looking down like a statue of judgment.
"I'm not going to hurt you, priest. Stand up," he said at last.
His voice was flat. Unreadable. But not hostile.
The priest blinked up at him, shocked by the mercy. He rose slowly, limbs stiff with fear, and kept his head bowed, unable to meet Ali's eyes.
Ali's presence pressed down like gravity.
"What were you doing out here," Ali asked quietly, "and what did you see?"
The priest nodded rapidly, grateful for the chance to explain. He wouldn't lie. Not now. Lying to this man would be suicide.
"I am a priest of the True Flame, bestowed upon us by its pure angels," he began, still shaking. "I… lost a game of dice with those two fools, and they dragged me out here as payment. It was part of a bounty they took from the adventurer's guild—small branch, based in Obidos."
Ali remained still, listening.
The priest continued quickly, desperate to keep him talking.
"We heard something—something powerful—through the forest. We rushed to see what it was, and then we saw you. That's all, I swear it. May the True Flame burn me if I lie."
Ali narrowed his eyes.
"So you came for the kobolds?"
"Yes," the priest nodded, swallowing. "The bounty said a small number of kobolds were gathering here. And those dead bastards over there brought me to heal them if things went bad."
Ali turned slightly, his gaze drifting back toward the crater, still smouldering with residual energy. His mind replayed the scope of destruction. The beam, the explosion, the collapse of the cave system.
'A small number…They would have all died.'
He turned back, now staring at the priest again.
"How come there's a priest of the Holy Flame out here in the kingdom?" Ali asked. "Aren't you far from your church, priest? It's on the other side of the continent, is it not?"
The priest straightened slightly, this question pulling him back into familiar conviction.
"Well, of course the True Flame is in the kingdom," he said, voice gaining steadiness. "We spread the One True Faith to save every soul from ending up as demonic spawn in the Demon Realm after they die. It is our duty to guide them—to guide all—along the righteous path through life."
He lifted his chin, now speaking with genuine pride.
"And the kingdom was built by the Church, after all."
Ali's eyes narrowed.
'Built by the Church?'
His mind locked onto the final words.
He stepped forward, just once. The priest flinched, his body instinctively shrinking backward, lowering his head even more.
Ali's voice was ice.
"What do you mean—built by the Church?"
"I-It's the truth, sir!" the priest stammered quickly. "The royal family that founded the kingdom was blessed by the angels themselves. One of the judicial families of the Church was sent here to liberate these lands from the demonic demi-humans, centuries ago."
He licked his lips nervously.
"The lords and rulers might deny it now, but the truth is written in stone. The records exist—hidden in plain sight. There's evidence, strong evidence, if you're willing to search. If you travel to the Church's holy city and enter the Ancient Library, you'll find it."
The priest's voice dropped to a whisper.
"It's all real."
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