Surviving as a Broken Hero

Chapter 45 – Interlude – Investigation

A dwarf border city on the edge of the Monster Regions…

Known as such for its high monster spawn rates and dungeon counts, others had tried to settle within the Monster Regions previously, but every attempt had been met with failure as steadily building monster waves shot such attempts down.

However, the small dwarf city had met with some success. Perfectly situated at the edge of the Monster Regions so that it didn’t trigger monster waves and using the well-known reputation dwarves had for neutrality, the city served as a trading post and stopping-off point for Awakeners heading out on expeditions for fame, items, experience, or simply adventure.

The city was also, unfortunately, perfectly located as ‘its’ target when ‘it’ first appeared.

Though it started in the dwarf city, it actually began with a sickly human Awakener on his last legs after an encounter gone wrong with an elven Awakener party within the Monster Regions.

He was the last surviving member of his party and had made it back to the city, permanently disfigured and mostly blinded, missing his sword arm and his friends. ‘It’ had found an easy target in the man.

The man, on his last breaths and cursing the elves with all of his heart along with the dwarves who refused to assist him in seeking vengeance for the wrong that had been done to him, had received a simple System message in a staticy window—quite unlike the usual pristine System messages that most received.

[[Would you like the power to do something about it?]]

Most would have first considered such a message or questioned it. Indeed, it would only make sense to question something so out of the ordinary, especially when it only showed up in an hour of most dire need.

The man, though, knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. It might’ve been the case that things that were too good to be true often were, but if he was going to die as a miserable cripple anyway, what harm could it cause?

The man, not seeing a yes/no option or anything to interact with from the System past that single, ominous message, had spoken a simple, strained, “yes”.

And it had turned out that the harm it could cause was exponentially worse than what anyone else could have imagined.

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He had been healed at once, his former strength returning, even being amplified, and the concept of levels became nearly meaningless to him as he found a new way to both sustain himself and boost his stats and abilities to unknown heights—«Consumption».

A simple ability, «Consumption» allowed him to consume the souls of recently killed Awakeners and consume a small portion of the power they had held in life.

He hadn’t necessarily been a bad person in life and didn’t go around killing people for their power immediately, which would have actually solved the problem before it became too big of an issue, as he would have been discovered as a murderer and likely executed by the dwarves.

No, he had started off hungry, stalking Awakeners headed to the Monster Lands and consuming the souls of those that monsters sent to the afterlife.

After a dry period where his hunger had gone unsated for too long, he had risked it all and attacked a single, lone Awakener who had, much like him, been the only one in her party to survive.

It snowballed from there.

He acquired an ability to sense the power of others after only a few kills, letting him better gauge his targets. With it, he had hunted stronger and stronger targets until he had not only amassed an incredible amount of power that even a level 30 Awakener—which were incredibly rare to begin with—would have been an easy enough hunt for him.

At that point, with a slew of abilities, including one that allowed him to transform those he consumed into his not-quite-undead underlings, he had assaulted the city itself, hungering for the powerful Awakeners that led it and called it their home.

The fighting had been fierce to the point that he had not only lost most of his forces but had even almost lost his life when the city lord, an old dwarf with a level of at least 35, had confronted him head-on with a slew of tank-like abilities that made it a long battle of attrition.

Their fight had leveled the entire city, and the shockwaves from their blows were felt thousands of meters away from the collapsed city walls by those who were retreating.

It could have all ended there, had the dwarf been just a bit stronger, had he continued his explorations and greed for power, had he been as ambitious as a human, as battle-lusting as an elf, as exploratory and magic-loving as an orc, but no—dwarves were known for their love of interactions with the other species and their abilities as peacekeepers and neutral parties. In a way, the man had been lucky that, out of all cities, the one he had truly Awakened in had been a dwarf one.

The dwarf was felled at last, and the man’s visage warped into a truly demonic appearance—visible muscle tearing from skin that couldn’t naturally support all of his stats and unnatural growth, horn-like protrusions extending from his head in a natural crown…

A true demon at last…

He had consumed the dwarf’s soul, reaching new heights of power and cementing the ruined city as his primary base of operations.

The other races had brushed it aside, considering it just another city lost to the Monster Lands.

By the time they realized the gravity of their mistake, it was too late.

All the while, a glowing, steadily growing bead of abyssal color sat within the first demon’s chest, growing as he grew in power and emitting a faint, dreadful light that sucked in all the warmth and energy around it.

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Reaper Scans

[Author – Farlight]

[Proofreader – Harley]

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“So what is it we’re doing here, anyway?” Angela looked out from above the clouds, gazing at the ruined city in the distance on the edge of the Monster Lands.

“We’re here to invest—”

“No, I know WHY we’re here, but seriously. A scouting mission, us? Come on, we’ve literally fought giants and dragons, Mako, why a scouting mission?”

Mako, an elf with midnight-black hair, rough skin crisscrossed with numerous scars, and eyes that glowed an emerald green, stared at Angela, a human who had quickly reached the upper ranks of the Association that she had been partied with for some time.

She let out an exasperated sigh and said, “The rewards were high, and the danger seemed low. Besides, we can just stop by one of the many dungeons within the Monster Lands if you want some quick XP on the way back.”

That seemed to satisfy Angela for the time being as she sat back on the cloud and nodded.

“Okay. Well, from what I can see, the city looks pretty destroyed to me. You notice anything different?”

Mako looked down on the city.

From how high up they were in the clouds, a normal human wouldn’t have been able to make out anything but the scar of the city on the landscape. However, both of them had abilities that let them perceive details that normal humans would never be able to pick out.

“Right, it does—”

“Perfect! So let’s just wrap this up, head back, and call it a day! How about we take on another dragon next, yeah?”

“I was going to say that yes, it does look like any other ruined city within the Monster Lands at first glance, but do you notice anything else?”

Angela squinted her eyes as if that would help her already perfect view of the city, more a habit that she kept from when she had been a normal human than anything else.

“…Is it the wind?”

“Not only that, but the vegetation as well.”

Taking a closer look, Angela saw that, while the wind was indeed affecting the tattered remnants of cloth and loose debris within the city, it seemed to be affecting it from a slightly different angle than the wind affected the forest around the city.

Not only that, but bits of dead and falling leaves drifting into the city even seemed to simply vanish for a moment before blinking back into existence.

“Is that…”

“Yeah, it’s a cloaking spell of some sort, which means…?” Mako let her words quietly trail off into a question.

Angela stood from her cloudy perch and rested her hands on the longsword she kept sheathed at her side. It was always possible to store a weapon within the item bags and unsheathe it quickly like Mako did, but the weight of the weapon at her side brought her comfort that she couldn’t quite explain.

“It means that something down there has to be pretty strong to be casting an illusion of that magnitude,” Angela finished.

It looked like she would get her fight after all.