Within the decimated forest, Asher stood calmly, his breath steady. His hair danced to the wind of his own apocalypse. His eyes were on the sun rising on the horizon as he just stood there, as if still digesting everything he had just gone through within the past six hours and thirty minutes.
He had never imagined his life would suddenly become something like this, going to sleep and waking up in another world for no reason at all.
Then training for six months for the so-called True Awakening, which he knew nothing about, only to be thrown into a forest at exactly 00:00 and told to survive without even a single bit of support.
He had gone through the True Awakening in nothing but his pajamas, which were now torn to pieces. No armor of any type, just a thin cloth even the weakest fire in existence could burn through with ease.
Asher sighed, his eyes glancing down alongside Virelass, who was now in his hand, humming in utter satisfaction, as though she welcomed the madness with open arms.
"I never knew you were this crazy, Virelass," Asher spoke aloud, and the rapier hummed once more. Asher simply smiled and shook his head in response.
Although he said that, Asher could feel his entire body rejoicing from the battle, as though every single blood cell, bone, flesh, and vein had experienced it firsthand. He couldn’t deny it, at the beginning, he just wanted to survive, and if he couldn’t, he would return to his room and pass it through that method.
But when he switched methods and engaged the assassins without running, he had loved every single moment of it.
Asher remembered his grin as he fought, as though he was a maniac who lived for the chaos. He remembered taking their lives, the feeling of his hands tearing through flesh like they were nothing. The sensation of life vanishing due to his blade, it was still fresh in his memory, he could remember the entire sensation vividly.
He, just a normal boy six months ago, now killed like a psychopath, using his bare hands to tear through a chest and even pulling out a heart and crushing it with just a clench of his fist. The brutality that once would have made him flinch was now a casual memory.
The kill count for this night alone was almost a hundred. Even most serial killers in his past life only touched that range of numbers after almost or over a decade of serial killing. But he had reached it in a single night.
Yet, he felt nothing, neither physically or psychologically. Although he had felt something earlier during Ryan’s case, since then, he had adjusted and adapted. He knew it was only a matter of time until lives fell to his blade. After all, Crymora wasn’t a world that showed kindness to mercy.
Although all these thoughts circled in his mind, they remained just that, thoughts. He wasn’t going through any existential crisis. He wouldn’t hesitate to move for the kill if another assassin stepped out again.
He was simply going through the difference between his two lives, a difference so great that even the distance between heaven and earth couldn’t compare.
’Would Jennifer love me if I was a serial killer in my former world? Or would she turn me in to the police?’ Asher thought with a soft chuckle.
Then he shook his head as he decided to forget about such thoughts entirely, dismissing them as pointless distractions.
His mind shifted to his brain, the way it had functioned during the past six hours. It was a way Asher had never thought possible. His careful planning and execution, his ability to think ahead and predict his opponents’ thought processes, it all felt like second nature in the heat of combat.
Right from his orphanage days, Asher knew he was extremely intelligent. He didn’t even need to try to read or study. It came effortlessly; he didn’t have to put in a single ounce of effort when it came to academics, which was what helped him maintain a 5.0 CGPA in his university days, and that was without even trying.
Asher had watched a lot of anime about intelligent characters with a knack for planning and scheming. He had tried doing this once in a while since he believed he had the same level of intelligence, but he failed horribly at it. His mind would go blank, as though he couldn’t plan or scheme anything of worth.
But here, in Crymora, his mind worked like a supercomputer. He thought, he planned, he executed, and it had all worked without any form of hiccup. Even Hillary, who had planned ahead and sent him into a trap, still failed at his own strategy, all because of Asher’s brain and his adaptability.
’Was my brain also enhanced when my body was reformed during the merge with the Absolute Physique?’ Asher wondered curiously.
But he didn’t feel any more intelligent. He just simply had a natural knack for planning and scheming now. Still, Asher had no thoughts of becoming a schemer, it wasn’t his way. If he could wipe out his opponent with his rapier, why waste time thinking?
He would only plan and execute in matters like the True Awakening that forced him into a binding spot. Outside that: no brains, just straight hands.
His eyes scanned the battlefield as he took it all in. He and Hillary had destroyed many things, trees, grass, boulders. Everything had been laid to waste. Trenches torn open by rapier attacks, stretching over a hundred meters, could be seen almost everywhere. The ground beneath his feet was hot, molten, nearly turning to lava from the sheer intensity of the combat.
Kilometers swallowed in their conquest of death. But outside their destruction, the rest of the forest stood untouched, as only smoke and shockwaves reached them, silent witnesses to the massacre.
As Asher took in his surroundings, the system finally came.
[Ding]
[Host, it’s 6:30 a.m]
As the system notified, reminding him of the alarm he had set earlier, Asher’s form vanished before he could even speak a word.