The Extra becomes the Villain's Bodyguard-Chapter 43: Research part 1.

Neville knelt by the hollow tree that had been his refuge, slowly packing his meager supplies into the rabbit-hide bag. The last strips of smoked meat, wrapped in broad leaves. His fruits and tubers, which he had developed a taste for. His knife, flint spearhead, and the coil of rope... each item carefully placed, as if the act of packing could impose order on the wilderness around him.

He hesitated before leaving the bow behind, fingers brushing against its rough curve. Before deciding to leave it behind.

The hollow tree stood silent, its gaping revealing the leaves, fire pit, abandoned bow, and some faulty arrows and on the wall, a sketch of his map. For twenty days, it had been a shelter. A barrier against the wind, the rain, the things that moved in the night.

Neville exhaled, his breath stirring the leaves at his feet. No sentimentality, no grand farewell—just a slow, deliberate nod. Then he turned away.

*********************

When he reached the river...

He kept on walking while keeping alert for any danger.

Then his ability clicked into place.

A subtle shift, like a second wind that never faded. His strides lengthened, his breathing steadied. The usual burn in his muscles, the ache of constant motion, simply... didn’t come. He could walk for hours without exhaustion gnawing at him. Without needing to stop, to rest, to waste precious calories.

"Good," he thought. "One less thing to worry about. Plus this doesn’t seem to take a toll on my body like sprinting does. I can also test out the duration of this and see if my training was effective."

Still, he forced himself to pause at intervals. He didn’t want his muscles to stiffen or go into a zombie state... also pushing too far, too fast, was its own kind of recklessness.

The forest changed slowly. The leaves lightened from a deep, shadowed green to something brighter, almost vibrant. The air grew thicker, warmer. But the stream remained constant, cutting its path through the earth with quiet determination.

Then the bank vanished.

One moment, he was walking on solid ground. Next, the water was at his hips, then his chest, the current tugging at him like insistent hands. He had to get into the water cause he couldn’t stop just cause the lank got rougher and wasn’t easy to walk in.

Neville gritted his teeth and waded deeper.

"Should’ve expected this," he muttered as he saw the rocky cliff he had to climb in order to follow the river. He threw a small rock at the cliff and as he expected, some rocks came falling. He knew it was too dangerous to climb.

"There must be a way around..."

***********************************

Back on Earth, while Neville fought for survival in that strange, silent world, his homeland had erupted into flames.

It began with the Black Winter Massacre.

The government had grown tired of dissent. System-users—especially those who refused registration—were labeled "terrorists", "anarchists", "threats to national security."

The orders were clear: "Disarm and detain."

But when the first armored vehicles rolled in, the Free Zone didn’t surrender. They fought back.

They were killed for resisting.

*******************

Cornered by soldiers, the teenager found himself with no way out. In a desperate act of defiance, he raised a gun, aiming at the soldiers. Their response was immediate—before he could fire, he was swiftly dealt with.

The streets erupted into chaos as the battle escalated.

System-enhanced rebels launched their counterattack, ambushing reinforcements in the narrow streets.

Some had reinforced skin capable of withstanding bullets, while others possessed hyper-reflexes that allowed them to dodge gunfire with inhuman speed.

Their assault caught the military off guard, throwing the operation into disarray. Meanwhile, across the nation, the battle was recorded and shared... fueling the thoughts of a revolution.

By dawn, the Free Zone lay in ruins. Buildings reduced to rubble, streets littered with fallen soldiers and rebels alike. But the destruction wasn’t the end, it was the beginning. The government responded with immediate force, suspending all civil liberties and imposing martial law. System users who refused compliance were branded "enemy combatants," hunted down, and imprisoned or executed.

Yet instead of uniting under the regime, military units began splintering. Some defected, joining rebel factions to fight against the oppression, while others doubled down on enforcing government control with brutal efficiency.

The rebellion spread like wildfire. Within weeks, uprisings erupted across the country. The message was clear—this wasn’t just resistance anymore. It was a revolution.

And Neville, lost in another world, had no idea his home was already at war.

********************

And the System didn’t care about fairness. It didn’t reward the strong or the righteous... it just responded.

And in the crucible of war, people awoke, gaining a skill in the most brutal, unexpected ways.

A shopkeeper, who had never held a weapon, unlocked [Close-Quarters Carnage] after bludgeoning a looter to death with a lead pipe. His hands shook as the notification seared into his vision: "Path (Combat) – Unlocked."

A child, hiding in a bombed-out school, awakened [Phantom Steps] after running for so long, so terrified, that his feet stopped making sound entirely.

Not all killers were warriors. Not all warriors fought fair.

The Back-Alley Butcher and a former accountant slit throats in the dark to survive. The System rewarded her with [Silent Takedown], marking her as an [(Combat path)]—though she’d never trained a day in her life.

A Soldier and a deserter, firing blindly into a crowd, suddenly found his panic crystallized into [Spray and Pray], locking him into the [Ranged (Combat)] path. He vomited afterward.

The Bait: A teenager lured enemies into ambushes by playing wounded, distracting them so his friends could attack the soldiers. The System branded him a [(Support)], giving him now a skill called [Lure].

Even those who didn’t kill directly became part of the machine.

A man who threw herself in front of a gang attacking a woman was beaten but managed to protect the woman. He unlocked a stat instead of a skill. He had a durability stat, and his path showed one of a tank.

As the war raged, people learned: Your Path was a vulnerability.

There were people who were selling each other out to the government or gangs, so people started to be careful about showing their skills or path.

Some gangs purged their own ranks when someone’s skills didn’t match their claimed Path.

***********

The government had planned for rebellion—but not for this.

At first, it was manageable. A few rogue System-users, easily contained. Then a dozen. Then a hundred. Then thousands.

The More They Fought, The More Awakened.

Every raid on a rebel hideout created new monsters. A soldier guns down a teenager, only for the kid’s grieving sister to awaken [Sonic Screech] and liquefy the firing squad’s eardrums.

A bomb levels an apartment block—and in the rubble, a survivor crawls out with [Unyielding Bones], unbreakable and furious.

Martial law backfired. Curfews bred desperation and dissatisfaction. Public executions became recruitment tools for the rebellion. Each act of suppression created more enemies than it eliminated.

Standard-issue rifles couldn’t compete with a man who could dodge bullets. They were useless against recruits who moved at [Blur Speed].

In a leaked memo from the last functioning government bunker, a strategist wrote:

"We cannot win a war where every act of violence breeds stronger enemies. The System rewards resistance. It always has."

But as the civilians gained skill and paths so did the soldiers. Fire was meant to fight against fire.

*********************

The government could no longer deny the truth—the System was rewriting humanity, and if they didn’t understand it, they would lose..

In a repurposed research facility, scientists and military strategists worked frantically to dissect the mechanics of awakening. Their goal?

To understand the system.

First, they categorized paths.

Early analysis revealed two broad classifications:

Combat Paths – Direct physical or offensive enhancements.

Support Paths – Indirect utility, healing, or tactical advantages.

In all paths, the system provided a progress bar to unlock the skill path. If not unlocked, it showed greyed paths.

For combat paths, the System provided progress bars—measurable, quantifiable growth in:

Stamina ( Came to be defined as Endurance under constant physical stress)

Strength (Raw physical power)

Agility (Speed, reflexes, coordination).

The progress bar on paths didn’t show any quantified growth in numbers as the status did; the researchers were clueless about how to calculate the requirements for each awakening requirement. They wanted to know if there was a fixed stat requirement or at least a percentile gain or some other factor so that they could produce more awakened soldiers.

Those who had fulfilled their requirements were asked about their initial stats, and they varied. They found out that everyone had different requirements and didn’t see any progress in stats while they were filling the bars, and after awakening, they got a boost in stats.

These researchers and scientists also came to develop paths based on their skills. Some of these killed goblins to satisfy their curiosity, and unintentionally came to see , their path.