Teeth, blood, and shattered fragments of bone exploded outward like shrapnel. The man’s jaw was completely unhinged, obliterated into dozens of jagged pieces, and a visible chunk of his frontal skull caved inward under the sheer pressure.

The fat man slumped to the ground, a horrific, gargling wail of absolute agony bubbling up from his ruined throat. But before the wail could even reach a high enough pitch to be considered a scream, Hide was upon him.

Hide straddled the massive man’s chest, his silver hair casting a cold shadow over the thug’s ruined face. He raised his fists and began to swing.

Smack. CRACK. Squelch.

Hide gritted his teeth, his eyes blown wide with an unhinged, bottomless rage. He drove his fists into the man’s face over and over and over again. Blood sprayed in wide arcs across the brick wall.

Why was he so angry? Hide didn’t know. His chest heaved, his vision tinting red. Was it the utter helplessness of the girl? Was it the pathetic, disgusting entitlement of the men? Or was it the deeply buried, traumatic memory of watching something defenseless be ripped apart while no one came to help?

It didn’t matter. The system reacted to the violent surge of his killing intent. Deep, pitch-black scales violently breached the skin over Hide’s knuckles, his Abyssal Scale Carapace surfacing to harden his hands into indestructible blocks of dark-steel.

Hide didn’t stop. A terrifying, twisted smirk slowly carved its way across his face as his armored fists repeatedly pounded the albino man’s head into the pavement. With every strike, the dark-steel scales shattered bone, tearing through cartilage and brain matter until the man’s skull was completely flattened, reduced to nothing more than a grotesque, unrecognizable paste of dark red gore and grey fluid.

The entire execution took less than four seconds.

A few feet away, the malnourished man stood completely frozen. His brain simply couldn’t process the sudden, apocalyptic burst of violence. One second they were robbing a rich foreign kid, and the next, his partner’s head had been physically turned into a puddle on the concrete.

Then, the realization hit him like a bucket of ice water. The impossible speed. The horrifying strength. The black scales manifesting on the boy’s hands. He hadn’t bumped into a rich foreigner. He had somehow been unlucky enough to bump into a fucking Exterminator.

Primal terror overrode his exhaustion. The tall man dropped his switchblade to the asphalt with a metallic clatter. He spun on his heel, his scrawny legs desperately kicking off the ground to run toward the safety of the neon-lit street.

He took exactly one step.

Suddenly, the ambient light in the alley was entirely blotted out. A wave of freezing, corrupted dark mana exploded from Hide’s back, flooding the narrow corridor.

From the center of that swirling mist, Zenith materialized. The towering, four-meter-tall phantom executioner didn’t bother drawing its greatsword. It simply extended its dark-plated, taloned hand.

SHLUCK.

The malnourished man gasped, his eyes bugging out of his hollow skull as his forward momentum violently ceased. He looked down. Protruding cleanly through the center of his chest was a massive, dark-metal gauntlet. Clutched tightly in the phantom’s razor-sharp talons was his own beating, blood-slicked heart.

The man couldn’t even scream. Right in front of his bulging eyes, Zenith casually closed its fist. The heart burst like a water balloon, spraying hot blood across the trash-littered pavement.

Zenith ripped its arm backward, carelessly tossing the lifeless, hollowed-out corpse to the dirty ground like a broken toy.

The alley fell dead silent, save for the heavy, ragged sound of Hide’s breathing.

Hide slowly stood up from the pulverized remains of the albino man. His chest heaved. His hands, clad in dark-steel scales, were completely coated in thick, dripping gore. He stood there for a long time, his glowing blue eyes glaring down at the horrific, bloody mess he had just created.

At that moment, the sound of footsteps echoed from the entrance of the alley. A passing civilian, likely drawn by the muffled sonic boom of Hide’s initial punch, peeked their head around the rusted corner to see what was happening.

The passerby froze. They saw the blood splattered across the walls. They saw the headless corpse on the ground. And towering over it all, they saw Zenith—a terrifying, faceless monster, dripping with fresh human blood.

The passerby let out a strangled, terrified gasp, stumbling backward over their own feet before turning and sprinting away down the street as if they had just seen the devil himself.

Hide clicked his tongue. He didn’t care. He sent a mental command, and Zenith immediately dissolved into a cloud of thick violet smoke, sinking seamlessly back into his Abyssal Core.

With the threat eliminated, Hide dismissed his Abyssal Scale Carapace. The black metal scales retracted back under his skin, leaving his hands stained crimson. He let out a long, slow exhale, trying to force his racing heartbeat back to a normal rhythm, and turned around to look at the girl.

"It’s okay," Hide started, keeping his voice as low and gentle as he could manage. He took a single, slow step toward her. "I am not going to hurt you. You can go now."

But the girl didn’t stand up. She didn’t thank him. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

Instead, she stared at him with eyes that were utterly fractured. She looked at his silver hair, at the glowing violet ring around his pupils, and at his hands completely soaked in the brains and blood of her attackers. She had just watched this boy brutally paste a human being’s skull with his bare hands and summon a literal demon from the shadows.

She pressed her back so hard into the brick corner it looked like she was trying to merge with the wall.

"N-No..." she whimpered, her entire body shaking uncontrollably. Tears streamed down her dirty cheeks, her voice rising into a frantic, hysterical pitch. "Get away! Stay away from me! Monster! You’re a monster!"

Hide froze. His extended hand hovered uselessly in the empty air. A cold, heavy weight dropped like a stone into the pit of his stomach. He had just saved her. He had ripped apart the men who were going to destroy her life. But to her, he wasn’t a savior. He was something infinitely more terrifying.

"Listen to me," Hide said, taking another step forward, his brow furrowing in desperation. "I’m not—"

"STAY AWAY!" she shrieked, her voice tearing at her throat.

Her frantic, searching hands blindly slapped against the asphalt. Her fingers brushed against cold metal. It was the heavy combat knife the albino man had dropped when he pulled up his pants.

Hide’s enhanced perception flared violently, mapping the trajectory of her hand, but his brain simply refused to compute the action. Why would she grab the knife? She was safe. The threat was dead.

Before Hide could even twitch his muscles to activate Phantom Step, the girl gripped the hilt of the blade with both hands. Her eyes never left Hide’s face—locked onto him with a look of pure, unadulterated horror.

With a choked, desperate sob, she violently drove the thick blade directly into her own throat.

Hide stood paralyzed.

Bright, hot crimson sprayed across the dirty brickwork, splattering against the tips of Hide’s boots. The girl’s eyes widened in sudden, agonizing shock as the blade severed her artery. Her hands fell away from the hilt, and she slumped sideways, collapsing into a heap of garbage and blood. She twitched once, a wet, gargling sound escaping her lips, and then she lay completely, permanently still.

The sweltering desert wind howled through the narrow corridor, carrying the heavy stench of rust and death.

Hide didn’t move. He stood alone in the dark alleyway, completely surrounded by corpses. He stared at the lifeless body of the girl he had stepped into the dark to save. The blood from his hands dripped slowly onto the concrete. Drip. Drip. Drip.

She had chosen to end her own life rather than exist in the same space as him.