Somewhere on the Blue Planet, far from the bustling capital cities and the gaze of its powerful factions, on an island hidden from normal eyes, lay an uninhabited, desolate part of the world.
The sky above was dark, casting a grim shadow over the land.
Across this bleak landscape, a string of malnourished people could be seen. They carried heavy logs of wood and various construction materials on a narrow, winding path that snaked around a desolate hill.
Their bodies were gaunt, their ribs showing through thin clothes, indicating long-term starvation.
All these weak people were bound by thick, heavy chains, roughly fashioned from crude metal. The chains dug into their already weak bodies, putting them under a lot of strain with every step.
Their faces were hollow, their eyes filled with despair. A few mutated, half-monster humanoid people, their bodies warped and grotesque, oversaw the work.
They carried crude, heavy whips and sticks, punishing anyone who dared to stop moving or falter under their heavy load.
"Move it, you bastards! We want the castle built before a week, otherwise you all will be brutally killed!" one of the mutated guards snarled, his voice echoed across the desolate landscape.
He lashed his whip striking a man who had stumbled.
In the queue of laborers, a woman could be seen carrying a particularly large log. She was frail, her body trembling with effort. On her waist, a cloth was tied tightly around her, and in it, she carried a newborn baby, its tiny form bundled securely.
The baby's presence added to her already immense burden, making her movements slower, more labored.
The mutated guard, his eyes filled with a cruel amusement, looked at her. "Tch, you humans breed like dogs" he sneered, his voice dripping with contempt.
"Give that thing to me. It hinders the work. Might as well throw it off the hill." His gaze was fixed on the tiny bundle.
The woman's eyes immediately filled with tears. She reflexively recoiled, clutching the baby closer to her chest.
"No, no, please!" she cried, her voice thin and desperate. "This child is my only family right now, please, I beg you!" She knelt on the rough ground, her voice pleading.
"Tsk, scram off!" the guard snarled, clearly irritated by her pleas.
He reached out a massive hand, tearing off the cloth that held the baby to her waist. He then held the baby tightly by its tiny leg, its small body dangling precariously in the air.
The baby immediately cried, a piercing, high-pitched wail of terror and pain, its cries amplified by the sheer pressure it felt from the monstrous grip of the mutated guard.
The entire queue of bound laborers stopped moving. They looked on, horrified and hopeless, at yet another impending execution.
Their faces, usually expressionless from endless suffering, now showed a flicker of dread.
"Ohh! God of Light, do something! Save my child!" the woman sobbed, collapsing onto the ground. She looked up at the dark, overcast clouds, begging for a miracle.
She knew that talking to these monsters was useless, they simply considered them livestock, devoid of any rights or dignity.
The guard still holding the baby by its leg, sneered and laughed in amusement.
His gaze was fixed on the suffering mother, her desperate pleas merely entertainment for him. He enjoyed the sight of the twitching baby, its small body struggling against his grasp.
He extended his arm fully, his hand hanging the baby directly over the edge of the cliff. The vast, empty space below was a dizzying abyss.
"You bitch! Look at that! Look how this thing is gonna break!" he taunted, his voice filled with cruel delight, expecting the mother to watch the horrific fall.
The woman cried with all her heart, a shriek filled with despair filled the air. But she did not turn around.
She simply kept her face buried in her hands, her shoulders shaking. Her frustration and despair, accumulated over years of working as a helpless slave, welled up all at once.
She knew she could not bear to see what was about to happen. She waited for the sound of impact, for the final, brutal end.
Suddenly, the dark clouds overhead cracked. A brilliant flash of purple light illuminated the desolate landscape.
The mutated man holding the baby suddenly paused, his cruel laughter dying in his throat. He became utterly still, as if reality itself had been glitched, frozen in time.
His arm remained extended, the baby dangling. Everyone in the queue, the slaves and the other guards, looked at the man. He had stopped laughing, and was absolutely still in his place, his eyes wide and unseeing.
Then, as if on cue, the dark clouds directly above them parted. A single beam of intense, violet light pierced through the opening.
From this light, a man in thin, dark violet armor descended slowly. His armor was sleek, form-fitting, and crafted from a material that reflected the strange light of the sky.
A sharp-horned mask, made of the same dark metal as his armor, covered his face, concealing his features.
The man landed quietly on the very edge of the cliff, his boots making no sound on the rough ground.
He then began to walk silently towards the mutated man holding the baby. His movements were unhurried and calm. He moved with a grace that seemed divine.
He reached the mutated man, who remained frozen, a statue of cruelty.
The armored man gently took the baby from the guard's unmoving grip, cradling it in his velvet-covered arms. The baby's cries, which had been loud moments ago, softened to whimpers.
He touched the baby's tiny abdomen. A soft, green light shone from his hand, enveloping the baby. Earlier, its abdominal part had visibly collapsed due to the brutal grip strength of the monster-type man, but now, the green light quickly healed its injuries.
The armored man then quietly walked with the baby cradled securely in his arms. He handed the baby to the woman, who was still kneeling on the ground, her face buried in her hands, looking only at the clouds.
The woman gasped for breath, her eyes widening as she looked up. She saw the baby, alive and unharmed, in the arms of her mysterious savior. She tried hard to speak, but no words came out, only ragged breaths.
Every slave in the queue, every single person who had been bound by chains, now looked at the armored man.
They slowly turned around, their faces filled with a dawning awe, as they saw all the mutated guards and overseers, who had been brutalizing them moments before, paused out of existence.
Every mutated man was frozen in thier places.
The armoured man looked at the crowd of slaves
"You all will get your freedom in a few hours," he declared in a deep hoarse voice.
And as soon as the words landed, a gush of red showers erupted. The heads of all the paused guards, including the man near the edge of the cliff who had been holding the baby, dropped from their bodies.
It was as if they had been waiting for a silent permission to fall. Fountains of blood arced into the air, staining the snow-like ground.
The red hue at the scene, combined with the backdrop of the partially parted sky reflecting on the violet armor, created a chilling, yet profoundly reverent, spectacle for the tired, despairing slaves.
The armored man then started walking away, moving towards the distant horizon.
As he departed, the woman, now clutching her baby tightly, found her voice.
She stood up, her body still trembling, and spoke in a loud voice that carried across the silent landscape.
"Are you the god of light?"
she asked, tears streaming down her face, tears of relief and desperate hope.
Every single human who had worked in that despairing land looked at their mysterious savior with the same question, their faces streaked with tears and dirt.
They all had the same question.
"I am The Devourer"
the man said, his voice echoing across the desolate terrain.
-------------------- A FEW YEARS AGO ------------------------
"Have you heard about the S-rank gate that appeared in the Antarctician region recently? ,They say it will be the end of the world once the gate breaks," a short, brawny man with a body full of muscles told his aide.
"Yeah, right It's scary how this has happened for the first time in centuries. The last time it happened is said to be thousands of years ago. No one knows how that threat was mitigated. Even the A-rank gates are a national headache. Now we have this.."
"I am sure the hunter association must be on high alert. Anyway, let's just get a transfer as soon as possible and sign up for the outer-earth planetary housing program. Earth doesn't seem to be safe at all after now."
The two men kept talking while guarding the D-rank gate they were assigned, but suddenly the color of the gate started changing hues into something redder, and soon a dark black and crimson light emanated from the gate with quite an intensity.
"What the heck, a mutation just happened..
An alarm rang out, taking the two men out of their stupor as they hurriedly started calling and reporting about the incident to their superiors.
Soon many men in black suits arrived at the location; they were people from the hunter's association. The Hunter's Association was an international organization that oversaw the major events around the world related to the supernatural. It was also the strongest organization in the world.
"How many hunter parties have entered?" A man in a black suit with a muscular frame and charming features asked in a cold tone.
"Only one team had entered sir, comprising five C ranked four D-rank hunters along with three F-rank porters." One of the guards of the dungeon spoke.
"I see, what a pity" the man sighed while taking out his glasses. He looked at everyone and said
"since the mutation level of the dungeon is too high for the B-rank hunters to survive. The case is closed when the gate returns to normal and if they don't come out, just declare them dead; there is nothing we can do."
With that, the man left with his entourage; out of these few people, some were from the forensic department. Jenna was a new recruit on the team. Looking at the cold attitude of the man in glasses, she cursed, "What a jerk, he doesn't value human life." For this comment she was immediately shunned by her colleagues.
"Shhh.… Jenna, have you lost it? That man is an A-rank hunter, Andre. Don't offend him for some dead people; rumors say it does not end well for the people who offend him.
Listening to her colleagues, a drop of sweat escaped from Jenna's forehead.
While all this was happening in the northeast section of Blue Land,City Sector 35 an injured youth was running for his life quite desperately inside the same dungeon.
Klaus had transmigrated to this world five years ago from a world called Earth, unlike this planet, Earth did not have the presence of monsters or mana. It was a relatively peaceful world Klaus wished to go back to.
When he first arrived, Klaus was quite happy to be transmigrated, he had previously read countless novels and watched quite a lot of anime to think that he would be awarded with a cheat skill on his transmigration.
But unfortunately, fate had other plans, and he was not able to awaken. Still, he did not lose hope since there was another way of awakening a skill through a specific crystal called the awakening crystal.
Initially he thought that he would get a sufficiently powerful skill to survive in this world, after all, skills were the things that defined strength in this world, and class was something that defined the type of skills one could master.
He had at least expected to get an average class and skill, his luck can't be that shitty, right? But reality was far from that, and he awakened a rubbish F-rank skill called 'Passive Aggro' that made him a walking target for monsters.
Without his will, the skill was a passive one, one, so it was activated all the time and made him a monster magnet of sorts.
But thanks to this talent, he was often invited to hunting parties, if he could divert the attention of monsters in a gate, then the work of hunting parties got much easier than before.
He was even invited by high-ranked raiding teams, who typically invited him for huge chunks of money, but he almost always refused,, keeping in mind his safety.
Right now he was running for his life; the dungeon he had entered mutated suddenly. The boss monster underwent a transformation, and a number of strange monsters appeared suddenly.
In time of desperation, to save their lives, the hunter party made him the scapegoat to try to escape the dungeon.
At first, he was angered to the brim, but slowly, as he made his way inside the depths of the labyrinth, he was, he was constantly hiding and escaping after every encounter with a monster.
He realized that it was only because he was weak that he was used as a scapegoat; he slowly accepted the fact that, that, after all, it was not his choice that he was made weak.
"ha....ha I…did everything I could" he said as he dragged a broken arm and leg across a strange gothic hall.
It was strange that no more monsters came at him right now,, given his nasty talent. The hall was filled with silence. Only his ragged breathing could be heard in the hall at this moment, adding to the cold howling winds.
Klaus came to a stop as the hall ended at a dropping cliff straight into what seemed like an abyss. He now stood there bloodied and battered.
Suddenly a sticky drop of some smelly fluid dropped on his hands.
He looked up only to find a giant, bat like monster eyeing him. His face showed that the monster had every intention to feast on him.
"Never thought that my own skill would be the reason for the death of me" Klaus chuckled and put his hands in one of the pockets of his military-grade pants. To take out some pills.
These were painkillers; even one was enough to numb his body since they were specially made for hunters who needed high dosages of them to work on their magically enhanced bodies.
He simply unscrewed the bottle and chugged down all the capsules. After that, he took what little amount of water was left with him and gulped it down in one go.
Klaus knew death was near, but he still wanted to try to survive. The painkillers would help him have a painless death in case the bat caught him and started skinning him alive.
With that thought, he hurriedly showed a middle finger to the monster stuck at the ceiling and jumped into the abyss.
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