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N/B : Yoy!! Guys Don't forget to check my other works: [ Shadow Monarch Ă Harry Potter. ]
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Third POV:
The hall convulsed like a living thing, a single, massive entity in its death throes. The very air was a weapon, thick with the screams of tortured metal and the explosive crack of ancient, stressed stone. A thousand voicesâno, ten thousandâtore the air apart, layering over one another in a horrifying symphony of liberation and violence: guttural snarls of pure rage, manic laughter that bordered on sobs, desperate prayers to forgotten gods, and curses so vile they seemed to stain the air around them. All of it braided together into a single, monstrous chorus that echoed off the weeping walls, a sound that promised only blood.
Prisoners spilled out of their broken cells like a dam giving way, a flood of twisted humanity and nightmare given form. Some moved with a limping, broken gait, their bodies wrecked by years of confinement; others sprinted with a frenzied, unnatural energy, fueled by hatred and a sudden, shocking hope. A few dragged the rusted, twisted remains of iron bars behind them, using them as anchors or weapons or simply because they could not bear to let go of the only thing they had possessed for decades. Others staggered madly, their eyes rolled back to show the whites, mouths foaming with a rabies-like frenzy, already hunting, already killing whatever moved simply because it could move. These were men and beasts that had been carved into nightmares, their humanity sanded away by endless torment, and they suddenly remembered how to move, how to bite, how to kill. Chains, still dangling from wrists, became whips that whistled through the air; broken benches and splintered furniture became clubs that rose and fell with wet, final sounds; and the floor, already slick with fresh blood and glistening, trampled entrails, gleamed under the flickering torchlight like a terrible altar to chaos.
The architecture itself seemed to moan in protest as bodies slammed into thick pillars, as shoulders rammed against weakened walls. The torches guttered violently in the choking, blood-misted smoke that began to fill the corridor. Bright, angry sparks leapt into the air when metal met metal in glancing blows; skulls cracked against stone with dull, wet, irrevocable thuds. A laughâhigh, piercing, utterly hystericalâsplit the chaos, only to be answered a moment later by a deep, guttural roar that shook dust from the high, shadowed rafters. Some prisoners, newly freed and drunk on it, tore at the lock mechanisms of adjacent cells with their bare, bleeding hands, ripping doors from their hinges with animal fury to pull others out, dragging them into the swelling, mindless swarm. Alliances were made in a single heartbeat, a shared glance of understanding between monsters, and torn apart in the very next, as a clawed hand found a vulnerable throat. The corridor was no longer a passageway; it had become a living throat that swallowed order and reason whole and breathed out pure, ravenous, unstoppable anarchy.
Akai stood in the center of that storm like a calm, still nail in a splintering plank, his eyes watchful, his body coiled but not yet moving. He could feel the pressure of a million tiny threats pressing in on him from all sides: the hungry, calculating glances from predators sizing up new prey, the sinister scrape of claws against wet stone, the barely contained, trembling hunger of those who had been starved of not just food, but of freedom, of violence, of touch, for far too long. He scanned the faces that rushed past him, faces that had been carved and reshaped by madness and hunger into grotesque masks, listening to the rising and falling rhythm of the chaos around him like a hunter listening for a single, specific heartbeat in a field of tall grass. Who would be first? he wondered, a cold curiosity cutting through the adrenaline. Who would be foolish enough, or brave enough, to step out of the crowd and declare, I am your enemy?
Then the system chimed â a crisp, clean, utterly unreadable sound, almost clinical amidst the sensory bedlam. A familiar blue screen slid up into the periphery of his vision, black letters unfurling with serene indifference:
[ Target Assigned ]
Name:KUROKAZ â The Bonebreaker
Species:Augmented Human / Giant-class
Height:~15.0 meters
Known Traits:Colossal raw strength; extreme bone density; simple but savage tactics; capable of crushing multiple prisoners with single strikes.
Threat:High â priority elimination recommended.
Akai read it twice, the words branding themselves onto his mind. The name itself felt heavy and brutal in his mouth. "Bone⊠fucking⊠breaker?" he spat the words out, a mix of incredulity and grim acceptance coloring his tone.
As if summoned by the system's cold pronouncement, the shadows at the far end of the vast chamber shifted. Something vast, something that defied the scale of the prison itself, broke through a yawning, demolished cell doorway â an impossibly large silhouette moving with the ponderous, earth-shaking certainty of a walking nightmare. Its limbs were like ancient, gnarled oak trunks, its shoulders so broad they seemed to drape out of sight into the darkness, its face half-swallowed by a maw of jagged, yellowed bone and thick, ropy scar tissue. Wherever its massive feet fell, the stone trembled and thin, phantom echoes of old screams seemed to rise from the very floor. The erratic torchlight haloed off old, darkly encrusted blood and patches of exposed, knobby bone, and the creature's breath fogged the thick air in ragged, thunderous puffs.
Akai's grin, a default shield against the world, lagged at the edge of his face and died into a soft, sincere curse. "Goddamn it⊠please tell me I'm still drunk from last night and this is not fucking real," he muttered to himself, the words immediately swallowed by a distant, carnivorous cheer as a group of prisoners overwhelmed a lone guard.
He let his eyes narrow, his focus sharpening until the chaos around him blurred into a meaningless backdrop. The system had given him a mission â eliminate threats â but the sheer, overwhelming physical reality of Kurokaz made the whole order feel like a cruel joke written in cold, unforgiving iron. He spoke to the void, not sure whether he was bargaining with the machine in his head or with some deeper part of himself:
"You know what? I never questioned how or why you tell me to eliminate prisoners and always the strongest fucking ones. All I know is you gave me another chance to breathe in an unfree and unjust world." He let the bitterness of the thought taste the air for a moment, then a smirk, colder and more determined, tugged at his mouth and his voice dropped to a near whisper, low and dangerous, like a blade finding a seam in armor. "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."
The thought hovered for a heartbeat, and then another, darker truth surfaced from the depths: 'Maybe the end of this is my death '. The idea brushed past him, a possible, easy route â a coward's exit. He mocked it with a small, fierce, internal laugh. "At the end, one needs more courage to live than to kill oneself. Guess what? I'm fucking certain I won't do that."
He straightened his shoulders, rolling the tension out of them, and let his ire settle, condense, and transform into a grin as sharp and promising as a naked knife blade. He filled his lungs with the foul, metallic air and whistled â a high, clear, piercing call that cut through the tumult like a razor. It was slow and deliberate, the kind of whistle used to steal attention in a rowdy tavern, the kind that makes every drunk and cutthroat turn to look. The sound was almost obscene in the madness around him: a single, calm, utterly human note resonating in a cathedral dedicated to screams.
Kurokaz, who had been backhanding a shrieking prisoner into a red mist against the wall, stopped. The gargantuan head, larger than a barrel, turned. Yellowed, milky eyes the size of dinner plates focused, a dim, animal intelligence flickering there beneath the brute's sheer barbarity. The beast sniffed the air, its wide, flat nostrils flaring, and then it bared a mouthful of jagged, bone-crumpling teeth in a silent snarl that promised unimaginable pain.
Akai's voice rolled out across the distance between them, low, carrying a humor that tasted distinctly of challenge and imminent violence. "You big boy⊠wanna fight?"
The roar that answered wasn't just a sound. It was a physical wave of pressure that hurt the ears, a vow of absolute ruin that shook the very foundations of Level 6.
â
End of Chapter 10.
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