Chương 11: Masterpieces of Violence

Zander wiped the grease of the roasted viper from his lips, the taste of the meat lingering pleasantly. The sun hadn't even begun its descent behind the tree line yet, but in this part of the forest, twilight was a permanent state of being. He kicked dirt over the embers of his small fire, extinguishing the evidence of his meal. The encounter with the Moss-Scale Viper had been a wake-up call. He had survived, yes, but only because he had been willing to turn his own body into a battering ram against a tree.

If he hadn't had the environment to use as a weapon, the constriction would have killed him. He flexed his hands. They were bare, stained with the faint residue of snake blood.

"Manual transmission," he muttered to himself, thinking back to the analogy he'd made the night before. That was his problem. He was walking around with a Ferrari engine inside a beat-up tractor. His stats were high, higher than they had any right to be, thanks to his BloodForged lineage, but accessing them was a nightmare. Every fight required a two-minute lead time to optimize his Might, or he was forced to fight with his base stats. And his [Scarlet Gauntlet]?

A clumsy, lumpy mitten that stripped him of his dexterity.

"One problem at a time," Zander whispered. He gathered his gear, shouldering the backpack that had miraculously survived four days of abuse, and pressed deeper into the green labyrinth. The forest seemed to react to his presence. The further he went, the more hostile the architecture became. Roots didn't just sit on the surface; they looped and knotted like arthritic fingers, waiting to snag a foot. The air grew heavy, saturated with the smell of wet rot and aggressive growth. Zander moved with a newfound caution.

The viper had attacked from above, from the "harmless" vines. Now, he watched everything. The canopy, the brush, the shadows between the roots. He walked for another hour, his senses dialed to the max. Then, he heard it. CRACK. It wasn't the dry snap of a twig underfoot. It was the wet, violent sound of live wood being splintered. Zander froze mid-step. He slowly lowered his center of gravity, melting into the profile of a massive fern.

He controlled his breathing, silencing the noise of his own lungs, and parted the fronds just an inch. Thirty yards ahead, the undergrowth was being demolished. A beast was rooting around the base of an ancient oak tree. It was a boar, but in the same way a tank was a car. It stood waist-high, a dense block of muscle wrapped in fur so dark and matted with mud it looked like crude oil. But it was the back that drew Zander's eye.

A ridge of spines ran from the base of its skull to its tail; long, black, serrated quills that looked like obsidian needles. They rattled softly as the beast moved, a dry, shivering sound that set Zander on edge. Two yellowed tusks, curved and wicked, jutted from its lower jaw. As Zander watched, the beast hooked a tusk under a root as thick as Zander's arm and ripped it free with a casual toss of its head. Zander narrowed his eyes, focusing.

[Bristle-Boar - lvl 7] Zander pulled back behind the fern, his mind racing through tactical simulations. Grappling? Suicide. If he tried the bear-hug maneuver he'd used on the snake, those quills would turn his chest into hamburger meat. Knife? He pictured his small survival knife against that hide. He might as well try to stab a tire with a plastic fork. Blunt force. That was his best option. He needed to hit it so hard that the shockwave bypassed the armor and quills entirely. He needed to be a hammer.

He needed Might. Currently, his Might sat at an impressive 19, but he wasn't leaving anything to chance. He needed to increase it using [Mind's Dominion]. Zander sighed silently. Here it was again. The wait. He checked the wind direction; it was blowing into his face. Good. The boar couldn't smell him yet. He eased back behind the trunk of a large tree, putting solid wood between him and the beast.

"Don't turn around," he whispered to the boar on the other side of the tree.

"Just keep eating roots for two more minutes." He dropped his backpack and activated [Mind's Dominion] to transfer 10 Will points into Might… And was shocked when it happened instantly. No resistance, no delay.

"What?" A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. He summoned his status screen to double-check, and it confirmed what his body was telling him. Might: 24 Will: 25 It was done. Instantly. Zander stared at the numbers, his brain trying to catch up with reality. How?

"The threshold," he realized, a grin spreading across his face. It had to be. Somewhere between 30 and 35, his Will had reached the level required to make that possible. The "manual transmission" hadn't just been upgraded; it had been swapped for a direct neural link. He didn't have to concentrate on the flow anymore; he just had to command it. He looked at his hands. If the stat transfer was instant... what about the gauntlet? [Scarlet Gauntlet], he commanded mentally. Usually, this was a grotesque process.

The blood would seep from his pores, thick and sluggish, taking nearly two seconds to cake over his hands into those ugly, lumpy mittens. Not this time. WOOSH. It was an eruption. The blood didn't seep; it materialized. It coated his hands and forearms in a fraction of a second. Zander raised his hands, turning them in the filtered light. Gone were the rippled, uneven lumps. In their place were masterpieces of violence. They were smooth. Perfectly symmetrical.

The hardened blood shone with a dark, vitrified luster, like polished obsidian or ruby glass. They were shaped like heavy, aerodynamic boxing gloves, bulbous over the knuckles to protect the impact zone, but tapering sleekly down his forearms to the elbows. He flexed his hands inside the shells. He still couldn't move his fingers individually; they were still fused inside the mitt, but the fit was snug, precise, and felt incredibly dense. He tapped them together. CLACK.

It was the sound of two rocks hitting each other. Hard. Zander looked toward the tree hiding the boar. The discomfort that had been his constant companion for the last four days, the fear of being caught unprepared, of being too slow, evaporated. He wasn't a survivor hiding in a bush, waiting for a timer to tick down. He was a BloodForged Lord. He stepped out from behind the tree. He didn't sneak. He walked right into the small clearing, his boots crunching loudly on the debris. The boar stopped digging.

It froze, its snout buried in the dirt. Slowly, it raised its head and sniffed the air. It turned its beady black eyes toward him and snorted, a wet, guttural sound, before pawing the ground. The quills on its back stood up straight, rattling like a shaker of bones. Zander didn't flinch. He raised his fists, the polished red surfaces gleaming in the twilight. He whistled. Sharp and loud. The boar squealed, a high, piercing sound of rage, and charged. It was fast. Faster than the squirrels, faster than the snake.

It was three hundred pounds of muscle and hate moving at the speed of a car crash. The ground shook with each hoofbeat. Zander stood his ground. He watched the gap close. Thirty feet. Twenty. The boar dipped its head, aiming to impale his thigh with a tusk. It was a bowling ball made of spikes, and Zander was the pin. Zander stepped into the charge. He didn't try to dodge. With his new stats, he didn't need to.

He twisted his hips, channeling the kinetic energy from the ground up through his legs, into his torso, and out through his right arm. He didn't aim for the body; the quills were there. He aimed for the jaw. He threw the cross. The smooth surface of the new gauntlet made the difference. The old, lumpy version might have caught on the coarse fur or snagged a quill, dissipating the force or throwing him off balance. The new gauntlet slid past the boar's defensive bristles like a bullet. CRACK.

The impact was thunderous. Zander felt the shockwave travel up his arm, but his structure held. The boar, however, was sent skidding sideways. Its head snapped to the right, its momentum ruined violently. It stumbled, its hooves carving deep furrows in the dirt as it fought to stay upright.

"Is that it?" Zander taunted, bouncing on the balls of his feet. The adrenaline was intoxicating. The boar shook its head, dazed. Flying saliva mixed with the blood now dripping from its mouth. It roared, a wet, gurgling sound, and spun. It lashed out with a lateral swipe of its tusk, aiming for Zander's ribs. It was a desperate, lightning-fast counter-attack. It was too close to dodge. Shift. Zander's mind snapped. Using [Mind's Dominion], he pulled the 10 points from Might and dumped them into Resilience.

Might: 19 Resilience: 25 Instant. Zander raised his left forearm to block. The tusk slammed into the hardened gauntlet. THUD. The force pushed him back a step, and he felt a deep bruise forming on his forearm bone beneath the blood armor, but the tusk didn't break his guard. He absorbed the hit like a stone wall. With a Resilience sitting at 25, his bones were denser than oak. The boar overextended, its flank exposed. Shift. Might: 24 Zander dropped his weight and exploded upward.

He drove a vicious uppercut into the boar's exposed throat, right beneath the jawline where the bristles were thinnest. The sound was wet and sickening, the crunch of cartilage giving way under immense pressure. The force of the blow actually lifted the heavy beast's front legs off the ground. The boar collapsed backward. It kicked once, twice, its legs thrashing in the dirt, and then went still. Zander stood over the corpse, a faint reddish glow emanating from his eyes.

'ding' You have killed [Bristle-Boar - lvl 7]. For killing an adversary above your level, you receive 40 System Coins. Zander stared at the notification, then down at his hands.

"Dismiss," he thought. The gauntlets didn't crumble into dust this time; they evaporated, turning into a fine red mist that was instantly reabsorbed into his skin.

"Manual transmission is dead," he said, a cold smile touching his lips. The path ahead was still dangerous. There were things in these woods that could likely still kill him. But they wouldn't catch him waiting. Zander knelt by the boar, drawing his knife. It was a lot of meat, and he had a feeling he was going to need the calories.