As A Mafia Boss, I Refuse To Be An Extra-Chapter 73: Kuro
Deep inside the forest, massive trees lay toppled and broken across the scarred earth.
The ground was torn up in countless places, deep gouges carved into the soil like claw marks from some titanic battle. Dust still hung in the air, slowly settling.
Bodies of various beasts were scattered everywhere. Butchered, mangled and beyond recognition.
But one corpse dwarfed all the others.
It was a giant serpent, nine meters tall and eighty-one meters long.
Its severed head lay several feet from its body, massive fangs visible through its gaping mouth. Each fang was the size of a grown man’s arm.
"Huff... Huff... Huff..."
A lone figure knelt in front of the massive corpse, using his axe as support to keep from collapsing completely.
One of the serpent’s smaller fangs was embedded deep in his stomach, blood pooling around the wound.
A dark red aura surrounded him, thick and viscous. Unlike normal Aura that flickered and dissipated, this energy clung to him like a living thing. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎
It was Slaughter Intent.
The figure was Damian.
He’d finally decided to take on that massive serpent he’d been avoiding for weeks. The consequences of that decision were written across his battered body in blood and pain.
"Hehe... hehehe... HAHAHAHA!"
After getting his breathing somewhat under control, Damian started laughing. The sound echoed through the destroyed forest clearing, manic and triumphant.
"Fuck... that son of a bitch was strong. I actually almost died there."
He gripped the embedded fang with both hands and yanked it out of his stomach with a wet, tearing sound.
Blood gushed from the wound.
His dark reddish-black Aura immediately began working on the injury, crawling across the torn flesh like living threads, pulling it back together.
One of the unexpected benefits from his brutal training in this forest was developing a self-healing skill after being forced to use his Aura to survive countless injuries.
As he focused on healing himself, a dark raven with blood-red eyes suddenly emerged from his shadow like it was made of liquid darkness.
It perched on his shoulder, tilting its head to observe him.
During one of Damian’s many near-death experiences weeks ago, when he’d finally regained consciousness after blacking out from blood loss, this strange creature had already been lying on his stomach. Covered in his own blood and staring at him with those unsettling red eyes.
And somehow, inexplicably, they’d formed a bond.
Damian still wasn’t sure how this worked. He’d never heard about beasts bonding with humans like this. Not in this life, and not even from the old beggar who’d read him the novel in his past life.
Even his status screen classified it as an "unknown entity."
But as soon as Damian had bonded with this creature, something else had happened too.
He’d awakened a completely new stat.
Perception.
The raven was incredibly perceptive, able to detect killing intent in the surroundings before Damian could sense it himself. It helped him track targets through the dense forest, spotting movements and threats he would have missed.
Beyond that, Damian hadn’t figured out much about the creature’s abilities yet. But he could feel its intentions and emotions clearly, like they shared some kind of mental link.
One thing Damian knew for certain was that it fed on death energy to grow stronger.
Whenever Damian killed prey, the raven would emerge from his shadow and look at him silently, as if asking permission to feed.
Just like it was doing right now.
"Go ahead, Kuro."
Damian had named him Kuro – meaning "black" in an ancient language – based on how impossibly dark his feathers were. Like they absorbed light itself.
Kuro took flight and landed gracefully on the massive serpent’s corpse.
Suddenly, a strange blackish energy began extracting itself from the serpent’s body. Wisps of dark smoke rose from every wound, every inch of dead flesh.
The same phenomenon occurred with all the other beast corpses scattered around the clearing.
Death energy flowing like rivers toward the raven, who absorbed it all hungrily.
"Status."
While Kuro fed, Damian opened his status screen to check his progress.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Name: Damian Valcor
Age: 15
Rank: D+
Talent: S
Core Attributes:
Strength: 149
Speed: 145
Stamina: 150
Vitality: 170
Aura: D+
Will: 200
Perception: 120
Intent: Slaughter
Skills: —
Shooting: A
Hand Combat: A
Telekinesis: C
Macro Vision: C
Sonic Blink: C
Self-Healing: C
Aura Control: C+
Aura Magnification: 2×
Weapon Arts: —
Omega Point - S: Level 2
Abyssal Slaughter - SS: Minor Success
Blood Bond: Kuro (D Rank)
- Unknown Entity
- Talent Unknown
━━━━━━━━━━━━━
After weeks of brutal, relentless training in this forest, Damian’s core attributes had grown to absurd levels.
He genuinely had no idea how far ahead his physique was compared to normal D+ rank awakeners. Probably by a massive margin.
His Aura core had also broken through to D+ rank sooner than he’d expected, though that made sense considering he’d been eating beast meat every day multiple times.
The Aura-rich flesh had supercharged his growth in both physique and core development.
He was already approaching the barrier to C- rank, which most people struggled with for years.
His newly awakened Perception stat sat at one hundred twenty points. Damian had no reference for what was normal, but awakening it at all at his current rank was already good.
The Intent section had appeared on his status screen the moment he’d successfully developed Slaughter Intent, displaying it clearly.
And he’d gained that crucial Self-Healing skill, which was honestly one of the most valuable things he’d acquired from this entire brutal experience. Being able to survive without constant medical attention was priceless.
The status screen also displayed Kuro’s basic information, though it was frustratingly vague.
Even the system didn’t know anything about Kuro beyond his current rank.
’Kuro is definitely something special. Even my status screen has no information about him, which shouldn’t be possible. I’ve never heard of anything like this existing.’
Damian stared at the screen for several long moments, questions churning through his mind.
He was pulled from his thoughts when Kuro finished feeding and returned to perch on his shoulder briefly before dissolving back into his shadow like smoke.
As Damian’s wound closed enough to move safely, he stood up with a grunt of pain and started walking back toward the Academy.
He’d been gone for who knew how long at this point. It was probably many weeks.
It was time to return to civilization.
When he was almost at the forest’s edge, nearly able to see the Academy buildings in the distance–
Kaiser appeared out of nowhere directly in front of him.
"Catch."
The old man tossed Damian’s watch at him, which he’d confiscated at the beginning of this training period.
Damian caught it reflexively.
He had already sent his family a message saying he would be out for training for a while. So there was no need to worry if he didn’t reply to their messages. He especially had sent Luna a longer message.
Kaiser studied him with a complex expression in his ancient eyes, like he was seeing something that both impressed and disturbed him.
"You mastered Slaughter Intent faster than I expected. Much faster. If I didn’t know your background and history, I would have genuinely assumed you were a mass murderer."
’I was, in my past life.’
Damian kept that thought to himself.
"Alright, you can head back to the Academy now. I’ll find you later when you’re ready to learn how to advance Abyssal Slaughter to the next stage."
After finishing speaking, the old man simply vanished again. No warning, no farewell.
Just gone.
Damian stood there alone at the forest’s edge, still covered in blood and dirt, holding his watch.
"Sigh... You could have at least teleported me back as well, old man. My stomach still has a hole in it."
No response came from the empty air.
Damian shook his head and started the long walk back to campus, his self-healing skill working overtime to close his wounds.
As he walked, Kuro’s presence stirred in his shadow, a dark comfort.
Even Kaiser had not sensed its presence earlier.
His Slaughter Intent pulsed faintly around him like a second skin.
And deep in his chest, his Aura core hummed with power, hungry for more growth.
’I wonder how much has changed while I was gone.
Let’s see if the Nobles are ready for what I’ve become.’
A cold smile crossed his blood-stained face.
Probably not.
