When The System Spoils You For No Reason-Chapter 49 - Fourty Nine

"Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not."

— Epicurus

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The demon roared. The sound hit the interior of the Reality Anchor like a struck bell — raw, guttural, vibrating through the sealed air. Dark blood pulsed from the stumps of his severed arms, but even as it spread across the fractured crystal, violet energy crackled at the wounds. Flesh began to writhe. Tendons snaked outward like black worms. Bone extended with slow, wet cracks.

Zeke walked him down.

"I wonder how to kill you," he said, a manic smile spreading across his face. The dome held the smell in — ozone, copper, the faint sulfur of demonic blood. "Slash at you until you run out of energy? Use that ability to burn you to cinder?" A playful glint. "My magic stat stays the same regardless of what I swap to."

He stopped.

"But first — exposition."

The demon looked up at him. Then, with an unhurried, almost deliberate calm, he folded his legs beneath him and settled onto the ground as though the conversation had been scheduled.

Zeke’s smile flickered with genuine confusion.

"You just roared," he said. "You should be hungry. Furious. You should be trying to kill me right up until the inevitable end." He tilted his head. "What happened?"

"It was a default action." The demon’s voice had lost its register of hunger. What replaced it was something quieter — tired, almost wry. "Taking rational thought into consideration, I realized there was no need to fight. My end is inevitable, as you said." A weak smile crossed his bruised, blood-streaked face. "Even if I had beaten you, I would only fall to the next one. As a monster locked in this dungeon, I exist to serve as a growth catalyst. I kill the less formidable because that is what I can do. The woes of the weak."

Zeke looked at him for a moment.

"You killed dozens." His voice was flat, not heated — the laugh that followed was short and sharp. "If you were going to die anyway, you should have died quickly instead of dragging weaklings down with you." He shrugged. "But what would I expect from a demon."

He didn’t wait for an answer. It wasn’t really a question.

Well. It wasn’t surprising. That’s what he’d do himself, in the same position.

"I don’t really care, to be honest. People die every day. People are born every day." He dropped to the ground and crossed his legs, settling in front of the demon with the easy posture of someone who had nowhere else to be. "Now. My questions."

---

"Oh, that’s got to sting," Anton said from outside the dome, affecting a wince as he watched Zeke tank a hit from the monster that had just been tearing through S-Rank heirs.

"How’d you lot tank those hits, anyway?" He glanced sideways at Daniel’s midsection, where the damage was still visibly written into his posture. "Maybe he went easy on you."

"Why is he only using his fists?" Anissa asked. Her voice was cool, but the curiosity was real.

"Ask Enel. He’s felt them firsthand." Anton’s smirk didn’t move.

"I think," Anthony said, with the tone of someone genuinely working through a hypothesis, "it’s because he prefers the visceral joy of a fist meeting another fist."

"Oh yeah — you’ve faced him." Anton turned. "How was the beatdown?"

Enel exhaled a dry, humorless laugh. "Sorry. Couldn’t hold that in." He let it fade, and his gaze slid to Anton — calm, precise, cold. "This bastard is just as annoying as him."

Zhōu Chénhào rose from where he’d been sitting, expression drawn tight. He’d been battered, sidelined, and this stranger had spent the last several minutes treating it like theater. "Why do you think mocking us is the best move for you?"

Before Anton could answer —

"Hey. We’re here."

Jude’s voice. The trio came around the far edge of the field, boots crunching lightly across scattered crystal, and moved toward the group with the unhurried ease of people who had not just been through a demon encounter.

"Oh, finally." Anton raised a hand. "Gang’s complete."

"You’re not part of the gang." Kai pointed at him. "You’re a one-time business partner."

"Is that bitterness I taste?"

"Don’t tell me these weaklings are part of your group," Daniel said, the words coming out low and strained — his posture still betraying the damage underneath.

"Bold words from someone with a caved-in stomach," Kai replied, grinning.

"Cool it." Anton put a hand out in front of Kai, the gesture easy but firm. "Clients."

Aaron’s gaze swept the field. "Where’s the monster?"

"Just over—" Anton turned to point and stopped. His mouth opened slightly.

Inside the dome: Zeke and the demon, cross-legged, conversing at a pace that suggested neither of them was in a hurry.

"HUH?!"

Kai brightened. "Oh, that’s pretty normal. One time he—"

Jude’s hand found his mouth. "Clients are present."

Kai smiled behind it, sheepish, and Jude released him.

"I’m not even surprised anymore," Anton said, in the tone of a man who very much still was.

He turned back to the heirs. "Right. Tax percentage. Let’s allot."

Daniel got to his feet — stiff, deliberate, defiant. "What if I don’t?"

"Then you’d be adding a caved-in stomach to a caved-in stomach." Anton’s aura unfurled — just enough to be felt, a quiet, palpable pressure that shifted the air around him. His gaze drifted toward the dome and back. "And if I weren’t enough — he’s right there." A thin smile. "Think you could take him?"

The silence that followed answered for Daniel.

---

"You mentioned a sin." Zeke rested his forearms on his knees. The dome hummed faintly around them. "That wouldn’t happen to be Pride, would it?"

"How would I know?" The demon’s amethyst eyes were dim now, but still attentive. "I only felt a synergy."

"Fair. For the record — even if you’d won, you couldn’t have devoured the trait. You cap at B-Rank absorption."

"An information-gathering skill."

"Yes." Zeke tilted his head. "Tell me about the sins."

"I don’t know much." The demon’s gaze dropped briefly. "Given my rank and the fact that I’ve been in this dungeon since birth, what I know comes from my demon lineage — built-in knowledge, what you would regard as a trait."

"Hell’s favorites. Innate talent and built-in information."

"Talent, yes — but there are degrees even within that. Sins are the core nature of demons. Every demon falls into one category. The talented fall into more. Some gain their sin as a trait; others receive the innate ability version — the bootleg, if you will."

"You know the difference between traits and abilities."

"Basic knowledge," Zeke said.

{Basic. I spent hours teaching you, you dimwit,} Zero muttered.

"But enlighten me on the sins specifically."

"Innate ability versions — like my Gluttony — require energy to activate. They have limits. A trait, however, becomes the demon’s core nature. For a demon with Gluttony as a trait, everything consumed builds strength — stat boosts, and at higher ranks, abilities and skills absorbed from whatever is eaten. A fish could grant the ability to breathe underwater."

"Cheat code."

"Indeed." Something almost proud entered the demon’s voice. "As you said. Hell’s favorites."

"Any more questions?"

"One. Why were you surprised I had a sin? Humans sin."

"Not to my knowledge, humans shouldn’t possess sins." The demon paused. "But my innate memories have gaps — I don’t know everything. I especially did not know children of your caliber existed." His gaze drifted past Zeke, settling on the group outside the dome — lingering on Enel, Anton, and Michael in turn.

"Ah." Zeke followed the look. "Enel did cut your arm, after all."

"Heh." The demon smiled — quiet, final. "It seems my time has come."

"Yes." Zeke’s voice was even, almost gentle. "Take some joy in it. You’re my first kill in this world."

He stood. The motion was fluid, unhurried. He crossed to the demon and placed both hands on him.

PWACH.

SLASH.

Instant Dismantling and Unseen Severance activated simultaneously. The demon came apart at the atomic level — matter unraveling in silence, no drama, no residue. A controlled pulse of flame followed, incinerating what remained. Not even ash was left behind.

"I’m spent."

Reality Anchor dissolved with a soft, pressure-equalizing sigh. The outside air moved back in, carrying the smell of battle and distant ozone.

Zeke turned toward the cave mouth — the one the heirs had broken themselves open trying to reach — and started walking. He glanced back once, the motion easy and unhurried.

"You coming?"

A tilt of his head toward the trio and Anton.

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