They Called Me Trash? Now I'll Hack Their World

The cold stone floor was slick with blood.

"Argh!"

Edric slumped heavily forward onto his hands and knees, his head hanging between his shoulders as the two assassins kept their poisoned blades buried to the hilt in his abdomen. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

"HAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Rolf threw his head back, his maniacal laughter echoing off the walls of the collapsed corridor.

He held Yenna effortlessly against his chest, the dagger still lodged perfectly in her spine, pumping lethal neurotoxins into her nervous system.

Rolf ceased his laughter, his face shifting into a mask of sickening, twisted affection. He leaned his head down, pressing his lips right next to Yenna’s ear, breath tickling her skin.

"See? You always had a problem with him, right?"

He whispered, his voice dripping with condescending sweetness so only she could hear.

Yenna’s eyelids fluttered, growing impossibly heavy as the poison did its work. Her breathing turned shallow, but the sheer, blinding hatred in her eyes refused to die.

"Always complaining about how he kept secrets. How he never fit in. I’m just doing you a favor, really. I am going to remove him once and for all. You should be grateful to me... right, my Yenna?"

He pulled back, a sadistic grin splitting his face, and began to laugh all over again.

He gave a sharp nod to his men.

The assassins standing over Edric twisted their wrists and violently ripped their blades free.

"Urgh!"

Edric let out a wet, pained gasp, his elbows buckling as more blood spilled onto the dirt.

"You’ll pay," Yenna wheezed, her voice barely a rasp. "You’ll pay for what you did, Rolf."

"Oh, Yenna," Rolf sighed mockingly.

"You asshole... I’ll kill you."

"With what?"

Though he got his answer immediately.

The air around Yenna violently warped. Despite the paralyzing poison shutting down her organs, her mana core didn’t just ignite... it detonated.

A blinding, incandescent orange glow erupted from her skin, so bright it cast harsh, monstrous shadows against the cavern walls. The temperature skyrocketed in a fraction of a second.

The stone beneath Rolf’s boots began to crack and hiss.

But the cost of forcefully overloading her poisoned core was horrific.

Dark, thick blood began to pour freely from Yenna’s eyes, her nose, and the corners of her lips, trailing down her chin as the internal pressure ruptured her blood vessels.

"Even if it kills me," Yenna choked out, her teeth stained entirely red, the flames roaring to life around her limp arms. "I’ll end you, lunatic!"

Rolf’s eyes widened in genuine, unfiltered panic. Fuck! She’s going to blow her own core! At this rate, she’ll vaporize us both!

He didn’t hesitate. Before the suicidal spell could fully manifest, Rolf ripped his right hand free and delivered a brutal, precise chop directly to the side of Yenna’s neck, striking a major artery.

The physical trauma, combined with the extreme exhaustion of the poison, was too much.

Yenna’s eyes rolled back into her head. The blinding orange glow instantly snuffed out, plunging the cavern back into gloom.

Her body went completely limp, turning into dead weight in Rolf’s arms.

Rolf let out a harsh, shaking breath, his heart hammering against his ribs. He clicked his tongue in deep annoyance, adjusting his grip on her unconscious form.

"Stupid bitch," he muttered, glaring down at her pale, bloodstained face. "Why were you so desperate to save him?"

He looked back up, opening his mouth to order the assassins to finish Edric off and prep for extraction.

But the words never left his throat.

As... Edric wasn’t on his hands and knees anymore.

He shot to his feet with explosive, terrifying kinetic force. He didn’t stumble or gasp for air. He moved with a flawless, lethal precision that completely defied the two fatal stab wounds in his gut.

Before the nearest assassin could even blink, Edric snatched his discarded sword from the dirt and swung it in a seamless, blinding upward arc.

SHKKK!

The assassin’s head tumbled cleanly off his shoulders, a fountain of blood painting the cavern ceiling.

Rolf flinched, his eyes bulging out of his skull. "What?!"

The second assassin stumbled backward, raising his daggers in a desperate panic. But he couldn’t even process what he was looking at.

Edric’s aura exploded.

But it wasn’t the standard, pale blue mana. It was a dense, suffocating torrent of silver and black.

Edric vanished, leaving behind nothing but a silver-black streak in the air.

He moved with an unnatural, terrifying speed that bent the very laws of physics. Reappeared directly behind the remaining assassins.

For a second, the assassins just stood there. Then, a perfect, diagonal line appeared across their torso. And the upper half slowly slid off his lower half, hitting the ground in separate, bloody pieces.

The cavern fell dead silent, save for the wet drip, drip, drip of blood.

Edric slowly turned around to face Rolf.

The silver-black mana writhed around his body like living smoke, sealing the puncture wounds in his abdomen as if they had never existed.

His eyes had changed, the sclera were pitch black, and his irises burned with a piercing, liquid silver light.

Rolf felt his blood turn to absolute ice. The suffocating, predatory weight of Edric’s true aura pressed down on his lungs, making it impossible to breathe.

Rolf took a trembling step backward, dragging Yenna’s unconscious body with him. His lips parted in sheer, unadulterated terror as he recognized the energy signature standing in front of him.

"A Demon Hunter...?"

The blood completely drained from Rolf’s face, leaving him as pale as a corpse.

His knees physically trembled, knocking together as the oppressive, suffocating weight of Edric’s silver-black aura crushed the air from his lungs.

"How...?" the word slipped from his bloodless lips, barely a terrified whisper.

His mind raced, fracturing under the sheer impossibility of what he was seeing.

A Demon Hunter? No. No, that’s a myth. A ghost story! They were eradicated centuries ago! Wiped out during the Great Purge! How is one standing right in front of me?