Confrontation with Pride
If I obtained it, I might as well use it, right?
With that thought, I stepped into the darkness, and an excruciatingly long time passed. Since this was the Void—a space with no distinction between day and night—I had given up counting the days long ago. Over that immense stretch of time, the only thing I did was hunt to survive, and hunt some more. I slaughtered every intelligent creature that stood in my way, devoured their hearts, and sat heavily in lotus position to make the essence I swallowed my own.
The raw energy gained from chewing and swallowing the hearts of intelligent beings was far wilder and more ferocious than I expected. It surged through my veins with a heat that threatened to burst free at any moment. Even sitting still, I suffered excruciating pain as if my limbs were burning from the inside out. If I couldn't perfectly control this bizarre energy and make it mine, my body would clearly explode from within long before I found any exit.
Every time the chewed-up lump of heart forcibly melted in my stomach, the uncontrolled streams of mana turned into sharp awls that mercilessly stabbed at my internal organs. Scorching heat flowed backward through my blood vessels, bursting every capillary in my body simultaneously each day, while dark red blood and pus poured from the gaps in my skin like rain. My bones couldn't endure the bubbling power source boiling up from within; they shattered, then were forcibly knit back together by the creatures' life force in a hellish cycle that repeated without end.
Even drawing a single breath brought burning agony to my lungs. The urge to let go of my sanity and simply faint crossed my mind thousands of times. But I wrung out every last ounce of mental strength and endured, sitting heavily in lotus position in the empty air. I knew all too well that the moment I knelt or collapsed here, the rampaging power inside me would reduce my body to a handful of meat fragments and erase me into nothingness.
The only thing that kept my mind as cold as ice was the ferocious, single-minded determination to tear apart this fucking darkness no matter what and escape back to my original world—back to my house, my bed. I used the iron grip of my will to seize the bizarre strands of mana rampaging like mad hunting dogs near my heart, one by one, and forcibly shoved them into my blood vessels. Every time I circulated the energy I clenched my teeth hard enough to shatter them, but I never stopped. If something broke, I hardened it. If it tore, I crushed my own cells to refine it again and forcibly reattached the pieces.
In the pitch-black darkness without a single guide, it was a desperate, bloody struggle. I relied solely on my razor-sharp supersenses and the primal instinct to survive as my compass, forcing this colossal storm of power to submit to my flesh.
“……Hoo. Ha.”
There were no kind guide messages, no status windows, no training manuals. I trusted only my sharp supersenses and the survival instinct I had fought with, chasing the flow of mana. I forcibly dragged the strands that rampaged madly through my body—stabbing like awls—toward the area near my heart. The pain felt like my veins would burst; I clenched my teeth until they creaked. Sweat poured like rain, but I didn’t stop. If it broke, I hardened it. If it tore, I reattached it.
By repeating that hellish training of circulating mana alone over and over, the purity of the mana accumulating inside me finally began to transcend every previous realm. The flame-like heat that had once torn my body apart uncontrollably gradually circulated smoothly under my control as time passed. The wild fragments of power seeped perfectly into every blood vessel and cell, fixing themselves there.
The old boundaries had long since collapsed. Amid the daily sensation of bones shattering and reknitting, my body grew to far surpass anything those monsters possessed. The surface of my skin had become as hard as steel; even the sharp claws or fangs of most creatures could no longer leave a scratch. Simply clenching my fist lightly sent a heavy pressure crushing the atmosphere outward from every knuckle in an unpleasant wave.
My supersenses had expanded into unimaginable territory as well. Even with my eyes closed, changes in air currents hundreds of meters in every direction, the flow of the wind, even the vibration of a single speck of dust rolling across the ground were vividly mapped in three dimensions inside my head. I could even hear the faint breathing of monsters hiding in the shadows of rocks beyond my line of sight, striking my ears with perfect clarity.
That dogged, obsessive determination to escape this damned world no matter what had forged me completely into a raw, terrifying transcendent.
At last, my mastery of mana was complete.
“……Huu.”
When I slowly opened my eyes, the world that had been nothing but darkness now appeared clearer and more transparent than I could have imagined. My heart no longer needed to be forced; it circulated majestic, enormous mana—like the core of a volcano—perfectly throughout my entire body. The heat that once felt ready to explode was now perfectly contained by my will, settled heavily beneath my skin. I had reached a realm where I could wield the power inside me with zero waste.
I tightened my grip on the dagger. The condensed mana inside me flowed naturally from my fingertips into the blade. Unlike before, the power no longer ran wild and heated the dagger red-hot. Instead, a transparently distorted current clung thickly around it. I had gained complete control over the space-distortion ability and its shockwave—the same power once used by that scaled intelligent creature.
The dagger’s surface looked unchanged, yet the space surrounding it twisted and screamed in silence. I began walking again. My steps after finishing the training held no hesitation. When packs of monsters blocked my path, I no longer needed to run or hide. A light swing of the dagger was enough; the space-tearing shockwave would crush dozens of beasts ahead into oblivion without a trace. The sounds of hides ripping and bones shattering erupted everywhere, but my eyes never wavered. With only the goal of escape burning in my chest, I advanced relentlessly into deeper darkness.
Hunting, absorbing essence, walking. A mechanical repetition.
How much farther did I go?
The air around me grew noticeably heavier. It wasn’t merely lower pressure. An overwhelming, colossal mass pressed down on the earth from every direction. Each breath felt like my lungs were being filled with heavy mercury. The terrain itself had changed completely. Instead of endless flatlands, sharp, gigantic pillars of rock rose grotesquely like a forest, stretching endlessly toward the sky. The ground was covered in unidentifiable black moss, from which an eerie energy that chilled the spine leaked out.
‘……This must be the boss of the area.’
I stopped and stared into the darkness beyond the rock field. I didn’t even need to grip the dagger tightly; the refined mana inside me burned with fighting spirit on its own. This was the aura of a predator on an entirely different level from the half-baked intelligent creatures I had faced before. An overwhelming killing intent that made my lungs ache with every breath. The goosebump-inducing pressure enveloping my whole body made my flesh instinctively tense, and mana began rotating explosively.
At that moment, my trained mana resonated strangely with the energy drifting from afar. A headache like my skull would split accompanied an unfamiliar sensation that flashed through my mind. An unpleasantly dense, alien emotion. A vicious arrogance that viewed every living thing in every direction as insignificant insects beneath its feet and sought to trample them filled the entire atmosphere.
“For a mere insect to crawl all the way here in such a trivial body… How utterly pathetic, you little rat.”
A low, majestic voice. It didn’t simply echo in my ears—it struck directly at my soul with bizarre resonance. The creature knew perfectly well that it stood at the absolute peak of this region. It looked at me with the gaze one might give an insignificant bug underfoot, paying no mind to the dagger in my hand or the mana wrapped around my body.
Every time its gaze touched me, a skin-crawling pressure like burning flesh washed over me.
“So you could talk, you bastard?”
My lips split into a savage grin. Perfectly controlled mana inside my heart rotated explosively, setting my blood on fire. The old weak habit of getting scared and calculating survival odds had been discarded long ago. Whether it could speak or not was none of my business. No matter what arrogant bullshit spilled from this thing’s mouth, my only goal was to rip apart this fucking world and leave. It didn’t matter how strong the bastard in front of me was. If it blocked my path, I would simply separate every bone and scrap of flesh from its body so it could never flap that arrogant mouth again.
The confidence I had gained from smashing the heads of countless monsters supported me completely.
“Don’t spout crap just because you’ve got a working mouth, you horned fucker. Today I’ll beat you until you’re nothing but dust.”
Kuuuung—!
The moment the demon rose in fury at my provocation, a tremendous shockwave tore through space itself and exploded outward. Massive rocks burst apart in every direction as the earth screamed. Stone dust clouded my vision, but my supersenses had already captured the creature’s every movement perfectly.
Tat—!
I kicked off the ground and leaped. A dull shockwave carrying red heat coiled around the black dagger, and I drove straight down toward the head of the unidentified demon.