God of Destruction: Living Among Mortals

Nova was directly behind him; the fire manipulator could feel Nova breathing down his neck, the tingles sending waves of shivers down the manipulator's skin. He turned back again, his fireballs ready, hotter than before, but all he saw again was blank.

Then he blasted the fireballs backward, expecting Nova to be there; instead, Nova was on the right side of him, snapping his fingers, as the fire manipulator saw him, and then in another second was sprawled on the ground, after being kicked by him in the ribs, breaking two bones, and getting sent back, colliding against the wall.

He rose to see that Nova was right in front of him again, using his daggers to lift the manipulator's chin, until their eyes met. One burned with primordial rage, the other in primordial fear.

Nova then kicked the guy's face, sending him flying through the store, breaking through the glass door, and landing just in front of the four guys. The leader tilted his head in anticipation of the fight being longer than he had anticipated.

The three lackeys started to move, but the leader halted them, then stood up, giving the fire manipulator a green crystal, the next step up from a basic yellow crystal. The fire manipulator weakly took the crystal, putting it in his mouth and crushing it with his teeth.

His mouth glowed with a green aura, shimmering along his body as the green light coursed through him, giving him more strength and speed, while keeping all the boosts from the yellow crystal. Each crystal was a step-up from the previous one. So, if the yellow crystal simply regeneration a person, refreshing them with health, mana, and energy, then the green crystal does all the following, while also increasing strength and speed.

The Circle of Pillars on the fire manipulator grew another black pillar, making him a D-rank Adventurer. This was something Nova wasn't expecting, even though he was able to defeat the fire manipulator when he was E-rank; D-rank was another ballpark.

The pillars signified what rank a person was, and as the pillars grow in numbers, the more experience points you need to level them up. Not many people in the world, who are awakened, have passed C-rank, since the gap increases so significantly that it's all up to raw talent for a person to keep gaining more pillars and ascending further.

The difference from going E-rank to D-rank was twice the difference from going F-rank to E-rank.

The fire manipulator stood up, cracking the ground beneath. He looked up, his eyes consumed by the green crystal, since the human body wasn't made to be able to control the powers of the crystal. As the crystal goes higher up in the hierarchy, the chances of people becoming zombies also skyrocket.

The manipulator lunged through the door, sending a huge shockwave in his aftermath. The floor cracked open, the walls cracking louder and louder by the second, as he travelled beyond Mach three.

Nova barely was able to dodge, his reflexes coming into action, warming themselves up. The fire manipulator lunged back after landing on the leftover wall, destroying it as he ascended towards him. He grabbed Nova by the throat, overpowering him, then burned his hand, singeing Nova's skin initially, but he wanted to take it a step further, so he threw him in the open, then summoned a fireball, so hot and massive that it put all his previous fireballs to shame.

Using Nova as a means of target practice, it hurled the fireball at him, Nova using his daggers to block the fireball, crossing his hands to make an X. The fireball burned his skin further, hurling him back through a building, until he reached another alley.

The fire manipulator closed the distance in a second, demonically grinning at him, as Nova's body trembled, the rage from earlier somehow keeping him standing, as his bones were slightly fractured again, blood dripping from his eyes, ears, and almost all the holes.

He spat blood on the ground, getting into his attack formation, then putting his daggers to his side, as he ran towards the fire manipulator. The manipulator feinted to the left, much faster than Nova, then ignited his fists with flames and punched Nova on the ribs, breaking four bones and sending him flying back to the same alley, destroying even more buildings.

The police sirens emerged, cops getting out of their cars to show their guns, but the manipulator couldn't care less. He stepped towards them, the cops shooting at him, but he dodged every single bullet, and then broke some of them in half, just for fun, just to scare the cops.

The last cop's breath caught in his throat as he turned to see the gore in front of his eyes. The fire manipulator was already there, close enough that the heat of his body scorched the air like a furnace.

His eyes no longer resembled human eyes; they were like molten pits, glowing the same light that surged through his veins. His skin cracked and pulsed like cooled magma, as if his flesh was trying to contain something it was never meant to hold.

The officer raised his gun, trembling, but the manipulator's hand clamped down over it, the metal liquefying under his grip. The man screamed as the molten steel fused to his hand, the smell of seared flesh rolling through the air.

The fire manipulator tilted his head, studying him with an almost curious detachment, like a predator experimenting with its prey, curious about its next move.

Then, in the blink of an eye, a single flaming fist drove through the officer's chest with the speed and force of a bomb. Bones shattered, skin and muscle burned away, and in the next second, the officer's body was more than just collapsing; he was smoking and twitching as the manipulator withdrew his arm.

The body hit the ground with a thud, the alley filled with the copper scent of blood mixed with the stench of charred human flesh.