The Extra Who Shouldn’t Exist

Alex and Kyle clashed and clashed again.

They collided in the sky thousands of times in the span of heartbeats, a blur of thunder and shadow. Each impact rang like the world being hammered, each collision throwing off pulses that cracked mountains and churned seas. But with every exchange it grew clearer who held the upper hand.

System messages flashed in front of Kyle like cold, accusing numbers.

[ 50,000 Abyssal Points have been used for regeneration. ]

[ 40,000 Abyssal Points have been used for regeneration. ]

Each time Kyle's body was torn apart by some brutal blow, the System dragged him back from oblivion. Bones reformed, blood reversed its flow, organs re-stitched in grotesque reverse motion.

His every scream echoed through the broken landscape, fading into the cold void before the next impact came.

Each time he tried a new technique Alex seemed to learn them mid-fight. His movements became sharper, his body more fluid, like a reflection studying its master until it knew him better than he knew himself.

Kyle swung his arm in a wide arc, releasing a storm of dark lances. They sliced through the air, ripping craters in the ground f om th sky, but Alex dissolved into streaks of silver light, slipping through the chaos like water around stones. He re-emerged an instant later, eyes gleaming with quiet, predatory amusement.

"You—how?" Kyle spat, his voice breaking between fury and disbelief.

Alex didn't answer. His lips curved into something too calm to be human. In the next blink, he was gone—no sound, no step—only reappearing behind Kyle.

Before Kyle could react, a cruel, precise kick smashed directly into his groin.

A sharp, wet crack filled the air. Pain detonated through Kyle's core, a kind of pain that transcended mortal comprehension. His body folded inward, his scream strangled halfway through as his knees buckled.

A system prompt blinked mercilessly before his eyes:

[ 900,000 Abyssal Points consumed for emergency regeneration — critical damage restored. ]

Kyle gasped, clutching the dirt, his throat tight with nausea. The regeneration came with an agony of its own—the flesh rebuilding in a frenzy of living fire, knitting tissue that shouldn't have existed anymore.

The cost flashed across his HUD again, cruel and red. 'Nine hundred thousand points… for that? How many souls—'

Before he could even process it, Alex struck again.

Another kick, perfectly timed. The same spot.

Another eruption of blinding, unbearable torment began as pain erupted.

The sound that escaped Kyle was not human; it was a guttural noise that scraped against the edges of sanity. The System responded again, cold and emotionless.

[ 900,000 Abyssal Points consumed for emergency regeneration — critical damage restored. ]

Alex stood over him, silent, his expression unreadable.

The air warped around him, the faint shimmer of space trembling under his control.

Kyle staggered up, his breathing ragged, spitting blood that hissed when it hit the scorched earth. "Do you know—" he growled, trembling, "how many people I had to kill for those points?!"

Alex tilted his head slightly, then vanished again.

Another strike. Another scream. Another explosion of regeneration.

It became a rhythm—a perverse, looping ballet of destruction. Pain. Recovery. Pain. Recovery.

By the sixth blow, Kyle could barely think. His pride cracked; his fury boiled into madness. The cost of his survival ticked away like a death sentence, digits turning red as millions of points burned to keep him standing.

He tried to lunge at Alex, to bite, to tear, to do anything—but every attempt met the same result. Alex didn't block; he redirected reality itself. Blades passed through him as if through fog.

Finally, Kyle fell to his knees again, gasping, trembling. His body healed, but his spirit felt flayed raw.

He looked up, and for the first time, there was something desperate in his eyes.

By the end, Kyle's pride and sanity were breaking apart faster than his body could heal. Each regeneration burned through thousands of abyssal points.

The humiliation overshadowed even the pain. His eyes twitched erratically, and his expression twisted into something feral.

'Enough!' he thought, pure rage taking over. 'I'll destroy everything!'

His gaze turned south—toward the shimmering horizon where the Elven Dominion lay, peaceful and unaware.

A sinister grin split his face. "Let's see how long your calm lasts when *they* burn."

Dark energy swelled around him, the ground fracturing under the surge. The air screamed as it was pulled inward, devoured by the expanding sphere of power at his core.

Then—release.

A catastrophic beam of black light tore through the sky, a river of annihilation that split the heavens. The shockwave flattened mountains, shredded clouds, and sent flocks of creatures fleeing in blind terror. The sound wasn't thunder—it was the howl of creation being rewritten.

The beam crossed half a continent in seconds.

But just as it neared the Elven Dominion, the world resisted.

A colossal barrier erupted from the earth—a wall of radiant glyphs spanning the horizon. It shimmered like crystal fire, golden and ancient. The impact came a heartbeat later.

The explosion was apocalyptic. Light swallowed everything. The barrier held—barely—but cracks spidered across its surface like veins in glass. Each fracture glowed red-hot, threatening to shatter at any second.

Kyle stood amidst the ruin, chest heaving, his aura wild and unstable.

He grinned through the blood streaking his face. "The more I destroy… the more souls I harvest… the more points I gain."

The black beam screamed across the sky toward the elven borders. For a moment the world held its breath, then a massive barrier rose and took the impact. The shield cracked like thin glass under the blow, hairline fractures spidering across its face.

Alex watched, disgust contorting his features. He moved with the coiled lethality of a storm. "Do you think having a System gives you the right to play god?" he called, voice cold and cutting across the riven heavens.

"Believing there is no equal, that you can take whatever you want? Let me show you what real power looks like—far beyond the comprehension of any system. Power that cannot be copied."

His expression sharpened, grave and absolute. "I will show you what true power is."

A voice in Alex's head confirmed the thought with clinical finality. [ Using cosmic essence to create death-energy. ]

Black energy welled up inside Alex like an onyx sun. It pooled along his skin, seeping from his pores as if his very blood had turned to night. The air around him chilled; the position of the world felt suddenly wrong. Even Kyle's body screamed danger—alarms screamed in his mind.

From Alex's hand, a black-aura blade formed: not merely an object but a silhouette of unmaking. It thrummed with the sound of endings and brushed the sky like a promise of oblivion.

Alex laughed then, a low, almost manic sound, and the laugh carried like the edge of a mask falling away. "This time, I will cut it off with this," he said, voice bright with cruel certainty. "Show me how capable your System is. Call on your goddess. Let them save you from this."

Inside Kyle's mind, Sabrina's voice burst into hysterics. 'Impossible. This—this is death energy. Hades backing him? How—'

Kyle's panic bled into thought. 'Sabrina, what is that ominous energy? I've never felt anything like it. What the hell is that?'

'Kyle, run. Get away now,' Sabrina begged, raw panic in her tone. 'If you're struck, your soul will be destroyed. I might not be able to you.'

Kyle inhaled raggedly and answered to himself in a voice that sounded like a blade. 'I'm using the Sovereign Cores,' he thought. 'I don't see any other way. It's him or me. A world cannot have two rulers. At least one must die.'

He did not hesitate. Seven sovereign cores materialized before him—ominous relics of black glass and braided metal, each veined with molten crimson. They floated in a perfect, menacing ring, each humming with forbidden hunger.

In Alex's mind, a cold alert sounded. [ Host — those cores are dangerous. ] Alex's body moved in a flash.

But darkness erupted from the cores like a waking plague. The smoke roiled, knit, and hardened into seven living silhouettes. They drew breath as if despair were oxygen.

They took shape in hideous detail.

Four were men: one with skin like kiln-fired clay that split with a sound like tectonics, one whose grin was a hundred tiny teeth, one crowned with bone that dripped ancient rot, and another whose skin shimmered with crawling runes that shifted like living script.

Three were women: one hairing into blades that whispered when they moved, one lacquered in mirror-black that reflected not light but accusation, and one garlanded in thorn-lattices, her smile threaded with blood.

The aura that poured from them was unfathomable—pressure like drowning, colors that hurt to look at. Alex felt it in the marrow; his System's whisper became urgent. [ Host — all seven possess strength greater than Monarch. ]

Kyle laughed then, a wild, breaking sound. "What do you think of this? Each of them holds the power of a sin,"he crowed, eyes bright with a terrible hunger. "This is where your run ends. You've already lost."

Alex's gaze never left him. The aura around him darkened the sky as answered with a single emotionless sentence.

"Naah. I'd win."