The pain snapped off like a taut string was cut. Every seized up muscle in his body uncoiled, and he went limp on the altar, shivering and shaking uncontrollably. It was like someone had doused him in freezing cold water. He smelled like piss and vomit and blood, and he felt like hell. Weakly, he scrabbled for the edge of the altar, and then he looked up at the goddess looming above him.

“Did I pass?” he rasped, and she stared down at him with dead eyes.

“Yes,” she said. “You passed.”

“I can go home now?” he asked thickly, and she was silent for a moment.

“There is one final test for you,” she said, and he slowly sat up and stared at her, loath to get off the altar less she strike him down.

“What is that?”

“Initiating re-awakening,” she said, and pain unlike any of the last pain hit him in the face. He screeched in pure agony, nearly pitching off the altar, and he smacked his head on the platform. He felt something crack as something like power invaded his bloodstream, and he realized something very, very important.

Power was pain.

Power was pain, and he was sick of power.

Re-awakening? So, he was actually getting something out of this? Knowledge invaded his mind, knowledge he didn’t understand, and yet could use intimately, and he flickered out of existence as the first skill hit. The walls closed in, suddenly closer and tighter, and walls made of mana materialized, shimmering in multiple colors. They were fazing in and out of existence as his powers went haywire, and he screeched in pain, thrashing on the platform, before it faded away, slowly, steadily.

All you could hear were his harsh pants. His body felt lighter, more steady, stronger. He felt like he was on top of the world. There was a high overtaking his brain, and for once, he felt like something wasn’t staring at him.

“Can I get off now?” he asked, and there was silence. The goddess was gone. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he knew that. He slowly sat up, and then he stared down at the ground. He didn’t want to swing his legs down. His blood and piss was smeared all over the altar, and he didn’t want to sit here a second longer.

Fuck it. If he died, he died. She told him he did everything he needed to do, so what was he even complaining about?

His boots hit the ground, and he paused, waiting for some divine power to smite him down. When nothing happened, he slowly added more and more pressure to his feet until he was standing, and suddenly, they were no longer floating. They were back in the wildflower field, and he was staring at the expanse of it in silence. It was full of monsters, and they were all turning their heads to him.

Oh.

Now is when he tried out his new powers, he thought.

Slowly, he drew the two daggers sheathed at the small of his back, and then he took a step forward. Without even consciously realizing he did it, he disappeared and the world spun around him, dizzying and nausea-inducing, and then he was at the front of the gate, which was slowly turning from red to white.

A Cerberus growled at him and lunged, and without even realizing what he was doing, he threw up a wall. The Cerebus crashed into the wall, battering against it, and then it leapt over it. Another wall appeared over his head, the mana solidifying in an instant, and the Cerberus leapt off it and through the portal.

Ah. Shit, he realized as the hordes of S-rank monsters rushed him. Should he hold his ground for as long as he could, or should he run?

Common sense told him to run.

Common sense was not his strong point.

….

The gate broke open right in the middle of the damn freeway, and Antoni was at the front lines with his team, Hayley to his right, Audrey to his left, and Evan behind him. His healer buffed him, and Antoni flared up. Explosions rocketed along the freeway, and a Cerberus came out with a long howl, sliding across the ground. Shit. Not going to work, Antoni thought darkly. Cerberus creatures were fireproof, and it blew fire out at them as harpies swarmed the skies. Antoni immediately redirected his fire, blasting them with flames as he hammered at them with all his might, and the warmth of Evan’s buffs overtook him.

“HOLD THE LINE!” Antoni screamed as Verbose Guild from San Francisco rushed in, cowboys as always. A harpy swept down, aiming directly for Evan, Antoni’s A-rank healer, and he blasted fire at it. It swept off with a screech of annoyance, and Antoni slammed his hands into the ground. Explosions rocked the freeway, and he took in the sight of the freeway’s lifted exit directly over the portal. He would get so much shit for infrastructure damage, but he needed to slow them down. Creatures were being thrown left and right with the explosions, and he aimed the next one at the support struts on the bridge.

It blew, and the bridge crumbled on top of the portal, blocking it off for now. He planted mini explosives under the rubble, trap springs, and then Evan screamed behind him. Shit.

A harpy had swept down and was harassing him. He had a massive scratch on his face, and Antoni blew fire at the harpy, nearly singing Evan, and Evan ducked just in time to avoid fire directly to the face. Mikey Valencia rushed in, strengthened to the max with his healer adding additional buffs on top of that, and screamed as he punched the harpy in the head. The harpy’s head snapped around, and Antoni’s heart dropped. Oh, that just pissed her off.

The Cerberus bounded towards their group, and Antoni dove out of range as it barreled through them. Mikey caught him by the jaws, his feet cracking the pavement as he was driven back, and miniature explosions went off as more creatures wiggled out of the exit. Mikey suplexed the massive mutt, and Antoni knew he should wait on Meteor Shower, but he was running out of options. This battle was too fast paced and out of control. They had managed to get ten S-ranks to show up with their teams, but it was not enough. There were only twenty S-ranks in the whole of the United States, and they couldn’t even rally for this. They were about to lose their most valuable copper deposit in the country, and no one would be able to do anything about it.

“PULL BACK!” Antoni thundered, because the broken bridge was not stopping them in the slightest, and they hadn’t even seen the boss yet.

“NO!” Mikey screeched as he pummeled the Cerberus, to no avail. He was a monster of a beast, and that would be a fight that lasted quite a while.

“WE NEED TO PULL BACK AND REGROUP!”

“IF WE LET THEM OVERWHELM US, WE LOSE THE CITIES!” Mikey cried, and Heyley whirled on him.

“IF WE DIE HERE, WE LOSE THE CITIES, ANYWAY!” she cried, and Mikey gritted his teeth.

“WE CAN DO THIS!” he screeched, and then the Cerberus got his teeth in his shoulder. Mikey screamed in pain, and the Cerberus shook him like a ragdoll before flinging him into the air. Mikey went flying and crashed into the ground, ripping up the pavement in a line as he slid back, back, back, tumbling head over heels until he slammed into another overpass.

“CLEARLY WE CAN’T!” Antoni screamed at him, and Mikey lifted his head as his team healer rushed to his side. “WE NEED MORE S-RANKS!”

He was not about to get his whole team wiped out because of Mikey’s stupidity. He had never met the man in person, but he had heard plenty of stories about him. The man’s stubbornness had nearly gotten his team killed on multiple occasions.

A harpy swooped at Antoni, and then the entire rubble exploded. A small, human shape came flying out of it, and the person twisted midair, landing hard with their feet braced on thin air, and they launched off at the speed of light, vanishing into thin air, before they reappeared off to the left, landing hard on a harpy flying out of the portal. He lifted twin blades, and, with a twist, he took off her head. The body crashed to the ground, and he rolled through the turf and came to his feet just in time to fling his knife at the Cerberus before it could finish off Mikey. The knife stuck out of the thing’s eye, and then the person clapped his hands together. The other knife clattered to the ground, and the air around the Cerberus shimmered like a desert mirage, heat off the pavement. In an instant, it was…

Crushed.

Antoni’s mouth dropped open. Everyone stared as the Cerberus was flattened into a pancake, all of its bones exploding from its hide, ripping open its flesh and smearing its entrails on invisible walls it spilled out of, and Antoni…

Antoni had been here from the start.

Never once had he seen a death so brutal.

Its brain matter was oozing onto the pavement, and the person picked up his knife from the ground and spun it around. He turned, and Antoni took a moment before he recognized the soft brown eyes and messy brown hair.

That was…

Holy Walker.

How the fuck was he alive???

….

Everyone was staring at him, but Holy didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything but getting home so he could get a shower and a change of clothes. Slowly, he walked over to the remains of the three headed dog and picked up his knife, which had been expelled violently from the body and was now discarded on the ground, eyeball still attached. With a flick of his wrist, he sent the eyeball flying. It hit the wall with a wet squelch, and he turned his attention to the harpies.

They were swirling around in the air, nervous and unsure if they should attack or not, and he pursed his lips before he visualized steps in the air. He got a running start and bounded off them, bouncing left, right, left, right, before he flung himself out into thin air and landed hard on the back of one, plunging his dagger down into her brain. She started to drop from the sky, and he launched off her back and landed on the next, slitting her throat with a single blow, blood splattering across his face in a massive gush, and he dropped too fast this time. He materialized a wall and landed on it hard, rolling off of the edge and falling through the air, hitting another one and bouncing off of it, then dropping a knife to grab the edge of the next one.

Knowledge flowed through his head, knowledge he didn’t understand, and he dropped to a platform below him and cut the one above him. The knife fell, and he snatched it out of the air. Then, he turned and flung it as his mana sensing picked up a presence behind him, and the knife slammed into the head of the harpy and threw her whole body backwards. He teleported before he even realized what he was doing, swishing past her falling body and yanking his knife free as he spun midair and slashed another harpy across the chest.

Monsters were now pouring out of the portal, and he landed hard on the ground and rolled forward. He landed on his knees and slashed out the tendon of a beast he didn’t recognize, and then he practically catapulted to his feet and wrapped his legs around its throat, slicing its throat. Blood soaked his crotch, and the beast fell. This was going to take hours, he thought grimly. How annoying. He needed a shower. And now his crotch was soaked in blood.

He flipped the knife in his left hand over and flung it. It curved around and vanished midair, reappearing in the air above the next three headed dog, soaring down towards it and nailing it in the center head. With a clench of his fist, the next head was crushed, and he flung his next knife at the second head.

He felt possessed. Like he wasn’t even human anymore. There were no thoughts, no processing, no nothing. It was a blank slate. He had not a single thought in his head, and there was only an understanding that it was kill or be killed. He had no bloodlust, no desire to kill. It was simply a matter of fact.

Fire flared just in front of his face, and the heat singed his nose hairs. The acrid scent of burnt hair rose up in his nostrils, and he shot an annoyed glance in the direction of the fire mage. He knew the man was probably an S-rank, but it was pretty clear at this point that Holy was an S-rank, too, considering how easily he was defeating these creatures.

“Holy Walker?” Antoni asked. “Or was it---?”

“It’s Holy,” Holy interrupted, and Antoni approached him.

“How did you even survive?” he asked, and Holy stared at him.

“Painfully,” he deadpanned, and Antoni frowned at him.

My executioner.

What did that mean?

“Is that all?” Antoni asked, and Holy looked past him at the rampaging wolf-like beast headed directly for him. Without a word, Holy vanished and reappeared behind him, taking a few steps forward and leaping forward to wrap his legs around the wolfman’s waist and twist his hips. The two of them went down, and he leaned forward and ripped his teeth through the wolfman’s throat. Fur, skin, muscle, organs all came out as he ripped free and spat out, and blood spurted out, squirting him in the face. He smelled more like blood than piss now.

“Keep your eyes up,” Holy ordered and vanished again as Antoni stared at him with wide, unseeing eyes. Holy reappeared behind him and picked up his knives, spinning them around, and charged forward into the fray.

He wouldn’t be able to go home until this was dealt with.

Dammit.

Fuck.

This was going to take hours.