"Damn it..."

I laid there with a heavy scowl on my face after she'd left, pain still ravaging the my right torso as I shuddered from the aching pangs that suddenly came and went. I patiently guided the MP around my body, the cloudy magic energy informing me of my condition:

'3 fractured ribs, light internal hemorrhaging, and some damage to my muscles.'

It wasn't nearly as bad as it could've been, but her attack had still hit fairly deep.

I knew I'd been spared simply because she didn't care enough for whether I lived or died, and I was angry at myself for being glad about my weakness in this moment. It was like I was using my inability to level-up quickly as a crutch, it felt disgusting.

Maybe if I was strong enough for her to see me as an actual threat, I would've been killed without a doubt, just like Leon. Anger crept into my heart like venom at the sudden fearful imagery which appeared in my head, and my vision shook violently.

While seeing red, self-loathing and rage filled me like lit gasoline, nails digging into my palms hard enough to leave marks and knuckles whitening like ice as I clenched my fists. I was good at looking composed and like I had an apathetic temperament most of the time, but even then I still couldn't extinguish the inferiority complex that clung onto my soul like the claws of a demon.

'I bet that fucking bitch had to suck up to a powerful Avatar to learn all that...'

'She probably worked so damn hard too, she doesn't even look good...!'

'What kind of shitty world is this? Where I'm weaker than a fucking arrogant whore!?'

With such powerful abilities, the Gods would've flocked to her like a gaggle of mangy, rabid dogs and pushed her into the higher spots of the Channel Rankings, like they do with all the lucky ones that catch their fancy.

But since I hadn't ever heard anything of someone like her – and god knows how much information those rats at the Lunar Auction manage to sniff out to sell to people like me – it meant she wasn't popular yet, so she'd only shown those skills recently.

She couldn't have been from another country or nearby region, since the changes in the Channel Rankings would be noticed:

It was only capable of showing the rankings for the country we currently resided in, the United States Of Almeric.

That meant she was still learning those skills, or that someone was teaching her. I fancied the thought of someone that'd already learnt those same abilities passing them down, as that would've put her in the same in the same submissive position she'd put me in.

Then, a crisp ding came into my mind as my vision cleared up.

---

[Gods: 7]

Chat Window:

[The Seventh Moon's Lord: Hey, why did you act like a lapdog? It was so unsightly I gagged.]

[Courier Of The Ancient Kings: I'll give you 320 SP if you try to fight her again!]

[The Violet Ocean's Witch: Does anyone here recognize her at all? I can't find her Channel anywhere.]

[Great Wolf That Swallowed The Sun: I don't either. I really want to give her my Blessing, though.]

[Demon King Of The Raven Star: I'll donate 300 SP if you try to flirt with her!]

[The Violet Ocean's Witch: Why would she accept the Blessing of a mutt like you when she could get mine?]

---

I groaned and shuddered again as a wave of pain spread from deep within my right chest.

"u-Ugh... Shit! Why are you still in my Channel if you like that fucking bitch so much!"

My Channel hadn't changed much at all, really — sadistic Gods were still sending a bunch of bizarre, random or outright suicidal requests for ludicrous amounts of Star Points, I was still being insulted for not being as strong as other Avatars, and the last few Gods that were really there for entertainment and who donated the bulk of the Star Points were leaving for better Channels.

Not that it would make much of a difference, since the bulk already wasn't that big to begin with.

Right now I didn't want to suck up to any of them, so I just shut off the window after saying what I wanted.

I clenched my teeth with a wounded expression and my mind cleared up as I sighed, rummaging around the belt on my waist for any [Tears Of Recovery]. I wanted something more fine-tuned to my current situation, but I couldn't afford it, could I?

After a few moments, I found the pocket reserved for them and fished out one of the small ampoules before undoing the cork and downing it quickly, like someone who'd been lost in a desert quenching their thirst. It wasn't healthy, but who cared.

I certainly didn't.

The refreshing warmth quickly spread throughout my entire body, and I felt my vitality returning as my ribs were rebuilt, the internal bleeding ceased and my veins were mended, and my muscles were soothed.

Roughly half of the damage done to me was healed, which was expected since [Tears Of Recovery] were rather low-tier recovery potions and were merely E-Grade. But like stated previously, It wasn't like I could afford better to be complaining.

'It's more than enough.'

[Tears Of Recovery (E)]
[Usage Restriction: Level 7+]

[Description: A healing concoction made by an elementary scholar from the eyes of a Spiked Lizard Troll.]
[Innate Skill: 〈Changeling〉 Regenerates any lesser injuries, wounds, and ailments of the user by around +45%.]

'But... why are there only 4 left?'

Lynos had only used 1 before he died, and since I'd now taken 1 as well to heal there should've been 5 left. As I thought about that more though, my face suddenly fell as I remembered an important detail — I kept an extra bottle in my inner armour for emergencies in case I didn't have the time to search for it, which meant that the woman had also plundered an extra precious item from me.

"That damn... Even then, she still took my stuff..."

I slowly stood up with a grunt, stumbling slightly with a pained face before trudging towards a ruined shop and leaning against its walls, cradling my side with my left arm in an attempt to quell the pain that still sprouted like an overgrown bramble.

Though it wasn't throbbing much and didn't seem like it would suffocate me like earlier, it was still painful enough for me to want to yell and scream. Well, that was pretty much every injury, I guess.

Wasn't the best at the whole "pain endurance" thing.

I looked down to the warped, bent rifle that had been almost completely destroyed in the fight and clicked my tongue before ignoring it altogether. Had better things to do at the moment than mourn a discount weapon like that.

'I need to get to Outpost Manticore before it gets too late.'

Our original destination was the military fortress to the southwest of Outpost Gheist, one that had a pretty bad relationship with it. If things went as planned we'd sell out Roderick Powell as the new leader of the camp after overthrowing General Brerick, which would grant us many privileges that others could only stare at with envy while drooling, the jealous mutts.

We'd live no worse than those wealthy officers in the new camp.

But that woman had stopped us before we could even get close to it.

Now I was stranded in the middle of the dangerous No Man's Land that was the city in between the camps, and I had no weapons or strength left at all to defend myself other than a black pistol which I didn't keep in the best conditions as my side arm.

Others would become hopeless only at the sheer thought of it, even to the point that it was an unspoken rule between Avatars not to have any fights when too far away from the outposts.

But still, a bandit-like woman appeared and plundered my things without mercy.

'That cunt, damn highway robber...'

I clicked my tongue while walking forward, the path to Outpost Manticore burnt into my mind's eye.

It was at times like these that I liked to thing I was fundamentally different from other Avatars — even in the face of unspeakably low odds, I always choose fight on like a wild dog to survive. And when I couldn't do that, I'd instead just bow my head and wait for my chance, the opportunity to run wild again, where I'd see the ugly faces of who'd humiliated me.

Although I wasn't very patient, knowing how strike at the right time and how to maneuver myself around uncertain situations helped make up for it, so I'd always managed to repay almost all my accumulated debts quickly until now, and satisfactorily too.

"w-Wait. Let's talk calmly about this, we're all fellow Avatars here."

I dropped my rifle to my side and picked up a needle, one of the tools I always kept on me just for this.

"You... You fucking bastard! I'll skin you alive, you cowardly bitch!"

I smiled and walked closer, seeing my reflection on their eye.

"C'mon, aren't we still allies in the end...?"

Grabbing them by the back of the head, I brought it closer and clo--

...

Well...

It was enough to say I was the type of person who didn't forgive my enemies easily, even when my blood had cooled.

'Roderick, and now this lady too...'

These 2 situations wouldn't end any differently from the past if it was up to me. But before that, I needed to reach Outpost Manticore, since I wasn't keen on staying in No Man's Land during the night. I already all my hairs standing on end.

"Grrrowl..."

An odd and guttural sound with a shrill, metallic ring to it then came from somewhere to my left.

'Eh? Wha--?'

Suddenly, cold and sharp blades dug into my side with a merciless momentum, shredding my skin like a layer of wet cardboard and tearing my muscles into ribbons. The world spun around me as I was thrown to the ground like a doll, my attacker still nailed to me.

When the ground and the sky stopped spinning, the pain set in and I noticed how brutal the damage was.

"a-AaaAhhH!"

I panicked and kicked the thing off me, pressing my hand to my wounds and feeling a river of blood leaking out like water from a broken tap. Applying pressure didn't seem to help even a little bit, and I felt a cold shiver run up my spine at the several croaky growls and rough barks that sounded like metal being ground on metal.

'How many are...?'

No, that didn't really matter right now.

I could barely cock my head up head to before the smell hit me, drowning out my other senses as a nauseating and putrid stench invaded my nostrils and chocked the air out of my lungs. It was blood and steel and decay all bundled up together, a true chimeric miasma.

Surrounding me like starved, mocking hyenas waiting for a buffet, metal armour sets that looked like wolves with fresh blood leaking from their open bits and cold bodies haphazardly thrown inside were digging into the concrete.

They reminded me of bulls readying their charge.

All I could focus on were their black eyes that shone with bone-chilling violet and blue light, and I felt as if I was looking inside blazing suns of roaring malice. They weren't like Dark Rose Footmen acting on instinct, no; they were much worse:

It was hunger instead of mindless behavior that moved them. But it was a much darker type of hunger than for simple sustenance, it simply wasn't something that should have been desired within the natural order of things.

"Aah...!"

I whined painfully into the cold air with gritted teeth, scrambling to get away from those things.

'No... It can't be like this...!'

Then they pounced on me, tearing into my flesh with ferocious desire and a cold, awful lust for something I couldn't understand. My throat was ripped up violently before I could utter anything more, my flesh and muscles were sundered under the dreadful steel of their many fangs and claws, and my bones were crushed into splinters under the weight of the armoured mountain atop me.

As the shock got me and the pain started to mellow out, I felt an overpowering exhaustion and urge to sleep grip me by my soul. I struggled to keep my eyes open, and while an errant claw dug into my left eyeball, I saw something that filled me with despair:

"[Hmm? It seems that someone interesting has passed through here.]"

It was a language I never heard before but that was fluently translated into english, an ancient-sounding tongue that humans weren't made to ever hear or speak. The pain as those words seemed to pound against my skull like a church bell was excruciating.

My ears started to ring and heavy trails of warm liquid seeped from them, and yet my eyes still tortured me.

Standing tall and proud some streets over from me, something horrible weighed down on the air around it with just presence alone. Such a distance that was likely to take me a solid minute to close but only a few steps for it still didn't help at all.

In that moment I felt like a set of gigantic chains were weighing me down, and the wolf monsters calmed down and let out distorted whimpers of trained submission, lowering their heads in reverence to that cursed being as they made way.

They still held me down with their height, but even if I could physically stand up, my legs would still buckle with that sight:

Something with a huge, gaping maw filled with excessive rows of jagged and broken dark grey teeth that drooled out disgusting black sludge, violet serrated tentacles and spiked tendrils sprouting from its back, and a giant building-sized body fixed its sights on me.

A truly horrible effigy of the alien forces that'd been invited into our world for the Gods' entertainment.

"[Aah! A human has appeared all the way out here? I'm sure you have information that could please my lord.]"

"[Be honored, mortal. Destiny has smiled upon you, for you to freely gaze at the sacred body gifted by my great king.]"

My vision darkened ever so slightly, its rancid and screeched cackling cutting into the very core of my being.

 

I hadn't encountered many Dark Rose Footmen after going farther away from their territories, but instead I'd found many roving squadrons of armoured Shadow Hounds sneaking through the city, like a silent army of shadows.

Once I'd even had the misfortune to chance upon a small army of them marching through the streets, narrowly avoiding a possible deadly encounter with the dark parade by hiding inside a ruined building.

They were almost numbering in the thousands by now, and I couldn't help but question where they were hiding in daytime.

Deep into the dangerous and lively night, I was still slowly trekking through the streets in the direction where I'd thought that Outpost Gheist was located, and I deeply regretted not having questioned the gunman about the exact location of the place. Still, I wouldn't cry over spilled milk at this point in time. The only choice was to keep moving forward.

'But I'm getting so hungry... and thirsty as well...'

The biological needs that hadn't acted up since I'd arrived on this 2nd Earth were also rearing their heads now, and I knew it wasn't going to be long before other kinds of more... urgent needs would eventually appear too. I wanted to reach the fortress before then.

'God, please help your pitiful child.'

I didn't want to have to relieve myself in the open like this. That would be horrible.

As I rounded corner after corner of the abandoned, destroyed, and nameless city I thought about my plan once I reached Outpost Gheist, and especially what I'd do to hide my Force Aura. It was my main weapon, so it wasn't like I could just refrain from using it.

Revealing anything about my origins or powers would not only probably go against the wishes of the Slayer's Legacy – else why would it go through the trouble of setting up a fake identity – but also call an incredible amount of trouble I wouldn't be able to deal with.

There was one thing she needed to gain first:

'Notoriety.'

I had to gain either the strength or the influence to act as I pleased, and the latter was easier than the former.

It wasn't like I planned on acting like the main character of an Isekai or regression novel and hide my skills since, while I considered it to be a sound strategy on some occasions, I heavily disagreed with using them now. With more notoriety would come the recognition of my power and sway over people, and with that would naturally come some kind of authority if I did it right.

'While it's impossible for me to completely avoid problems, in the long run it'll be in my best interests.'

Well, I wasn't an original inhabitant of this world and I didn't have any plans of settling down yet, so the actions I took were pretty much meaningless in the grand scheme of things unless they affected me immediately in the short term.

And without having to worry about upsetting key figures and powerful individuals since I'd be gone before they could really get their act together in this chaotic situation, I had much more freedom than I ever did or would ever have on my original Earth.

My plan relied on me gaining power, but that didn't really mean much since I didn't have enough info to work out the quirks.

"Just what was I even thinking back then? Did the blood loss affect me or what?"

Instead of interrogating my surviving attacker about any large groups and key figures excluding Roderick, I'd just left after taking his armour like a straight dumbass. I got a splitting headache just thinking about my sudden stupidity, but I wasn't the type of person to keep regretting the past and indulge in self-pity. What was done was done, and the only thing I could do was deal with the aftermath.

Then, after I rounded another corner, I saw something that made me feel instinctively uneasy.

A large dark wall that shadowed even the surrounding buildings was set in the middle of what I guessed was initially a park from the ravaged greenery and dirt around the walls, and blinding searchlights bathed the ground in an pale haze.

The wall was dotted with small, bare watchtowers and improvised battlements of barbed wire netting, while small bulwarks and ramparts of soil and metal supported by grey-ish hedgehogs like those used to stop tanks in the past were spread around it.

I could see black silhouettes carefully patrolling the wall holding tools that resembled guns or more cold steel weapons, and the only entrance appeared to be a giant plate of wall directly across from me covered in old wheels and cogs.

Well, I guessed it was an entrance because of the dark ridges around its frame.

'This entire place... It feels like tar is clinging to my skin, how disgusting.'

I patted my arms through my armoured vambraces while avoiding the burnt skin to get rid of those goosebumps, but they stubbornly remained there as I advanced. As my prey was inside those walls, I naturally had to go in there to properly hunt him down, didn't I?

Carefully, I stepped into the light.