Bloodstar System: Infinite Evolution Through Beast Slaughter

Chapter 15: Fiend!

Norcrest Central Hospital.

Special care ward.

Dace lay on the hospital bed with his right arm wrapped in thick plaster and suspended high above him.

His face was swollen like overproofed dough. The handsome features he once took pride in were now squeezed together, making him look both ridiculous and frightening.

Joren had done that with the flat of a blade.

Even after the best treatment and the use of expensive cell repair fluid, the burning sting remained, like a hot iron pressed against his skin, reminding him of his humiliation every second.

"Your father said you should focus on recovering."

At the door of the ward, a middle aged butler in a black suit lowered his head. His tone was respectful, but there was distance in it.

"As for Astraeus War College... the master said to let it go this year and repeat another year. As for Joren, the master will send someone to deal with him and help you vent this anger."

Dace said nothing.

He stared at the ceiling, his eyes threaded with blood.

Let it go?

What kind of joke was that?

If he failed to enter Astraeus War College this year and had to remain at school like a repeat student, suffering the whispers and pointed looks of others, that shame would be worse than death.

And besides.

Let his family deal with Joren?

What would that make him?

That would mean admitting that he, Dace, was trash. That he could not even handle an expelled nobody and had to run home crying to his father.

"Get out."

Dace forced the word through his teeth.

The butler paused, but did not try to persuade him further. He bowed slightly, withdrew, and closed the door softly behind him.

The ward sank into a deathly quiet.

Only the heart monitor continued its dull beeping.

Dace slowly turned his head and looked at the fruit basket on the bedside table.

Beneath the expensive fruit, an inconspicuous black iron box was hidden.

His breathing quickened.

It was something he had bought on the black market half a year ago.

The seller had been a strange old man who muttered constantly, claiming it was a sacred object brought out from a forbidden zone, something that could remake the body and grant power beyond the mortal world.

Dace had only found it amusing at the time and bought it on a whim.

Later, he had someone identify it.

It was no sacred object.

It was the flesh of a Fiend.

Fiends.

They were more terrifying and more evil than Voidbeasts.

They possessed intelligence and strange abilities, and they carried pollution and madness with them.

Human Awakened Warriors regarded Fiends as mortal enemies.

Anyone contaminated by Fiend power would be treated as a heretic and hunted by all of humanity.

Dace had once sneered at the thought.

He was a Martial Prodigy with a bright future. How could he possibly touch something so filthy?

But now...

Joren’s eyes surfaced in his mind again.

Cold as blades.

The way Joren had looked at him, as if he were nothing but garbage.

And that hand that had crushed his bones so easily.

"Ah!"

Dace suddenly let out a suppressed growl.

With his uninjured left hand, he grabbed the black iron box like a madman.

That helplessness.

That humiliation of being trampled underfoot.

It was driving him insane.

"Joren... you forced me to do this..."

Dace’s face twisted. With trembling fingers, he opened the iron box.

A nauseating sweet metallic stench spread through the room at once.

Inside lay a black lump of flesh the size of a thumb.

It did not look dead.

It was still wriggling slightly, its surface leaking sticky black fluid as it contracted and expanded like something alive.

This was Fiend flesh.

Once eaten, it would grant power.

But the price...

He might become a monster.

A mindless killing machine.

Dace looked at the piece of flesh, and fear flickered in his eyes.

Then he thought of Joren.

He thought of his ruined right hand.

"As long as I can kill you... so what if I become a Fiend?"

Madness flashed through Dace’s eyes.

He grabbed the wriggling black lump and shoved it into his mouth.

A cold, foul taste of blood spread across his tongue.

Then came a violent burning pain, as if his organs were about to be scorched into ash.

"Gah!"

It hurt.

It hurt too much.

It felt as though countless knives were stirring inside his stomach, slicing his organs into scraps.

It also felt as if countless worms had drilled into his blood vessels and were gnawing at his flesh.

Dace rolled across the floor in agony, both hands clutching his throat. His nails dug deep into his skin, carving out bloody marks.

A force rampaged through his body, destroying its structure, then rebuilding it in a strange and twisted way.

Crack.

Crack.

His broken arm suddenly swelled.

The skin turned dark blue black, and a layer of fine scales covered it.

His nails grew sharp and long, like the claws of a beast.

The pain of broken bones regrowing nearly made Dace faint.

But he did not pass out.

A violent, bloodthirsty will slammed into his mind, holding him in a state of extreme clarity and madness.

After an unknown amount of time, the sounds in the ward gradually faded.

Dace lay sprawled on the floor, gasping heavily.

His once normal eyes had turned into strange vertical pupils, giving off a faint green glow.

He raised his right hand.

It could no longer be called a hand.

It was a claw covered in dark blue black scales, packed with corded muscle and bulging veins. An evil aura leaked from it, enough to make the heart tremble.

Dace tried clenching his fist.

Crack.

The air popped in his palm.

Right now, he felt as if he could tear apart a true ranked Awakened Warrior.

"So this is... the power of a Fiend?"

Dace looked at himself in the mirror.

The swelling on his face had disappeared, but his skin had turned pale, without the slightest trace of blood.

In those vertical pupils, there was no longer any human emotion.

Only endless greed and killing intent.

"Joren..."

Dace stretched out his mutated claw and lightly dragged it across the window made from special tempered glass.

Screech.

The extremely hard tempered glass was sliced open as easily as tofu, leaving five deep marks behind.

The cuts were smooth as mirrors.

"I will repay the pain you gave me tenfold, a hundredfold."

"I will crush every bone in your body, one at a time."

"I will tear the flesh from you piece by piece."

Dace walked to the wardrobe, changed into a black tracksuit, and pulled up the hood to cover his strange eyes.

Then he walked to the window and pushed open the pane he had carved apart.

From the twelfth floor, he leaped out.

The wind roared past his ears.

His figure vanished into the endless night.