Chapter 54: Grim Reaper
The System took control.
Inside Nathan’s shattered body on the stone floor, something moved that wasn’t a muscle, wasn’t a thought, wasn’t a decision. It was the Class itself taking the wheel for the first time since the day of the alley. The root essence of the Grim Reaper awakening from the part of Nathan he’d never directly explored—and that had been waiting for exactly this moment during the five days since the Seal’s activation.
His eyes, which had closed moments before, snapped open.
Abruptly.
And his pupils, which until that second had been the everyday pupils of Nathan Voss, now had a dark green tone starting from the center and expanding outward until it covered the entire iris.
The creature that had been pressing on his chest noticed first.
It lifted its paw.
Stepped back half a step.
Emitted a low, guttural sound—specifically confused.
And in the entire passage, in that momentary silence, the System finished calculating.
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EMERGENCY TRANSFORMATION — PHASE 1
Reorganizing internal mana channels.
Suspending moderation protocols.
Extracting Class root essence.
Adapting bearer’s physical form
to the Grim Reaper’s full manifestation.
Bearer level: 5.
Functional level during transformation:
Temporarily elevated.
Estimated duration: until exhaustion
or active threat elimination.
Initiating external manifestation.
```
Nathan rose from the ground.
Not with effort. Not with broken joints complaining. Not with bones cracking from movement. He rose as if the stomping had never happened. As if the poison had evaporated. As if his body had been redesigned in the last three seconds by something that knew exactly what a functional body should be in this moment.
The creature that had been pressing on his chest retreated another step.
The other eight watched him.
The leader, beside them, narrowed its eyes.
And on Nathan’s right forearm, the door mark ignited.
Intense green. Dark green. Green of night forest. Green of the ink that Yeva had responded to Liaraen with in Marren. The glow shone through the torn sleeve of his jacket and illuminated the passage with a light that came from no flame.
And Nathan’s clothes changed.
The torn jacket dissolved into fragments that rose around his body before reforming into something different. The pants and boots transformed in the same process. Fragments that rose and fell and reorganized.
When the process finished, Nathan was dressed in something ancient.
A long tunic of muted black, crossed by green veins that twisted across the fabric with the apparent calm of thick smoke. The edges of the fabric were frayed and burnt at the corners, as if the garment had passed through centuries of use without repair. Over his shoulders, a sort of short mantle that fell to his elbows. On his hands, gauntlets of dark, lusterless leather.
The clothes weren’t ornamental.
They were functional.
They were the clothes the Class had worn at some time before Nathan—generations or millennia ago, in some previous existence the root essence remembered and Nathan himself hadn’t lived.
And in the air before him, something appeared.
It started as a green thread. Thin. Almost invisible. The thread grew. Coiled on itself. Solidified. Took the form of a long handle approximately one meter eighty in height. The upper end opened into a curved blade—not of metal but of a green substance that emitted its own light. The blade had the sheen of things that are alive and things that are death simultaneously.
A scythe.
Green.
Brilliant.
Suspended in the air before Nathan at the exact height for his right hand to take it without lowering or raising it.
Nathan took it.
His gauntleted hand closed around the handle.
And in the second his fingers closed, the scythe emitted a small flash of acceptance.
*The bearer has claimed the instrument.*
*The instrument has recognized the bearer.*
*The contract is reestablished.*
Nathan spun the scythe once. Smoothly—though he’d never physically touched one in his life. The green blade cut through the air with a specific sound.
Then he lowered it to his side.
And looked at the nine creatures.
---
They looked back.
None moved.
The leader, which had been a meter and a half from the central creature, slowly turned toward Nathan. Its black eyes processed the transformation with the attention of a hunter that recognizes when prey is no longer prey.
And in the nine remaining creatures, without instruction, without coordination, something happened that had never happened to them in the time they’d existed as dungeon creatures.
They felt fear.
Not situational fear that made them retreat when a battle went wrong. Primal fear. Deeper-level fear. Fear that didn’t come from the brain—the part of the animal nervous system that recognized apex predators and sent escape signals even when the body didn’t yet know why it should flee.
The nine creatures began to tremble.
Almost imperceptibly at first. Then more strongly. The stingers of the four large ones lowered. The clawed hands of the five agile ones contracted. The black eyes blinked with a speed that wasn’t natural.
The leader noticed.
It looked at them.
Then looked at Nathan.
Smiled with the forced smile of someone who’s decided that acknowledging fear would be worse than ignoring it.
"Attack," the leader said.
The creatures didn’t move.
"Attack," the leader repeated, louder.
The creatures kept trembling.
"ATTACK!" the leader roared.
And this time, by instinct older than fear, by obedience trained over generations of hierarchy within the corrupted pack, the nine creatures charged.
Against their own fear.
Against their own knowledge that they were running toward a specifically inevitable death.
They charged.
And Nathan, with the green scythe in his hand and with the specifically empty expression of someone who was no longer entirely Nathan Voss in that moment, moved.
The first agile creature arrived first. It leaped toward Nathan’s chest, claws outstretched.
Nathan swung the scythe once.
The green blade sliced the creature diagonally from its right shoulder to its left hip. The two halves fell to the ground before Nathan had even finished the swing.
The creature’s soul, a pale green mist, rose from the two halves and was drawn into the scythe’s handle, then into Nathan’s chest.
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SOUL HARVESTED
HP RECOVERED: +140
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