The Iron-Hoofed Behemoth's horn was a blur of rusted bone and jagged metal, mere centimeters from piercing Alex's sternum. To any observer, he was a dead man—a sacrificial lamb crushed by the weight of a C-Rank nightmare. He could smell the creature's fetid breath, a mix of rotting meat and sulfurous mana that threatened to paralyze his lungs.
But in Alex's vision, the world didn't just slow down; it fractured. Time had turned into thick syrup, every vibrating particle of dust suspended in the stagnant air.
[The Void Hand: Activated.]
His fingers brushed the cold surface of the void, and the blood-red sun floating in the monster's skull reacted. It wasn't just a sphere of light; it was the concentrated essence of the beast's malice. It didn't just move; it was dragged through the dimensions. The sphere screamed across the distance, tethered to Alex's palm by invisible, ravenous threads of void energy that hummed with a low, predatory frequency.
[Extraction Successful!][You have scavenged SSS-Rank Fragment: Unstoppable Force (1/10).][Temporary Buff: Your next physical strike ignores 100% of the target's Physical Defense.]
The moment the fragment touched his skin, a surge of primordial heat exploded in Alex's veins. It felt as if liquid iron was being pumped directly into his heart. His pulse hammered like a war drum against his ribs, pushing back the cold grip of death.
Move.
Alex twisted his body with a fluidity that shouldn't have been possible for a malnourished scavenger who had spent years eating nutrient paste and sleeping on cold concrete. The Behemoth's horn grazed his threadbare tunic, tearing the fabric, but it missed his flesh by a hair's breadth. The beast slammed into the cavern wall behind him with the force of a runaway freight train, sending spiderweb cracks racing up to the ceiling and shaking the very foundations of the Silent Hollow.
The beast let out a confused, guttural grunt. Its momentum had stalled, its massive horn buried nearly a meter deep into the solid rock. It struggled to yank itself free, its massive muscles rippling like tectonic plates under its iron-like hide, but the stone held firm.
Alex didn't run for the exit. For the first time in his life, the fear that had defined his existence was gone, replaced by a cold, calculating hunger. He looked at the wolf corpses littering the floor—the "trash" Victor and his team had left behind without a second thought. To them, these were useless husks; to Alex, they were a gold mine.
"Pick up," Alex muttered, his voice raspy and raw. "Everything. I want every single scrap."
He sprinted past the first wolf corpse. [Picked up: Strength +5. Your muscle fibers densify and harden.]
He swiped his hand through a pool of glowing blue mist near another carcass. [Picked up: Agility +3. Your nerves tingle with lightning, shortening your reaction time.]
He lunged for a broken silver sword, a discarded relic of some long-dead adventurer. [Picked up: Sharpness Essence +10. Your fingertips feel like whetted blades, capable of rending steel.]
With every step, the agonizing heaviness in Alex's limbs vanished. The exhaustion of years of starvation, the humiliation of being a "bottom-feeder," and the physical toll of manual labor were burned away by the raw, unrefined power flooding his system. He felt his bones knitting tighter, his vision sharpening until he could see the individual pores on the Behemoth's skin and the tiny tremors in its muscles.
The monster finally tore its horn from the wall with a shower of stone splinters, turning its head with a roar of pure, unadulterated fury. It expected to see a mangled corpse; instead, it saw the small human—not cowering, but standing in the center of the chamber, his body wreathed in swirling orbs of white, gold, and crimson light.
The Behemoth charged again, its hooves shaking the earth. But to Alex's enhanced perception, the beast was moving through water. Its movements were telegraphed by pulsing red veins of "Weakness Points" highlighted by his [Divine Sight]. He could see the structural flaw in its throat, the gap in its armor-like skin where the mana flowed thinnest.
"My turn to be the butcher," Alex hissed, a dark smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth.
He didn't have a weapon. He didn't need one. He balled his fist, the [Sharpness Essence] coating his knuckles in a faint, shimmering edge that hummed with lethality, while the [Unstoppable Force] fragment glowed like a dying star within his marrow.
As the Behemoth reached him, Alex didn't dodge. He stepped into the strike, meeting the mountain of flesh head-on. His fist drove upward like a hydraulic piston toward the monster's throat—the precise point of failure.
BOOM.
The shockwave blew the surrounding sulfur mist clear in a perfect circle. The Behemoth's massive head snapped back at an impossible angle, the sheer kinetic energy bypassing its hide and shattering its internal structure. The sound of its neck vertebrae snapping echoed through the cavern like a sequence of heavy firecrackers. Its several-ton body actually lifted off the ground, propelled by a force that defied every law of physics the System had established.
The monster crashed into the ground, its legs twitching in a final, violent spasm. A low moan escaped its throat before its life force finally extinguished, leaving only the silence of the grave.
Silence returned to the Silent Hollow, broken only by the frantic thrumming of Alex's heart and his heavy, ragged breathing. But the silence didn't last long.
Then, the harvest began.
From the Behemoth's massive carcass, dozens of light spheres erupted like a fountain of divine jewels. There were standard white ones, several rare greens that pulsed with life, and a single, pulsing violet orb that drifted toward the ceiling, radiating an aura of ancient power.
[Detected: C-Rank Elite Corpse. Mass Extraction initiated...][Strength +12, Constitution +15, Stamina +10, Mana +8][Detected Rare Attribute: Iron-Hoof Durability (Passive) - Increases skin density by 40%.][Detected Skill Fragment: Brutal Trample (1/5) - Collect more to unlock the active skill.]
Alex stood amidst the fading glow, his shadow stretching long and menacing against the massive stone doors that Victor had locked from the outside. He felt a cold, sharp clarity he had never known. His SSS-Rank profession wasn't about "cleaning" the world's messes; it was about dismantling the world itself and rebuilding it in his own image.
He walked toward the reinforced stone gate, each step heavy with the weight of his newfound power. On the other side, he could hear the faint, muffled sounds of laughter and the clinking of glasses. Victor's team was already celebrating their "heroic" escape and his "unfortunate" death.
Alex placed his palm against the foot-thick stone. It felt warm, almost fragile, under his touch.
"You said I was a parasite, Victor," Alex whispered, his voice vibrating through the stone like a death knell. "But a parasite only survives. A scavenger... a scavenger takes everything you have left. Including your life."
With a thought, he channeled the newly acquired [Strength], [Unstoppable Force], and [Iron-Hoof Durability] into his right arm. The air around his fist began to distort from the sheer pressure.
CRACK.
A hairline fracture appeared in the center of the heavy gate, spider-webbing outward as the stone began to groan under the might of the man it was meant to cage.