The heavy obsidian chest sat on the blood-stained floor of the clinic, its dark surface absorbing the flickering yellow light of the overhead bulb. Inside lay the fragment of the Archdemon's heart, a piece of dark-red tissue that defied the laws of biology. It was not merely dead meat; it was a rhythmic, pulsing engine of malice. Every time it beat, a low-frequency thrum vibrated through the concrete floor, causing the dust motes in the air to dance in violent, erratic patterns.
Alex Kane leaned forward, his right hand trembling slightly as he stared at the object. The extraction of the Ember Crystals had left him drained, his face a ghostly mask of sweat and pallor. His left shoulder was a cauterized ruin, a jagged stump of flesh and bone that ended abruptly at the joint. To any sane person, this was the end of a career, the mark of a broken man doomed to rot in the slums. To Alex, it was a blank canvas.
The air in the basement felt heavy, thick with the scent of sulfur and the metallic tang of dried blood. Old Jack stood by the door, his eyes fixed on the chest with a mixture of terror and revulsion. He had spent decades scavenging the scraps of the powerful, but he had never seen anything that radiated this kind of concentrated, primordial violence.
Is that... still beating? Jack's voice was a whisper, as if he feared the thing in the box might hear him.
Alex didn't answer immediately. He reached out with his right hand, his fingers hovering just inches above the fragment. Through his internal vision, the heart was a supernova of chaotic energy. It wasn't just physical matter; it was a condensed knot of the Destruction attribute, a fragment of the Red Gate's lord that had refused to fade into ash.
It isn't just beating, Jack, Alex finally whispered. It's breathing. It's waiting for a host.
What are you planning, Alex? Jack took a step forward, his brow furrowed. I can get you a high-grade mechanical limb from the scrap markets. It won't be perfect, but with your skills, you could rig it to work. You don't need to mess with that... that filth.
Alex looked up, and for a second, Jack saw something in the boy's eyes that chilled his blood. It wasn't madness, but a terrifyingly cold, logical greed. The kind of greed that looked at a god and saw only a pile of valuable components.
A mechanical arm has limits, Alex said, his voice flat. It relies on batteries, on servos, on the laws of physics that the Drakes and the System have already mastered. If I want to kill a monster, I can't do it with a toy. I have to become the variable that the System didn't account for.
He stood up, the movement causing a fresh wave of agony to ripple through his chest. He ignored it. He walked toward the corner of the clinic where the remains of his modified truck were piled—specifically, the reinforced chassis and the heavy-duty hydraulic struts that had been twisted into scrap by the demon's foot.
He knelt beside the metal pile. His right hand reached out, and the air around his palm began to shimmer with a faint, translucent distortion.
Void Hand... Attribute Extraction.
He pressed his hand against the mangled steel of the truck's chassis. The metal was cold and dead, but to Alex's senses, it was a reservoir of concepts. He searched for the specific density, the molecular resilience that had allowed the truck to ram through a reinforced perimeter fence without buckling.
Heavy Armor Defense... Hardness... Structural Integrity.
He began to pull. To Old Jack's eyes, it looked like Alex was simply gripping the metal, but as the seconds passed, the steel beneath Alex's hand began to lose its luster. It turned from a dull grey to a brittle, chalky white. The very essence of the metal's strength was being siphoned out, channeled through Alex's nervous system and stored in his palm as a glowing, silver-grey orb of pure attribute energy.
The strain was immense. Alex's muscles began to spasm, the lack of a left limb throwing his balance off, but he held on. He didn't just need the demon's power; he needed a framework to contain it. The demon's heart was pure destruction, but without a vessel, it would simply vaporize his remaining torso. He needed the 'Heavy Armor' attribute to act as the casing for the furnace.
When the silver orb reached the size of a marble, Alex let go. The truck chassis beneath him shattered into fine dust, its structural reality having been completely removed.
Now, Alex gasped, his lungs burning. The real gamble.
He returned to the surgical table and sat down, gesturing for Jack to come closer. Jack, I need you to hold me down. If this goes wrong, don't try to save me. Just burn the clinic and run.
Alex, this is suicide, Jack pleaded, his hands shaking as he reached for the leather restraints on the table. You're trying to fuse demon flesh with extracted metal attributes inside a human body. The rejection rate will be a thousand percent.
Then I'll just have to be ten thousand percent more stubborn, Alex said.
He picked up the dark-red fragment with his right hand. The moment his skin touched the tissue, the room erupted in a rhythmic, deafening boom. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. It wasn't just a sound; it was a physical pressure that rattled the surgical instruments and sent a shower of dust falling from the ceiling.
The fragment began to extend tiny, hair-like filaments of dark-red energy, sensing the proximity of a living host. They lashed out, stinging Alex's palm, trying to burrow into his veins.
Alex didn't flinch. He pressed the fragment directly against the raw, open wound of his left shoulder.
The scream that left his mouth was not human. It was a sound of absolute, unmitigated rupture.
The demon heart didn't just sit on the wound; it slammed into it, driven by a predatory instinct to survive. The dark filaments surged into Alex's brachial artery, turning his veins a bruised, glowing purple that could be seen through his skin.
Attribute Alchemy... Fusion!
Alex's mind became a battlefield. He visualized the silver-grey orb of the Heavy Armor attribute and shoved it into the center of the chaotic red energy. He was trying to perform a microscopic engineering feat while his body felt like it was being fed into a wood chipper.
The red energy—the Destruction attribute—roared in protest. It tried to consume the metal essence, to melt it down into nothingness. But Alex utilized every scrap of his focus to weave them together. He used the metal to create a skeletal structure, a cage of reinforced atoms, and forced the demon flesh to wrap around it.
It's too much! Jack yelled, trying to hold Alex's thrashing body against the table. The smell of burning meat filled the air as the energy discharge scorched the surgical sheets. Your heart is going to burst!
Alex's vision was a strobe light of agony and crimson. He could feel the demon's consciousness—a faint, lingering echo of primordial hunger—trying to overwrite his own. It showed him visions of a world turned to ash, of a throne made of teeth.
You want... to eat me? Alex's internal voice was a snarl of defiance. I'm a scavenger. I don't get eaten. I digest.
He bit down on his tongue so hard he tasted copper. He redirected the energy, forcing the fusion to descend into the marrow of his remaining bone fragments.
The throbbing in the room reached a crescendo. The lightbulb overhead shattered, plunging the clinic into a darkness illuminated only by the violent, rhythmic pulse of the energy on the table. Each beat of the demon heart was a shockwave that threw Jack back against the wall.
Suddenly, the screaming stopped.
The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the sound of dripping water and Alex's shallow, whistling breath.
Slowly, Alex sat up. In the dim, ambient light of the street lamps filtering through the high basement windows, his silhouette looked warped.
His left shoulder was no longer a stump. From the charred wound, a new limb had emerged. It wasn't made of flesh, nor was it entirely metal. It was a jagged, obsidian-black construct that looked as if it had been carved from a single piece of dark volcanic glass. Dark-red veins pulsed beneath its semi-translucent surface, carrying a fluid that hummed with the sound of a distant, dying sun.
Alex raised the new arm. It felt heavy—heavy with the weight of a thousand tons of iron and the malice of a thousand dead souls. He flexed his fingers. They were long, claw-like, and ended in points that seemed to blur the light around them.
The internal interface flickered to life.
Fusion Successful. New Attribute Gained: Living Armor (Demonic). Current Rank: D-Rank Peak (Unstable). Warning: Life force consumption increased by 300%. Continuous suppression required.
Alex looked at the arm, then at his trembling right hand. The contrast was jarring—the pale, scarred hand of a human boy next to the terrifying, alien majesty of a predator's limb.
Jack... Alex said, his voice sounding deeper, as if two voices were speaking in unison.
Old Jack picked himself up from the floor, his eyes wide with a terror that would never truly leave him. You... you did it. But at what cost, Alex? Look at you. You're turning into the very thing that destroyed the North District.
Alex stood up, the movement now strangely fluid, as if the new arm was helping him balance. He walked over to the TV that Jack had turned off earlier and caught his reflection in the dark glass. He saw the hollowed eyes, the blood-stained bandages, and the black, glowing limb that pulsed in time with his own heartbeat.
If destiny wants me to be a monster, Alex said, his right hand reaching up to touch the cold, obsidian surface of his left shoulder, then I will be the one that monsters fear.
He squeezed his left fist. The air around the black claws cracked and hissed as the Destruction attribute leaked out, disintegrating the dust in the air.
I don't need to be a hero, Jack. I just need to be the one who's left standing when the hero falls.
He turned toward the door, the obsidian arm catching the faint light. He could feel the Drakes' search teams moving through the streets above, their boots heavy on the pavement. He could hear the hum of their scanners, the arrogant chatter of the 'Platinum' hunters who thought they were cleaning up the trash.
Alex Kane adjusted the strap of his tattered scavenger's coat, hiding the pulsing black limb beneath the heavy fabric. The fire in his marrow had found a home. The greed in his heart had found a weapon.
Let them come, he thought, a cold, jagged smile playing on his lips. I have so much more to collect.
The clinic door groaned open, and Alex stepped into the shadows of the hallway, leaving the light behind. Behind him, the truck chassis lay in a pile of fine white powder, a silent testament to the fact that for Alex Kane, nothing was ever truly waste. Everything was a resource. Everything was a step toward the throat of the world.