The night air tasted of burnt hair and cheap iron.

The Red Mage danced like a drunk marionette, palms spitting gouts of flame that turned the hillside into a kiln.

Jax moved inside the heat, cigarette glowing like a fuse, senbon flicking from his fingers in lazy arcs.

Thwip. Thwip. Thwip.

Each needle found flesh: wrist, shoulder, the soft meat under the jaw.

Black-white aura bled out of the mage and into Jax like smoke sucked up a chimney.

The mage’s cloak caught fire.

He didn’t notice.

“What the hell are you doing?” he snarled, voice cracking.

Jax ducked a whip of flame, came up inside the mage’s guard, and carved a shallow smile across the man’s cheek.

Blood hissed on the hot ground.

“Thought it’d be obvious,” Jax said, licking a drop off his knife.

“I’m carving slices outta you. Medium-rare.”

The mage staggered back, eyes wide behind the mask.

“You’re siphoning aura?”

“Smart boy. Yeah. Worked a treat on the choir-girl with the meat-sack fetish.”

He flicked another senbon.

It punched through the mage’s ear and kept going, trailing a ribbon of stolen power.

“Veyra’s dead?”

The mage spun toward the palace, panic overriding pain.

“I have to—”

Jax was already behind him.

The bowie slid between ribs with a soft shlick, twisted until something important snapped, then ripped sideways in a wet, grinding arc.

Spine parted like wet rope.

“We don’t turn our backs on people here, Red.”

The mage folded, knees first, face kissing the mud.

Aura geysered into Jax—thick, electric, permanent.

His vision tunneled, then snapped wide.

Every nerve lit up like Christmas in a crack house.

STR: 47 → 312 AGI: 83 → 489 END: 61 → 277

He exhaled a shuddering breath that tasted like victory and burnt copper.

“Jesus,” he whispered, eyes rolling back for a second.

“That’s the good shit.”

The mage’s corpse twitched once, then went still.

Jax wiped the blade on the red cloak, lit a fresh smoke off the mage’s still-burning sleeve.

He looked up at the palace—windows glowing like fat yellow eyes.

“Your move, piggy.”

The throne room reeked of rancid fat, piss, and the sour stink of broken souls.

Verrick sprawled across his dragon-skull throne, grease-slick fingers dragging through the matted hair of a kneeling elf girl.

Her eyes were glass.

The others—ten, maybe twelve—curled into themselves on the marble, naked, collared, waiting for the next fist or whim.

Jax kicked the doors in.

Iron hinges screamed.

The doors smashed into the walls hard enough to crack stone.

“Look at you,” he rasped, cigarette smoldering between blood-crusted lips.

“Whole kingdom starving and you’re one sneeze away from a heart attack.”

The guards—six, maybe seven—drew steel with hands that shook like junkies in withdrawal.

Blades clattered against scabbards.

Verrick rose.

The fat didn’t melt.

It ripped.

Skin split like overcooked sausage.

Muscle ballooned outward in wet, tearing sheets.

Silk shredded.

Veins burst through the surface, glowing molten gold, pulsing like worms under glass.

In three wet, crunching seconds he was eight feet of raw, veined meat, knuckles dragging sparks across the floor.

“Veyra’s dead,” he snarled, voice a gravel grinder.

“Shame. Her screams were my lullaby.”

He kicked the banquet table.

It exploded—roast pig, crystal, a slave girl’s skull—into the far wall.

Bone shards rained.

“Killing my mage was dumb,” Verrick spat, joints popping like gunshots.

“Walking in here? Dead.”

Jax flicked ash onto the marble.

“Hero?”

He laughed, wet and ugly.

“I’m the guy who’s gonna wear your intestines like a scarf.”

Verrick moved.

The floor shattered under his boot.

He crossed twenty feet in a heartbeat, fist the size of a tombstone screaming down.

Jax slid.

The punch missed by inches.

The shockwave peeled his cheek raw.

Marble exploded into shrapnel.

A guard caught a chunk in the throat—blood jetted like a busted hose.

Jax came up inside Verrick’s guard, bowie flashing.

SHRRRRK.

The blade carved a red canyon across Verrick’s ribs.

Meat parted.

Aura gushed out in black-white steam, sizzling where it hit the floor.

text

STR: 312 → 498 AGI: 489 → 734

Verrick roared.

Grabbed a guard by the face.

Squeezed.

Skull popped like a grape.

He hurled the corpse.

Jax caught it mid-air, used the body as a meat shield.

The impact crunched his shoulder, sent him skidding through gore.

“Creative,” he coughed, spitting a tooth.

“But I’ve seen better in a back-alley knife fight.”

Verrick charged, fists glowing like forge fires.

Jax met him.

Knife met knuckle.

Steel screamed.

The blade bit deep into Verrick’s forearm, locked.

Verrick grinned with too many teeth.

“Got you.”

He slammed Jax into the floor.

Marble pulverized.

Ribs snapped like green wood.

Blood flooded Jax’s mouth—hot, coppery, alive.

Jax laughed through it.

“Wrong. Fucking. Hand.”

His free arm blurred.

SENBON HELL.

A dozen needles punched into Verrick’s face—eyes, gums, tongue.

One went through the soft palate and out the top of the skull.

Aura detonated.

Black-white lightning ripped through Verrick’s veins, burning him from the inside.

Verrick screamed—a sound like a dying god gargling razors.

Jax twisted the bowie.

Rip.

Tear.

The blade carved a wet, screaming tunnel through Verrick’s chest, out the spine, spraying gore in a fan.

Verrick staggered, golden veins flickering like dying bulbs.

Jax rolled to his feet, ribs grinding, blood pouring from his mouth.

“Anger’s a hell of a drug,” he gargled, lighting a smoke off Verrick’s burning silk.

“Makes you bleed pretty.”

Verrick lunged, fist cocked, face a ruin of needles and hate.

Jax stepped in.

The bowie punched up under the chin—through tongue, through palate, into brain.

Crunch.

Grind.

SPURT.

Verrick froze, one eye dangling by a thread.

Jax leaned in, breath hot against the tyrant’s ear.

“You can die now.”

He yanked.

The head came off with a wet pop, spinal cord trailing like a red ribbon.

It hit the floor with a splat.

Silence.

The elf girls didn’t move.

Jax spat a glob of blood and lung onto the corpse, wiped the blade on Verrick’s face.

He looked at the slaves.

“Keys. Belt. Run.”

One girl—barely fifteen, eyes like broken glass—whispered:

“You’re… not a hero.”

Jax snorted, voice raw.

“Kid, I’m the joke.”

He walked out through the smoking doors, boots leaving red footprints that steamed.

Behind him, the palace burned.

The throne room was a butcher’s gallery.

Verrick’s headless corpse lay in a lake of its own steaming blood, golden veins still twitching like dying snakes.

Jax stood over it, ribs grinding with every breath, cigarette dangling from split lips.

He spat a red clot, wiped his mouth with the back of a trembling hand, and flicked his wrist.

The air shimmered.

A translucent pane snapped into existence in front of his left eye, like a cracked HUD from a dream he’d never asked for.

text

JAX HARLAN LEVEL: ?? → 17 STR: 498 AGI: 734 END: 277 → 312 (regenerating) LCK: ??? [ASSASSINATION TREE UNLOCKED]

Below the stats, new branches unfurled in jagged red text:

→ DEATHBLOW [Rank C] Instant kill chance vs. stunned/paralyzed targets: 34% Aura cost: 120 → 90 (passive reduction) → AURA SIPHON [Rank B] Steal 12% of target’s max aura per piercing strike Senbon range: 15m → 22m *NEW:* Converts 3% to permanent END → SPINAL TAP [Rank A] (NEW) Backstab → sever spinal column → instant paralysis Ignores 60% armor Aura cost: 200 (one-time burst) → GHOST STEP [Rank D] (NEW) 0.8 sec blink (3m max) Cooldown: 4 sec Leaves smoke decoy (taunts enemies) → “FALL GUY” (Passive) (NEW) Take 40% reduced damage when shielding allies *Flavor text:* “You always ate the charge. Now you eat the pain.”

Jax stared at the screen for three full seconds, the cigarette burning down to the filter and scorching his fingers.

He blinked.

The pane vanished.

He looked down at Verrick’s corpse, then at the bowie knife—still dripping, still humming like a tuning fork. Then to add insult to injury Jax raised his boot and crushed Verrick's head, showering the floor in broken skull and brains.

A slow, ugly grin split his blood-crusted face.

“Well, shit,” he rasped, voice raw as gravel.

“Looks like the house finally dealt me a hand.”

He flicked the dead cigarette away, lit a fresh one off a still-burning tapestry, and walked out through the smoke.

Behind him, the status window flickered once more in the dark:

NEXT MILESTONE: “KINGSLAYER” – 0/1