CHAPTER 537: THRIVING

Ray felt unstoppable.

For the first time in his life the world finally made sense. Chaos, death, and monsters. The kind of world where people like him weren’t overlooked or ignored. Because everyone only cares about themselves.

A world where strength meant everything. A world where no one dared to mock, bully, or pity him because he can become stronger with his strength alone.

This day was his fifteenth birthday and it makes it even better.

Only an hour ago, he had been sitting in class like always. The teacher droned at the front. The windows rattled faintly with wind.

His classmates whispered, passed notes, or scrolled through their phones.

Ray sat at the back while being invisible as always.

And for a brief moment, he had been happy. The bullies were gone. "Disappeared," While he actually had killed them in coldblooded then burn their body and blood into ashes.

He didn’t care. He could finally breathe in class. But that peace hadn’t lasted long.

The sky cracked open.

The classroom lights died with a pop. The ground shook. Screams echoed from the hallway.

Cracks split the floor and from beneath, monsters clawed their way into the world.

Monsters with blackened flesh, glowing eyes, and rows of teeth like nightmares had found a door and kicked it open.

The students screamed. The teacher bolted out and desks overturned.

Everyone ran, trampling each other in blind panic. Nobody paid attention to the script that said the scenario had started.

No one noticed Ray.

And Ray smiled.

He stayed seated until the last person fled. Only then did he stand, heart pounding not with fear but with excitement. It felt right to him. Finally, the rules had changed.

The strange blade that he had used to kill those bullies and he kept in his bag called to him and he took it.

The blade was long, jagged, and curved like a fang. Its surface shimmered more with dark power and pulsing faint red with every breath he took now when the apocalypse had started.

When he picked it up, something inside him clicked. More than before. As if the Demon blade really integrated into his soul now.

The moment his fingers closed around it, a system window appeared in front of him showing his stats.

He hadn’t wasted time and started killing.

Now, ten minutes later, Ray had slaughtered dozens of monsters that burst through the walls and floors.

The school was unrecognizable. There were a lot of collapsed hallways, burning classrooms, blood-slick tile, mangled corpses and Ray moved through it like a ghost with purpose.

His blade whispered constantly. It guided him, whispered secrets of battle, told him when to duck, when to strike, and when to kill.

Now he was level 5 already.

He didn’t feel tired. He felt alive.

Then, a scream snapped his head to the left.

Down the corridor, a girl stumbled and fell. A hulking creature, one of the larger beasts with wolf-like body lunged after her.

Ray moved instantly. He wanted that Exp points, not because he wanted to save the girl.

He dashed forward, blade flashing.

In one strike, he cleaved into the monster’s back. The thing gave a shriek and collapsed, twitching.

Black blood splattered the walls. The girl scrambled away in terror.

Ray didn’t even glance at her.

He stood tall and breathing slow, his blade dripping and glowing faintly with magical power.

He had another kill and received more Exp. More power.

He looked at the blood on his hands and smiled.

Then he kept moving without pause.

The halls of the school had become a slaughter house in a span of fiften minutes. Blood on every surface, twisted limbs scattered like broken mannequins, walls scorched black from burst magic power or claw marks. And in the middle of it all Ray walked with focused eyes, while bathed in gore.

His blade thirst for more kills. It pulsed like a second heart in his grip, sending a warm, electric thrum through his fingers.

With every monster he killled, with every skull he caved in or spine he split, it fed him something invisible but undeniable.

Strength, speed, and clarity over his purpose.

The blade whispered in his mind now, more frequently and louder than before. It was no longer a quiet murmur but a voice.

"Keep going!"

"Kill more!"

Ray obeyed without hesitation.

A monster lunged from a shattered stairwell, its six limbs clawing madly.

Ray sidestepped, ducked beneath its swipe, then drove his blade into its chest and ripped upward through its torso.

Black blood sprayed his face but he didn’t blink.

Another monster came crawling through the ceiling. Ray hurled a broken chair leg like a javelin and impaling its eye and causing it to thrash before he finished it with a clean upward slash.

Then more came at him. Three this time, charging down the main corridor.

Ray didn’t stop. He welcomed them.

He ducked the first one’s leap, severed its leg mid-air, then spun and cut the second’s throat as it roared past.

The third one tried to run, screeching as if it had realized too late that Ray was different.

He cut it down from behind without a word.

His body was changing. Not just stronger or faster but his instinct was also become sharper.

His vision was clearer and he could see the world more vivid.

Students were watching him.

Some huddled behind lockers. Some crouched in classrooms. Teachers and staff had barricaded the library.

They saw this blood-soaked boy moving like a monster itself through the battlefield, eyes wild, breathing calm, never hesitating to slash his strange weapon.

He heard them whisper his name.

"Ray...?"

"Oh my God..."

"Is he saving us?"

But he didn’t care.

He didn’t move to protect them. He didn’t offer safety. If anything, he didn’t even seem to acknowledge their presence.

He passed them like they were dust because they were, in his eyed. They hadn’t killed anything. They hadn’t earned power like he does.

They were just background noise.

Another monster burst through a door.

Ray turned to meet it with a grin.

He didn’t smile because he was glad to help. He smiled because that meant another fight, another chance to level up, another surge of power flooding into his limbs.

More monsters. More blood. More strength.

His eyes gleamed faint red now. The blade in his hand pulsed like it was alive.

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