novelraw Chapter 47 47: Crimson Horned Boar
Chapter 47 47: Crimson Horned Boar
The echo of his roar hadn't fully faded among the ruined buildings when a cold, emotionless message from the Essence Record appeared before Leon's eyes, stark against the blood-soaked image of the fallen beast.
[Essence Record - Kill Confirmed]
[Target: Crimson Horned Boar (LVL 27) - First Order Entity]
[Reward: +60 MANA | +35 VIT | +20 STR]
A wave of energy slammed into his body almost instantly, deep, heavy, nothing like what he'd felt in previous fights. It was as if the Essence Record wasn't just strengthening him, but formally acknowledging that what he had just done was abnormal even by the new rules of the world.
Before his mind could fully process the first change, more notifications appeared one after another, nearly overlapping.
[Level Up: LVL 14 → LVL 15]
[Stat Points Gained: +4]
[Level Up: LVL 15 → LVL 16]
[Stat Points Gained: +4]
[Level Up: LVL 16 → LVL 17]
[Stat Points Gained: +4]
[Level Up: LVL 17 → LVL 18]
[Stat Points Gained: +4]
[Level Up: LVL 18 → LVL 19]
[Stat Points Gained: +4]
[Level Up: LVL 19 → LVL 20]
[Stat Points Gained: +4]
Leon barely registered any of it.
His roar died out, breaking into a rough, rasping breath. His legs suddenly stopped supporting him, as if all the tension that had kept him upright over the past few minutes simply dissolved. He swayed forward, on the verge of collapsing face-first into blood-soaked dust.
Then someone was there.
Valeria appeared in front of him, wrapping an arm around his waist and catching his weight at the exact moment he lost the last shred of control over his body. Her grip was unexpectedly steady, almost soothing, completely out of place amid the surrounding chaos.
She leaned in slightly, and her voice, usually laced with provocation and irony, was now calm, soft, and clear. Almost innocent. It sounded less like the voice of a being hunted across half the cosmos, and more like someone close. Familiar. Safe.
"Good job, Leon," she said quietly. "Really… that was a wonderful victory. You can rest now."
The words hit him harder than any system notification.
They sounded too familiar.
Like his mother's voice, back when he was a child, when he came home exhausted, dirty, scraped and bruised, but alive. His eyelids, which he'd been holding open through sheer willpower alone, finally gave in as exhaustion, pain, and depletion overwhelmed everything else.
Leon slumped into her arms, breathing shallowly but evenly, as silence settled around them amid the ruins and the blood of a First Order entity.
Valeria looked down at Leon's face, which, boldly, without asking permission, now rested against her chest, heavy with sleep and exhaustion, still smeared with blood and dust. For a brief moment, her first reaction was something like surprise. Even after everything, he still looked more like someone who'd fallen asleep after an unbearably intense day than a man who had just killed a First Order entity.
Then a small, almost imperceptible smile appeared on her lips as memories of the fight resurfaced, every moment where a single mistake would have meant instant death, every horn strike that could have killed him or ruined him for life. One clean hit from the Crimson Horned Boar would have ended everything Leon was trying to build.
She raised a hand and gently stroked his head, carefully, as if afraid of waking him, and leaned in just enough to whisper softly:
"Good job."
She knew all too well that what he had done balanced on the edge of the impossible. Leon hadn't won because he was stronger, nor because he possessed greater raw power. He won because he used his only real advantage, agility and terrain, and trusted it completely, slipping past the deadliest attacks in the final possible fractions of a second.
Every time his life hung by a thread, Valeria could do nothing but watch. She couldn't intervene. She could only root for him in silence, knowing that if his path ended here, she wouldn't be able to change it, no matter how much she might want to.
She also understood exactly how absurdly powerful the Crimson Horned Boar had been. Even if Leon's stats, boosted by continuously absorbing the essence of stronger enemies, were already overwhelmingly higher than those of an ordinary evolved human at level fourteen, the gap between such a being and a First Order monster was a chasm that sheer determination alone should never have been able to cross.
Unlike humans, who gain stat points with every level and grow gradually, monsters don't build their strength brick by brick. Instead, they receive a massive, brutal surge of power at the moment of successful evolution, a single qualitative leap that turns them into something fundamentally different from what they were before.
Valeria lifted her gaze from Leon's sleeping face and looked at the monster's corpse, specifically at the neck, where a massive, ragged cavity gaped open. A testament to a desperate, brutal fight that had no right to end this way. She let out a quiet sigh, more to herself than to the world.
"You were lucky," she whispered. "Incredibly lucky."
Her gaze swept over the rest of the Crimson Horned Boar's massive body, the destroyed buildings, the traces of blood and steam. Only then did she add, even more quietly:
"If that beast had possessed even a single offensive skill… not just physical reinforcement… this fight wouldn't have gone so easily."
She frowned slightly as something caught her attention.
Near the monster's corpse, partially buried under rubble and blood, lay an object that didn't belong in the rest of the macabre scene.
Valeria hesitated for only a moment.
"This… shouldn't be a violation of the rules. He earned it himself," she whispered, as if someone might hear her.
She extended a hand toward the dead monster. The object beside it lifted slightly, peeling itself off the ground and flying toward her as if drawn by an invisible force. She gave it a brief, indifferent glance and tucked it away, as naturally as if she'd done it hundreds of times before.
Only then did she return her attention to Leon.
She adjusted his position, draped his arm over her shoulder, and slowly, unhurriedly, began guiding him back toward the pharmacy, barely a dozen meters away, stepping around rubble and puddles of steaming blood. Her movements were calm and sure, as though the devastation around her barely registered.
Behind them lay the corpse of a First Order monster, the ruined campus, and the traces of a battle that should never have happened.
***
Two hours later, Leon's eyes flew open and he screamed before he even understood where he was.
A tearing pain surged through his legs and feet, mixed with a burning, itching sensation, as if thousands of red ants were crawling beneath his skin, biting, scratching, and tearing everything apart at once. His body tensed instinctively, as though trying to escape his own limbs.
His vision was blurred, swimming, colors bleeding together. Focus returned slowly, far too slowly for his panic. He breathed hard in a broken rhythm, forcing his eyes to focus until, at last, he looked down.
And then he saw his boots.
Or rather, what remained of them.
The Shadowstep Walkers were almost completely melted and deformed, as if someone had poured boiling water over them and left them to cool into a grotesque parody of their original shape. The soles were burned through, the material twisted and warped, in some places gone entirely, exposing things that should never have been subjected to such heat.
Leon's heart clenched painfully, almost physically. He knew exactly what he'd lost, a rare-class treasure, an item that granted him fifteen points of Agility, something that had saved his life more than once. For a brief moment, he felt something close to grief, as if he'd lost a tool he relied on more than he cared to admit.
Then he looked at his legs.
The skin was burned and reddened, blistered in places, cracked and raw, but the bones were intact, and the joints still worked. Leon couldn't tell whether he should feel relieved or even more overwhelmed.
Relieved, because his legs and feet were only burned. If they'd been broken or crushed, he couldn't even imagine how he would survive in this world, fully aware of how vital mobility was.
"At last you're awake, my sleepyhead," a soft, sweet voice said, yanking him sharply out of his thoughts.
Leon flinched and looked up, seeing Valeria standing beside him, watching him with a small, unmistakably approving smile, one that said more than a thousand words.
"G-good… morning…" he rasped. Then something clicked, and unease twisted in his stomach. "Wait… what happened? How long was I out?!"
He tried to sit up, then immediately tried to stand, as if desperate to get moving again, but a split second later, a searing pain ripped through his feet, so intense that he hissed and collapsed back down, teeth clenched and fists tight.
His body made one thing very clear.
This time, it was the one setting the rules.