The concrete was cold, stained with the fresh crimson of a broken boy.
Ren lay still. His ribs were shattered, his lungs struggling for a breath that wouldn't come. Above him, on the four-story rooftop, the laughter of Max and his gang had turned into a suffocating silence. Even for bullies, this was too much.
[Pathetic.]
A voice, cold as the void and sharp as a razor, echoed through the darkness of Ren's fading consciousness.
[So this is the 36th vessel? A weakling, crushed by children on a Tier 3 planet. My divinity for a bag of broken bones... what an ironic gamble, Vesperion.]
Suddenly, the air around Ren's body began to vibrate. It wasn't a normal vibration; it was a rhythmic Glitch in reality itself. Small black cubes of anti-matter flickered in and out of existence around his mangled fingers.
Snap. Crack.
The sound of bones re-aligning echoed through the quiet playground. Ren's body jerked unnaturally. A surge of chaotic energy—the Monarch's Blessing—forced its way through his blocked meridians, tearing them open and stitching them back together with threads of dark light.
Above his head, a jagged, shadowy silhouette materialized for a split second—a Demonic Crown that seemed to mock the very laws of physics.
Ren's eyes snapped open.
The dull, fearful brown was gone. In its place was a swirling abyss of pitch black, centered with a flickering crimson glow.
He didn't scream. He didn't groan. He simply stood up, dusting off his dirt-caked uniform as if he had just taken a nap instead of falling four stories.
On the roof, Max's face went pale. "N-no way... He should be dead! Ren, you freak! How are you standing?!"
Ren looked up. He didn't see bullies. He saw 'Resources'. He saw 'Experience'.
"Ren?" the boy whispered, his voice sounding like two people speaking at once—one a child, the other a sophisticated monster. He looked at his hands and smiled. "Ren is currently... unavailable. But don't worry, Max."
Ren took a step forward, the ground beneath his feet cracking with every move.
"I've always been a fan of laboratory rats. Let's see how much pressure your 'tier' can handle before it breaks."