The air around the pond grew unnaturally still. Adi tried to slip past the water's edge, his footsteps completely silent, but the figure standing there didn't need to hear him.
Dusk slowly turned, his crimson eyes piercing through the gloom like twin blood moons.
"Where are you running off to?" Dusk's voice was smooth, yet it carried a crushing, impossible weight.
Adi froze, his hand drifting instinctively toward his waist. "What do you want from me?"
Dusk scoffed, turning his gaze back to the dark water. "Tch. Why are you mortal males always so predictably defensive?" A slow, terrifying smirk crept across his face as he locked eyes with Adi again. The killing intent radiating from him was suffocating, freezing the blood in Adi's veins. "I know you possess the strongest aura among humans, Adi. But relax. I'm not here to end your brief little life."
Dusk raised a hand toward the heavens. "I was the destroyer of this world once. But I came to warn you: there is a horror far worse than your Demon Lord waiting in the shadows. Even if you slay him, the cycle will merely reset in two years."
*"Calamity Destroyer!"* Dusk commanded.
For a heartbeat, the sky inverted, swallowing all light into a pitch-black void. When the world blinked back into existence, a blade pulsing with pure, cursed malice rested in Dusk's outstretched hand. He tossed it to Adi.
Before the heavy hilt even settled into Adi's palm, Dusk dissolved into the mist, vanishing as if he had never existed.
Adi stared at the weapon. It hummed with a dark, heavy energy, yet his own body felt strangely numb to its curse. Pushing deeper into the jungle, he quickly tracked a wandering pack of goblins. *A perfect test.*
"Time to rest, monsters," Adi muttered, lunging forward.
As he swung, the blade erupted in a blinding, violet glare. Adi brought the sword down in a single, fluid arc.
The resulting shockwave didn't just kill the goblins—it completely obliterated them. The forest floor was violently carved open, ancient trees were shredded to splinters, and the monsters were reduced to a grotesque spray of crimson. Blood pooled rapidly, flooding the craters like a macabre river.
Adi dropped to his knees, his hands trembling violently. He had slaughtered goblins before, but this... this was apocalyptic. The sheer scale of the carnage gnawed at his sanity. *I can't ever make the mistake of losing control of this,* he thought, his breath hitching.
He hastily severed a few intact goblin ears from the wreckage for his bounty. The moment he willed it, the cursed blade vanished from his hand, dissolving back into the shadows. He needed to get out of the forest before anyone saw the destruction.
Back at the Adventurer's Guild, the receptionist counted the ears, unfazed. "Impressive work. Here is your coin, and your star rating has increased. Remember, your level rises based on the efficiency of your completed tasks, not raw power."
*"What's the difference anymore?"* Adi murmured under his breath.
Securing enough coin to survive comfortably for ten days, he retreated to his inn. Inside the safety of his empty, locked room, he summoned the spatial 'Magic Box' he had accidentally awakened during the massacre. He quickly stashed his excess coins and the gruesome surplus of ears into the void, keeping his secrets hidden.
Suddenly, a commotion from downstairs broke his focus. The girls from his party had returned.
Adi rushed down, his stomach dropping. They were battered, exhausted, and drenched in goblin blood. They had managed to secure a massive bounty, but the cost was evident in their vacant, terrified eyes. Adi quickly stepped in, guiding them through the guild to submit their spoils before escorting them back up to their shared room in total silence.
"Rem," Adi asked softly, looking at the deep, vicious lacerations tearing through the girl's armor. "What did this? How did you get so badly injured?"
Rem stared into the distance, her voice hollow and trembling. "I... I don't know. It was just... a shadow. And then... everything was gone."
A cold knot tightened in Adi's chest. *A shadow.*
Trying to ease the suffocating tension in the room, Adi quickly mixed a restorative herbal draught for the group. "Here. All of you, drink this. It will stabilize your mana and make you feel better."
Exhausted, the girls accepted the wooden cups. They raised the draughts to their lips in unison and swallowed.
I got you, bro. Let's take it in a completely different, psychological direction. This one leans hard into the mystery of the sword and makes Adi question his own reality.
Pick it up right from that last line:
When everyone drinks—
...a sudden, violent hiss filled the suffocating silence of the room. The healing draught was supposed to soothe their pain, but the moment the liquid hit their stomachs and activated their mana, the deep lacerations across Rem's body began to glow.
Not with the soft, warm gold of healing magic.
The wounds pulsed with a violent, blinding violet glare.
Adi's blood ran ice-cold. He stopped breathing. It was the exact same cursed, apocalyptic aura the *Calamity Destroyer* had unleashed when he decimated the goblin forest.
Rem gasped, her wooden cup slipping from her fingers and shattering on the floorboards. She stared at the pulsing, cursed energy eating away at her own skin. Then, slowly, terrifyingly, she raised her head to look at Adi.
The vacant terror in her eyes was abruptly replaced by a sudden, agonizing realization.
"Adi..." she whispered, scrambling frantically backward against the wall, her trembling finger pointing directly at him. "The shadow in the forest... it was..."
"Rem, wait, I swear I didn't—" Adi started, taking a step forward with his hands raised.
"Stay back!" she screamed, her voice tearing with pure hysteria. "Look at the floor!"
Adi froze. He slowly lowered his gaze to the wooden floorboards.
His hands were completely empty. But cast under the flickering candlelight of the inn room, his shadow was holding a massive, jagged blade.
And his shadow was dripping with fresh blood.