It feels completely normal, but when I look at it with my inner vision, it’s a mess.

  It looks disgusting.

  Parts of my soul are expanding and then bursting. There’s a stable centre in all of this mess, which stays stable. The crazy layer keeps the stable one safe as any attack that may come would be blown away together with part of my soul. I am blowing away parts of my soul, together with his.

  The concept of this is utterly mad and at the same time I utterly love it.

  So I just don’t limit my soul anymore, seeing as it is capable more than enough to fight by itself, giving me enough space to enjoy the physical aspect of the fight.

  I release my madness into its fullest and attack the Reapshade with the newfound vigor.

  I jump around him, giving him cut after cut while he’s uselessly keeping occupied himself, still trying to attack my soul. Then he abandons it and my chances narrow again.

  I can’t surge anymore. Even in my lunatic state, I can still get a bit of grip on reality, knowing that one more surge would send me into unconsciousness as both my mind and my body are running on the last millilitres of fuel.

  Yet, the high efficiency motor is able to do a lot even with this small amount of fuel.

  My lunatic state shifts into another stage.

  I seemingly fly around him, dodging most of his by now weaker and slower attacks, as a lot of black mist is leaking through his wounds, and the rest of the attacks are safe to block or even better to parry.

  Though I’m in no better state than he is. My arm - well, at least the remains of my arm, is bleeding a lot. Not as much as at the start, but the loss of blood is something I should take care of as soon as possible. Not to mention all my broken bones… honestly I’m not quite sure how I’m able to even move.

  Yet I’m dancing around the, by now, severely injured Reapshade. He is not able to match me anymore. Though I’ll have to slow down in just a moment - it’s already too much strain.

  Our fight slowed a lot, compared to its most intense moments, but it’s still fast enough to make a slightest mistake prove fatal.

  To each one of us.

  Unfortunately for me, it seems like the amount of black mist his wounds produced, allows him to use his teleportation ability in a different way.

  He phases, or that’s at least how I would call it. He can turn parts of his body into the mist and then condense the mist back, which seems to be possible only thanks to all the mist that already escaped from his body. So instead of teleporting, he phases now.

  It’s even more annoying than teleporting - I hate it.

  I’ll have to gather my last strength to infuse my sword with null one last time and get a clean cut through his head, or neck.

  Dash away from the implosion-explosion and immediately slide under the swing of the scythe. I can’t go for his head from this position so I run around him, waiting for a perfect opening.

  And soon I get what I need.

  He tries a new type of attack. He swings again, but this time it lacks the strength and speed of normal and serious attack. I’m surprised by it, which is exactly what I suppose he wants.

  So I ignore his new attack type and dash forward, but the scythe stops mid swing and he starts to pull it back. I stumble forward and intentionally fall, the scythe flies above my head and when he stops pulling, I know that it’s my chance.

  I get up and jump on, for the moment a stationary scythe blade, bounce off it and fly towards his head.

  He starts to phase, but I infuse my sword with every last bit of the null strength I can gather, my sword glowing nearly the same as at the start of the fight.

  I cut through, his head separated from the rest of his bod-

  There’s still a piece holding his head tied to the body.

  Nonetheless to the scream melting my brain, I brace myself and surge towards his head. I start to lose consciousness mid flight, but I still manage to squeeze more from me, mildly lighting up the blade with null. I even make it to start a swing… and then I black out.

  ***

  The huma- no, the monstrosity with level 14 defeated the Reapshade level 60… the master between the soul manipulators in lower levels.

  Defeated by… by someone integrated into the System just a few days ago. That’s ridiculous.

  He even knocked himself out purposely in order to land the final hit. Maybe he didn't know the Reapshade was already done and he would bleed out?

  There are mostly two categories of people - the ones who would crumble under the pressure of facing someone who they have no chance to defeat and the ones that would fight till the end, knowing they will die, but still decide to fight.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  But then there are smegheads with their absolutely messed up heads and delusional belief systems, who break natural laws on a daily basis.

  It’s intruding.

  ***

  When I finally wake up, I stand before a hard decision to make.

  Does my whole body hurt more than my itself-eating stomach?

  I haven’t eaten since the integration came, not counting the few berries I ate in the forest. I was a little hungry at the start, but then I gained some levels and the hunger disappeared by itself. I guess, the overuse of skills, my lunatic state and the amount of injuries I have, was pretty hard on my body. It makes quite sense that it needs some fuel to heal.

  Whatever, time for the intro and retrospection will be later. Now just an inspection.

  My body is fucked up, that’s for sure. The ribs are severely broken and every breath hurts like hell. On the severed arm has formed a scab, which must be the reason why I didn’t bleed out.

  “Wow, I must have been unconscious for some time.”

  Otherways, the scab wouldn’t have time to form this fast.

  “Damn, I wonder how long it was…”

  All my bruises had time to lay off, so they hurt x times more now. I don’t even try to move anymore, my body is all so fucked up, it might take a long time since I’ll be back to battle functionality.

  Unfortunately I don’t have another regeneration potion to magically heal myself. This time, I’ll have to leave it to my natural regeneration, which is luckily boosted by my levels.

  I think I've found the reason why I’m still alive.

  … I must have gained some levels, right?...

  LEVEL UP

  LEVEL UP

  LEVEL UP

  LEVEL UP

  …

  LEVEL UP

  

  

  

  

  “Well, this is a bit crazy, isn’t it?!”

  Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against gaining levels and I even find it quite fair to get a lot of levels from this fight, but dude, this is fucking lot levels!

  But it would explain how I survived - my natural regeneration must have been massively boosted by the levels.

  It also healed my eardrums, together with my before bleeding eyes, but my head is still in pain. Either from that horrible scream or from my overuse of my abilities

  Of course, the level up messages are not all I got and since it looks like there’s no danger around, and I have some time to spare - to heal up some more, I might also go through them all right now.

  The dungeon has been scanned - no more enemies have been found.

  The dungeon has been completely cleared again, your reward will be upgraded.

  As soon as I’m done reading the message, the weight of the new bony dagger disappears from my improvised waistband.

  “What the fuck! You said upgrade, not steal!”

  I would go further on and vent my anger properly, if not for the blue light forming the dagger in front of me again… Seems like it needed to be taken away for upgrading.

  It had to be at least a high rare rarity or low epic, so now it might be like high epic or even low legendary?! Still not really sure how much difference there is between rarities, since I did not see much gear yet.

  The dagger finally completely forms and falls in my hands.

  It looks nearly the same as before, made completely from bones, its length is pretty impressive to a dagger, reminding me of a viking knife sax. It’s slightly curved, resembling a bowie knife, which makes an interesting combination, together with the middle of the blade being occupied by some too closely known magic… Its middle is glowing with gray-turquoise colour, with after upgrade added purple.

  Pale Reaver (Epic)

  

  Enchantments:

  

  

  “Wow, those are some fancy descriptions. Now I envy my enemies even less.”

  As I’m laying on the ground, I get the old rusty dagger from under me and throw it away.

  I probably shouldn't do that. My whole fucked up body reacted accurately to how fucked up body should react, which means bringing a all-encompassing pain uppon me.

  …I could do without it…

  When my body calms down a little, I slip the dagger into the “belt”, taking extra care to put it there safely - to not be able to cut myself by misstake.

  I can’t wait to use it, but more rewards are waiting for me which I also can’t wait to see.

  Level 25 achieved, as a reward, choose one of the following skills:

  Adaptive Footwork [Uncommon] [passive]

  

  Tactile Memory [Rare] [active]

  

  Keen Instinct [Rare] [active]

  

  “Wow, those are some fancy options, let’s see what they’re about.”

  Two rares and one uncommon, not bad in my opinion for level 25. All of them are quite good to my surprise, which shouldn’t actually surprise me - there wasn’t a bad skill offering so far.

  I bet the next skill rewards will be shit now… whatever. I’ll just have to live through it.

  By now I already know what skill to choose. I definitely don’t want Keen Instinct

  Adaptive Footwork

  But the one I find having the most potential of them three is, of course, Tactile Memory

  As I am right now, it is not good. Untrained, led only by my talent. I can meet in the future a skilled and experienced person and I would be fucked. I have fighting in my blood for sure, but if I want to become stronger, I’ll have to train, not to rely on pure talent only.

  Even though the skill has less text in description than I would expect from rare grade skill. Based on what I’ve seen till now, it seems like the higher the grade, the higher the description… which makes quite a bit of sense, because why would you need a long description to tell me that my colossus sword is just a basic big ass sword.So this ability, based on this knowledge, is quite the odd one.

  Still, it should allow me to train some techniques with the sword. That’s why I’m picking it.

  Which leaves only one last System message; one last, and what should be the greatest, reward.