S-Rank?!

Nex explained a LOT of stuff!

- His identity

- How he had tricked the cultists

- Soy sauce and why it goes well with sushi

He sat on a literal putrid pile of corpses as he spoke of modern gastronomy to a bunch of insanely strong beings.

"Then, what happens?!" The Elf asked, stars in her eyes.

"That's it. You bite it, the melting yolk comes out, and it's super delicious!"

"But wait, how do you fit it all in your mouth at once?" The Elf suddenly shot him an incredibly suspicious look.

"You use chicken eggs that are about this size," Nex commented the obvious.

At this point, he had the group mostly figured out.

The Elf loved eating, talking about food, and was a free spirit that did whatever she wanted. Her fiery hair just happened to go well with that.

The Tamer was some Eldritch mist-like entity and lived to take care of the monsters he had collected over the years.

The halfling followed along and didn't care for much besides keeping her friends alive. A genocide could happen before her, and she wouldn't care.

The assassin could very well be a vampire. White hair, red glowing eyes, and just loved to impale people. Oh, and the man utterly hated his guts, striking at every opportunity.

"Chicken eggs so small? Liar!"

The man's eyes showed perverse joy as he charged over.

Nex tried evading only to be restrained by gravity magic, the spear drawing a purple arc toward his head. The Elf simply watched on, her eyes conveying that liars should perish.

— Splatter! —

The spear pierced the flesh, drawing a fountain of blood.

Luckily, it was snake blood. At the very last second, the Tamer had sent his pet to block the blow. The assassin growled at him. "Out of my way, or I'll stab you too!"

"But he likes animals…." The Tamer uncertainly shared.

That's why he had saved him?! Because he had mentioned in passing that he loved dogs?! Whatever plot armor this was, he didn't count on it to last.

"Wait! I swear it's the truth: small chickens exist! But let's forget that for a minute. How about we head to meet the reinforcements you guys were waiting for?"

"Oh? You'd like that, wouldn't you? We should just kill him now and be done with it." The assassin spat out.

These people were crazy AF! He almost regretted not holding to the naked cultist's thigh at this moment!

"Hum, he's not wrong. Guess we can bring him back to the association to be evaluated. Teacher will know what to do with him for sure." The Elf chimed in.

Thus his fate was decided…

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

They headed to the Awakened Association.

On the way, Nex lost count of how many times he almost lost his soul.

1. The cave exit had been a glowing orange portal, and the dimensional transfer had felt utterly strange. It was as if he had lost his physical shape!

2. The portal's surroundings had him exclaim that it was "Big" and "Grand-Canyon-Like," but turned out to be a mere pothole: this world was HUGE!

3. Their ride, a 30 meters blue snake, had suddenly sprouted three gigantic angel-like wings before taking flight powerfully. Flying brought such an incredible rush!

4. The view seen from the bloody sky had been phenomenal. This City, Arcadia, was so large that he hadn't been able to see the end of it, but its shape was already so damn strange.

It was circular, and from the middle to the edge, it went:

- City's Core

- Slums (Giant Hole)

- Suburbs Districts (Four)

Each district was also connected to the Core with a colossal bridge larger than the wall of China!

As for the sights, three especially stood out, a Glowing Neon-Looking Magical Tower, an enormous holy-light-radiating Goddess Statue, and a giant Flame Palace! All looked so magical!

5. The people were strange. They had seen a bunch as they landed on a bridge since flying above the Core area was forbidden.

- Dogkins and wolfkins

- Glowing humans

- Scalies

- Fishes

- …

All these races had been happy to gossip about them, pointing. Was it that entertainment was inexistent here or that the strong were revered as celebrities?

"Shadow Star?!"

"The only party with an S-Tier Elf!"

"Aren't they Disaster-Rank?… Oh, you meant her b—"

The more they glowed, the more he stuck out like a sore thumb.

"Who's the new weak-looking guy? A cultist?"

"Beats me…but why's he half-naked?"

"Is he some human purist?"

Needless to say, he was annoyed by it all even before they reached their destination.

< Awakened Tower! >

This was the Neon Tower he had seen earlier.

The place looked like it had been designed by a supervillain wanting to assassinate every epileptic in the world. Green! Yellow! Orange! Red! Purple! Black!

It was frankly insulting to the eyes, but no one seemed to care.

An equally glowing tiny crystal golem came to welcome them: "Shadow Star: D-Level Clearance! Please enjoy your stay!"

This place had elevators and even had a place called the "Awakening Room," aka their final destination.

Inside, plenty of youngsters queued up as they waited their turn to access a floating multicolored orb.

This was both a process of Awakening (Breaking through human limitations) and revealing one's newfound magical abilities.

That's when lettering appeared on the screen.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

User: Deez Knots

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

BODY 49 (STR: 16 / AGI: 15 / RES: 18)

SOUL 31 ( MAGIC : 11/ SENSE: 8 /WILL: 12)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

AWAKENED: Flaming Fist (F)

POTENTIAL: Very Low Grade

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The Elf sneered on the side.

"Tch— Another failure." She pointed at the man's yellow armband. "He even took a loan to access the Awakening Device. What a fool! Good luck repaying it, haha. "

"Didn't he successfully Awaken?" Nex asked.

"The problem isn't the ability, but the potential. F-Rank is a start, but it's useless if it can't evolve. The guy's trash." She mercilessly remarked.

In the distance…

"W-wait, no! There has to be a mistake. I'm really strong! Let me try again!" The youngster screamed as men in black captured him, bringing him away.

That's when a bald old man came over. He wore simple robes and didn't appear especially intimidating, but something about his gaze chilled Nex.

"Hehe, another one for the mines. Anyway, what did you guys bring me this time?" He examined Nex from all angles, exclaiming "oh?" and "ah?" at times.

"How is it, Teacher?" The Elf respectfully asked.

"Well…I have no clue. Still, he's not a Blood Cultist for sure. Come with me, you little bastard." He forcefully dragged Nex around, shamelessly cutting the queue.

"Hey, who the hell— ARGGG!" As a random complained, Nex's guide threw a fireball, incinerating him.

"Hehe, anyone else?" The murderer chuckled.

"?!?"

"…."

What kind of crazy lawless place was this?!

The old man gestured toward the orb, Nex touching it. It was cold, warm, felt like lightning, yet soft like a pillow…

The thing glowed in all colors imaginable, finally settling on a bloody red. 'Please let me have an ability. Even F-Rank will do!' Nex prayed.

Never had a wait felt so torturous….

Suddenly the orb went crazy, trembling non-stop. The screen behind lit up, bathing the room in a bloody golden glow as the bystanders cried out in shock.

"R-Royal Glow?!"

"Oh my god, that's S-Rank!!!"

"I can't believe I'm alive to see such a miracle!"

That's the exact moment Shadow Star's attitude changed. The Elf threw herself at him, breasts first, while the others showed friendly smiles.

"Amazing! This is the best! This has to be fate. We just happen to be missing a fifth member! How about it, want to join us?! Here, add your mana to our party token!"

She enthusiastically pushed a black emblem his way, making doe eyes. As he touched it, he understood its functions: it served to enter "Dungeons".

The people behind were already screaming in communicators, requesting their bosses to show up ASAP. They'd then turn to him and promise him the world.

It seemed like S-Rank was a BIG deal.

"C'mon, agree already!" She pouted, acting cute.

Chances were that the shaking of her assets was by no means accidental. Nex inwardly scoffed: as if he'd fall for such a crude honey trap!

He disliked how quick the party had been to change their attitude. How lovely would her expression be upon getting rejected? Should he throw the damn thing at her face or tits?

He grabbed the token and….

"Wait, no. Something's wrong!" The old man shouted.

As Nex's Status finally appeared, the atmosphere turned bone-chilling cold…

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

User: Nex Xander

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

BODY 16 (STR: 5 / AGI: 7 / RES: 4)

SOUL 16 ( MAGIC : 0/ SENSE: 0/WILL: 16)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

AWAKENED: Blood Immunity (SSS)

POTENTIAL: Exhausted

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━