Chapter: 9 [Dark Forest] [3]
Staring at the demonic beast in front of me, a cold, leaden weight settled in my gut. I was sure it was stronger than me. Even though the system labeled us both as [G-] rank, there is a fundamental difference between a pampered noble teenager and a creature that has traded its soul for pure, predatory violence.
Demonic beasts were like nature's most cruel mistakes—biological car crashes that shouldn't be able to walk, let alone kill. As I gazed at the bear-like aberration, a wave of nausea rolled over me. It was a mix of primal fear and bone-deep disgust. Any sane person would have recoiled; the creature was an affront to the very concept of life.
It was an evolved bear, a mountain of corrupted flesh that would reach nearly three meters if it stood on its hind legs. Its mouth hung open in a permanent, slack-jawed leer. There wasn't a single tooth left in its gums—they had either fallen out or been shattered—leaving only jagged, blackened ridges of bone. Thick, greyish saliva roped from its maw, and a swollen, purple tongue lolled out, twitching as if it had a mind of its own.
The beast was totally bald. Not a single patch of fur remained on its shivering frame. In the dim forest light, it looked like a colossal, peeled chicken ready for a butcher's block. It wasn't muscular or fat; it was gaunt to the point of obscenity. Every rib, every vertebrae, and the sharp edges of its pelvis were visible beneath the translucent, bruised skin. It huffed like a dying dog, the sound wet and congested. Most horrifying of all were the wounds—weeping sores and deep gouges that covered its flanks. I realized with a jolt of horror that many of the marks were self-inflicted, the result of the creature literally eating its own necrotic flesh in its madness.
Its eyes were bulging out of their sockets, devoid of any emotion, intelligence, or even the primal spark of a predator. They were just two milky orbs of static rage. I assumed it had once been a black bear, though without a single hair on its face, it was hard to recognize until I saw the specific curvature of the skull.
You know what there were both positive and negative sides to being a side character in a world like Aurora.
The positive side? You weren't a magnet for world-ending calamities. You didn't have to worry about ancient demon kings or galactic threats knocking on your door every Tuesday, at least not until you blatantly went looking for trouble. You could, in theory, live a quiet, cowardly life in the background.
The negative side? You lacked the "Plot Armor" that kept protagonists alive when they did something stupid. In movies and animes back on Earth, the side characters were the first to go. They were the fodder used to show how dangerous a villain was.
Even the legends died. I remembered Jujutsu Kaisen—Gojo Satoru, the strongest, a man who seemed untouchable, was eventually sacrificed just to move Yuji's character development forward.
As a side character, I didn't get the "Precious Cheat Items" or the "Hidden Legacies" that fell into the laps of people like Aaron Hein. I had to bleed for every inch of progress, and even then, survival was a coin toss. I was standing in the mud, bleeding and terrified, thinking about anime tropes while a literal monster prepared to end me.
But the bear was dying. It was old, skinny, and clearly on its last legs. I tightened my grip on the mana gun, the cold metal biting into my palm.
'It's on the verge of death and still trying to hunt. I need to be careful. A cornered rat bites the hardest, and this is no rat.'
I didn't wait for a signal. I raised the gun and fired.
And I missed.
I missed a three-meter-tall, stationary target from less than ten yards away. My hand had been shaking so violently that the mana-bolt screamed past the bear's ear, grazing the air with a hiss of ozone before slamming into a massive Iron-Oak tree behind it.
BOOOM—
THUMMPP—
The power of the gun was terrifying. The tree didn't just break; it exploded. The sound of wood splintering and the heavy thud of the trunk hitting the forest floor hadn't even finished echoing when the bear moved. It didn't growl. It just lunged.
In any other life, I would have frozen. My mind would have gone blank, and I would have let the beast tear me apart. But something happened—maybe it was the "Old Ascera's" muscle memory or a primal survival instinct buried in my DNA. I felt the mana in my core surge. I took a sharp step back with my right foot, arched my back like a bow, and curled my right hand into a fist.
I punched forward with everything I had, concentrating every drop of mana I could muster into my knuckles.
THUMPP—
SQUELCHH—
My fist connected with the bear's ribcage. It felt like punching a stone wall covered in wet leather. The impact sent a jolt of white-hot pain up my arm, but in the same heartbeat, the bear's claws found me. It wasn't a clean cut. The jagged, filthy nails pierced my chest, shredding my expensive shirt like it was tissue paper. I felt the cold slide of bone-claws entering my muscle, followed by the sickening heat of my own blood pouring out.
The force of the leap flung me backward several meters. I hit the dirt hard, the world spinning. My chest felt like it was on fire, a burning, throbbing agony that made it impossible to draw a full breath. But the demonic bear didn't care about my pain. It was already back on its feet, leaping again before I could even regain my footing.
This time, it was aiming for my throat.
'Just die, you Fucking BEAR!'
I couldn't aim the gun again in time. I threw another desperate punch, twisting my body at the last second to shield my neck. The claws tore into my right shoulder instead.
More blood sprayed the ferns, and my vision began to flicker and blur. The blood loss was hitting me fast.
'I can't keep this up... I'll bleed out before it dies.'
My right hand was still clutching the mana gun. As the bear pressed its weight into me, its rotting stench filling my nose, I jammed the barrel directly into its open chest. I didn't think about safety. I didn't think about the blast radius. I just pulled the trigger.
For a second, there was a vacuum of silence. Then, the world exploded.
The recoil and the point-blank detonation flung us in opposite directions. I hit a tree and slid down into the mud, my ears ringing with a high-pitched whine. I tried to move my right arm, but it wouldn't respond. I looked down and almost screamed.
My right hand was a ruin. The blast had caught me as much as the bear. My palm was gone, replaced by a blackened, bloody mess of exposed bone and shredded sinew.
My entire arm felt like it had been put through a meat grinder; it hung limply at my side, swaying with the wind. The forest air, once smelling of damp earth, was now thick with the metallic tang of blood and the acrid scent of burnt mana-powder. The 3,500 BMN gun was gone, lost somewhere in the undergrowth.
'I have to find it... that gun is half my net worth. And the bullets... 200 BMN each...'
I looked toward the bear. It wasn't dead, but it was finished. The point-blank shot had carved a gaping, one-foot hole through its chest. I could see the blackened lungs and the twitching remains of a heart. It was lying in a pool of its own filth, groaning and twitching, its legs kicking uselessly as it tried to stand. It was chewing on the dirt, its body refusing to give up even as it fell apart.
I forced myself to stand. Shivering, limping, and clutching my mangled right arm to my chest, I retrieved a knife from my storage necklace. I tried to finish it with my left hand, but the bear's hide was still like reinforced rubber.
I had to find the gun. I limped over to the fallen tree, my boots squelching in the bloody mud. I found the weapon near a pile of splintered wood. With trembling, bloody fingers, I loaded the last bullet—the one I'd bought with a discount—and pointed it at the bear's head.
BOOM.
The bear's head didn't just stop moving; it vanished. A spray of grey brain matter, bone fragments, and black ichor coated the surrounding jeans, but I didn't flinch. I just stared at the corpse until the shivering stopped.
I reached into the mess and pulled out a small, pulsing black stone. A Demonic Core. It was rare for a beast this far gone to have an intact core, but this one had crystallized. I tucked it into my necklace—a white-gold chain with a black diamond centerpiece that doubled as a high-capacity storage space.
"Haa... haah... haaa..."
I collapsed against a tree and fumbled for my potions. I was a wreck. My right hand was a stump of cauterized meat, and my chest looked like a map of the red sea. I downed three Healing Potions in rapid succession. I watched, fascinated and horrified, as the mana forced my cells to knit. The hand didn't grow back—potions weren't miracles—but the bleeding stopped, and the skin sealed over the stump, leaving it smooth and scarred.
I emptied two Mana Recovery Potions and five Strengthening Potions. The latter felt like liquid lightning, a surge of artificial energy that masked the bone-deep exhaustion of the fight. Finally, I took a Blood Recovery Pill.
The effect was instantaneous. The deathly pallor of my face vanished. The shivering stopped. My mind cleared, the fog of blood loss lifting to reveal a sharp, cold clarity. I reached into my storage necklace and pulled out the black core.
It glowed with a faint, malevolent light.
'Finally... something worth the pain.'
I leaned my head back against the bark and let out a jagged, hysterical laugh. I was a side character. I was a failure. I was half-dead and missing a hand. But I was still breathing. And for the first time, I had something the protagonists didn't: I had the raw, desperate hunger of a man who had lost everything and found he quite liked the taste of blood.
"Haha.. Now I just need to reap the fruits of my labor... Haha... Hehe..."