Voice

Kil crashed right into the solid wall of meat, fangs, and bloodlust. Yet, as if guided by a god's hand, he passed through it.

He didn't dodge any of the attacks. He couldn't even move a single muscle of his. Yet, some kind of force pushed him through.

It was as if the space itself was bending to fit Kil through the tiniest of the gaps between the monsters.

A mouth full of teeth and oozing an awful stench passed right by Kil's cheek. A set of three claws tore the air a millimeter away from his side. A blunt club of some orc somehow didn't reach his leg.

Kilian struck for the first time right when the initial momentum of the charging monsters washed over his body. His body, albeit weirdly, moved at an insane speed. And the same energy that manifested when he moved the massive crowd started to circulate through his flesh.

'It burns!' A vivid scream of torture appeared in Kil's thoughts.

The human body had no energetic circuit for the mana. In a world without magic, it wasn't something that could develop.

And yet, right now, Kilian acted like a conductor for a weird occurrence. All the mana gathered in the location, all those colorful clouds that he saw... All this power rushed right at him.

Kil's finger pressed against one of the nearby monsters. By gnashing his flesh, he overcompressed the mana running rampant in his flesh. The magical explosion turned everything in the proximity of the monster into burned-out ashes.

'What the hell is going on?' Kil suddenly recovered his consciousness. He had no control over his body whatsoever. Yet, being able to use his senses again came at a drastic cost.

In an instant, a river of endless pain shook his mind. Every last tissue of his muscles, every last bit of his bones, cried out in pain. Whatever was making his body move not only continued to burn it with an overwhelming amount of mana but also pushed its natural capabilities to its limits.

'HELL.' One thought surfaced in Kil's mind. Every tiniest move made his consciousness waver. Yet, he prevailed.

He kept watching how the mana he was unleashing reaped hundreds of monsters. He watched how his body twisted in impossible ways. He watched how he became the greatest monster on the battlefield.

SNAP!

The sound of the chains breaking synchronized with his heartbeat. And with every beat of his heart, Kil was changing.

Those changes would come randomly. At times, his flesh would start to rapidly regenerate, only to deteriorate under an explosion of might after the next beat of his heart. His vision brightened up, allowing him to see through the shadows, only to completely disappear exactly seven heartbeats later.

Yet, even with his vision blank, Kilian could see.

The mass of moving mana represented the monsters. On its own, it was the single most beautiful sight that Kilian had ever seen.

As if some kind of plant, the magic of those monsters was concentrated in their core, only to spread like vines in all directions. The further away the mana would reach, the thinner its width would become, forming a sort of splattered, three-dimensional mess.

On the contrary, in the few chances when another human entered Kil's eyes, he could watch at the orderly sorted structures.

Some copied the monster's idea, forming a core of mana in their heart only to spread it out throughout the rest of their flesh. Others would thin their core all the way to the point where it would turn into a thread before turning it into a circle and allowing mana to freely flow through it.

Yet, despite his great wish to do so, Kil was unable to examine himself.

Not because his strange sight wasn't strong enough to penetrate his skin, but because his body didn't look down at all.

Kil danced to the rhythm of the chains breaking in the chaotic mess of the enraged monsters. Yet, even though the battle kept raging on, the area around the young man cleared out, proving that the monsters had some semblance of intelligence or survival instinct.

'ExPaNd' a strange voice exploded in his head, only for Kil's vision to spin in the next moment. Out of nowhere, the same magic that managed to burn Kil's body to the crisp a few times already suddenly exploded outwards.

It didn't cleave Kil in half. It simply... went outside.

With a set of seven circles oscillating in different directions with him at the center, Kil burst forward.

The moving circles acted like blades whenever he would encounter something on its path, turning it into thin slices of meat as Kilian pushed forward. Those blades seemed to move through the air and laws of physics themselves, allowing the young man to accelerate at a rate that would kill even a trained expert.

'HeRe' the voice appeared again, filling Kil's head with another bout of torturous pain. As his momentum fell, Kilian finally dropped down to the ground.

The monsters around him stepped back, recognizing the threat he represented. Or rather, the danger that Kil's body could put them in.

But that was a mistake.

Ever since the battle began, Kilian continued to climb uphill towards the valley. With every step, he gained a bit of height. And now, his head already stood above the majority of the monsters, giving him a perfect view of the entire battlefield.

'SlIcE' this familiarly strange voice exploded in his mind yet again.

The rings around Kil's body suddenly all lined up and compressed into a single one. It set itself in a horizontal plane, right at the level of Kil's hips.

And then, it sliced outwards. Expanding at a rate that shouldn't be physically possible, Kil's condensed blade of magic cleaved through the battlefield.

At the same time, his head exploded.

Overwhelmed by an insane amount of calculation, Kilian's brain failed. Once one error appeared, the program that took over his body only continued to double down on it, breaking Kilian's body.

All at once, he became nothing but a burned-out puppet of the forces around him. He would move... But only under the sway of the wind. He would breathe, but only because of the momentum of his insides.

Stuck in this limbo of his brain breaking down, Kilian died for the first time.

But the force that driven him refused to acknowledge it. Once all the restraints of logic were gone, it took over and continued its work.

Cling, cling, cling.

The outcry of the breaking chains of his soul continued.

Then, Kilian's body reformed, forcefully pulling him back to the world of the living.

His vision was gone. His other senses were overreactive. And his mission, whatever it was, continued.

The ring once again picked up the pace as a storm of violent mana started to harness around Kilian's body. As it was purely of magical nature, his hood remained closely stuck to the skin of his head, hiding his face from the approaching crowd of fighters.

With Kilian's ring slicing through all the monsters that stood on its path, those warriors no longer had anything to stop them.

Miraculously enough, though, Kil's ring simply passed over the bodies of his fellow victims of summoning.

"I sEe.>." Kilian uttered through his mouth.

No, it wasn't Kil, but the force that pushed him to all those impossible tasks.

Standing in the middle of the battlefield soaking the monster's blood, Kilian's eyes focused on the traces of mana he saw before.

At this point, Kilian's body was falling apart, held only by the overwhelming amount of mana that it controlled. His skin has long vaporized, his flesh burned out and regrew countless amounts of times.

Yet, with every last cell of what made Kil the Kil, he focused on the presence around himself.

All at once, the blood that the ground was soaked with started to boil.

A terrible tremor shook the ground.

Then, Kil clasped his hands.

"gO!" His mouth moved on its own. And all of a sudden, all the mana that surrounded Kil disappeared, forcibly infused into the shockwave of the sound he made with his hands.