Time seemed to slow down. It’s a passive skill you pick up after a few thousand hours of combat—Frame Data Analysis.
I watched the wolf leap. I saw the trajectory of its jaws. I saw the clumsy AI pathing it was following. It was aiming for my shoulder, a programmed grapple move meant to hold me down while the master extracted the loot.
My body was weak, sluggish, and uncoordinated. I couldn't dodge. I couldn't block.
But I was hungry.
A deep, gnawing emptiness clawed at my stomach. It wasn't a hunger for food. It was a void demanding to be filled. The warning from the void flashed in my mind again.
[WARNING: SOUL DEVOUR IS ACTIVE.]
Instinct took over. I didn't try to punch the wolf. I didn't try to run.
I just reached out.
My left hand, caked in mud, shot up and grabbed the Spirit Mutt by the throat mid-air.
"What?" Chen scoffed. "You think you can—"
His voice cut off.
The moment my skin touched the summon, the world inverted. The blue smoke of the wolf’s body didn't burn my hand; it felt cold, like grabbing liquid nitrogen. The hunger in my gut roared. It pulled.
The wolf didn't yelp. It shrieked—a digital, glitching scream that sounded like a modem dying.
[CONSUMING TARGET...]
The blue smoke swirled violently, sucked into my palm like water down a drain. The wolf thrashed, its polygon model distorting, stretching, unraveling.
"Blue?" Chen shouted, stepping back. "Hey! Let go! What are you doing?"
I couldn't let go. It felt too good. A rush of cold energy shot up my arm, slamming into my chest like a shot of pure adrenaline. My HP bar ticked up.
[HP +5]25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvb29hbZrtc
[HP +10]25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhIAumBlFpr
[HP +30]
Within three seconds, the Spirit Mutt was gone. Not killed. Erased. There was no corpse, no loot drop, no dissolving pixels. It had simply ceased to exist, absorbed entirely into my inventory.
[SYSTEM ALERT: TARGET CONSUMED.]25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3G3brYF7ea
[GAINED: 150 EXP.]25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjig8yvDptF
[GAINED SKILL FRAGMENT: FERAL BITE (F-RANK).]
I sat up, the rain plastering my hair to my forehead. The pain in my ribs was gone. I felt electric.
Chen stood there, mouth open, his UI flickering as it tried to register that his summon had just been deleted from the server.
"You... you glitched it," Chen stammered, his face pale. "That cost me three weeks of rent! You broke my skill!"
ns216.73.216.10da2
and then Add to home screen.