SSS Rank Awakening: The World Beyond Redemption

Ten days later ~

I don’t know what happened, and I can’t recall how I got here. But what I’m seeing right now is no longer any world I ever imagined.

I moved my head and the first thing that registered was the smell — copper and rot, thick enough to coat the back of my throat before my eyes had even finished adjusting. Then the bodies. Hundreds, maybe thousands, stacked in loose piles that rose higher than a man, slumped against each other in postures no living body ever holds. Every single one was missing its head. The floor beneath the piles was a continuous sheet of red, so deep and so old in places that it no longer looked like liquid at all. It looked like paint that had dried, cracked open, and been painted over again — layer after layer of the same dark color, a record of how many times this had happened before.

The silence was the worst part. No flies. No dripping. No wind. Just the faint, wet click of something moving in the middle of it all.

In the center sat a girl. Her white skirt had been soaked through so completely that the fabric no longer draped — it had stiffened into dark, crimson folds, cracking faintly at the knee every time she shifted, like something dried around her rather than worn. In one hand she held a severed head by its hair, tilted back at an angle, the neck still slick and glistening where it had been torn rather than cut. Her other hand was buried inside the skull, fingers working with slow, practiced patience through a wound at the crown. Her face was streaked with blood in careless smears — across her cheek, down her jaw, one thin arc flicked over her brow like she hadn’t even noticed it landing there. She lifted a piece of grey-pink matter to her mouth and ate it with the same quiet, unhurried focus most people give a meal they’ve been waiting far too long for. Her jaw worked slowly. Her eyes stayed half-lidded, almost peaceful, as if the thousand heads around her weren’t there at all — as if this were the only clean, private moment she had all day.

She hummed. Softly. Off-key. A child’s tune, the kind hummed absentmindedly while doing something completely ordinary.

Rael’s legs gave a violent shake beneath him, his knees threatening to buckle before he even registered standing. ”What in the world is happening?”

Present ~

Rael eased the bushes aside a finger’s width and peered out. From this angle he could see almost nothing—just a narrow slice of slope and the grey-green blur of trees lower down. He pushed the branches farther and started to crawl out.

Lila’s hand closed around his wrist.

”Don’t. It’s dangerous.”

”We have less than two days of food left,” he said. ”If we stay sealed in here we’ll starve before any monster finds us. I only need to go a little way. Check the ground. Come straight back.”

Her face tightened. He saw the fear there, clear and unhidden.

”All right,” he said, softer. ”I’ll stay close. Five minutes. Ten at most.”

She shook her head. ”Wait. I’m coming with you.”

He looked at her. ”You sure?”

”Yes. You’re right. We can’t live inside this hole forever. We have to leave sometime.”

They were higher on the mountain than Rael had realised. He still had no idea how she had managed to drag his dead weight this far up while he was unconscious. The two of them moved in a low crouch, keeping to the broken rock and the patches of scrub that offered at least a little cover. The air was colder here, thinner, carrying the faint metallic smell of distant blood.

Lila stopped first. She pointed with her chin.

”There. Orc. Huh it’s weird.”

Rael squinted. He saw nothing but trees and shadow. Then he remembered—archer class. He reached out and laid his fingers lightly on her shoulder.

”Hey...”

She flinched at the contact, then realised he was not looking at her. She turned her attention back to the slope and said nothing.

[Class detected]

[Class: Archer (C-Rank)]

[Do you want to copy?]

[Y/N]

He clicked yes.

[Archer] (C-Rank → B-Rank)

[A ranged combat class specialising in bows and precision attacks. Archers rely on sharp senses, accuracy, agility, and powerful ranged attacks to defeat enemies from a distance.]

[Skills]

[Eagle Eyes] (Apprentice→Expert)

[Enhances the user’s eyesight, allowing them to see targets clearly from extreme distances. It improves accuracy, perception, and target tracking, making it easier to identify weak points and hit moving targets.]

[Piercing Arrow] (Apprentice → Expert)

[Fires an arrow with concentrated force that can pierce through enemies, armour, and weaker defences. The greater the user’s strength and mastery, the more powerful the arrow becomes.]

The skill settled into him like a second set of eyes opening. The world sharpened. Distances that had been vague shapes resolved into hard detail.

It was the first time in his life he had seen this far with such clarity. Every leaf, every drop of blood on the undergrowth, every twitch of a dying hand registered with painful sharpness. The scale of it settled over him slowly. This was not a hunting ground. It was a collection.

He followed the line of Lila’s gaze and found the creature almost at once.

An orc, ten feet tall at least, moved through the trees with a slow, deliberate gait. In one massive hand it dragged a human body by the ankle. The body was still alive. Rael could see the chest rising and falling in shallow, panicked breaths, the hands clawing weakly at the dirt. The orc did not look down. It simply walked, as if the living weight behind it were no more than a sack of grain.

Rael had studied the bestiary records before the ceremony. Orcs of that size were almost always level twenty or a little higher. They did not belong in the first awakening realm. Nothing above level ten was supposed to exist here. Yet the creature moved with the easy confidence of something that had never been told the rules.

He turned his head a few degrees and the enhanced sight kept giving him more. A pack of wolves—lean, grey, larger than any natural breed—trotted in single file across a clearing. Each of them held a living person in its jaws, the bodies hanging limp but not yet dead. One of the captives still tried to scream; the sound came out as a wet, muffled cry before the wolf’s teeth shifted and silenced it.

Farther to the right a second orc appeared, then a third. Between the trees he caught glimpses of other shapes—things with too many limbs, things that moved on all fours but had the silhouettes of men, things that left trails of frost wherever they stepped. All of them carried living prey. None of them stopped to feed.

A white flash cut across his vision. When the dust settled he recognised the shape at once—the same frost dire wolf they had fled days earlier. The beast stood on a ridge of broken stone, head raised, nostrils working the air. For a second it seemed only to be scenting the wind. Then its head snapped around and its eyes locked directly on the place where Rael and Lila crouched.

Rael dropped flat and pulled Lila down with him. They pressed themselves into the rock, hardly breathing.

”Back,” he whispered. ”Now.”

She did not ask questions. They retreated the way they had come, moving only when the wolf’s attention seemed to slide elsewhere, freezing whenever its head turned. The cave mouth finally appeared between the bushes. They slipped inside and Lila dragged the branches back into place until the entrance was sealed again.

In the dim light Rael sat with his back against the stone wall, the after-image of what he had seen still burning behind his eyes. The behaviour of the beasts made no sense. Orcs and wolves of that kind did not store food. They killed and ate on the spot. Keeping humans alive, dragging them somewhere out of sight—that was something else.

And the levels. Too many high-level creatures in a realm that should have held nothing above ten. The only explanation that fitted was the one that felt most absurd: someone had summoned them. Someone had brought second-realm beasts into the first awakening ground on purpose.

He looked at Lila across the narrow space. Neither of them spoke for a long time. Outside, the mountain continued its quiet work of hiding whatever was being gathered in the trees below.

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