From Slave to King: My Rebate System Built Me a Kingdom With Beauties!-Chapter 203: First Sign Of Danger, A Bloody Battle Ensues!

Byung was lost in every sense that mattered. He had no way of regaining himself, no anchor point to cling to that might restore the memories stripped away by this cursed forest. There was nothing separating him from death except dwindling instinct and reflexes his body remembered even if his mind didn’t. And with his memory loss came the devastating loss of his fundamentals—including his awareness that he had a system embedded within him, skills and abilities that could help him navigate through this impossible situation.

He didn’t remember the notifications, the ability increases, the evolutionary transformations. All of it was gone, locked away behind walls his consciousness couldn’t breach. He was running on pure survival instinct now, the most primal parts of his brain making decisions while the higher functions flailed uselessly trying to understand.

He ran and ran through the maze-like forest, his enhanced body carrying him faster than he should have been able to move, though he didn’t question why. The trees blurred past, identical in their ancient menace, offering no guidance or hope. His lungs burned despite his superior endurance, panic overriding efficiency.

Then he found himself at a dead end—a solid wall of thorny vegetation so dense it might as well have been stone, impossible to pass without spending precious time he didn’t have. The discovery proved immediately costly because something was coming from the opposite direction he’d fled from, heavy footsteps that shook the ground approaching with terrible inevitability.

This meant he had no choice but to turn and confront this danger directly. There was nowhere left to run, no escape route that wouldn’t take him straight back toward whatever was hunting him. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Byung gulped, his throat dry with fear, as a burly human came into view through the trees. The man was almost as big as an orc, standing easily seven feet tall with shoulders so broad they seemed impossible. Muscles like twisted iron cables covered his frame, and his face was scarred beyond recognition—whatever violence had brought him to this prison had marked him permanently.

Byung felt startled by the sheer size of the threat before him, his mind unable to process how a human could grow so large. But then something clicked, shifted, changed within him. The violent nature that prisoners were allowed to retain kicked in like a switch being flipped, primal aggression flooding through his system and drowning out the fear and confusion.

His eyes narrowed, pupils contracting to dangerous slits as survival instinct fully took over. His hand moved to the sword at his waist—not the bone weapon crafted from Vrognut’s remains that he didn’t remember, but his standard blade, well-maintained steel that gleamed even in the forest’s dim light. He grabbed the weapon and looked at it as if inspecting it for the first time, testing its weight and balance with movements that suggested muscle memory his conscious mind couldn’t access.

The massive human mocked him, his voice deep and resonant with cruel amusement.

"What’s something so small doing here?" He studied Byung’s green skin with interest. "Never seen one like you before. Green and small like that... you some kind of sick human? Diseased?"

Byung was actually the first goblin to ever be sent to this prison or at least, the first this man had seen. The elves had never captured one important enough or dangerous enough to warrant this ultimate punishment.

The human didn’t wait for an answer. He charged forward with surprising speed for someone his size, covering the distance between them in seconds. His weapon was a giant sledgehammer, its head easily the size of Byung’s torso, the handle thick as a tree branch. The weapon was his default choice, something he’d either brought with him or crafted from materials within the prison.

Byung barely managed to dodge the first swing, the sledgehammer whooshing past his head close enough that he felt the air displacement. The weapon crashed into a tree trunk behind him with enough force to splinter the ancient wood, leaving a crater a foot deep.

The human yanked the hammer free and swung again in a wide horizontal arc designed to catch Byung regardless of which direction he dodged. But Byung dropped low instead, sliding under the swing on his knees, and came up inside the human’s reach where the massive weapon was less effective.

He slashed with his sword, aiming for the exposed ribs. The blade bit deep, drawing a line of crimson across the human’s side, but the wound wasn’t fatal—the man’s muscle mass was so dense it absorbed damage that would have dropped a normal person.

The human roared in pain and rage, dropping his grip on the hammer with one hand to backhand Byung across the face. The blow sent Byung spinning, blood filling his mouth from a split lip. He hit the ground hard, rolling with the momentum to avoid being crushed by a follow-up stomp that cratered the earth where he’d been.

Byung scrambled to his feet, shaking off the disorientation. The human had repositioned, both hands back on his sledgehammer, breathing heavily from exertion and the wound in his side.

They circled each other warily now, both combatants recognizing the other was more dangerous than initially assumed. The human feinted left then swung right, but Byung was already moving, his enhanced reflexes reading the shift in weight and shoulder position before the attack fully committed.

He darted in close again, this time targeting the human’s knee with a brutal slash that opened the joint to bone. The man’s leg buckled, his stance compromised, and Byung pressed the advantage mercilessly. Another slash across the back of the other knee, both legs damaged now, dropping the human’s height advantage.

The massive man fell to one knee, trying to swing the sledgehammer in a defensive arc to create space. But Byung had already moved past it, his sword finding the tendon in the human’s wrist. The fingers spasmed open, the hammer falling from nerveless grip to land with a heavy thud.

Despite the catastrophic damage, the human wasn’t finished. He lunged forward with his remaining good hand, fingers closing around Byung’s throat with crushing strength. The grip was ironclad, cutting off air, making black spots dance in Byung’s vision.

Byung stabbed his sword into the human’s exposed shoulder, twisting the blade viciously. The grip on his throat loosened fractionally but didn’t break. He stabbed again, and again, each strike puncturing deep into meat and muscle, but the human’s fury seemed to make him immune to pain.

They grappled there, locked together—the human trying to crush Byung’s throat, Byung stabbing repeatedly with weakening strikes as oxygen deprivation sapped his strength. The fight had reached its critical point, the moment where one would die and one would survive.

Then something shifted within Byung, some reserve of power activating without conscious command. His armor—the dwarven-crafted plates that he didn’t remember receiving—began to glow faintly with blue luminescence. The metal hummed with energy, channels carved into its surface pulsing with power that fed directly into Byung’s body.

The armor still had access to its unique features because the dwarf who created it still had access to magic, stolen from the elf he’d drained. The enchantments woven into the metal were slowly stripping away the effects of this cursed place without Byung even knowing it, gradually eroding the memory loss though too slowly to be immediately noticeable.

But more immediately relevant, this magic was powering up or at least allowing Byung to use his enhanced strength subconsciously as the shackles that afflicted his memory was cracking. The energy flowed through him like liquid fire, concentrating in his muscles, in his bones, in his clenched fist.

Byung dropped his sword, the weapon falling forgotten to the forest floor. With his now-free hand, he grabbed the wrist of the hand choking him, holding it in place. Then he cocked back his other arm.

The human’s eyes widened, some animal instinct recognizing the danger too late. Byung’s fist shot forward with explosive force, connecting with the side of the human’s skull just above the ear.

The impact was catastrophic. The human’s head didn’t just snap to the side—it exploded, the entire structure from the neck up simply disintegrating under the force of the blow. Bone fragments, brain matter, and blood sprayed in a grotesque radius, painting the nearby trees and vegetation crimson. He might be as big as an orc but he was still a human.

The massive body remained upright for a heartbeat longer, fingers still twitching around Byung’s throat, before toppling backward like a felled tree. The grip finally released, letting Byung gasp desperately for air, his throat bruised and aching.

Byung staggered back from the corpse, staring at his blood-covered fist with a mixture of confusion and horror that his fractured memory couldn’t fully process. He had killed before—his body remembered the motions even if his mind didn’t—but the sheer power of that final strike confused him.

How had he done that? Why was he so strong? The questions had no answers he could access, floating in the void where his memories should have been.

The armor’s glow faded back to dormant state, the magic cycling through its enchantments, continuing its slow work of eroding the prison’s effects. Byung didn’t notice. He was too busy trying to breathe, trying to process what had just happened, trying to decide what to do next in this endless maze where death waited around every corner.

He retrieved his sword with shaking hands, wiping the blood on the grass before sheathing it. Then he turned away from the dead end and the corpse, choosing a new direction at random, running again because staying still felt like death.

Behind him, the headless body began to dissolve, the forest consuming its own as it always did. Nothing remained but bloodstains that would fade with the next rain, another nameless prisoner erased from existence in a place where identity meant nothing and violence was the only constant.

But if no one had been here since 300 years ago, how did a human survive this long, way beyond their natural lifespan?

This was a question with no answer... yet.