From Slave to King: My Rebate System Built Me a Kingdom With Beauties!-Chapter 243: Combat Point, Error! [FIXED!]

Kragg’s face looked off — the way your own house feels strange when someone’s moved a chair without telling you.

Byung had seen that same face once before. Back when the orc showed up at his settlement, stood in front of everyone, and did something that clearly hurt him to do. One short meeting was enough for Byung to size the man up. The strong jaw, the wide flat nose, the long scar running from his left temple down to his chin. He remembered how heavy Kragg felt just standing there, the calm stillness of someone who’d been in charge so long the posture never really left him.

None of that was there now. Whatever was looking out through those eyes was wearing Kragg’s face like borrowed clothes — it worked, but it didn’t fit right.

Byung had figured it was some kind of resurrection gone bad. The body pulled back, but the mind twisted or broken along the way by whatever ugly magic the dwarf used. Sad, but something he could handle. He was already calculating angles, figuring out how to take the thing down without ruining the body completely, when Kragg suddenly moved.

Byung didn’t see the motion. One second there was space between them. The next, Kragg was crouched right in front of him — so close Byung could see thin dark lines running through his irises, so close he caught the smell underneath the familiar one: old, wrong, and patient, like something that had been lying in the dirt since before anyone alive was born.

Kragg hadn’t blinked. Hadn’t even shifted his eyes. He’d just crossed the gap without seeming to pass through the middle of it.

Byung froze.

Kragg stayed low, eye-to-eye, and stared. Not at Byung’s face or hands — at something deeper, something Byung couldn’t name and didn’t even know was there. The look was quiet and complete, like a predator deciding what comes next.

Mazga moved first. She charged from the side, putting all her weight and speed into a punch aimed at Kragg’s ribs. It landed hard. The sound echoed through the tunnel — solid, heavy, the kind of hit that should’ve knocked someone back. Kragg didn’t budge. Didn’t flinch. His eyes never left Byung. Mazga drew back and swung again — same nothing. On the third try she reared up and slammed both fists down toward the base of his neck like a hammer.

Her arms came down.

Then one of them was lying on the ground.

The cut was perfectly clean. Byung watched it happen — one small, almost lazy motion of Kragg’s free hand passing through the space where her right arm had been, like brushing lint off a sleeve. Mazga’s scream came half a second late, raw shock turning into sound that bounced everywhere in the tunnel. She dropped to her knees, the stump already dark and bleeding fast, her other hand clamping down on it by reflex.

Byung sucked air through his teeth.

He was at her side before the next scream could start, hands on her, already scanning the hole Thulga had smashed in the ceiling. No way to climb up carrying her. He hauled her to her feet, wrapped one arm around her middle, turned her toward the opening, and threw her upward. Hard. The angle was right — she cleared it. That was all that mattered. If she stayed down here, they’d both be dead in under thirty seconds.

He turned around.

Kragg had stood up straight and was watching him again. Not coming closer. Not getting ready to strike. Just watching — the same steady look he’d had since crouching down. Byung met his eyes and understood: Mazga’s arm wasn’t cut off because Kragg wanted her dead. It was cut off because she was blocking the way, and whatever was inside him had removed it with about as much care as you’d give a fly on your arm.

This thing wasn’t hunting orcs.

Byung held the stare and felt the truth sink in.

He glanced at the dwarf.

The dwarf was already walking over, slow and calm, like the severed arm, the screams, and the heavy darkness rolling off Kragg were just background noise. He stopped next to Kragg, hands clasped behind his back, red eyes flicking between Byung and the body with the quiet pleasure of someone whose plan had finally clicked into place.

"That isn’t Kragg," the dwarf said.

Byung looked at the body again — at those eyes full of threaded darkness. The shape was still Kragg, the same orc who’d walked into his settlement and bowed his head. But whatever had been behind those eyes back then wasn’t here now.

"What is it?" Byung asked.

"Something that slipped through before the barrier sealed completely. It found the body. I just... made the introduction." The dwarf tilted his head. "It’s been waiting in these tunnels longer than you’ve been here. The runes were never meant to stop something that was already on this side."

"The barrier is closed," Byung said.

"It’s weakened." The dwarf’s tone stayed even. "It needs mana to stay strong. And something on the dark continent’s side has mana — and it’s been pushing against the barrier for a long time. The damage built up slowly but it repaired itself too quickly for it to be of any use. At least, not until you showed up,"

Byung took that in. He understood mana in a practical way: it was the power behind spells, the extra push the system gave him when his body wasn’t enough as of recent. He knew how it worked on a basic level.

What he didn’t get right away was how the barrier tied into any of this, or why the dwarf was looking at him like that.

"The elves," the dwarf went on, "didn’t banish their people for being evil in the moral way. They did it because of the dark mana — the kind that soaks everything on the dark continent — eats away at the barrier when you use it here. Every bit of it used on this side weakens the wall because there is no dark mana on this side so it draws directly from the barrier and dark continent."

The tunnel was quiet now except for Thulga and Roktha moving overhead, and Mazga’s muffled groans drifting down through the hole.

"Something happened," the dwarf said, eyes fixed on Byung’s face, "when you were in that other place. Something that let dark mana cross over to this side."

Byung stood still for one full second.

Velara.

The dark elf. The fight in the prison world. The powers he had taken from her. The magic he had pulled inside himself. He’d known it was dark magic in a vague way — the kind of knowledge you have without really thinking it through. He hadn’t thought it through. Survival came first, then getting home, then everything else. Now her magic lived in him. He’d used it. He’d felt it rise earlier in the tunnels — that hot rush of bloodlust and anger that didn’t belong to him.

Every time he or she used it, the barrier had taken damage.

The thing inside Kragg’s body turned its head just a little and looked straight at him with those dark, swallowed eyes. Byung saw the whole picture now: the weakening barrier, the thing that slipped through, the shifting tunnels, the dwarf draining power from the elves to set up this exact moment.

It all led back to one thing.

Byung was the cause of all of this.

Byung looked at the dwarf, still smiling that quiet smile, and said nothing. There was nothing to say right then. The reckoning could wait. Right now Kraghul was up top with internal and mental wounds with no source, and the thing responsible stood five feet away wearing a dead man’s face.

He let out a slow breath and looked back at whatever was inside Kragg.

Byumg knew in that moment, he needed to draw on all of his strength to kill the dwarf.

He now understood why Rodell deemed him dangerous enough to list as a wanted creature.

This creature was the pinnacle of evil and knew far more than he realized but what was scary was how calm the dwarf was.

Byung thought about it for a second but instantly knew he needed to know more about what he was up against.

He needed to utilize his system to the fullest of its ability.

The barrier might have weakened but as long as the dwarf existed.

It would fall regardless of what they do.

It could be a few days, weeks, or even years.

"System, what is the chance I survive this fight?" Byung thought to himself, to his system internally.

[Ding!]

[Calculating combat points...!]

[Combat points calculated!]

[Survival chance: -99%!]

The fact that it entered the negative showed how impossible this situation was.

Byung was astonished by the gap in strength considering Kragg’s corpse must have been a weak vessel.

If this was the case, how strong would it be in its original body.

But there was one advantage Byung had here, his half-mutation skill which allowed him to come back from the dead, much stronger.

And if this thing was the one that killed him, how much stronger will he return?

This was worth a gamble even though Byung was aware him coming back depended on entirely on the state of his body upon death.