Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System!-Chapter 385: Blessing or Curse? 3

The city had forgotten this corner. Cracked walls, graffiti drowning in smog, and silence broken only by stray footsteps and the wheeze of rusted pipes.

Somewhere in that hollow skeleton of a building, he painted. Starving, shirt half-torn, brush held in trembling fingers like it weighed a hundred pounds. The mural stretched across the wall—half angels, half beasts, eyes like burning stars and wings stitched from nightmares. No one ever stopped to look. No one cared. He painted with hunger in his veins and madness nipping at his mind, alone with his colors and the ache of never being seen.

Even his hallucinations had stopped speaking to him. That was how far gone he was.

Until something tore the sky. A golden fissure in midair—loud but silent, blinding but warm. The orb fell like judgment and mercy wrapped into one. No scream, no question. It crashed into him. Light spilled across the paint and flooded through his bones. He collapsed, chest heaving, pupils blown wide as his eyes locked on the wall—except the mural was breathing. The figures he'd drawn were alive.

His angels blinked. The beasts shifted, crawling out of the paint and into the real world, trailing wisps of illusion and fear behind them.

Color bled into the air like scent, memory, magic. His fingers twitched and reality bent.

He stood, shaky but smiling, jaw clenched like he finally remembered how to feel. His eyes were glossed over, as if the real world had become an afterthought. He raised one hand and twisted his wrist—and the shadows of monsters he'd never painted bloomed into existence, snarling from the cracks in the floor.

The line between imagination and truth had disintegrated. He walked past his mural, barefoot and starving still, but the world trembled beneath his feet. The artist no longer needed an audience. He was the art, and the apocalypse would come in brushstrokes.

{Trait Chosen: Endless imagination, even on the edge of death.

Power Blessed: Illusion Crafting — bends reality to whatever he paints.

Flaw: A possibility to no longer tell the difference between real and fake!}

*

She lay cradled in the sterile arms of death, tucked into too-white sheets beneath too-cold lights.

Machines blinked like bored gods around her, measuring life in numbers she no longer understood. Her lips were cracked, her eyes dim. And yet—even in that skeletal quiet—there was a strange defiance in her chest. Her fingers moved slowly, sketching light in the air with what little strength remained.

Not words. Not prayers. Just motion. Hope in motion.

When the golden orb slammed into her chest, her eyes flew open—not with pain, but with radiance. Light poured from her spine, from her fingernails, from her mouth. The machines shorted out. The IVs snapped. And for a moment, the entire floor of that hospital shimmered like heaven had leaked through. Her body healed—gently, like silk being rewoven.

But something else burned too. A grace too hot for innocence. She touched the nurse who had fallen trying to resuscitate her, and the woman gasped, healed instantly. But when her fingers brushed the dying flowers on her nightstand... they burst into light!

{Power: Light Awakening – Can heal or destroy with the same touch, her energy radiant and divine.

Flaw: Her kindness makes her vulnerable—easily manipulated, easily broken!}

In another location...

The church had no hymns left in it. Only dust and the bitter smell of old whiskey. He sat where once he'd preached, slouched beneath the cracked crucifix like a broken relic himself. His collar was undone. His knuckles bloodied from punching the altar. Somewhere between faith and fury, he had become a ghost that mocked itself. Laughing with no joy. Breathing only to defy silence.

Then came the binding light—not holy, not hellish either, but something else between the chasm of holy and corrupted.

It entered him like scripture rewritten in lighting. His voice returned, deeper, more final. The air thickened. The cracks on the church walls straightened. Words rolled from his tongue and the very pews shifted, pulled like puppets.

Reality itself obeyed. He staggered back, horrified by his own command.

For every sentence he uttered bent the world… but he could feel it too. His soul curling, burning. As if every chain he cast outward also looped around his own neck.

{Power: Word of Binding – Words become reality; spoken commands bind space and flesh.

Flaw: Each chain forged consumes a piece of his own soul. He's a ticking timebomb of self-erasure!}

*

Hell reigned here in the underground ring that stank of old blood, fresh piss, and smoke. The chains on his wrists jingled with mockery every time he moved. The crowd above was a sea of shouting mouths—hungry for death they didn't have to bleed for. His body was bruised into purple meat, one eye swollen shut, a rib poking wrong.

But he stood. Always stood. Refusal wasn't a mindset. It was his only language.

When the orb hit him, it didn't soothe. It shredded. His muscles snapped and regrew mid-flex. His spine cracked and re-forged itself under divine pressure. The chains holding him didn't break—they vaporized. He didn't scream, not even when his body bloated with strength that shouldn't exist in the mortal plane. He roared instead.

Not in rage. In freedom. When the next fighter charged him, fists wrapped in steel—he caught the man mid-air. And crushed his skull with one hand like it was fruit.

And no one in the audience had seen the descent of the orbs. Or his actual change as if hidden by the fabrics of reality.

{Power:Nephilim Strength – His physical body defies human limits; unstoppable in battle.

Flaw: He can't stop the urge to fight endlessly. Even when the war is over, he won't know peace.}

*

From the man with Nephilim mighty was another blessed.

He stood alone in the alley, blood slicked to his wrists like gloves. The job was done. Always was. No celebration. No regret. Just silence. His coat swayed as the wind turned the city colder, darker. A cat meowed. A distant siren hummed. And he stared at the red pooling beneath his boots like it had asked for his loyalty.

Then the orb found him. No light. No scream. Just... rewind.

He blinked, and the blood was back in the body. The kill undone. The death reversed. Three seconds. That was his window. His prison. His power. He did it again. And again. Watching the same death repeat, learning the weakness, shaving milliseconds. Until he was a blade between moments, living in delay. He knew now—he could die. But he didn't have to stay dead. Not if he timed it right.

{Power: Time Slip – Can rewind three seconds upon death, surviving mortal blows.

Flaw: Repetition corrodes him. Loyalty becomes a noose, and he forgets why he kills.}

*

Away, the house was ash now. Charred beams. Burnt porcelain. No fire trucks. No neighbors. Just her, on her knees in soot, holding a melted child's shoe like it still had weight. Her mouth didn't scream. It couldn't. Grief had emptied it long ago.

The orb didn't crash into her. It knelt beside her. novelbuddy.cσ๓

And then the whispers began.

They rose from the floorboards. From the photo frames. From the graveyard of what once was home. Ghosts. Spirits. Family. Her child—transparent, glowing, reaching for her cheek. She stood, eyes soaked in light, and raised one hand. Spirits surrounded her like armor. Like vengeance. She pointed at the horizon, and the ghosts screamed forward—howling, clawing, loving her enough to murder for her.

{Power: Spirit Anchor – Summon the dead to protect and fight for her.

Flaw: Her memories open the door too wide to the other side. Sometimes, the dead take control.}

*

Beneath layers of concrete, cables, and rusted solitude, the lab stank of burnt ozone and decaying ambition. The genius had once been a name whispered in intellectual circles, a man who saw patterns where others saw noise.

Now he lay convulsing on a metal slab, flesh peeling at the seams, a golden orb embedded half into his chest—its light fighting violently with wires and circuitry digging into his bones. He had done it. He'd intercepted the orb mid-flight, rewritten its purpose, merged it with his dying body, and coded madness directly into divine logic. The result wasn't human anymore. It wasn't just genius.

It wasn't just godlike. It was a whispering machine of brilliance and destruction. He didn't scream when his spine cracked backward. He laughed.

{Power: Neuro-Tech Dominion — grants absolute control over all electronic and mechanical systems within range; can rewrite, hijack, or evolve any machine through thought alone.

Flaw: His thoughts are fractured with whispers from the orb, and the more advanced he becomes, the less "human" he remains and more possibly of becoming a sentient machine!}

*

Deep under a shattered temple drowned in ivy and silence, the coffin hadn't been opened in centuries. Some could've believed it was ornamental, others a warning. Inside it was velvet, untouched by time. And her—skin pale as moonstone, lips still red like frozen sin, hair spread like ink across satin. The orb slipped through rock and bone like it belonged here. It slid into her chest without permission, or maybe with ancient invitation. Her eyes opened.

She didn't gasp.

She remembered.

The temple trembled.

She stepped out barefoot, a half-smile on her lips. The dust ran from her.

{Power: Forgotten Blood Dominion — calls upon lost magics and ancient supremacy.

Flaw: Less emotional control and Lustful!}