When The System Spoils You For No Reason-Chapter 37 - Thirty Seven

The silence stretched, taut as a drawn bowstring. Twenty hunters glared across the gap, weapons glittering under the Expanse’s shifting light. The leader’s face was stone, but his eyes moved with cold calculation.

Zeke rolled his neck left, then right, the crack carrying in the stillness. "Alright. You want the herb? Come and mug us for it. Let’s see if you’re better at it than we are."

That was the only signal the trio needed.

Jude was already moving. He shot straight for the leader—the man with the granite face and the greatsword—his flaming blade materializing mid-stride, trailing a ribbon of embers through the thin air.

The leader’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t draw his weapon. He met Jude’s charge bare-handed, arms suddenly sheathed in crackling grey stone. Stonefist Aura—a defensive skill that turned his limbs into living battering rams.

CLANG.

Jude’s flaming sword met a stone-clad forearm. The impact rang like a cathedral bell. Jude didn’t flinch. He pressed forward, A-rank Agility and Strength flowing into a relentless barrage. The leader blocked, parried, and countered with startling speed for his size. Strong, technically sound, clearly comfortable in prolonged exchanges. An A-rank brawler pushing the upper limits of the tier.

Perfect.

While Jude anchored the leader in a grinding dance of fire and stone, Kai and Aaron moved as one toward the second A-ranker—a woman with twin daggers, their blades weeping thin threads of green. She grinned, slow and cruel, and vanished into a blur of poison-tinged afterimages. An agility-focused assassin.

Kai settled into the Flowing Stone Breaker Art, his posture going fluid and rooted at once. Aaron melted into the shadow of a nearby crystal spire without a sound.

The remaining eighteen hunters hesitated a beat too long, then charged Zeke—swords, axes, and crackling spells all converging on the lone man in the trench coat.

Zeke smiled.

His Pride trait hummed with quiet satisfaction. Against C and B-rank hunters, he was effectively untouchable—his attacks bypassed armor, skills, and defenses entirely. He could end this in seconds.

But where was the fun in that?

The first grunt swung a massive axe at his head. Zeke didn’t move. The blade stopped at his shoulder. He glanced at it, then at the man holding it. Not a scratch.

"Hm." He tilted his head slightly, as if confirming something mildly interesting. "Would you look at that."

Before the grunt could process what had just happened, Zeke reached out and tapped the man’s forehead with one finger.

Tap.

It wasn’t a powerful blow. But Pride made it True Damage—bypassing Endurance, hardened skin, and every defensive skill the man had. The force transmitted directly to his brainstem.

His eyes rolled back. He collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Chaos erupted around him.

Zeke walked into the heart of it. A sword thrust aimed at his kidney shattered against nothing, its wielder recoiling with a broken wrist. A fireball meant to engulf him dissolved into harmless warmth on contact. A hunter swung his shield in a desperate bash, and the moment it touched Zeke, Sunder’s instant-dismantling function reduced it to loose components clattering across the ground. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

His responses were casual, almost idle. A finger pressed to a pressure point. A gentle shove that sent one man careening into three of his comrades. A sidestep that redirected a crossbow bolt into the shooter’s own ally. He moved with the unhurried grace of S-rank Agility, guided by Martial Instinct’s preternatural awareness of the space around him.

He wasn’t fighting. He was strolling. And everything that touched him broke.

Across the clearing, the real fights raged.

Jude and the leader had escalated into a full storm of force. The leader had finally drawn his greatsword—its dark blade moving with a speed that belied its mass, each swing carrying enough weight to split a tank. Jude met him blow for blow, his flaming sword leaving deep, molten gashes in the dark metal. The leader had the edge in raw power, his stats honed by years of genuine combat. But Jude was balanced in a way that offered nothing to exploit. Every parry was solid, every dodge precise, every counter aimed with lethal economy. He was a wall of fire that advanced—step by measured step—forcing the veteran back.

Meanwhile, Kai and Aaron had turned their fight into a systematic dismantling. The dagger-woman was a phantom, striking from every angle at once. But Kai was an unmoving river—deflecting, redirecting, and dissipating each attack, using her own speed against her. Every time she darted in, she found not an opening but a waiting palm or redirecting elbow that sent her momentum spiraling harmlessly away.

Aaron was the darkness between her blinks. He never engaged directly. He was pressure—a sudden grip on her shadow that slowed her for a half-second, a fist materializing from a dark patch to slam into her ribs when she overextended. Caught between Kai’s unbreakable defense and Aaron’s relentless, unpredictable harassment, the assassin was being ground down with quiet efficiency.

Zeke finished with the grunts. Eighteen hunters lay scattered around him—groaning, unconscious, or dragging themselves toward the edge of the clearing. Not one had landed a hit. He brushed a speck of imaginary dust from his shoulder and turned to watch the finale.

The leader, his entire force dismantled in minutes, roared and overcommitted—a massive two-handed cleave meant to bisect Jude at the waist.

Jude didn’t block. He flowed inside the arc, his hand shooting forward, a conjured hammer already forming as he drove it into the leader’s armored chest.

BOOM-WHUMF.

The sound was a deep, muffled detonation. The leader’s breastplate flared red-hot for an instant before he was lifted off his feet and flung ten yards back, skidding through the crystalline grass, his greatsword spinning free. He didn’t get up.

In the same moment, the dagger-woman—desperate, her rhythm completely broken—lunged at the exposed stretch of Kai’s back. She never saw Aaron phase up from the shadow at her feet. His hand, wrapped in solidified darkness, chopped down on the back of her neck. She dropped mid-leap, daggers clattering harmlessly to the ground.

Silence.

Not the taut, pre-violence silence from before. The empty, ringing silence after a storm has passed.

The trio stood among the fallen, breathing hard but unbroken. Jude’s flames guttered out. Kai lowered his hands, his flow stance easing. Aaron let the shadows around his arms disperse.

Zeke walked over to the leader, who lay on his back, the front of his armor still smoldering. He looked down at him for a moment, then nudged the man’s boot with his own.

"You mugged wrong," he said, conversationally. "Good fight, though. Pick better targets next time." He paused. "Ciao."

He turned back to the group. "Grab the shiny plant. I think we’ve overstayed our welcome."