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The Apocalypse Grinder - Chapter 13
🕑 Added 2025-06-18 08:54:36 +0000 UTC<< Chapter 12 | Index | Chapter 14 >>
If Ronan had not been dead, he might have recognised the sound that carved through the silence of the tutorial dungeon. It was the same sound he heard when his own system assessment was interrupted.
The single mote of mana which had broken free of his corpse froze. It seemed to tremble in the air, before suddenly it was sucked back towards his corpse as though it didn’t dare to return to the mass of ambient mana that suffused the room.
One moment the tutorial dungeon was there—wherever there was. The next moment it was not.
All that remained was a miniscule tear in the fabric of reality. Before the system could grasp it and tear it apart, it was gone.
In the depths of the void, where nothing existed—not even time—a man with plain features, wearing nothing but a colourless robe, snapped open his eyes as purple blood dripped from his nose.
The only thing he wore that might separate him from the surrounding void was an amulet made from a strange material that shimmered like a blanket of stars. He straightened his back and stared into the distance.
“At last an inheritor has appeared. If not for my intervention the accursed system would have snuffed out his life before I could awaken the gift. I fear I do not have long left. All is in your hands now, child,” he muttered, raising a hand that was cracked and broken to his eyes.
Ronan snapped to awareness. Where was he? He remembered… I died! he suddenly remembered. His gaze darted around, only to find trees in every direction.
This is a strange afterlife. Am I in hell, then? However, before he could ask himself more questions or figure out where he was and why he wasn’t dead—because he could feel the pounding of his heart and the rise and fall of his chest—he heard a familiar chime in his head.
Welcome to the tutorial of the 103rd Grand Integration! This introduction to the multiverse will serve to test your strength and skill. Upon completion, you will return to your newly terraformed planet for the 1st Phase.
What the fuck!? Ronan read through the system message that hovered in front of his face. With every word he read, his disbelief grew.
Yet, the evidence was clear as day. Somehow, instead of dying, he had been sent back to the moment of integration. The moment he was first thrust into the shitty hellhole of a tutorial.
Initiating user assessment…
The first time this had happened, that weird noise had interrupted it. The strange symbols that then appeared in his ‘heritage’ had broken the system itself.
Assessment complete!
This time, Ronan didn’t hear that strange sound. The assessment finished without interruption and the next moment, his status appeared. However, he immediately noticed the differences. And boy, were there a lot.
[Status]
Name: Ronan Steele
Race: Human (G)
Heritage: @#^?-
Level: 0 (8)
Class: N/A
Fortune: 0 (349c)
[Stats (1.008)]
Health: 60/60
Stamina: 90/90
Mana: 50/50
Vitality: 6
Endurance: 9
Wisdom: 5
Regeneration: 3
Resistance: 6
Strength: 6
Agility: 5
Intelligence: 8
Dexterity: 5
Acuity: 7
Tenacity: 12
Luck: 2
Charisma: 4
Available Points: 0
[Traits]
Personal: Inevitable (Epic)
[Skills]
Unified Language Adaptation (Universal)
Relentless Training (Common)
[Mastery]
[Cultivation]
Mind: None
Body: None
Energy: None
Soul: None
Most of the changes followed a similar pattern, but Ronan couldn’t understand a few of them. Some were obvious.
The numbers in parentheses beside his level and fortune were what he had reached before his death. That felt odd to think. His death. And yet he was still here… in the past.
His stats section had another number. That one he didn’t understand. Perhaps he would figure it out soon enough. There would be a lesser goblin’s head to cave in, after all.
Ronan’s stomach dropped when he saw that all of his masteries were gone. Reduced to nothing. However, while the numbers on his status might have vanished, his body remembered.
The feeling of fists burying themselves in green flesh. Cracking bone and drawing blood. He could earn the mastery back and this time it would be easy.
That left him with the final difference. His personal trait had not been erased, unlike the rest of his progress. Inevitable.
A sharp laugh escaped his throat. That was funny. That would help him kill the goblins, all over again. Even his skill, relentless training, had survived his death. Interesting. He heard the hateful chime of the system.
Your difficulty has been set to [Normal]! If you believe this is an unsuitable assessment, you are free to voice your complaints. Stage 1 will begin in 5…
I wonder if there’s an easier difficulty, he joked to himself. Then his eyes widened in shock before narrowing as he clenched his fists. Fuck you, system.
[Easy] difficulty is typically reserved for young, crippled, and mentally handicapped individuals of sentient and sapient races during integration.
You may change your difficulty to [Easy], but you will be branded with the [Coward] title! Change difficulty?
[YES][NO]
Ronan instantly refused. Fuck that. Normal difficulty had been tough, but he was going in armed with the knowledge of what he would face.
3…
This time, the goblins wouldn’t get the chance to hurt him. This time, he wouldn’t let that chubby bastard Keith get himself killed.
2…
Although, I’m going to make damn sure he pulls his weight from the beginning this time around. Ronan dismissed his status and shook his arms and legs to loosen them up as the countdown ticked down.
0…
Good luck, challenger!
The shimmering purple goo started to worm its way into reality. It didn’t take long for the portal to build itself. A green leg stepped out, followed by the rest of the lesser goblin’s hunched and hideous body.
A clenched fist smashed into its nose before it could even appraise its surroundings.
Blood spurted from the broken bulbous flesh. A piggish squeal broke the silence. Ronan was just getting started.
The portal vanished as the lesser goblin stumbled backwards, clutching its nose. Ronan pushed forward, hooking his foot around its ankle.
He smashed the other foot into its gut, revelling in its cries of pain. It tripped over his leg and fell onto the wet grass. A flash of orange as it tried to shank his calf.
Ronan hadn’t expected its tenacity and couldn’t dodge the strike. Burning heat lanced into his flesh from the shallow cut. Barely a scratch.
He fell onto the creature with hellish fury. He grabbed its skinny wrist in his hands and twisted. Bones crunched as they snapped apart. The dagger fell to the grass.
The goblin squealed. Ronan roared and smashed his fist into its mouth, knocking half its rotting teeth from its blackened gums. A second punch silenced its garbled screeches.
Ronan’s arms rose and fell like twin jackhammers as they landed heavy blow after heavy blow into the goblin’s face. Crunch. Crack. Thud. Squelch.
After a while he saw nothing but red. Anger and fury at the system, the goblins, and the shitty world that allowed him to be ripped from the comfort of boredom and forced into this brutal place.
It was long after the goblin died that Ronan finally stopped punching. His chest heaved and fell in panting breaths as he raised his bloodsoaked head to the sky and bellowed his anguish at system-forged skies.
A tear fell down his cheek, stained red by the time it dripped from his chin. He slumped down, rolling off the lesser goblin’s corpse onto the wet grass.
He stayed there for a while, ignoring the blaring of the system in his head. It was counting down the time until he was forced to advance to the next stage of the tutorial. That wasn’t healthy.
Ronan knew that it was bordering on psychopathic to do what he’d just done. Even if it was a monster—a hideous creature that wanted nothing more than to see him dead—that savage brutality he’d unleashed made him equally monstrous.
Even knowing that, Ronan wasn’t bothered. More than anything else, turning the lesser goblin’s head into pulp had been cathartic. If the system wanted to turn his life—his world—into hell and fill it with monsters, then he would become one himself if it meant he could survive to see tomorrow.
A tiny part of his mind, one that he wasn’t sure he was as ready to accept, delighted in the bestial brutality he’d given himself to. Nonetheless it was still part of him.
He sat up, wiping the blood and brain matter off with the grass, then drying his hands on his suit trousers. Ronan read the kill notification.
You have killed [Lesser Goblin Lv.2]!
+2 Copper Credits
+2 [Pugilist] Mastery
+Lesser Goblin Ears (Common)
You have leveled up to Lv.1!
You have been restored!
+1 Vitality
+1 Endurance
+1 Free Stat Point
He scoffed. Nothing had changed. The exact same rewards as he’d received the first time he killed the little green bastard.
That was fine. Ronan would slaughter his way to the end of that stone dungeon. Only this time, he wouldn’t fall at the end of the third stage. He would tear apart anything that stood between him and returning to Earth.
And whatever awaited him there? If it stood in the way of some peace and bloody quiet, he’d rip it to shreds too.
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