Wandering Knight - Chapter 12: The Crazed Hagbirds

Lin Chen is born in a deprived family. To purse his martial artist dream, he has to do some gig work to make ends meet. Luckily, he gets diligence system: as long as he keeps working hard, there will be no bottlenecks in his path.

In a distant future, the empires of mankind span the galaxy, and glorious Earth has devolved into a peripheral backwater.

In Shanjing city in the Asian region, Wang Zheng’s dreams of becoming a mech pilot are crushed when his college entrance exam genetic score turns out a pathetic twenty eight, barely above an animal.

To make things worse, people get the impression he attempted suicide after being rejected by the campus beauty.

Then the closest thing to a family he has, the old man in the book store across the road, goes missing, leaving him only a mysterious birthday present.

Endless sky and infinite space, the cosmos isn’t some paradise waiting to be found, it is full of darkness and danger, death and terror of the great unknown. However, for that glittering swath of blue, we have no fear! For the longevity of men, we have no regrets! Nothing shall stand in our way because it is finally our time, our age! The age of cosmos exploration!

I was some twenty-something woman dying of stage four cancer.I got obliterated by the “Truck-kun” you nerds are always joking about. Turns out it's a lot less funny when it's your guts splattered on the pavement. Crap.Next thing I know, I'm floating in the dark and this thing pops up in my face.[A choice is now available to you.][Option One: Fade.Cease to exist.][Option Two: Reforge.Begin anew.]You think you can just erase me? Hah. As if.Fueled by pure, uncut spite, I slammed the reforge button. Turns out the universe has a totally sick sense of humor, though.I woke up as a male elf. A seriously hot elf —a mage, of all things. Let's just say I was working with some… unfamiliar hardware downstairs.And Jonny? My best friend, my bro, my lifelong meat shield? The universe decided he'd look better as Yael—a stunningly beautiful elf chick with a charisma stat that was probably maxed out.For a while, we weren't just getting by. We were crushing it. It was awesome.Our new life was shattered by the arrival of Vex, an overpowered demigod who saw our world as a resource to be harvested. He was a cosmic-level threat.My pride, the same stupid pride that always gets me into trouble, wouldn't let me kneel. So I told him where he could stick it.Big mistake.The price for my big mouth was paid in her blood. Vex decided to make an example of her. He didn't just defeat her; he shattered her legs into pulp right in front of me.After that, she just… erased me. Walled me off. I went from being her best friend to a ghost she looks right through. Her hatred isn’t loud; it's a permanent debuff, and the silence is a thousand times worse than her screaming would have been.Broken by my failure and rage, the System offered me another choice.I accepted. The System laid out the cost in cold, hard code:The friendly blue “Overwhelming Pride” interface shattered, overwritten by a brutal, blood-red OS running one program: The 'Overlord Slayer'. My personality was stripped for parts. My charm and pride were forged into an 'Aura of Dread.' My guilt became a damage buff called 'Pain Eater.' My grief is now, literally, my mana pool.My quest is no longer about survival. It is brutally simple: Kill Vex. Absorb his power. Fix what I broke.But to become strong enough, I have to grind this new 'Slayer' class, and every level up feels like I'm deleting a piece of myself.The real question is, by the time I'm strong enough to squash him, will there be anything left of the person Yael knew?And even if I can fix her legs… what's she going to think of the monster who comes back?