My SSS-Rank Grim Reaper System-Chapter 84: CORE AND FRAGMENT

Matthias lowered his hand.

He didn’t attack.

He was looking at Grim.

At the other end of the field, a hundred meters away, the skeleton still lay where it had fallen. Against the base of the canyon. Not moving.

One HP.

"Your companion is finished," said Matthias. "Do you feel it?"

Alex felt it.

Through the Fragment. The faint connection, nearly severed. Like a thread about to break.

Still there. But barely.

"Yes," said Alex.

"Then this ends here."

Matthias raised his hand again.

[CORRUPTED SMITE — TARGETED AT GRIM]

The green energy concentrated. Not toward Alex. Toward the incapacitated skeleton on the ground.

A final blow to cut the thread.

Alex moved.

No MP. No skills. Ninety-five HP.

He ran.

He wouldn’t make it in time.

The distance was too great. Matthias too fast in Power Spike. The Smite already charged, already aimed—

Then the ground between Matthias and Grim darkened.

Not like a shadow.

Like an absence.

As if light decided not to exist there.

[SYSTEM — CRITICAL ALERT]

[FRAGMENT 1 — CORE — RESPONDING]

[GRIM — CORE FRAGMENT MANIFESTATION — INITIATING]

---

It started with the single HP he had left.

That HP shouldn’t have been enough for anything.

But it wasn’t physical energy that activated.

It was memory.

Fragment 1 was the Core of the Original Reaper. Not a copy. Not an echo. The very heart of a being that had existed before the Ancient Gods had a name for him.

And that heart remembered.

Grim’s bone armor fractured completely.

It fell to the ground in pieces.

Matthias lowered the Smite. Confused.

The pieces didn’t stay on the ground.

They levitated.

Then they reorganized.

Not as before. Not in the form Alex had summoned in the Ceremony months ago. Not in the form that had gradually evolved through dungeons and battles and harvested souls.

Into something prior to all of that.

[GRIM — CORE FRAGMENT MANIFESTATION — ACTIVE]

[Form: Primordial Reaper — Partial]

Four meters. Complete bone armor, but different... not white bones but something darker, denser, like obsidian carved into a skeletal shape. No cracks. No frost. No damage.

New.

Wings.

Not of flesh. Not membrane. Of solidified crimson energy, extending six meters on each side, leaving dark traces in the air like ink in water.

And his eyes.

Not points of red-green light.

Two pure crimson flames that illuminated everything within ten meters.

[GRIM — CORE FRAGMENT MANIFESTATION]

[HP: 1 → 8,000/8,000]

[All stats: RECALCULATING]

[New skill unlocked: Harvest of Thousands]

Silence on the battlefield.

Matthias, with effective level 90 and Power Spike active, looked up at Grim’s new form.

And he didn’t attack.

For the first time in the entire battle, Matthias didn’t attack.

"I remember."

Grim’s voice.

Not fragmented. Not in loose words separated by periods.

Complete. Resonant. As if each syllable came from several places at once.

"I remember what I am."

---

Alex reached his side.

Ninety-five HP. Zero MP. Knife in hand.

He looked up at Grim.

Grim looked down at him.

Something passed between them. Not words. Not through the Fragment.

More direct than that.

Recognition.

You are the vessel.

You are the core.

We were always the same thing.

[Death’s Synergy — RECALIBRATED]

[Previous effect: +20% to all attacks]

[Current effect: Vessel and Core share energy pool — each damage taken by one feeds the other]

Alex’s black energy and Grim’s crimson energy merged visually. Not mixed. Intertwined. Like two rivers running parallel sharing the same riverbed.

Matthias watched the process.

[POWER SPIKE — 3 minutes 12 seconds remaining]

He still had time.

"Impressive," he said. Without irony. Without condescension. "Genuinely impressive. You’ve had that fragment for months and it only now accesses its primordial form? That just speaks to how weak you are."

He readied himself.

"But I’m still level ninety-six for three more minutes."

---

The battle that followed had no tactics.

Only force.

Grim descended from above with [Harvest of Thousands] active.

It wasn’t a targeted attack. It was a field. Every living being within a forty-meter radius felt their souls tugged, weakened, slowed. Not fully harvested, just... touched by the hand of something that normally only saw them at death.

Matthias felt it too.

[Holy Regeneration — INTERFERED] (Harvest of Thousands field suppresses passive regeneration)

For the first time in the entire battle, his HP stopped rising.

He launched himself at Grim with full Power Spike.

BOOM.

The impact created a shockwave that split the ground thirty meters in all directions.

[Grim HP: 8,000 → 6,400/8,000]

[Matthias HP: 24,000 → 21,800/32,000]

Grim didn’t retreat.

The energy wings closed around Matthias like a trap.

[Shadow Scythe — AMPLIFIED]

The scythe cut from three angles simultaneously, spectral projections of the main blade.

[Matthias HP: 21,800 → 18,600/32,000]

Matthias broke free with a burst of green energy.

And found Alex waiting for him.

[Soul Rend — AMPLIFIED by Necrotic Amplification]

Alex’s hand connected with Matthias’s chest.

Physical damage was minimal. Ninety-five HP didn’t generate much momentum.

Soul damage was another matter.

[Matthias — SOUL DAMAGE: -1,600]

[Matthias HP: 18,600 → 17,000/32,000]

Matthias howled.

Not from physical pain.

From something deeper. More intimate. As if something was being torn from him that he didn’t know he had until he felt it being lost.

He separated twenty meters, breathing heavily.

[POWER SPIKE — 2 minutes 44 seconds remaining]

He looked at his hands.

The green energy armor still intact. The power still there.

But his expression had changed.

For the first time, Matthias seemed to be calculating if he could win.

"Fine," he said.

One word.

He closed his eyes.

---

[SYSTEM — DETECTION]

[Matthias — unknown technique charging]

[Danger level: CRITICAL]

Alex saw it before it finished.

"Grim—"

"I know."

[Holy Corruption — Perfect Fusion — ACTIVATED]

Matthias’s green energy stopped being external.

It stopped being something he used, something he threw, something he controlled.

It turned inward.

And remade him.

It lasted four seconds.

Four seconds in which Matthias disappeared inside a column of green light so intense it eclipsed the sun.

The cracks in the ground expanded outward like roots. The mountains answered with another tremor, stronger this time. Rocks falling. The canyon to the north partially collapsing.

When the light faded—

It wasn’t Matthias.

Or it was Matthias, but also something else.

Two meters ten in height. His right half still human, still bearing the exorcist’s features, but the skin translucent with green energy running beneath like veins of light. His left half something different. Wrong angle at the shoulder joint. Fingers too long. The left eye completely green, no pupil, no iris.

A Saint and a monster in the same form.

[MATTHIAS — PERFECT FUSION]

[HP: 14,200 → 25,000/25,000] (new form, HP reset)

[Effective level: 85]

[Power Spike: permanently absorbed into new form]

[Holy Regeneration — ENHANCED: +200% healing speed]

His voice, when he spoke, had the same echo as Grim’s. As if coming from multiple places.

"Now," he said, "we’re speaking the same language."

---

He launched himself.

Grim intercepted him.

The impact shook the entire valley.

[Grim HP: 6,400 → 4,200/8,000]

[Matthias HP: 25,000 → 22,400/25,000]

Grim’s wings enveloped him again. Matthias shattered them with both fists. Crimson energy exploded outward in fragments.

Alex exploited the opening.

[Death’s Domain] and [Soul Rend] simultaneously.

The death field suppressing the enhanced regeneration. Soul Rend seeking the soul behind the fusion.

[Matthias HP: 22,400 → 20,100/25,000]

Matthias spun and struck Alex with the back of his hand.

No skill. Just level 85 physical strength.

[Alex HP: 95 → ...]

[Death’s Synergy — Shared pool active]

[Grim absorbs 60% of damage]

[Alex HP: 95 → 57/1,110]

[Grim HP: 4,200 → 3,720/8,000]

Alex rolled. Got up.

Fifty-seven HP.

He looked at Grim. Grim looked at him.

[Death’s Synergy — Shared pool]

[Energy available: calculating]

An idea passed between them without words.

Grim extended his wings fully.

[Harvest of Thousands — MAXIMUM AMPLITUDE]

The death field expanded to sixty meters.

Matthias felt the pull on his fused soul and gritted his teeth.

Alex ran straight toward him.

No dodging. No Shadow Step. No resources.

Just speed and the fifty-seven HP he had left.

At three meters, he channeled the only thing he had available.

[Death’s Domain — CONCENTRATED TO A POINT]

Not field. Not area.

A point. In his fist.

He struck Matthias in the center of the chest.

The death zone collapsing at the moment of impact.

[DEATH’S DOMAIN — POINT COLLAPSE]

[Matthias HP: 20,100 → 17,800/25,000]

Two thousand three hundred damage with no MP.

Matthias looked at the two of them.

The mountains still trembling. The valley floor unrecognizable, covered in craters and cracks and the remains of the sacrificed creatures.

His HP regenerating.

[Matthias HP: 17,800 → 18,400/25,000]

Harvest of Thousands’ pull slowing it but not stopping it.

Three entities at the peak of what they could give.

One with fifty-seven HP.

One with three thousand seven hundred.

One with eighteen thousand four hundred and active regeneration.

The sun fully up now.

Full light over a landscape that no longer resembled the one that had existed at dawn.

Matthias flexed his left hand, the one with the too-long fingers.

"This," said Grim, "does not end here."

It was a statement.

Matthias looked at them.

And for the first time in the entire battle, he didn’t answer.