The moment the training resumed, Hasib understood exactly why the System had called it a "warm-up."
Thin, near-invisible threads wrapped around his wrists and ankles without warning, yanking him into positions his body had never been asked to hold. His arms twisted backward at an angle that made his shoulder scream. His legs were pulled wide, the muscles along his thighs stretched taut as bowstrings.
"AAAH!"
The pain tore out of him before he could stop it.
Sweat rolled down his temple, mixing with the sting already burning across his cheek. His muscles trembled, fibers pulled to their limit, and for a moment all he could do was grit his teeth and endure.
This hurts... this actually hurts.
But somewhere underneath the pain, a strange kind of relief settled into his chest.
At least, if this works, maybe I can make myself stronger.
The knowledge didn’t make the agony any smaller, but it gave it a shape he could hold onto.
A small counter blinked in the corner of his vision.
[6:18 REMAINING]
Six more minutes of this...
He exhaled through clenched teeth and forced his spine to stay straight.
The final minute passed in a blur of trembling limbs and gritted breath. Then, without warning, a hand cracked against his back, open-palmed, hard enough to knock the wind out of him.
"AH!"
The threads released all at once, and Hasib crumpled forward, catching himself on his palms, chest heaving.
A mechanical chime rang somewhere just behind his ear, indifferent to the fact that his whole body still throbbed.
[WARM-UP COMPLETE]
Hasib glared at nothing in particular.
Could’ve warned me about the slap, at least.
Before he’d even caught his breath, the world around him folded into darkness.
It came faster than sleep, total and immediate, a darkness with weight to it.
Then, just as suddenly, light returned. Hasib blinked against the brightness, and when his eyes adjusted, something was already standing across from him.
It was shaped like a man, broad-shouldered and tall, built from layered plates of dark metal that shifted faintly as it moved, like something breathing beneath the surface. Where a face should have been, there was only smooth plating, and where eyes should have been, two points of red light burned to life and locked onto him.
Hasib’s stomach dropped.
What... is that.
The thing didn’t speak. It didn’t need to. Its right arm folded inward with a sharp metallic click, plates sliding and reshaping until what had been a hand was now a long, gleaming blade.
Hasib looked down at his own hands.
Empty.
Oh, come on.
The construct moved first, a blur of grey and red light, closing the distance faster than Hasib’s mind could process. He threw himself sideways, barely twisting out of the blade’s path, but he felt it anyway, a thin line of fire opening across his shoulder.
A notification flickered into the corner of his vision.
[LIFE -10]
[YOUR LIFE: 190 HP]
Hasib pressed a hand to the wound, blood warm against his fingers.
Right. Okay. This is real too.
He forced himself back onto his feet as the enemy turned toward him again, the blade dragging a thin line through the dirt.
I can’t keep dodging. It’s faster than me. If I keep running, I lose eventually.
His jaw tightened.
Then I won’t run.
When the blade came down again, Hasib didn’t move away. He thrust his left arm straight into its path.
The impact was immense, a shock of pain that rattled up through his bones, the red armor plating along his forearm groaning as the blade bit deep into it and lodged there, trapped.
[LIFE -50]
Hasib’s vision went white for a heartbeat, a scream tearing out of his throat. But his arm held. The blade stayed locked.
Now.
With everything left in his battered body, he twisted, using his own weight and the enemy’s momentum against it, wrenching the trapped arm downward with a furious roar. The construct staggered, off-balance for the first time, and Hasib drove it hard into the ground.
CRASH
Dust exploded outward.
Hasib didn’t wait. He planted a foot against the fallen construct’s shoulder, gripped the jammed blade-arm with both hands, and pulled until metal shrieked and finally tore free at the joint.
He rose holding the enemy’s own severed arm like a sword, chest heaving, blood running down his shoulder.
The construct was already rising, its red eyes flaring brighter. Hasib didn’t give it the chance. He surged forward and brought the stolen blade down across its neck in one clean stroke.
SLASH
For one suspended second, nothing happened. Then the construct’s red eyes dimmed, its body dissolving into scattering fragments of light before vanishing entirely, as if it had never stood there.
Silence.
Hasib stood alone on the empty field, breathing hard, blood dripping from his fingertips onto the dirt.
A notification bloomed in front of him.
[LEVEL +0.5]
[3 REWARDS UNLOCKED]
He let out a shaky breath, half a laugh escaping despite everything.
"...I survived."
Three boxes materialized in front of him, each humming with a faint colored light. He reached for the red one first.
[RED BOX: 2x ARMOR PIECES]
[HEAD HUNT BONUS: 0:30]
A countdown ticked in the corner of the notification, though nothing else happened yet. Hasib frowned at it, filed the warning away, and moved to the next.
The green box cracked open to reveal something that looked less like a reward and more like an energy drink, a small vial of glowing liquid. He hesitated only a second before drinking it in one go.
Warmth spread through his chest at once, a current of renewed strength rolling down his arms and legs, chasing away some of the exhaustion clawing at his muscles.
...Okay, that one’s good.
Finally, the blue box.
[SPEED +0.25%]
Hasib stared at the number for a long moment.
That’s it? Point two five percent?
He almost laughed, until he took a step and felt it, faint but real, a fraction of a second shaved off every motion his body made.
...Fine. I’ll take it.
Before he could examine the rewards any further, the air in front of him split open, a rectangle of shifting light stretching from the ground to well above his head. Words scrolled across its surface in the same cold glowing script as everything else the System had shown him.
[INVENTORY DOMAIN]
[1ST PHASE: MINION KINGDOM]
Hasib turned in place, searching for another way out. There wasn’t one. Nothing but empty space stretched in every direction except toward the portal itself.
...Of course.
He steadied his breathing, clenched his fists, and stepped into the light.
[START]
The light released him into blinding sunlight and a wall of heat.
Hasib staggered, shielding his eyes, and found himself in the middle of a vast desert, golden sand stretching to the horizon, dotted with crooked cacti and jagged red rock formations. And directly ahead of him, chaos.
Dozens, no, hundreds of small figures, barely three feet tall, clashed across the dunes in a battle that looked equal parts war and comedy. They wore tiny makeshift armor, wielded weapons half their own size, and screamed battle cries in voices too squeaky to sound remotely threatening.
Hasib blinked.
"...What."
Before he could process anything further, a cluster of the little creatures spotted him and froze mid-battle, eyes going wide.
"IT’S HIM!"
"Karon is back!!"
"KARON HAS RETURNED!!"
Hasib barely had time to open his mouth. "Wait, who’s..."
A dozen small hands seized him by the waist, hoisted him off his feet, and before he understood what was happening, he was being stretched backward like the pouch of a slingshot, tiny arms straining against his weight.
"H-hey! Wait! WAIT!"
"FOR THE KINGDOM!!"
They let go.
Hasib shot across the desert like a cannonball, wind screaming past his ears, sand and sky blurring together, and crashed, hard, in a heap of limbs, straight into what appeared to be a small, ornate throne pavilion.
He groaned, pushing himself up onto his elbows, dust falling from his hair. Half the pavilion lay flattened around him, and in the wreckage stood a doll-sized figure in a flowing violet dress, her skirts clutched in both fists, her crown slipping over one eye.
Hasib’s whole body locked up.
Oh no. Oh no, no, no. I just crashed into a princess.
He scrambled upright, bowed so fast his neck cracked, and kept his eyes fixed on the sand.
"I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, it wasn’t on purpose, I got launched, I didn’t have a choice in the matter!"
"E-excuse me?!" The princess’s voice came out several octaves higher than before, flustered and sputtering as she yanked her crown straight. "Wh-what kind of... who even ARE you?!"
"Sorry! Really, I’m sorry!"
"Enough! Just..." She pressed both tiny hands to her burning cheeks, composing herself with visible effort, then drew herself up with as much dignity as a three-foot monarch could manage. "You. Are you truly Karon, returned to us?"
Hasib finally risked lifting his head. "I don’t... I don’t actually know who Karon is."
"It doesn’t matter!" Princess Dora’s composure cracked again, this time into something closer to desperation. She grabbed the edge of his sleeve with both hands, eyes wide and pleading. "Please. Whoever you are, whatever they call you, the Hogs are going to destroy everything. Our kingdom, our people, all of it. You have to help us. Please."
The sky answered before Hasib could.
A deep, rolling boom rumbled across the desert, and every minion soldier on the battlefield dropped instantly, faces pressed flat into the sand.
"INCOMING!" one of them shrieked. "TAKE COVER!"
Hasib looked up.
Dozens of massive cannonballs arced across the sky in a smoking, thundering wave, and every single one of them was curving, unmistakably, directly toward him.
"...Why me?!"
He barely had time to raise his stolen blade before the first impact hit.
BOOM
The shockwave threw him backward through the sand. He rolled, forced himself up, blade raised just in time to deflect a second blast, and this time the impact was too much. The metal shrieked, cracked, and shattered in his grip.
"No!"
He stared at his empty, ringing hands as another cannonball screamed toward him.
Then, out of nowhere, a group of small armored cadets, minion-sized soldiers bearing the kingdom’s crest, sprinted toward him, straining together to carry something long, wrapped in tattered cloth.
"Take it! Quickly!" one of them shouted, shoving the object into his arms. "It’s the Hilt of Legend! Every record says it belonged to the strongest warrior who ever lived!"
Hasib tore the cloth away. Beneath it was a plain, worn hilt, stripped of any blade, its metal dulled by centuries of age.
"This is a legend? It doesn’t even have a..."
"HISTORY SAYS IT GLOWS RED!" the cadet screamed over the next explosion. "JUST HOLD IT!"
Another cannonball shrieked overhead.
Hasib didn’t have time to argue. He gripped the hilt with both hands.
For a moment, nothing.
Then light exploded outward from the hilt, so sudden and so bright that every minion soldier within a hundred feet flinched away, shielding their eyes.
It burned violet.
[SPECIAL WEAPON DETECTED]
[VIOLET BLADE]
[STATUS: TEMPORARY]
A blazing violet blade tore into existence from the empty hilt, crackling with light that felt almost alive, humming with a pressure Hasib could feel in his teeth.
Princess Dora stared, her mouth falling open, her eyes wide with awe and disbelief.
"That’s... that’s not possible. The legends are clear. It has always been red." Her voice dropped to a stunned whisper. "Why is it purple?"
Overhead, the sky darkened again, a fresh wave of cannon fire screaming down toward him, close enough now that Hasib could feel the heat rolling off it.
He didn’t run.
He planted his feet in the burning sand, raised the glowing violet blade before him, and stood his ground as the sky itself seemed to fall toward him.