Arthur’s eyes snapped open, heart hammering against his ribcage as an overwhelming sense of dread coursed through him. His skin crawled, an icy sweat clinging to him. Something was wrong. Horribly wrong.

He lay there for a moment, hoping it was just a lingering nightmare, but the feeling wouldn’t leave. It wasn’t fear or simple anxiety—it was deeper, darker, like a void opening inside his chest. And then he heard it.

Bubbling.

Cross’s blood ran cold.

It was coming from the bathroom.

The disgusting, unnatural aura that filled the air seemed to grow stronger by the second, oozing from the cracks of the door, seeping into the very room he lay in. It was as if something that shouldn’t exist in this reality had forced its way into his world, twisting the air around it with a presence that defied logic.

He threw his covers off and sat up, his mind racing. His instincts screamed at him to run, to get as far away from whatever was in that bathroom. But something deeper, an irritating curiosity or maybe some ingrained sense of duty, told him he needed to investigate. That it would be beneficial to him in some way.

Cross gritted his teeth. “Why am I like this?”

Fear and reason battled in his head, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew something was wrong, and in a world where people could tear down skyscrapers with their bare hands and monsters as tall as buildings roamed, wrong could mean something world-ending. He couldn’t afford to ignore it.

He stood, heart pounding in his ears, and mentally went through a list of possibilities. What could it be?

A Fiend?

The thought made his stomach churn. That disgusting aura, that sense of madness and chaos… it could only be a Fiend. And Fiends were something he was far from ready to deal with.

Cross glanced around the room, searching for anything he could use as a weapon. His eyes fell on the only viable option: a short knife from his kitchen. It wasn’t sharp, but it wasn’t dull either. He grabbed it, his grip tight as he tried to steady his nerves.

He’d taken some basic self-defense classes back in his previous life, and even dabbled in boxing for a short while, but that wasn’t going to help much if he was facing an actual Fiend. Still, it was better than going in empty-handed.

His eyes flicked toward the bathroom door again, the bubbling sound growing louder, more insistent. The air around it seemed to pulse with a dark energy, as if reality itself was trying to push it back, keep it contained.

Taking a deep breath, Cross steeled himself and approached the door slowly. His body was screaming at him to run in the opposite direction, but his mind refused to let him leave without knowing what was inside. The closer he got, the thicker the air became. It felt like walking through a cloud of tar, every step heavier than the last.

The knife in his hand felt woefully inadequate.

His fingers wrapped tighter around the handle as he raised his free hand, reaching for the door. Please don’t be a Fiend. He didn’t want to deal with something like that right now. Not this soon after transmigrating into this new world. Not when he had barely started on his path to power. This was supposed to be his second chance, and he had just begun laying out his plans for how to become overpowered. He wasn’t ready for this.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

But life didn’t care about whether or not he was ready.

Cross hesitated, his hand hovering over the door handle. He could feel the disgusting aura now, pressing against him like a suffocating blanket. His mind raced, trying to find an alternative, any excuse to leave. But he knew there was no other way. He had to face it.

Cross didn’t want to do it—he really didn’t. He knew what pushing his Heavenly Eyes too far could cost him, and the last thing he wanted was to end up blind. But he was out of options. If the thing in his bathroom was actually a Fiend, then he had no choice. There was no way he could deal with it using just a dull kitchen knife. The Fiend was something beyond normal comprehension, something born out of chaos and corruption. It didn’t follow the rules of this world.

But if I can kill it…

Cross’s breath caught in his throat. If he could kill it, then he would get its core, a Fiend Core. That was the key. If he got the core, he could absorb it and use it to offset the damage to his eyes. It was a gamble, but it was the only shot he had.

His grip tightened around the knife. His other hand twitched as he mentally willed his Heavenly Eyes to activate. The now-familiar sensation washed over him as the world shifted into a spectrum of colors and sharp detail. The physical world bled away as the kaleidoscope of Source energy particles took its place.

The colored particles returned to his vision: red for Body, blue for Mind, green for Will, and so on. But that wasn’t what made his stomach twist.

It was the black.

Thick, oily black miasma clung to the edges of the door and pooled in the cracks of the bathroom floor. The dark energy was palpable, suffocating, and wrong. It wasn’t just a void of light; it was a void of reality, a stain on the fabric of the world. Cross’s heart rate spiked as he saw the source of it—a concentrated, swirling mass of chaos. It wasn’t hard to piece together what he was looking at.

“An egg,” he whispered to himself, a thrill of terror and excitement rippling through him. “A Fiend Egg.”

This wasn’t a curse. This wasn’t some random bad luck. This was a blessing. A twisted, dangerous blessing, but a blessing nonetheless. If he played this right, if he could destroy that egg before it hatched, he’d have a Fiend Core in his hands. He would be on the fast track to becoming stronger.

Cross’s face split into a nervous grin. He could almost hear his heart pounding in his ears as adrenaline flooded his system. Without wasting any more time, he pushed the door open and stepped into the bathroom, the disgusting aura of the Fiend Egg slamming into him full force.

The thing pulsed in the middle of his bathroom. The Fiend Egg was massive, almost the size of a beach ball, but it wasn’t solid. It looked more like a thick miasma of black energy, swirling and shifting in on itself. Its form flickered between substance and shadow, and every second he stood there, Cross felt the world distort around it. The floor beneath the egg had started to corrode, tiny tendrils of black creeping outward, staining the tiles like rust.

The sight made his stomach churn.

He felt nauseated, especially now that his Heavenly Eyes were active. Every breath, every moment in this cursed miasma seemed to press on his senses like nails scraping across a chalkboard. The corruption was pervasive, its very presence wrong, violating the natural order of the world.

But Cross had no choice. If he didn’t do something now, the egg would hatch, and whatever monstrosity that came out of it would rip him apart.

His grip on the knife tightened. He held it above his head, steadying his nerves. "Sorry," he whispered to the egg, a grin tugging at his lips. "But I need your core."

With a single motion, Cross swung the knife down, aiming to cleave through the egg in one swift blow.

Nothing.

His blade passed right through the black miasma like it wasn’t even there. The knife met no resistance. It was as though he had tried to cut through smoke. Cross’s breath hitched. It took him only a second to realize what had gone wrong.

Fiends don’t belong to this world. Of course a normal weapon won’t work on them.

Fiends were creatures born of chaos and corruption, entities that existed outside the natural laws of reality. Ordinary weapons—ordinary anything—couldn’t harm them. That’s why Rankers were needed to deal with Fiends. Only a Ranker, someone infused with Source energy, could interact with and damage these creatures.

Cross’s stomach dropped as the realization hit him. He wasn’t a Ranker. He hadn’t figured out how to manipulate Source energy yet. Hell, he’d only been in this world for a few hours.

“Dammit,” he cursed under his breath, his eyes widening as the black miasma began to pulse.