Grinning with satisfaction, Waen looked at the slash he had left on the flank of the beast before him. As a tier 10 beast, a Nickleback bear should not have been injured by what was, in essence, a tier two human, but Waen had cheated the system.

He smugly rescanned his [rending Battle axe]

Rending Battle Axe

Quality: otherworld artifact- unique

Effect: uses mana to rend whatever it strikes

This item, though it did not look like much, either from observation or scanning, its power came from its abstractness. By fueling mana into the weapon, it could be used to [rend] just about anything, as proven by the bear in front of him.

As it charged forward, he dodged. He had prepared for this fight for years. By putting all of his stats into [agility], he was able to outpace this particular opponent easily. Granted, he could never hope to fight toe-to-toe with a Nickleback bear. They were heavy-hitting tank-type monsters with extremely tough skin, even when compared with similarly powerful beings. That was why his weapon was so valuable. Yes, it took quite a bit of mana to power it enough to cause any damage, but that was why he had put half of his stat points into [wisdom].

Seeing the human running circles around it, the great beast smashed downward with wide, powerful paws. As a wave of force cracked the ground around it, Waen went flying.

Landing on his feet and skidding across the dusty clearing, he mustered up his mana and sprinted. He wanted this. If he were able to take down a monster of this caliber, the number of levels he would receive would boost him to at least five tiers of power if not six. That is not even considering the potential titles or future class refinements he might unlock as a result of defeating a monster eight tiers above him. Waen chose this path, and the end was in sight.

Activating [dash] and chaining it with [leap], he vaulted above the head of the bear as it rose to meet him, but it was too slow. Too heavy. As he reached the height of his jump, he readied his weapon and pumped it as full as he possibly could, squeezing every last drop into the otherworld object. As it hummed with power, he swung with all of his might.

Where the blade passed, the very world rippled. As the axe struck, the bear’s armored skin and flesh were rent. It would have gone straight through, but the bear moved. Nothing drastic, its angle shifted suddenly and subtly, but it was enough. A long gash flowed almost six inches deep across the Nickleback bear’s back.

Waen landed on the back of the bear with a thud, and one of his ankles gave out and he fell to the metallic skin beneath him.

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Hurriedly trying to rise, he noticed the pained stillness of the beast beneath him. Frantically trying to see what had happened, he noticed it. A distortion in the flesh. In the blood, and in the muscle, even in the air itself. It all surrounded a spot of infinite deep blackness thinner than the human’s little finger.

Seconds passed for eternity until the bear jerked and bucked and tried to run. But no matter what it did, the hole through reality lodged in its back anchored the panicked bear in place, helpless and in pain.

Clinging to the back of the kicking Nickleback bear, Waen looked between his [Rending Battle Axe] and the tear in space that he had apparently created. As he stared in awe at the little hole, something changed. The hole changed. A small speck of purplish-brown appeared in the center and grew larger and larger until something came out. A small thin… something. A worm? As its tail tapered off, the hole contracted until the end was met and the hole disappeared as though it had never existed.

With the anchoring hole removed, the Nickleback bear was released from its panicked confusion, and finally able to throw Waen off its back.

Confused by what had just happened and the potential consequences, he landed with a jolt, his already fractured ankle crying out in agony. His breath shoved its way out of his lungs all at once, leaving him in a shocked heap on the ground.

The enraged bear turned to Waen and charged, batting a paw toward the prone figure. In an instinctual attempt to save himself, he lifted his only weapon only for it to be ripped from his hands by the force of the swing. As the otherworldy battle axe clattered to the dusty ground, the bear whaled on it with an unnatural determination, trying, and succeeding, to shatter the instrument of all its misery.

With its task complete, it turned its great bulk back to the wielder of the weapon. Waen had been desperately scrambling away as soon as the bear had turned away from him, but his ankle was not allowing him to stand much less flee. So he had resorted to crawling as fast as he could manage, but as he saw the shadow loom behind him he realized that it was not enough.

He had tried to cheat the system, and now he was getting his just reward.

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Synth watched through the eyes of the Nickleback bear as the weapon was destroyed. After seeing what that artifact was capable of in the hands of one so weak, she could not allow it to exist, lest someone of greater power find it. No matter the intentions, a weapon of that power would destroy the very world. She had not known that it was capable of such damage to the core structure of the world. of the system. This was the only way.

She sighed in relief when the task was done, she had been a little bit worried that it would not be able to be destroyed, but without mana, it would appear as weak as any other weapon enchanted with [Durability V]. that was good. Now she had to go warn the other watchers to keep an eye out for similar items in the future as they conducted system management.

She turned her attention to the creature that had exited from the hole in space. After observing it and trying to find a potential danger from it, she decided that it was harmless. Perhaps if it did something notable in the future, she would check back up on it. But, until then, she had more important matters to attend to, the most notable of which was warning the others.