A massive conflagration completely engulfed me as the blast sent me flying high into the air with my legs blown off. Agony consumed my mind as everything, and I mean fucking everything in my body was being cooked.

[Physical Resistance has leveled up to Lv.7]

[Physical Resistance has leveled up to Lv.8]

[Physical Resistance has leveled up to Lv.9]

[Through sheer effort, you have learned the Skill ‘Minor Fire Resistance Lv. 1.’]

My eyesight was the first to go out when the fire managed to get inside my helmet through the small gap. The next was my ability to breathe, because as I discovered right then, inhaling fucking flames wasn't good for your lungs. Next, my hearing went silent as my ears melted and covered my damn earholes. Lastly, all sensation in my skin completely disappeared as the heat fried it to a crisp.

[Minor Fire Resistance has leveled up to Lv.2]

[Minor Fire Resistance has leveled up to Lv.3]

[Regeneration has leveled up to Lv.6]

But my agony didn't end right then. Oh no, it just ramped up from there. With no other senses to focus on, my brain put all its attention to my insides, and my innards, which were already obliterated from the shockwave, were fucking boiling in my own blood. To make matters worse, I must've landed hard on the ground after being flung into the air by the explosion because I felt my bones all over my body breaking. All my organs were being turned into a stew with my bones as stock, and my regeneration was on overdrive trying to keep everything together.

[Minor Fire Resistance has leveled up to Lv.4]

[Minor Fire Resistance has leveled up to Lv.5]

[Regeneration has leveled up to Lv.7]

[Regeneration has leveled up to Lv.8]

My organs were intermittently shutting down before functioning again as my regeneration brought them back. Even my brain was getting melted and healed back up, because even with my senses obliterated, I was smelling colors and tasting sounds like a fucking lunatic.

[Minor Fire Resistance has leveled up to Lv.6]

[Regeneration has leveled up to Lv.9]

[Regeneration Lv.9 has been upgraded to Greater Regeneration Lv.1]

All of a sudden, my regeneration went on steroids. My blood was still literally boiling inside me and my bone shards were shredding my organs, but everything was suddenly healing faster than they were being damaged. Even the bones, which I usually needed to manually set, painfully went to their proper positions and healed back up, though not before shredding everything that stood in their way.

The first to return to functioning order was my breathing. As soon as my lungs were no longer scorched from the flames I inhaled, I coughed uncontrollably and vomited blood at the same time. With my helmet closed and tightly secure around my head as it was, that meant my vomit was trapped inside and caused me to choke.

I hurriedly tried to remove my helmet, but to my horror, the base of the helmet had melted and stuck to my fucking skin at some point. I couldn't remove it.

I was drowning in my own damn blood and vomit.

I tried pulling my helmet forcefully off my head, and with the pain I was going through, my strength was through the roof thanks to Masochist. At the first tug, I felt my spine at the base of my neck snap and disconnect. My body was suddenly paralyzed, all while I was drowning.

I was forced to wait for my spine to reconnect, which fortunately happened quickly. Once it did and I gained control over my body, I forcefully dug my fingers into the metal and ripped the entire front of my helmet off. A layer of skin and flesh from my face was also ripped off because the damn metal had melded to my face from the heat.

I vomited again, this time freely. I coughed and cried at the same time as my body healed itself from the sheer torture I went through. It was the most excruciating thing I've ever experienced, and I honestly wished to have just died instead of feeling that agony.

I spent the next ten minutes recovering from my ordeal. My body had completely healed long ago, but the mind was a more fickle thing. I broke down in tears like a bitch several times.

When I finally gathered enough of myself, I took stock of my surroundings. The entire main building of the Siren's Call was gone, replaced by a massive crater. In the center of the crater was me.

The entire thing had been a fucking trap. I don't know if Carmen had a mole inside the City Hall or if we were just that predictable, but no matter the case, he knew where we'd be and he got us real fucking good.

“Warner,” I gasped, my voice still raspy from all the smoke still stuck to my throat. “Warner, you there?”

I had no idea how the old man's shadow abilities worked, but I was hoping that he was completely immune to attack while stuck to someone's shadow. There was no response, however, as I called out for the old dude. Maybe he shifted away to another shadow when he saw the trap. He did spot it the moment I busted into the manager's office.

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I tried standing up, which took quite a bit of effort due to how my armor's joints had completely melded together. I forced the joints apart with my sheer strength easily enough, what with the durability enchantments no longer working. It was made easier by the fact that my legs weren't constrained by armor anymore. My legs just above the knees were now bare after they were blown off from the explosion and regenerated as good as new.

Normally, I'd lament how my badass armor didn't last as long as I would like, but I wasn't in the mood right now. All I wanted to do was to sleep in my bed and forget about the pain I experienced.

As I began climbing toward the lip of the crater, I noticed something in the debris that littered the area. Everything was charred black, but even then, the familiar shape of a cage was unmistakable even if its bars were warped in every direction. The cage was partially buried under a high stack of still-smoldering wood.

And inside the cage was the blackened corpse of a child.

I looked around, and that's when I saw more cages littering the place, most of them containing the burnt corpse of a child. Bessi would've been in one of those cages if I hadn't saved her and her companions in the sewers.

Carmen never had any intention of transferring the children out of the brothel at all. To him, all that mattered was to kill the pesky Constable.

For the first time since I've arrived in this world, I felt true rage. Not the piddling anger that I felt when somebody annoyed me like Camille using me as assassin bait. What I felt was the type of rage that I nurtured against the bastards who made my life hell back on Earth. Deep, primal rage that Ma tried to keep me from expressing.

This time, though, Ma was no longer here to stop me from turning that rage into action. Now, I had the power that I had been craving in the past just so I could gain some semblance of control over my life. The power to kill anyone that tried to mess with me.

And I would gladly use that power to kill the bastard who set up a trap for me while knowing that these child slaves would perish in the process.

At that moment, I heard the rustle of fabric pass me by. One moment I was staring blankly at the burnt child in the cage, the next, I was surrounded by five cloaked figures whose blades were already piercing my body. Two targeted my heart, one stabbed into my neck, and the last two was plunged into my skull.

The familiar burning sensation of poison entered my bloodstream, and if my enemies were smart, the poison was probably of the anti-healing variety.

My antidote pills had been destroyed in the explosion.

[Minor Poison Resistance has leveled up to Lv.5]

[Minor Poison Resistance has leveled up to Lv.6]

Whatever poison these bastards were using, it was strong. My body started burning from the inside, not unlike the severe burning I just went through. The horrendous pain was back.

My vision went red with rage.

I howled in pain and fury as I grabbed the arms of two of my assailants. They responded by stabbing more daggers into my head, causing my mental faculties to go haywire. But even with my malfunctioning brain, I was somehow still conscious and managed to kill one of the assassins I held by biting his throat out.

[You have slain a Lv. 46 Dark Blade. Experience gained.]

[Congratulations! You are now Level 24.]

[Minor Poison Resistance has leveled up to Lv.7]

The other assassin I grabbed brought out a dagger and sliced his arm off without hesitation just as I was about to bite his throat too, escaping my grasp.

The four remaining assassins fell back warily as they watched me suffer from the poison. The pain was exceuciating, and despite my efforts, I was forced to my knees from the debilitating pain.

[Minor Poison Resistance has leveled up to Lv.8]

I plucked the blades stuck all over my body and triggered Blood Bag, forcing my body to replace my poisoned blood. I had to flush the poison out of my body quickly, because without my regeneration, I was fucking dead.

But imagine my surprise when my wounds instantly healed the moment I removed the daggers stabbed into me. And I meant that literally. As soon the daggers left my flesh, my body healed up the wounds in less than a second.

I was so surprised that I forgot about my pain for a moment. Did these bastards use the wrong poison?

But judging from the assassins' wide eyes, they did not expect that too. Something changed with my regeneration, but I had no idea what since I haven't been able to read my notifications yet.

However, that didn't matter at the moment. What did matter was that their poison was ineffective, and that meant they lost their best advantage against me.

[Minor Poison Resistance has leveled up to Lv.9]

With the poison still stuck inside my bloodstream, the pain I was experiencing was debilitating. But I forced myself to think through the pain and used it to my advantage.

With Masochist boosting my strength to tremendous levels right now, I shifted my footing and pushed off the ground with all my might, resulting in me rocketing forward towards one of the assassins. Fast they may be, but I still managed to reach my target before he managed to move out of the way.

I grabbed his neck right as I passed him by and crushed it with a closing of my fist.

[You have slain a Lv. 43 Dark Blade. Experience gained.]

The three remaining assassins took advantage of the situation by launching a barrage of poison needles at my back. The burning intensified by threefold as hundreds of needles turned my back into a pin cushion.

[Masochist has leveled up to Lv.4]

[Minor Poison Resistance Lv. 9 has been upgraded to Poison Resistance Lv. 1]

All of a sudden, the burning diminished significantly, but I didn't get to appreciate it for even a second before one of the assassins reached my position in an instant and swung a shortsword at my neck. My instincts screamed at me that the attack would behead me.

I focused Hard as Fuck on my neck. At level 4, I could harden four body parts at once, but I focused all of that hardening instances to my neck as I tried to trap the assassin in a bear hug.

My effort was moot.

[Hard as Fuck has leveled up to Lv.5]

The world spun all over the place as my head flew off and landed a few meters away. I just got fucking decapitated. The bastard's blade cut through my neck with minimal resistance even with my Skill.

Before I could even start worrying about my situation, a sharp scream tore through the air along with the sound of breaking bones. It came from the assassin that beheaded me.

Somehow, before my head went flying, I succeeded in catching the assassin in a bear hug. The last instruction I sent to my body was to crush the motherfucker to death, and now that my head was gone, my body somehow locked in position with the screaming assassin trapped in the bear hug.

The two other assassins arrived and hacked my body to pieces, freeing their compatriot. But it looks like they were too late. The bastard was already foaming at the mouth.

[You have slain a Lv. 49 Dark Blade. Experience gained.]

[Congratulations! You are now Level 25. You are eligible for a Class Evolution.]

The two remaining assassins didn't give their dead companion another glance. After seeing my decapitated head, they immediately left the scene.

Or rather, they tried to.

Before they could even take a single step, one of the assassins suddenly crumpled into a compressed ball of flesh. The other was sliced into hundreds of tiny pieces not unlike what they did to my body.

And throughout all that, I was still conscious and alive.