The berserker

A berserker’s abilities work as such:

Going berserk makes berserkers stronger and burns through life energy by using it to overload their lifeforce with it

The more life energy you have, the more your lifeforce is passively strengthened. Going berserk just turns that passive into active at the cost of life energy.

Life energy is stuff that is basically lifespan

Archana is a berserker but has an extra ability

They can do the opposite of the berserk ability.

They can be temporarily weaker to get more life energy.

Kind of like putting his life force on power saving mode.

So Archana was born in a berserker village

Almost every adult is a berserker, and kids are taught how to go berserk at puberty bcus idk that’s when it would be easiest to start.

Archana was weak for his whole life, by the time he was 13 he only had the strength to carry himself and some small, light items.

He was bullied quite a lot.

So when the time comes that they teach him how to use the berserk ability, he finds:

That he already has an opposite version of berserk on, that because he was getting more and more life energy, it was reinforcing his life force more and more and that the opposite version was compensating for that, keeping him at roughly the same power and making more and more life energy produced at an exponential rate. that he has a great amount of life energy prodecud already. In the past, he was told of a legend of a cursed technique given by demons that was essentially what he had, and that it would grant them an actual lifespan (they would have worn through most of it by the point of enticement) but they could never go berserk again and it would be weaker than in their normal state. The technique is permanent. People despise them and call them cowardly.

Archana finds out his is supposed to be permanent, and that it is in many many parts. He also discovered that some parts are weaker than others, because of the sheer amount of lifeforce that was being contained.

Archana decided to hide that he was “cursed” because the village hated him enough as it was.

When he was told to use the berserk ability on a dummy, he broke a tiny part of the ‘curse’. Enough to let through a fraction of a fraction of the lifeforce contained through.

It was to the point where he was as strong as the other kids using berserk. He check his lifeforce inwardly and apparently he was still gaining lifeforce much faster than he was using it being alive. He wondered if that meant he could live forever.

He demonstrated that he was as strong as the other kids, and some of the adults snickered and whispered to eachother.

Archana heard something along the lines of: “the amount of lifeforce he’s burning just to keep up with the other kids must be large, best case scenario, he dies of life energy deficiency and is out of our hair. Worst case scenario, we have an extra sub-par berserker”

So everyone went home, Archana (who i’m going to nickname Archie) kept the broken part of the curse open. When he got home, he found that he was hella hungry, and craved meat. Not wanting to worsen the situation of his family (it was already pretty bad because of him) he went out hunting. He usually went hunting every other day with a sling and sometimes caught some birds. Anything to help his family. This time he caught 4 birds. It helped that he could run faster, run longer, and launch the sling bullet faster.

He brought them home and asked his mother to cook them, and his mother agreed, saying it would be a celebration that he finally learned the berserk ability.

When dinner was done he ate two of the birds and some of the other stuff before he was full. He then did his chores and went to bed.

The next morning, he found that he had more muscle mass than before. Apparently the passive effects of life energy were already reinforcing his lifeforce and improving his body.

So life went on for a couple years.

He became a respected warrior, the strongest. His former position in the village and his family situation improved bit by bit, and so did his body.

Constantly having passive effects equivalent to the average warrior going berserk had turned him into a 2 meter (6’6” for americans) tall man with a swimmer’s build by the age of 18.

One day, he was out hunting a very strong beast that had gotten too close for comfort to the village. But when he got back, the entire village was destroyed. He bolted to his family’s house and the whole thing was rubble.

He dug through the rubble and debris and found his dad.

He was pretty much dead but managed to say some things to his son.

“It was *cough* the empire’s soldiers, they destroyed the whole village and massacred the people.” he took a couple breaths before continuing. “Go south of here, to the city of Yhtil, look for a man called Borris, tell him nakra sent you, he will train you and give you a chance to fight the empire.”

*switch to 1st person

I wanted to run all the way to the empire and kill as many as I could, but I restrained myself, I stayed and listened to Father.

“Listen, before you go, I wanted to tell you that we always loved you, even before you grew in strength, and we will always be proud of you.”

Tears stream down my cheeks.

“But I warn you, do not spend the rest of your life seeking vengeance, as you will only be left hollow, find what makes you happy and do whatever you can to obtain it.”*cough cough*

“Continue the legacy of the archak people, and live…” with that the light fades from his eyes and he collapses immediately.

Usually his death would hae been a lot more gradual, but he must’ve been burning through life energy to stay alive long enough for me to reach him and to tell me his last words.

My father… was dead.

I wanted to scream out in agony and pain, I wanted to kill the people that did this, the people that told them to do this, the world itself and the gods that created the world.

But I did not.

I lied down next to my now dead father and wept.

Stolen story; please report.

After I was done, I buried every corpse I found. When I was done I turned to my left. There was a demon leaning against a tree. I knew he was there, I sensed him a while ago, but I deemed the matter of giving my people a proper burial more important, and he seemed patient enough to wait.

As I turned to him I said “What do you want?”

“Right to the chase I see, I want to offer you a deal.” he said within a sinister grin

I sighed, I wasn’t going to take a deal from a demon, only stupid people do that, but still I decided to indulge him. “What kind of deal”

“Simply put, I will give you the secret to eternal life, and in return you will give me your soul”

I laughed. ‘The secret to eternal life’ was what demons called I already had, and for anyone else, it would already be a double edged sword, and with the tradeoff of my soul? Only an idiot would take that deal in this situation.

Turning to him, I said “screw you and your eternal life, if you want my soul, you’ll have to come over here and pry it from my cold dead chest”

The demon looked surprised, before laughing out loud. “Do you know what you’ve just done!? You’ve just challenged a demon! That means the rules restricting me from harming you directly are no longer applied! Your life is forfeit little human.”

I already knew about this though, because we had been taught from birth never to challenge a demon to a fight. I ignored this because I didn’t care. I wanted something to vent my anger on and now I had it.

And so we started fighting.

The demon seemed to take me on with relative ease. I could tell now that he was double my strength currently, and even more skilled.

We withdrew from eachother and the demon started talking again.

“I am surprised that you are able to maintain such strength for more than short bursts of power, like the rest of your clan. You must be burning through your lifeforce at an incredible speed”

I wasn’t. In fact, I forgot that we did it like that. We were trained to make the best use of our life energy by only using it in short bursts when we need to use our muscles. This was part of the reason our village was famous for our berserkers. I obviously didn’t do this because I didn’t use the berserk technique.

Still though, this was proving to be a challenge. He was better than me in both skill and power, and the only way to win was to be better than him in one of these.

He continued speaking “you have proven to me your strength and resolve, and so my offer still stands, and you may take it at any point before I kill you.”

I couldn’t just improve my skill with the sword on the spot, so that left…

The demon said “no? Well okay then, your funeral.”

Power.

The demon started walking towards me, weapons ready, he was slowly picking up speed.

I reached within myself and found the curse.

The one hole I broke in my teen years was small, like a hand-sized hole in a giant wall.

I reached towards the area.

And broke a hole in it.

If the last hole was the size of a hand, this one was more the size of a person.

Instantly strength surged into me, I felt as though I was ten times the man I was before.

It was a good thing too, because the demon was almost upon me.

I then bolted at him and attacked.

Suddenly, the demon was on the defensive, a look of surprise on his face as I barraged him with attacks much faster and much more powerful than before.

Switch to 3rd person demon’s POV

The demon was surprised, incredibly so. It was just a minute ago he was toying with the grief-stricken human in front of him. How had he gotten so strong so suddenly! His mind hurriedly rushed to come to an acceptable answer: the human was burning through the rest of his life energy in a last-ditch attempt to kill him. It probably would’ve worked, if he didn’t figure it out. Now all he had to do was stay defensive and evasive until the human ran out of juice.

*20 seconds pass

The demon had gotten cuts all over his body from unsuccessful dodges ‘any second now, he will collapse where he stands.’

*20 seconds later

The demon was incredibly tired and had just lost an arm. It didn’t matter, since he could just re-attach it later, but that was only after the human died. Speaking of which: WHY WASN’T HE DEAD YET

Switch to 1st person

As I poured my grief, sadness, anger and desperation into the battle, the demon was quickly overwhelmed.

In just a minute, the demon was on the ground.

“How… HOW?!” the demon screamed

“How what?” I asked, amused and a lot less tense after venting.

“HOW DID YOU GET SO MUCH STRONGER?, HOW DID YOU BEAT ME? AND HOW ARE YOU NOT DEAD?!”

Taking a deep breath, I answer “screw you that’s how” I then decapitate him.

He’s dead.

A black mass escapes from the demon and starts floating away.

“Oh no you don’t” I said, and grabbed it as it screeched.

I knew what it was, a demon soul. Pesky little things, they float back to wherever they came from and reconstitute themselves or something, whatever they do, I wasn’t letting the little creep do it.

There were a couple things you could do with demon souls, You could destroy them, but without a proper exorcist, the dark energies left-over would corrupt your mind. Alternatively, you could seal it in something.

Sealing it in a place or special location was too much effort for too little gain, but you could seal it in a weapon and turn it into a demonic armament, that stuff was pretty powerful, but they were sentient and wouldn't do what you wanted most of the time. My idea was a little different.

Back before I knew I could be a berserker I was an apprentice to the local exorcist, but I gave up on that, because he got close to no respect in the village. More than I had at the time, but less than that of a berserker.

I went to the exorcist’s house and found the stuff I needed, a special type of holy ink (very rare) and a holy charm.

I put the charm in the same hand I was holding the demon soul with. This would weaken the demon soul and make everything else easier. I then drew the sealing symbols on what I wanted to seal it in and I put the demon soul in the middle of it and it got sucked in, squealing all the way.

And with that I had a demon arm. That’s right! I put it into my arm!

I know, probably stupid, but I made sure I did everything right, and even splurged on the holy ink, sjust to make sure it would work as intended.

Not intended by the people who designed demon seals, but by me.

Back when I was still weak and the exorcist’s apprentice, I still wanted to be really strong, and I had an idea and planned out an entirely new demon seal, one that would seal the demon inside the body. I designed it to use the demon soul as a conduit to consume other souls in order to provide strength to myself, much like how demons work naturally. I was desparate when I came up with the idea, and I wasn’t going to use good people’s souls.

Having thoroughly studied the thing containing my lifeforce, I made some improvements to the sealing technique before using it on myself of course.

The seal was on my left arm, I didn’t want to have to cut off my good arm if something went wrong.

Luckily, nothing went wrong, and the seal seems to be working.

I decided I would call it: Demon’s grasp

Demon’s grasp only uses a couple parts of the demon soul, the rest were unneeded. So, I tested Demon’s grasp for the first time, using it to consume the rest of the demon soul, and it worked!

I feel a rush of strength flow through me, but not like last time.

Last time, it was the quantity of life energy that increased. Now it felt as though it was the quality that increased, and the change happened to the life energy on the inside of the curse as well. Cool.

This was because he wasn’t used to the amount of strength that was flowing into him, combined with the quality increase. And he didn’t want to accidentally tear someone’s arm off by accident.

Still though, he was more powerful than before, because of the quality increase, even if the hole was the same size as before

He then left south for Yhtil.

***

On the way he found a wyvern, a creature with a small amount of dragon blood in it’s veins. It was about the strength of the demon before, so Archana decided he would use it to get used to his new strength.

It was a close match.

Archie then roasted a bunch of it’s meat and preserved a bunch of it (wyvern meat it hella tasty and hella healthy)

He ate all the stuff he roasted (his appetite increases whenever his lifeforce increases, because his body is trying to improve itself to match the lifeforce)

He then went to sleep.

He woke up a bit stronger, and decided he wouldn’t walk the rest of the way because walking is boring.

He started running to Yhtil.

When he was about halfway there, he found an abandoned shrine. He investigated and found something in the back. It was a demon sword.

He decided not to use it and to instead, eat it.

Of course, demon’s grasp wouldn’t work on a demon soul unless it was weakened first.

Archie undid the seal, grabbed the demon soul, poured some holy water on it, and ate it.

This time, because it was a whole demon soul, the qualitative change happened as well as something else. The soul eating part of the demon soul reinforced the soul eating part of the seal. Neat.

—

“Now, this fragment cuts off around here, but I did manage to find another one belonging to the same dream. This one takes place many years later, after countless battles, hardships and discoveries.”

—

As Archana faced off against the God of The End, he was utterly hopeless. He had already destroyed his curse in it’s entirety, and even with all the life energy that provided him, even with all the qualitative changes his life energy had gone through, even with the arm of the god slayer, he was no match for God of The End.

[achievement unlocked! {it’s over} fight the God of The End without the power to defeat him, your end is certain]

‘Dammit!!! If only there was a way I could get stronger! It doesn’t even need to be permanent, I just need a temporary power increase! I would even burn up all of my hard earned life energy- ohhhh, wait, i’m a dumbass’

With that he used the skill berserk for the first time in his life and his body surged with newfound, almost tangible power.

[achievement unlocked! {deus ex machina} obtain the power defeat a previously undefeatable enemy mid-battle. “What, did the writers pull this one out of their ass?”]

[Achievement unlocked! {blasphemy} obtain the achievement {deus ex machina} by your own power during a fight against a god. Effect: deus ex machina’s don’t work on you.]

[achievement unlocked! {IT’S NOT OVER!!!} obtain the power to fight the God of The End after gaining the achievement {it’s over} you are a badass]

He then killed the God of The End, consumed his soul and ascended into the ranks of the divine.

[You Win!]

[thank you for playing wielders of life]

[exit] [restart] [continue]

He knew there was nothing left for him in this world, so he left.

He woke up in a chair and there was someone excited in front of him

“Did you like my game? Were there any loop-holes or bugs I need to fix? Did you like the bosses? How was the gameplay? Did you like the energy mechanics?”

Memories flooded my mind of how i was a creation god, a real one, not like the fake gods in the world i was just in. I was helping out a friend test his first world apparently.

I only had one thing to say: “berserk OP pls nerf”

The End

—

And that was the end of that dream. Quite meta wasn’t it? Well, on to the next one.”