[100% Charged]
Ethan stood in the middle of the clearing, the air still thick with the smell of burnt flesh and ozone. Energy surged through every part of his body.
It wasn't just power anymore, it felt like lightning had replaced his blood. His muscles twitched with it. His nerves fired in sharp bursts. He could hear the crackle inside his own veins.
Marcus was on one knee a few meters away, blood dripping from a cut above his eye and another along his ribs.
He had taken hits from the soldiers before Ethan stepped in. Even so, he managed a weak grin when he looked up. "You're glowing like a damn Christmas tree, man."
The five remaining A-rank soldiers from the Leviathan crew froze where they stood. Their black tactical gear was scorched in places from earlier exchanges. Rifles hung loose in their grips.
One woman in the front row, helmet half cracked, stared at Ethan with wide eyes. Blue sparks danced across his skin, jumping from fingertip to fingertip. The lightning wasn't hidden anymore. It wrapped around him like a second layer.
Ethan met Marcus's gaze and gave a small nod. Then he focused. He pulled the charge into his right hand.
The air around his palm warped. A bolt of lightning formed, thick as a spear, snapping and hissing. His eyes lit up with the same electric blue.
One of the soldiers, a woman with a scarred cheek, found her voice first.
"That lightning… it's impossible. You… you're a demigod?"
Ethan didn't answer right away. He swung his arm in a short arc and released the bolt. It shot forward in a jagged line, splitting at the last second. The first strike hit the woman dead center. The other two beside her caught the forks.
Their bodies jerked hard. Smoke poured from their mouths and eye sockets. In under three seconds, all three dropped, skin blackened and cracking. The smell of cooked meat hit the air.
Ethan lowered his hand. "Not just any demigod. I am Ethan, son of Zeus. Heir of Olympus."
The words came out steady. He hadn't planned to say the full title, but it felt right in the moment. Somewhere far above, in a place he couldn't see, someone smiled at the declaration.
The two soldiers still standing took a step back. One was a tall black man with a shaved head and a rifle slung across his chest.
His eyes darted toward the helicopter parked fifty meters away on the flat stretch of dirt. The rotors were already spinning up, whipping dust into the air.
"We… we weren't told about this," the black soldier said. His voice cracked. He started moving, first a fast walk, then a jog, then a full sprint toward the chopper.
Ethan felt the aura rolling off him now. It pressed down on everything around him like heavy static.
The running soldier glanced back once. His face twisted in panic. A fresh bolt left Ethan's hand, thinner than the last but faster. It punched straight through the man's chest. For half a second the soldier kept running on momentum.
Then his legs gave out. He collapsed face-first. Before he hit the ground, his body was already turning to charcoal, crumbling at the edges.
Only one soldier left.
The last man stood ten meters away, hands shaking on his rifle. He didn't try to shoot. He just stared at Ethan, then at the three piles of ash, then at the charred corpse near the chopper. His finger moved.
He slammed a button on his wrist device. A small red light blinked once. A signal shot out toward the helicopter.
Ethan raised his hand again.
Before the lightning left his palm, Marcus shouted, "Wait!"
Too late. The bolt struck. The final soldier convulsed once, then dropped. His body joined the others as nothing more than black dust that the wind started to scatter.
Marcus pushed himself to his feet, wincing at the pain in his side. He looked around the clearing.
Six, Seven A-rank soldiers from the Leviathan crew, elite operators who usually cleared entire monster nests without breaking a sweat, were gone. Just ash and scorch marks left behind. The wind picked up, carrying the gray flakes away like dirty snow.
"Damn, Ethan. What in the freaking hell?" Marcus's voice was low. Shock sat heavy in it, and underneath that, a thin thread of fear. These weren't random grunts.
Leviathan crew members carried reputations. They were the ones governments called when regular forces failed. And Ethan had turned them into charcoal in less than a minute.
Ethan let out a slow breath. The lightning around him dimmed, but it didn't disappear completely. Small sparks still jumped across his knuckles.
"Yeah… I know." He flexed his fingers. "I was trying to stun them. Knock them out, maybe. The charge was higher than I expected. It just… cooked them."
He glanced at his own hands. The power still felt raw. New. Unstable in ways he hadn't tested yet.
Is it because of the STR stats?
The thought crossed his mind. His strength had been climbing fast lately.
Maybe the extra power was bleeding into everything else, speed, output, control. He didn't have answers and the system never gave full explanations.
A series of blue panels appeared in his vision, one after another.
[7/5 soldiers killed]
[Reward: +2 STR points.]
[Congratulations, you have exceeded the required kill count.]
[Reward: Extra +2 STR points.]
[Total: +4 STR points.]
[100x reward system applied.]
[+4 STR points => +400 STR points.]
The numbers hit him like a truck.
Ethan's body locked up as the reward flooded in. It started in his core and spread outward. Every muscle fiber tightened, then expanded.
Tendons felt like steel cables being re-forged. Bones creaked under sudden pressure. The sensation was the same one he had felt back when his STR first crossed 200, but multiplied. Way more intense.
His heart hammered against his ribs like it wanted out. Sweat broke out across his forehead even though the lightning had left his skin dry and hot.
He gripped his left wrist with his right hand, squeezing hard enough that a normal person's bones would have snapped. The excess energy still built. It needed an outlet.
His eyes landed on the rifle one of the soldiers had dropped. Standard issue, heavy alloy frame, meant to handle recoil from anti-monster rounds.
Ethan bent down and picked it up with one hand. The metal felt light. Too light.
He wrapped his fingers around the barrel and squeezed. The steel groaned. Then it bent. Cleanly. Like folding a sheet of aluminum foil. The rifle folded in half without any real effort.
He kept pressing until the two ends touched. The internal mechanisms crunched and snapped. When he let go, the ruined weapon dropped to the dirt with a dull thud.
Marcus watched the whole thing. His mouth opened, then closed. "You just… bent military-grade steel like it was nothing."
Ethan rolled his shoulders. The rush was still there, but it had settled into a steady thrum. His stats screen flickered at the edge of his vision. He didn't open it fully yet.
He could feel the difference already. His arms felt thicker. His stance more solid. Every movement carried more weight.
"Yeah," Ethan said. "Four hundred extra STR points. The multiplier turned four into four hundred. I'm still getting used to what that actually means."
Marcus wiped blood from his face with the back of his hand. "Leviathan crew doesn't send A-ranks for small jobs. Whoever sent them wanted us gone. Quietly.
Now they're all dead and one of them managed to hit a panic button before you finished him. That signal went to the chopper. Probably straight to command."
Ethan looked toward the helicopter. The rotors were still spinning, but no one had come out to check on the soldiers. The pilot must have seen everything. The craft started to lift off, nose tilting as it gained altitude.
"We can't let it leave," Marcus said. "If they report what they saw, lightning, demigod talk, the way you dropped five A-ranks like they were trainees, it'll bring bigger problems."
Ethan nodded once. He took two steps forward, planted his feet, and looked up at the rising chopper. The lightning in his veins answered immediately. He didn't need to form a bolt this time. He just pushed.
A thick arc of electricity leaped from his outstretched hand. It crossed the distance in a flash, thicker than any he had thrown before. It struck the tail rotor.
Metal exploded in a shower of sparks and molten chunks. The chopper lurched hard to the side. Alarms blared from inside the cockpit.
The pilot fought for control, but the damage was done. The craft spun once, twice, then dropped. It hit the ground fifty meters away in a crunch of metal and breaking glass. Dust and smoke billowed up.
Marcus let out a low whistle. "Remind me never to piss you off."
Ethan lowered his arm. The lightning faded back under his skin, but the charge still hummed. "We need to check the wreck. See if the pilot survived. And we need to move. That signal probably already reached whoever runs the Leviathan crew."
Marcus limped over and picked up a fallen rifle that hadn't been bent into scrap. He checked the magazine out of habit. "You think they'll believe the report? One guy turning their elite squad into ash with lightning?"
"They'll believe it when more teams don't come back," Ethan said. He started walking toward the crashed helicopter.
As they approached the wreck, the pilot crawled out through a broken side door.
His flight suit was torn and his face was covered in blood from a cut on his forehead. He saw Ethan and Marcus coming and tried to raise a sidearm with shaking hands.
Ethan didn't even slow down. He reached out with one hand and the pistol flew from the pilot's grip, pulled by some invisible force tied to the lightning. It landed in Ethan's palm. He crushed it without looking.
The pilot's eyes went wide. "What the hell are you?"
"Like I said," Ethan answered. "Son of Zeus. Heir of Olympus."
Marcus crouched beside the pilot and pressed a knee into his back, pinning him. "Easy there. We're not here to kill everyone. Just the ones who shoot first."
The pilot spat blood onto the dirt. "Leviathan command will hunt you down. They don't leave loose ends. Especially not ones that can do… that." He jerked his chin toward the distant piles of ash.
Ethan scanned the inside of the wrecked chopper. No other crew. Just the pilot. A data pad was cracked on the floor.
He picked it up and tapped the screen. It still worked. Encrypted logs showed the distress signal had gone out three minutes ago. Destination tag: Leviathan Central Command.
Marcus saw it too. "We've got a clock now."
Ethan tossed the pad aside. "Then we don't waste time. Patch yourself up, Marcus. We grab what supplies we can from their gear and move. I need to figure out how to control this charge before the next wave shows up."
The pilot laughed weakly. "You think you can fight the whole crew? They've got hundreds like the ones you killed. Better ones. And they've got bigger toys."
Ethan looked down at him. "Hundreds, huh? Good. I could use the practice."
He didn't say it with arrogance. He said it like a man stating a fact. The extra four hundred STR points sat heavy in his body, waiting to be used. The lightning waited too.
Marcus finished tying a strip of cloth around his bleeding side. He stood up and gave the pilot a light tap on the head with the butt of his rifle, knocking him out cold. "We tie him up and leave him. Let his own people find him. Message delivered."
Ethan nodded. They spent the next ten minutes stripping useful gear, ammo, a couple of undamaged rifles, medical kits, and a encrypted comm unit that Marcus said he might be able to crack later.
The wind kept blowing, scattering the last traces of the soldiers' remains across the clearing.
When they were ready to move, Ethan paused at the edge of the tree line. He looked back once at the crash site.
Marcus noticed. "You okay?"
"Better than okay," Ethan said. "Stronger. A lot stronger. But I still don't know the limits. If I push too hard next time, I might fry everything around me, including you."
Marcus shrugged. "Then don't push too hard until we test it. Find a nice empty field somewhere and blow some rocks up. Safely."
Ethan almost smiled. "Safely. Right."
They started walking into the denser forest. The sun was starting to dip, casting long shadows between the trees.
Ethan's steps left deeper prints than before. Every branch he brushed aside bent easier. Every rock underfoot felt smaller.
The system panel flickered again, smaller this time.
[New quest available: Evade Leviathan Pursuit]
[Reward: Variable based on survival time and kills]