Novel's Extra: I Awakened The Strongest Physique From The Start

The courtyard pulsed with joy.

Children perched on shoulders, waving crimson-and-gold flags, their faces painted in streaks of flame.

Elders clapped and laughed, gripping each other's hands as though the day's warmth could banish every cold memory of hardship.

The smell of roasted meats, sweet pastries, and spiced wine mingled with the fragrant petals that floated lazily in the air.

A man in a baker's apron laughed heartily, shaking his head as he spoke. "King Reganath ruled like a warrior, that's for sure. But Queen Zahara... she'll rule like fire itself. Warm when needed, destructive when necessary."

"She's already better than him," another chuckled. "Not that Reganath was bad. God knows he kept the empire from invading. But the girl... she listens. I remember when she stopped by my shop to ask about grain prices. She was ten!"

"She helped my daughter get medicine," an old woman proudly said. "She ran herself to the apothecary when no one else would. Not a noble soul—a royal one."

They could vividly recall those moments in detail.

"And she loved my meat rolls!" Called out a burly man near the front, puffing out his chest with pride. "Every week, she'd come running down to my stall, red hair bouncing, asking for two rolls—never three, never one. Just two, always."

He laughed. "Said the third was too greedy, the first too lonely."

People chuckled around him.

"I gave them to her free, of course. Best in the city!" He grinned. "She'd smile so bright, you'd think you saw the dawn. I remember once—"

His words stopped.

Mid-sentence.

He froze, smile still stretched wide across his face.

Eyes open. Mouth half-formed into the word once.

"…Hey?" Someone nudged him. "What, thinking up a better version of the story?"

No reply.

"Oi, Balrun," another teased. "Don't tell me you're choking up!"

But Balrun didn't move—

—Before his right hand began to glitch.

It shimmered unnaturally, phasing like a broken mirror, jittering left and right in impossible bursts.

The skin along his wrist twisted, bulging like it was swelling, then compressing all at once.

Balrun let out a sound—but it wasn't a scream.

It was static.

A choked distortion of noise, like dozens of voices trying to speak at once from a broken echo chamber.

Those around him stumbled back in alarm, but the crowd was too dense to escape quickly.

Some thought it a trick of light. Others tried to help him.

Then his shoulder cracked sideways, followed by a groan of bones that sounded wet.

His body contorted and twitched, eyes rolling back as his face split, revealing something flickering beneath, jagged symbols and snarled shadows dancing in glitched stutters.

"What in the gods—"

Someone screamed.

But another man near the dais, halfway through chanting "GLORY!" suddenly stopped, convulsing mid-cheer.

His head jerked back, veins pulsing as his voice dropped several octaves into an otherworldly resonance before silence fell from his mouth—and something else emerged in its place.

Glitched.

Transformed.

All at once, the celebration unraveled.

Cries rang out across the courtyard as more and more people began to change.

A child began to cry, only to shudder and collapse, rising seconds later as something that wasn't a child.

A merchant's wife clutched her husband's arm, only to see his flesh ripple and burst in corrupted patterns.

She screamed, but a moment later, her own body convulsed, the scream cutting off as she joined the tide.

Dozens.

Then hundreds.

It spread like a plague.

A living virus of corruption.

A wave of glitching, groaning, and shuddering horrors rose from within the very heart of Simharia's joyous crowd.

From above, on the dais, the sight was devastating.

"Alex," Lilia, who was first to notice the change, called out, breaking the fluffy atmosphere between him and Zahara.

She did feel bad about it, but the situation needed their attention, especially because of the speed at which the glitch spread.

Alex's gaze found the scene from the dais, his eyes squinting.

Looking at the scene before her, Zahara froze for a second. She saw the child of the baker she used to buy meat rolls from, transforming into a grotesque, glitched entity.

Her proud stance faltered just for a moment.

"What... what's happening?" she whispered.

Alex stepped forward, his teeth grinding. 'Where's the source of all this?'

Something like this wouldn't start without a trigger or switch—Alex was sure of it.

"Bahir!" Reganath growled, his expression betraying his rage. "We need to clear the square. Now!"

Bahir's golden eyes were already burning. "Soldiers, follow me!"

Kael, on the other hand, stayed behind, his expression cold as he stared at the already-transformed entities clawing their way onto the dais stairs.

"Die," he spoke, his hand flickering as a golden arc shot out, cutting down the creatures.

The strike severed the beasts cleanly, but they twitched even as they fell, flickering unnaturally before finally disintegrating into black ash.

Mira instinctively moved closer to Alex. Her light blue eyes were calm but tense, flicking across the crowd, counting threats.

Lilia summoned a crimson sigil at her palm, eyes locked on a nearby transforming noble, her face grim.

"Alex," Zahara whispered, stepping back toward him, "what is this?"

"A glitch spread," he muttered, his voice low and dangerous. "A planned one. The one who planned it is probably hidden in the crowd."

Reganath, hearing his words, gritted his teeth, a low rumble echoing through the surroundings.

From below, the crowd screamed in panicked waves, people trampling others, trying to escape. But it was too late for many.

They didn't even realize they were changing until it was done.

The chants had turned into warped echoes, sick parodies of "Glory," spoken from broken mouths and jagged, snapping jaws.

"WE—WILL—BURN—BRIGHT—"

"LONG—LONG LIVE—GLORY—CORRUPTION—"

Bahir tried his best to suppress the chaos and move to the square, but it wasn't easy even for him, a peak star-formation realm expert.

The glitched entities were one thing; even the citizens went crazy, especially when their loved ones turned into something they couldn't recognize.

Many died because they thought those who had become glitched entities were still the people they knew.

Looking at a child moving closer to her mother, who had now become a glitched beast, calling out to her as she killed other people, Zahara felt her heart pound.

Not with fear.

With fury.

She turned to the high priest, who had dropped to his knees, whispering prayers in trembling tones.

Then she turned to the crowd, not the corrupted, but those still sane and screaming for safety.

She raised her hand, her voice thundering even over the chaos.

"DEFEND OUR PEOPLE!"

Her voice struck like lightning as she, without waiting, jumped into the battle.

With his eyes as cold as ice, Alex followed, leaping forward as Verathian crackled with condensed aura.

He slashed down a lunging glitch-entity, the burst of energy lighting up the dais.

Kael, worried about Zahara's safety, also leaped toward the crowd.

Everyone was moving.

Reganath, Lilia, Mira, and the few soldiers protecting Zahara.

Despite that, the situation wasn't improving.

After all, they had to minimize their destructive power, save the citizens, and kill the glitched entities simultaneously.

Zahara drew her new sword—Solvahl, the Flameblade—and raised it high.

Flames erupted along the blade's length, shining brighter than the sun.

"Don't run!" She shouted. "Fight back! The people you knew are no more! They were turned into these creatures by someone still among you all! Find them!"

The crowd could hear her words, so Zahara continued. "Direct your rage at the one who caused it, and show one last mercy to your loved ones by being the last one they had to see! Don't abandon them!"

Her words worked like magic, and the citizens, running away from the creatures, paused, facing them with hard gazes filled with tears.

'I won't run anymore!' They thought, using whatever they had, to fight against the ones they once laughed with.

It was hard not because those creatures were hard to kill, but because they couldn't bring themselves to kill them.

Now that they were able to do it, the real battle for the kingdom began—not against nobles or politics—

—But against an infection that came not from within or without but from beyond.

The flames of Simharia still burned.

But now they had to fight to keep them alive.

........................

Some time later.

Smoke curled into the afternoon sky, stained by ash and tinged with the scent of burnt flesh and steel.

The once-vibrant courtyard was now a battlefield littered with scorched stone, twitching embers, and the silent forms of those who'd fallen—some monstrous, some not.

Yet, they had survived.

Mothers clutched their children.

Husbands wept beside fallen wives.

Soldiers knelt in place, swords slack in hand, staring into nothing with blood-smeared faces.

Zahara stood at the center of the square, her hair wild, her face streaked with soot and tears, and Solvahl planted into the cracked ground beside her.

The blade's flames had dimmed to a flickering glow, reflecting her breathing, slow and exhausted.

Alex stood beside her, expression hard. In his hand, Verathian hummed faintly as its aura settled.

Mira was beside him, hand on his arm, breathing lightly but steadily.

Lilia stood a few paces away, her sigil still glowing faintly with residual energy. Her eyes, which had turned crimson, returned to their original purple shade, locked on the survivors rather than the dead.

Reganath, once a lion on the battlefield, now looked… old and worn. His shoulders were heavy with more than fatigue.

"...We did it," Bahir finally muttered, his golden eyes scanning the wounded, the tired, and the aching. "The courtyard... we secured it."

Kael gave a slow nod. "Minimal casualties, considering the ambush." He looked at Zahara. "Your words rallied more than I expected. They weren't soldiers, yet they fought like veterans."

Zahara didn't reply. Her gaze was on a small, broken ribbon on the stones near the dais—a crimson-and-gold festival streamer.

One of the children must have dropped it before the change.

A gust of wind blew past, sweeping the ribbon with it. The flags overhead, torn and half-burnt, still fluttered.

"People will sing of this day," Kael said, a hand over his chest. "How their queen led them in battle."

"Let them rest first," Reganath murmured. "Let them mourn."

A slow silence began to settle, uneasy but real.

It looked like everything was over until—

—A scream echoed.

Not inside the courtyard.

Outside it.

A woman's voice, high-pitched and raw with terror.

Then another.

A man's.

Then dozens more.

Everyone froze.

Bahir's eyes darted to the boundary walls. "That… that came from outside the square."

Alex's muscles tensed. Mira's fingers tightened on his wrist. Lilia turned, mouth parting slightly in dawning realization.

"No..." Zahara whispered. "We killed them all here. We ended it—"

"No," Reganath muttered, eyes narrowing. "We ended this wave. We never found the source."

Without waiting for another word, he pushed off the ground with a burst of aura, soaring up and over the courtyard's boundary wall.

Alex followed immediately, the wind screaming past him as he ascended. Bahir was already in the air beside him, teeth clenched tight.

They landed hard atop the ramparts, the city sprawling wide before them.

And what they saw—

The air left their lungs.

Glitching shadows moved in rising chaos all across Simharia's capital, from the market districts to the harbor roads.

People twisted and screamed.

Families convulsed.

Soldiers fought desperately in streets littered with overturned carts and flaming homes.

The courtyard was just a fragment.

The entire city…

…was under siege.

And the corrupt were everywhere.

The scream of a child echoed in the distance just as Reganath clenched his fists, his voice cracking with fury.

"We're far from done."

The flames of Simharia still burned.

But now, they flickered under a storm.