The Extra's Rise

Ren's jaw clenched as the coppery taste of blood hit his tongue, thick and bitter as old coins. His boots dragged furrows through the cracked terrain, the soles grating against the earth like nails across glass. Every joint in his arm screamed as he held it aloft, the weight of his fist suddenly reminiscent of an angry planet—a crushing gravity that threatened to pull him into the dirt.

His entire body trembled, not from fear—at least that's what he told himself—but from the slow, cruel collapse of a body being asked to do one thing too many. Each breath felt like inhaling broken glass, each heartbeat a thunderous toll that counted down to failure.

The beast before him bellowed, a rumbling avalanche of sound that flattened the air. The miasmic bear, an absurdly overgrown slab of muscle and spite, was a six-star monster of the sort normally reserved for military campaigns and cautionary bedtime tales. Its fur, dark as midnight and slick with corruption, rippled over muscles dense as iron.

Ren's vision blurred, a smear of dark fur and hellish red eyes blotting out the sky. The bear's paw arced toward him like a collapsing mountain, trailing wisps of corrosive energy. His God's Eyes flared to life, tracing the swipe with pinpoint accuracy, every muscle and tendon in the creature's massive limb rendered in perfect detail. He knew exactly where it would land, how much force it would carry, the precise angle at which his bones would shatter.

Unfortunately, foreknowledge meant bugger all when your limbs moved like wet rope.

He braced for the end, a strange calm washing over him despite everything. So this was how the story of Ren Kagu concluded—not as the Second Hero, but as a cautionary footnote in some other legend.

And then the end didn't come.

A clang of mana on miasma cracked the air like thunder, and the world jolted to a halt.

The strike had been parried.

Standing in front of him—casually, almost insultingly so—was Lucifer Windward. Blond, smiling like he'd just strolled into a tea party instead of the jaws of death, and glowing with that bloody righteous light he always seemed to carry like it was stitched into his bones.

Ren's body, no longer forced upright by sheer suicidal will, gave out. He slumped, one knee thudding against the ground, the rest of him not far behind. His breath came in shallow gasps as he watched the bear turn its fury to Lucifer.

Lucifer, of course, looked thrilled.

"Looks like you're the leader of this little picnic," he said to the beast, white mana flooding around his sword in clean arcs. But it wasn't just aura. There was something else there now, something more refined, more concentrated—like liquid light given purpose and direction.

Sword Intent.

Ren blinked, then blinked again, as if trying to dismiss the hallucination of advancement. He stared at the light dancing around the blade, the hum of the air bending to Lucifer's will, the perfect harmony between mana, weapon, and wielder.

The bastard had done it. Reached Sword Intent before even scratching the surface of Integration.

Ren had trained until his skin bled and his mind frayed at the edges. He'd eaten, slept, and breathed combat, all because he carried the bloodline of the First Hero—the weight of expectation draped across his shoulders like a leaden cloak. Every moment of his life had been preparation, every breath a step on a path laid out before his birth.

And now here was Lucifer, golden boy of the gods, cutting down monsters like it was Tuesday, the light around his blade singing with a perfection that shouldn't have been possible yet.

A bitter chuckle slipped from Ren's lips, tasting of blood and resignation.

"How unfair can you be, you damn god…" he whispered to no one in particular, the words lost in the cacophony of battle.

Above him, streaks of elemental light—fire, lightning, water, all wrapped in that pristine white mana—shot from Lucifer's form as he clashed with the miasma beast. Each movement was elegant, clean, and decisive. The bear roared again, this time in pain, its bulk recoiling from Lucifer's blade like darkness fleeing the dawn.

Ren watched, chest hollow, as the battle unfolded. It wasn't jealousy. Not entirely.

No.

It was emptiness. The cold, quiet kind that came when you realized you were the supporting actor in someone else's legend. The bit player whose struggle would be condensed to a line or two in the story of someone greater.

'I too... want to reach it dammit,' Ren thought as he gritted his teeth, feeling the enamel creak under the pressure.

Did he not desire it enough? Had his hunger been insufficient, his ambition too tame?

Did he not strive for it enough? Were the countless hours, the broken bones, the sleepless nights all just hollow gestures rather than true sacrifice?

Then.. did he not deserve it?

'I want it too!' Ren said as his violet eyes gleamed with something raw and desperate, a hunger that transcended mere ambition.

Ren had always crushed the weakest. That was his way of fighting. Not out of cruelty—though many saw it that way—but out of conviction. The strong defined the world; the weak inhabited it. To rise meant to step on those below, to ensure your place by proving others unworthy of theirs.

He wanted to sit at the throne overlooking everyone else, not for the adulation, but for the validation that his path—his truth—was correct.

He wanted to remove the unworthy ones, those who reached for greatness without the backbone to support it, those who played at being heroes without understanding the cost.

That was why he had tried to crush Arthur. The boy without Gift or bloodline who dared to stand in Class A, who presumed to walk among giants while bearing the stature of a common man.

But even Arthur had surpassed him, closing gaps that should have been uncrossable, advancing with a speed that defied all logic and precedent.

And Lucifer—who Ren had thought he was closing the gap to, who had always been ahead but at least within sight—had suddenly increased the distance by unlocking a second Gift, by achieving Sword Intent as if it were nothing more significant than learning a new dance step.

'Why can I not reach it?' Ren thought as he reached out to them in his mind, these boys who moved like men, these students who fought like legends. He saw them climbing heights he couldn't touch, standing on peaks he couldn't scale despite the blood in his veins, the legacy in his name.

The level Arthur and Lucifer stood at.

The level beyond him.

He deserved it. By birth, by blood, by every drop of sweat and pain he had poured into his training.

He needed to have it. Not just to fulfill expectations or silence critics, but because something in him would wither and die if he didn't.

If he could have it, he would throw away everything. Pride, fear, doubt, restraint—all of it meaningless compared to the ascension he craved.

Because.. all he had was his fist.

More than the expectations of becoming the Second Hero. More than the gazes from his family, heavy with assumption and demand.

Ren's mind wandered to the past, reaching back through the layers of training and trial to the very core of his being.

When he was born, he was the talented monster, the child who could shatter stone before he could properly speak, who fought with an instinct that terrified his teachers.

But more than that, more than the accolades and the whispers of "prodigy" that followed him like shadows, he had wanted to hone his fist. Not because it was expected, not because it was his birthright, but because something in him recognized it as truth—his truth, unvarnished and absolute.

To surpass everyone. To reach even the gods watching above. To stand alone at the summit, not as Ren Kagu, heir to the First Hero, but as himself—defined by his strength and nothing else.

'That.. is my true desire,' Ren thought, the realization crystallizing in his mind like frost on glass.

And in that moment of clarity, he discarded everything.

The rivalry he felt with Lucifer and Arthur—gone, like ash in the wind. The inferiority complex that had eaten at him since arriving at Mythos—dissolved, meaningless. The admiration he secretly harbored for those who advanced beyond him—vanished, irrelevant.

All that was left?

He looked at his right fist, still held aloft despite the agony, despite the trembling, despite everything.

That was all that was left. A simple truth, distilled to its essence.

His fist. His path. His strength.

Not the fist of the Second Hero. Not the fist that would live up to a legacy. Just his fist. Ren's fist.

In the clearing of his mind, in the vacuum left by discarding all those tangled emotions and expectations, something new began to form. Not an intention shaped by others, but a pure, singular focus—a truth so fundamental it transcended technique or talent.

Fist Intent.

The understanding that the fist was not just a weapon but an extension of will, not just a tool but a manifestation of identity. The fist did not serve Ren; it was Ren, distilled to its most essential form.

He puked blood in front of him as a rush of mana filled his body, not flowing into his circuits but becoming them, reshaping them according to this new understanding. It wasn't just power—it was clarity, purpose given form, desire made manifest.

Strength he didn't have was now found in abundance, pouring into him not from some external source but from within, from the deepest parts of himself that had always known this truth but had been clouded by expectations and comparisons.

Second stage of the Integration process was completed for him, not through gradual accumulation of power but through the sudden, violent stripping away of everything that wasn't essential.

As he rose to his feet, blood dripping from his lips, his fist began to glow—not with the white light of Lucifer's divine blessing, but with something darker, more primal. The violet light of ambition distilled to its purest form, of will unshackled from expectation.

The miasmic bear, sensing a new threat, turned its attention back to Ren, red eyes narrowing with malicious intelligence.

Lucifer paused in his assault, sensing the change, the shift in the very air around his fellow student.

Ren smiled, a hard, tight expression that held no joy, only certainty.

This was his path. Not heroism, not legacy, not the approval of others.

Just the fist. His fist.

And it was enough.