Jax pushed through the carpet of meat, boots squelching in warm, wet rot.

He lit a fresh cigarette off the dying ember of the last, the flare briefly lighting the tunnel of fused throats.

Side-stepping a bubbling pool of stomach acid, he grimaced.

“Great. Someone’s shit on my shoes. These are Italian!.”

No rag, no mercy. He marched on, the soles leaving bloody prints that hissed and smoked behind him.

Wide-open throats gaped on every side, all screaming the same silent scream (Veyra’s chorus, looped and broken).

Her voice slithered from the walls:

“Still persistent, pet? My knights will make short work of you.”

Jax raised an eyebrow.

“Knights? Dude’s in armor?”

He spat, checked the edge of his bowie, and kept carving.

Each slice into a larger mass of flesh siphoned a ribbon of pale Aura.

“Status,” he muttered.

The sickly-green panel stuttered awake:

STR: 13 AGI: 36 END: 27 LCK: 3 MANA: 0

“Not great. Not bad. Still shitty.”

He took a long drag, then flicked the cigarette into the gaping throat of a corpse.

It landed with a wet plop.

A sour, off-key note squealed out as the throat convulsed and collapsed.

Jax grinned.

Chaos was his native language.

The first obstacle rose from the muck like a bad dream given bones.

A disjointed knight-thing (three arms, four legs, every joint sprouting bone blades that dripped acid).

Its face was a patchwork of screaming mouths stitched together, tongues writhing like worms.

“Misssstressss…” it hissed, “I ssssshal do your bidding.”

The blades hissed where they touched the ground; flesh melted into steaming craters.

Jax rolled his neck.

“Eck. Gross.”

“You think to harm me?” the creature gurgled.

“Harm? Nah. I’m gonna kill you.”

He straightened.

Vertebrae cracked like knuckles.

Muscles slid into place with wet pops.

“This place is a fucking toilet. I had three women on my arm before I got yanked here.”

His voice dropped, raw.

“Reduced to some cosmic douchebag’s plaything. No super strength, no magic, no affinity for jack shit.”

Something shifted.

Far above, on its throne of broken moons, the Chaos Weaver leaned forward.

Its too-many eyes narrowed.

Jax’s Aura (zero, always zero) twitched.

Black and white spirals bled from his pores, thin at first, then thicker, coiling around his arms like living smoke.

“I hate isekai. I hate this place. I hate those pompous jackasses who call themselves heroes.”

His stats surged:

STR: 13 → 28 AGI: 36 → 62 END: 27 → 45 LCK: 3 → 12 AURA: 0 → ???

The panel glitched, letters warping.

“Oh. I’m angry.”

He laughed (low, ugly, real).

“That’s not good for you, buddy. Means I’m suddenly… feeling good about myself.”

The flesh-mound knight lunged, bone blades scissoring.

Jax blurred.

He was at its side before the swing finished.

The bowie knife flashed (once, twice, three times).

Each cut siphoned Aura in gouts.

The creature’s blades melted mid-swing, acid hissing uselessly against the black-white spiral now armoring Jax’s skin.

“You’re leaking,” Jax said, voice calm.

He drove the knife through the thing’s central mouth-cluster.

Aura exploded into him.

STR: 28 → 47 AGI: 62 → 89 END: 45 → 71

The knight-thing collapsed, bones liquefying into sludge.

Jax stood over the puddle, cigarette relit somehow, smoke curling from his lips.

The black-white Aura condensed into a thin, shifting halo around his knife.

“One down.”

He looked deeper into the tunnel, where the Trees of Woe were starting to sing his name.

“Let’s see how many encores the bitch can handle.”

Somewhere above, the Chaos Weaver’s smile split wider.

“Wrong, wrong, wrong,” it whispered.

“The glitch just learned to feel.” The Chaos Weaver had plucked Jax from a gutter in a city that no longer had a name.

A disposable errand boy, the kind of face you sent to take the fall when the cops came knocking.

No mana signature, no latent bloodline, no prophecy stitched to his soul.

Just a bored smirk and a rap sheet longer than his patience.

So why him?

The Weaver never answered questions.

It simply watched, the way a child watches an anthill before pouring gasoline.

Jax moved through the tunnel like a man walking through his own living room.

Mounds of flesh erupted around him—wet, pink volcanoes—spilling knights, hounds, and things that had no names.

They came in waves, blades of bone and acid, mouths screaming in chords that hurt to hear.

He carved.

Left hand flicked a senbon into a throat that hadn’t finished forming.

Right hand drove the bowie through a chest that tried to become a shield.

Each kill fed the knife.

Each feed fed him.

The status panel in the corner of his vision had given up pretending to be useful.

Numbers dissolved into static, letters bled off the edges like wet ink.

JAX HARLAN STR: ??? AGI: ??? END: ??? LCK: ??? MANA: ???

The screen flickered, trying to recalibrate, failing.

Somewhere in the system’s guts, alarms were screaming in languages no one had coded yet.

Jax laughed—a short, sharp bark that echoed wrong.

His eyes were too wide, pupils blown, reflecting the carnage in perfect detail.

Blood dotted his cheek like freckles.

He licked it off the corner of his mouth and kept moving.

“Yes—send more meat.”

A knight the size of a truck barreled down the throat-tunnel, shoulder blades unfolded into scythes.

Jax didn’t dodge.

He stepped in, shoulder-checked the thing’s knee, and rode the collapse.

The bowie found the soft spot under the jaw and drank.

The knight’s dying scream tasted like copper and battery acid.

The black-white spiral around him thickened, no longer smoke—more like liquid shadow poured over glass.

It crawled up his tie, soaked into the fabric of his suit, left the blue darker, wetter.

His shoes—those ruined Italian leather—left prints that stayed, smoking holes that didn’t heal.

Another wave.

This time the flesh didn’t bother with knights.

It birthed something worse: a child-shaped thing with too many joints, dragging a ribbon of intestines like a jump rope.

It opened its mouth and Veyra’s voice poured out, sweet and maternal.

“Come home, pet. Mommy’s waiting.”

Jax tilted his head.

“Wrong house, lady.”

He threw the cigarette.

It spun end-over-end, cherry glowing, and landed between the thing’s eyes.

The explosion took the head clean off.

The body kept walking for three more steps out of spite.

The status static screamed louder, a sound like dial-up modem death throes.

Jax didn’t look at it anymore.

He didn’t need to.

Somewhere far above, the Chaos Weaver leaned closer to the scrying pool.

Its reflection had too many teeth.

“Interesting,” it whispered, voice layered like a choir recorded in a slaughterhouse.

“The pawn is eating the board.”

Jax wiped the blade on his sleeve, already moving deeper.

The tunnel narrowed, walls pulsing like the inside of a throat.

At the far end, something vast and rooted waited, branches of flayed arms swaying in a wind that didn’t exist.

He rolled his shoulders.

The spiral tightened, eager.

“Next verse,” he said, and stepped into the dark.