The brood-sack convulsed and slammed down like a wrecking ball made of wet ham.

The impact cratered the bone floor, sent ribs spinning like shrapnel.

Jax was already moving, cigarette glowing like a tiny red lighthouse in the dark.

He vaulted the shockwave, landed on the meat-limb itself, and carved a six-foot gouge through pulsing flesh.

“Lady, you got ants in your pants or did someone spike your oatmeal with meth?”

Another limb whipped sideways, fast enough to pulp steel.

He ducked under it, felt the wind shear the hair off the top of his head, and came up running along the limb like it was a highway.

Veyra laughed, the sound of a thousand throats gargling broken glass.

“Closer, pet. Come embrace Mother.”

“Yeah, hard pass on the family reunion.”

He leapt, spun mid-air, and buried the bowie to the hilt in a knot of screaming faces.

Aura gushed into him like cheap whiskey.

STR: 214 → 289 AGI: 301 → 447 END: 177 → 233

The limb tried to fling him off.

He rode it like a rodeo bull, carving handholds as he went.

Every time he got within ten yards of the main body, space seemed to stretch

Ten yards became twenty. Twenty became fifty.

The cathedral warped, walls breathing in and out, distance turning into taffy.

Jax spat blood—his own this time—and kept climbing.

“Really? Pocket-dimension bullshit? That’s your play?”

He hacked off a chunk of meat the size of a couch, used it as a springboard, and launched himself thirty feet straight up.

Mid-air, he flicked a senbon into what looked like a random eyeball on the ceiling.

The eyeball popped.

For one heartbeat, the stretching stopped.

Jax grinned like a wolf that just found the sheep pen unlocked.

“Found the cheat code.”

He landed on another limb, sprinted its length, and leapt again—this time straight at Veyra’s central mass.

She saw him coming and panicked.

Every limb, every mouth, every screaming face turned toward him at once.

Jax flipped the knife reverse-grip, black-white aura spiraling so bright it lit the cathedral like a strobe.

“Personal space, sweetheart,” he shouted over the roar.

“Learn it.”

He hit her like a meteor made of bad decisions.

The bowie punched through the exact center of her sternum—where all the stolen souls knotted together—and kept going until the hilt kissed bone.

For one perfect second, everything went quiet.

Then the Tree of Woe screamed with every voice it had ever stolen.

Jax twisted the knife, leaned in close, and whispered through the gore:

“Tag, you’re it.”

Aura detonated outward in a ring of black-white fire.

The cathedral started to collapse.

The brood-sack ruptured.

The stolen faces peeled off Veyra’s body and aged a thousand years in a second, crumbling to dust.

Jax rode the explosion downward, surfing a wave of liquefied god on a sheet of bone.

When the dust settled, he stood in a crater full of gently steaming meat.

He lit a cigarette off a still-burning rib, took a long drag, and flicked ash onto what used to be a goddess.

“Next.” Jax spat a red-black wad onto the cathedral’s dead floor.

The meat carpet had gone quiet, like a radio suddenly unplugged.

He rolled his shoulder, feeling the borrowed strength already leaking out of him like air from a punctured tire.

“Great. Five-star Yelp review: ‘Would not recommend the all-you-can-eat soul buffet.’”

The plate shifted under his boots with a grinding roar.

Bone and flesh peeled away, revealing a new edge (stone steps descending into a fog-choked medieval city).

Wooden houses leaned together like drunk old men. The air stank of shit, smoke, and despair.

Jax stepped off the last stair and landed ankle-deep in a puddle of something that used to be liquid.

“Shit. Literally. Ah well, can’t help it now.”

He flicked his dying cigarette into the muck and reached for a fresh one when a tiny hand tugged his sleeve.

A girl (maybe eight, barefoot, soot on her cheeks) held up a scrap of embroidered handkerchief.

“Mister…”

She pressed it into his palm.

“A hero’s gotta look clean, right?”

Before he could answer, she darted off, disappearing around a corner like a sparrow.

Jax stared at the cloth (white linen, tiny crooked stitches spelling “HOPE”).

He snorted, wiped the worst of the sludge off one boot, then used the bench to scrub the other.

“Kid’s got better manners than half the planet I came from.”

He shrugged out of his ruined jacket, inspected the tear under the left armpit.

“Great. Tailor?”

A faded sign across the lane: NEEDLE & THREAD, EST. FOREVER.

The bell above the door jingled like a nervous cat.

Inside smelled of lavender and old wool.

An old woman no taller than the counter looked up from her knitting.

“What can I do you for, dearie?”

Jax laid the jacket down like a corpse on an altar.

“Can you fix this? It’s my favorite.”

The woman lifted it to the light, clucked approvingly.

“Fine weave. City cut. Haven’t seen its like in fifty winters.”

She shuffled to a mountain of thread bobbins.

“I’ve got the exact midnight blue, give me—”

BOOTS.

Heavy, synchronized, marching like they owned gravity.

A herald in polished half-plate strode past the window, voice booming through a brass cone:

“Citizens of Fargone! Lord Verrick demands your taxes! Pay or perish!”

The old woman froze, spool rolling from her fingers.

“Oh no… I’m short again this month.”

The door slammed open hard enough to rattle needles in their boxes.

A tax collector filled the frame (piggy eyes, dented breastplate, cudgel swinging like he was born with it attached).

“Taxes,” he barked, ignoring Jax entirely.

The woman’s purse hit the counter with a pathetic clink.

The collector sniffed. “One hundred crowns light. Not good enough.”

He swept half the coins into a sack, then reached for Jax’s jacket.

Jax caught his wrist with two fingers and a senbon that appeared from nowhere.

“Touch the jacket and lose the hand, chrome-dome.”

The collector blinked, finally registering the man in the strange clothes.

“Out of the way, outlander. This is—”

“Extortion with extra steps. Yeah, I’m familiar.”

Jax flicked the senbon.

It thunked into the soft spot under the man’s jaw, just deep enough to tickle the carotid.

“New plan,” Jax said, voice low, almost friendly.

“You’re gonna give the lady thirty days.

You’re gonna forget this shop exists.

And you’re gonna walk out that door before I decide to see how many holes one neck can hold.”

The collector’s mouth opened, closed.

The cudgel trembled in his grip.

Jax leaned in, smile all teeth.

“Or I start with the eyeballs and work south.

Your choice, buddy.”

A long second.

The collector dropped the coin purse, backed out, and ran like the devil just signed his performance review.

The bell jingled again, softer this time.

The old woman stared at Jax like he’d grown wings.

“You… you’re one of the new summoned heroes, aren’t you?”

Jax stubbed his cigarette in the collector’s forgotten helmet, lit another.

“Lady, I’m the opposite of whatever fairy tale you’re selling.”

He slid three gold coins across the counter (heavy, pre-isekai Earth mint, but gold’s gold).

“That’s for the jacket, the thread, and your silence.

If anyone asks, the tax man got food poisoning from bad lampreys.”

She touched the coins like they might bite her, then looked up with wet eyes.

“Bless you, stranger.”

Jax was already shrugging the half-repaired jacket back on.

“Don’t bless me, ma’am. Just don’t name any kids after me. I’ve got a reputation to uphold.”

He stepped back into the muddy street, smoke curling over his shoulder like a lazy halo.

Somewhere in the distance, church bells started ringing (frantic, wrong note).

Jax grinned around the cigarette.

“Round three, I guess. Let’s go ruin someone else’s day.” Jax shrugged the freshly stitched jacket back on, the old woman’s needlework holding tight despite the gore stains.

He stepped back into the muck-street, lighting a fresh smoke off the dying butt of the last.

Whispers followed him like flies.

“...Lord Verrick’s bled us dry. Taxes every dawn, every dusk. Where’s the coin supposed to come from? His damn banks print it from our bones...”

Two dockworkers scattered like roaches when Jax glanced their way.

He kept walking, ears open.

A baker dumping ash-water from his doorstep: “Verrick’s got the Weaver’s favor. Sent heroes to ‘protect’ us. More like tax-farm us.”

A fishwife gutting cod: “Heard the elf girl leveled half his garrison with one arrow. Didn’t stop the tithes.”

Jax exhaled smoke, watching it curl toward the castle silhouette on the hill.

Twisted didn’t cover it.

The Chaos Weaver wasn’t playing a game—it was running a pyramid scheme with extra murder.

He fished the crusty handkerchief from his pocket, rinsed it in a horse trough.

The embroidered “HOPE” came up clean(ish).

He wrung it out, stuffed it back in his pocket like a lucky charm he didn’t believe in.

Then—

“HO! Citizens of Fargone! Fear no more! Your prince has arrived!”

The voice hit like a brass trumpet fucked a thunderstorm.

Jax’s shoulders slumped.

“Great. Golden Dick’s here.”

Prince Valerian strode into the square like he owned the cobblestones (gold armor gleaming, infinite blades orbiting his shoulders like deadly sparrows, a crowd already parting like the Red Sea for a yacht).

Jax tried to melt into the alley shadows.

Too late.

Valerian’s eyes locked on, smile splitting ear-to-ear.

“The weakling lives! Not bad, Harlan. I owe you a tankard.”

He boomed it loud enough for the castle to hear.

Half the square turned to stare.

Jax flicked ash, kept walking.

“Yeah, send the bill to your mother.”

Valerian laughed (rich, practiced, the kind that made peasants clap).

He fell in step, blades humming faintly.

“Verrick’s men already? I saw the tax cart limping back to the keep. You start the party without me?”

Jax side-eyed him.

“Collector tried to fondle my jacket. I explained consent.”

Valerian snorted.

“Good. Bastard’s got it coming. Word is Verrick’s hoarding Weaver-tokens—trading lives for power-ups. Whole city’s one bad harvest from revolt.”

A scream cut the air.

They both froze.

From the castle gates: a woman dragged by her hair, shrieking.

Two goons in Verrick tabards, cudgels raised.

The square went dead silent.

Valerian’s hand twitched toward his sword.

Blades spun faster.

Jax sighed, crushed the cigarette under his heel.

“Problems escalating already. you wanna play knight, or should I

Valerian grinned, feral.

“Together. For once.”

Jax drew the bowie, thumbed the edge.

“Fine. But if you monologue, I’m stabbing you first.”

The two heroes moved as one toward the gates.

Behind them, the square erupted in whispers:

“The summoned... they’re fighting back...”