THE RISE OF THE SYSTEM OVERLORD

CHAPTER 34

Unintended Consequences

The battlefield was silent, but not with peace—only with death.

Smoke curled from the wreckage, twisting in the cold wind. The ground was littered with bodies, some still twitching, others unnervingly still. Sparks spat from broken ships, their engines gutted, the metal carcasses groaning under their own weight. The acrid scent of burning wires and blood coated the air, thick enough to taste.

I stood in the center of it all, my hands slick with something warm. My breath came steady, controlled. Too controlled. I should have felt something—guilt, regret, even relief—but instead, there was just… nothing.

My fingers curled into fists, but the emptiness didn’t go away. I looked down at the nearest body, a man barely older than me, his helmet cracked open, his chest rising in weak, ragged jerks. His mouth twisted as if trying to form words, but all that came out was a broken cough.

I knelt beside him, my face unreadable even to myself. "You’re dying."

His bloodstained lips curved into something that might have been a smirk in another lifetime. "And you're... changing," he rasped.

I frowned. "Changing how?"

His eyes, already losing focus, locked onto mine with a sharpness that shouldn’t have been possible. "You’re… becoming it."

A chill crawled up my spine, slow and deliberate. "Becoming what?"

The bounty hunter let out a weak, gurgling laugh before his body went slack. His last breath escaped in a final whisper. "The anomaly."

Something inside me tightened, like a wire stretched too thin. The wind howled through the ruins, whipping my coat around me as if trying to shake the truth into—or out of—me.

I stood up slowly, the weight of his words pressing down on me. The anomaly. That was what they had called me from the beginning. A force that shouldn’t exist. A wild variable in a universe that thrived on control.

I looked around again, taking in the destruction with fresh eyes. The wreckage, the bodies, the silence. The enemy had come for me, armed to the teeth, expecting a battle.

And I had given them one.

But the way I fought—it wasn’t just survival. It was something else, something deeper. Something more... instinctive. As if the fight wasn’t just in me—it was me.

A cold realization settled in my gut. I had barely broken a sweat.

I turned away from the battlefield, suddenly aware of how the wind carried the scent of death like a warning. This wasn’t over. I could feel it, like a whisper in the back of my mind, a static hum just beneath my skin.

The universe was watching.

And I had no idea who would come next.

I moved through the ruins with purpose, my thoughts coiling tighter with every step. I could still hear the dying man’s voice in my head. You’re becoming it.

Becoming what? A weapon? A threat? A god?

The word anomaly had always followed me like a shadow, but now… now it felt different. Now it felt true.

I shook off the thought, focusing instead on the sound of my boots against the cracked ground. The only thing that mattered now was getting out of here before more bounty hunters came looking for their fallen comrades.

But I wasn't alone.

Something watched me. I didn’t hear it. I didn’t see it. But I felt it, a presence just out of reach.

I turned sharply, scanning the area, but there was nothing. Just wreckage and shadows stretching under the flickering light of burning ships.

Then, a faint whirr.

I looked up.

A drone. Small, nearly invisible, hovering high above the ruins like a ghost. Its lens glowed faintly in the dark, locking onto me.

Recording.

Every muscle in my body tensed. I should have expected this. There was no way an attack of this scale would go unwatched.

The question wasn’t if someone was watching. It was who.

A dozen possibilities ran through my mind. The factions. The Syndicates. The Order. Each one more dangerous than the last.

And yet, deep down, I already knew.

I took a step forward, and the drone adjusted, tracking me with unnerving precision. My fists clenched. I could destroy it. I could reach it in seconds, rip it apart, leave nothing but metal shards scattered across the ruins.

But I didn’t.

Because something told me it was already too late.

Far away, in the dim glow of a control room, a man leaned forward, his sharp eyes locked onto the holographic screen in front of him.

Obsidian Heitt.

The name alone sent ripples of fear through the highest circles of power. A strategist. A collector. A man who saw people not as individuals but as variables to be manipulated, controlled, or eliminated.

And right now, his full attention was on me.

The footage played in silence—my movements, my kills, my unnerving calm in the face of death. He watched it all, dissecting every frame, every detail, his fingers tapping against the polished surface of his desk.

The corner of his lips twitched into something resembling a smile, but there was no amusement in his eyes. Just calculation.

"This," he murmured, barely audible over the quiet hum of the control room. "This is interesting."

The lights from the screen reflected in his cold, unblinking gaze. He had been waiting for proof. For confirmation. For something—someone—that could tip the scales in his favor.

And now he had found it.

"Prepare the retrieval team," he ordered, standing. His voice was steady, composed, but beneath it was an excitement that rarely surfaced. "We move at dawn."

He turned off the screen, but the image of me—the anomaly—was already burned into his mind.

This wasn’t just another fight.

This was the beginning of something much bigger.