CHAPTER 82: VITALITY COLLAPSE: THE ART OF DETONATION!

FWOOOM!!!

A bright yellow glow ignited from inside its body, pulsing like a lantern filled with lightning.

Bruce landed far away, dust kicking around his boots as he watched with quiet fascination.

His smile widened, eyes reflecting the growing light.

"...now," he whispered, "let’s see the result."

The glowing beast didn’t slow down. It bloated. Swelled. Its skin stretched taut. The light inside it grew brighter... brighter... blinding.

The surrounding wolves didn’t even have time to react.

BOOOOOOOM!!!

The beast detonated. A blast of gore, fire-bright light, and wind fragments erupted outward, shredding the pack before they could even register danger.

Bruce stood several meters away, coat fluttering in the settling dust, the aftershock rolling harmlessly past him. He watched the explosion with the calm, focused gaze of a man appreciating a well-executed experiment, not a massacre.

Art!

Living, explosive art!

And it worked.

His eyes lowered slightly, thoughts already unfolding.

’As expected. Targeting vitality directly instead of the cells is the key to cause explosions. Only when the life force overloads does the body ignite... Ozai’s Burn Command works off the same principle, just automated. Cause and effect.’

’Which means his skill wouldn’t work on undead. Mine wouldn’t either... unless I find a way to artificially infuse life first before detonating it. Possible, but an unnecessary number of steps for a simple explosion.’

He exhaled slowly, thinking deeper.

’Since the explosion is fueled by disrupted vitality, which in turn destabilizes the target’s mana pool and forces self-combustion, the stronger the vitality, the bigger the blast. Meaning... the higher the rank of the creature I use, the more destructive the outcome.’

As the smoke cleared, a pair of agonized howls echoed across the savannah.

Two surviving wolves limped out, charred, bleeding, half-collapsed. The explosion had shredded most of the pack, but these two had been at the furthest edge, barely outside the primary blast radius. Their bodies twitched, struggling to stay upright.

Bruce nodded once.

"I guess their defense is decent," he murmured. "A-rank, judging by how much they endured."

The wolves tried to flee, but in their damaged state, their once-incredible speed was gone. Bruce moved after them, not rushing, simply walking, and still closing the distance effortlessly.

He raised a hand toward them, not touching, not even getting close. A calm test. A new take to the test he just did.

"Heal: Vitality Collapse."

The words were spoken softly, almost lazily.

A golden glow burst beneath the wolves’ skin, bright, pulsing, violent.

They froze. Trembled. And then,

BOOM!!!

Another explosion tore outward, smaller than the first, but still powerful enough to disintegrate the beasts instantly. Chunks of flesh and ash scattered into the wind. Bruce’s eyes reflected the golden light of the blast, glowing faintly with fascination.

"Nice," he muttered, lips curling into a satisfied smile. "Another success."

He lowered his hand, eyes sharpening with understanding.

"Since I’m targeting vitality directly, I don’t need physical contact. Not like Restorative Detonation, where palm-contact is required to force cell overgrowth."

That distinction, small but crucial, had been bothering him. Now it was confirmed. And Bruce felt the clean, wordless satisfaction of a scientist validating a theory through flawless field testing.

Another technique perfected. Another weapon added to the arsenal. Another step in refining the art of killing.

Bruce received the rewards without haste, 350 points for those seven A-rank beasts, then pushed on. He decided to go all out today: pure beast hunt, no rest until sunset.

Even after spending time hunting Ozai, Average Joe’s team, the hyenas and the wind wolves, it was still morning, edging toward midday by the sun’s position. Plenty of time.

Fueled by that calculation, he moved territory to territory with ruthless efficiency.

Mutant laughing hyenas, second most common, went down first, then bronze-horned goats, then wind wolves, then blood hounds that tried to track him.

Pack after pack fell before him; none of the groups stood a chance against his current strength. As long as he had mana, he had infinite stamina. His Heal recovered stamina as readily as flesh, so he simply kept going.

From dawn until sunset he cleared entire zones. By day’s end he had wiped beasts clean from the hunting grounds of five recruits. The rest of the trial watched in stunned silence as Bruce’s points increased by a lot within a few hours: Bruce had amassed more than five thousand additional points in only a few hours from beasts alone.

At first the others assumed he’d been killing recruits again, but the system announced every recruit kill. After his kill on Average Joe’s team, Bruce’s name wasn’t announced again.

The truth was obvious: Bruce had farmed beasts relentlessly. The implication hit hard. If a single recruit could pull thousands of points in hours purely by hunting monsters, then the early bloodshed against fellow recruits had been premature and short-sighted.

Gradually the mood in the simulation shifted.

Many who had rushed to attack other players paused, reconsidering strategy. If farming beasts now brought richer, safer returns, why risk having their deaths broadcast? A tacit agreement formed: focus on beasts first, harvest points, then deal with rival recruits later. Recruit-on-recruit killings dropped dramatically.

Bruce, looping back toward the cave he’d marked for the night, watched the scoreboard with a faint, satisfied smile. With Sophie stubbornly staying at just 1,000 points, the weakest recruit now still had at least 5,000. Jean and the others were pushing into the high thousands, Jean hovering near 9k.

He allowed himself a small, private calculation.

"Good," he thought. "If I suddenly decided to kill them all now, I could rake in half a million points."

The cruel humor of it made him grin. He hadn’t expected his psychological nudge to work so cleanly; by demonstrating the payoff of killing a recruit, he’d initially driven others to bloodlust; by demonstrating the sheer profitability of beast-farming, he’d corralled them back into the herd.

His own tally ticked upward, fourteen thousand plus, crawling toward fifteen.

’The fourth day would be beautiful,’ he mused. By then, with the remaining recruits bunched and fattened from beasts, he could very well harvest a fortune. Definitely over a million, this was out of his expectations...