Primordial Awakening: I Breathe Skill Points!-Chapter 20: Don’t Tell Me You’re Just For Aesthetic Purposes!

Chapter 20: Don’t Tell Me You’re Just For Aesthetic Purposes!
Boom!
Zeph’s fist went through the building.
Not punched through a wall—went through the entire fucking structure. Concrete, steel reinforcement, load-bearing pillars—all of it disintegrated like wet cardboard as his uncontrolled momentum carried him through what used to be a three-story apartment complex.
The building groaned once, a sound like a dying giant, then collapsed behind him in a thunderous avalanche of debris that sent dust plumes hundreds of feet into the air.
’SHIT!’
He tried to stop, planted his feet to brake, and the ground exploded beneath him. The street cratered into a ten-foot-deep impact zone, launching chunks of asphalt like shrapnel. His next step was more careful, lighter, and still left a footprint that could have doubled as a meteor strike.
’Control it, control it, CONTROL IT—’
Too late. His attempt to slow down translated into a backward leap that sent him rocketing through the air at speeds that turned the world into a blur.
Wind resistance meant nothing to his 999 Vitality. Air pressure that should have torn baseline humans apart just made his purple hair whip dramatically behind him.
The sound barrier shattered like glass.
BOOM!
The sonic boom rattled windows three miles away and sent flocks of mutated birds scattering in panic. Zeph tumbled through the air, desperately trying to orient himself, and slammed into another ruined skyscraper hard enough to punch clean through six floors before friction finally arrested his momentum.
He hung there for a moment, embedded in concrete and twisted rebar, staring at the Zeph-shaped hole that had torn through the building like a bullet through butter.
’This is fucking ridiculous.’
His enhanced hearing picked up the sounds of structural collapse—groaning metal, cracking concrete, the whisper-quiet moments before catastrophic failure. The building was coming down.
Zeph tore himself free and dropped just as the upper floors pancaked into the space he’d been occupying, the entire structure folding in on itself with the inevitability of gravity.
He landed on the street below. The impact sent spiderweb cracks radiating outward for fifty feet in every direction.
A parked car nearby crumpled from the shockwave alone.
’I’m going to kill myself by accident before anyone else gets the chance,’ he thought, standing very, very still and trying not to breathe too hard in case his lungs decided to create a localized hurricane.
This wasn’t power. This was a curse wearing power’s face.
Every movement was a potential catastrophe. Every gesture risked property damage measured in city blocks. His body had become a weapon of mass destruction that he couldn’t turn off or control, and the instruction manual was written in a language he didn’t speak.
’Is this permanent?’
The question clawed at his mind like a living thing. The Soul Mark on his forehead pulsed with faint warmth, as if responding to his thoughts, and Zeph felt something cold settle in his chest.
What if this wasn’t temporary? What if the transformation was the new normal—eight feet tall, purple-haired, clawed, and radiating enough power to register as a natural disaster on whatever instruments the Sanctuaries used to monitor threats?
’Do I spend the rest of my life running?’
The System Event notification had made his status clear: Malicious Anomaly - Regional Extinction Event. Not "dangerous creature" or "rogue awakened" but a threat serious enough to authorize lethal force from every awakened in range.
The reward structure guaranteed that he’d never be safe. 5,000 EXP. 100,000 Skill Points. Legendary equipment.
That last one was the real killer. For the thousands of awakened stuck in the ruins, scraping by on scavenged resources and constant danger, guaranteed legendary equipment was worth more than all the other rewards combined. It was simply too enticing of a reward.
Which meant every desperate, ambitious, or simply pragmatic awakened in the Seattle ruins would come for him.
And the truly terrifying part? Even with his 999 stats, he wasn’t sure he could survive.
’Power isn’t just numbers.’
The thought brought a bitter laugh to his lips. Three years of gaming experience, optimizing builds and theory-crafting stat distributions, and he’d learned the lesson too late.
A level 50 awakened with a Legendary bloodline, high-rank physique, S-tier skills, and decades of combat experience could easily match or exceed his capabilities despite having "only" 250 total attribute points.
In fact, Zeph wouldnt be surprised if they had stats in the thousands! It sounded absurd but it was the plain truth.
Bloodlines could provide reality-warping abilities just from their domains alone. High-rank runes granted stat boosts that could quickly get ridiculous depending on how high leveled the rune was.
After all, his rune was currently only at D rank and it was already boosting his vitality by 100 attribute points!
Imagine what it would do at S-Rank!
Skills at A-rank and above operated on authority levels. A skill called "Inevitable Strike" might guarantee a hit regardless of the target’s Agility. "Absolute Defense" could create barriers that couldn’t be broken by anything below S-rank power.
Unless he could counter it with an S-Rank skill of his own, he was essentially putty!
Runes could grant passive bonuses that stacked multiplicatively rather than additively, turning modest stats into godlike capabilities through sheer synergistic bullshit.
But physiques were the real game-changers. They multiplied base stats by obscene factors. Someone with a Titan’s Constitution at Complete stage might have effective Vitality in the tens of thousands despite being level 40. A Spectral Body could turn the user intangible at will, making raw Strength meaningless.
And none of that accounted for experience. Someone who’d been fighting for twenty years knew things—tactics, timing, psychological warfare, how to exploit weaknesses and create opportunities.
Zeph had three years of survival experience and exactly zero formal combat training.
’I’m a level 2 awakened with cheat-code stats, no idea how to use them, and a target painted on my back that screams "KILL ME FOR PRIZES."’
When he put it that way, his survival prospects looked spectacularly grim.
Movement!
His soul-sense flared like an alarm bell going off inside his skull. Not the vague awareness he’d experienced before, but crystal-clear perception of presences converging on his location from multiple directions.
Three from the east—moving fast, coordinated, professional. Their souls burned with the distinctive pressure of combat-hardened awakened.
Five from the south—less organized but radiating bloodlust and greed in equal measure. Probably a gang that had formed up to claim the bounty.
And from the north... that one was different. A single presence that felt like standing next to a bonfire, power barely contained and impossibly focused.
High-level. A-rank minimum, possibly S-rank.
’They’re already here.’
The hunters had mobilized faster than he’d expected. Less than thirty minutes since the System Event triggered, and already organized groups were closing in on his position.
His sonic booms and building collapses had been like firing flares into the sky, announcing his exact location to anyone with working senses.
’Need to move. Need to—’
Purple flames erupted from his palm.
Zeph stared at his hand, watching the fire dance across his skin without burning, without consuming, without producing heat or light beyond its own otherworldly glow. The flames moved like living things, responding to his thoughts with disturbing eagerness.
They’d covered the centipede creature’s entire body, wreathed it in power that had torn through dimensional barriers like they were made of paper. Now that same power was his, integrated into his transformed physique as naturally as breathing.
But what the fuck did they do?
No heat meant they weren’t for burning. No light meant they weren’t for illumination. They just... existed, pretty and useless, cosmic decoration on a body that was already too powerful and too uncontrollable.
’Please be useful,’ he thought, staring at the flames. ’You looked incredibly OP on that monster’s body. Don’t tell me you’re just for aesthetic purposes!’