Free Web NovelChapter 12: Over 100 Strength
The walk back toward the ridge was slower than the ride out. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ
Ronan’s body had passed exhaustion and entered something deeper, a bone-level fatigue that no amount of stats could fix.
The Titan Greatbow weighed on his shoulder like a second spine, and his throat still burned faintly with each swallow, a reminder of black ichor and divine jealousy.
But his mind wouldn’t stop turning.
’Affinity.’
’Wife.’
’She kissed me.’
The memory of her lips, desperate and salty with tears, kept surfacing no matter how hard he tried to focus on practical concerns.
Like the fact that he was still in a dead world full of monsters. Like the fact that a lit city full of unknown threats was waiting for him.
Like the fact that he now had a flesh golem’s shadow sitting in his storage and no idea what it could do.
He needed to test it.
"System," he said, his voice still hoarse. "Summon the flesh golem."
[Skitter Unsummoned]
The ground beneath his feet shuddered.
And compared to the bone-face or skitter’s summoning, this was closer to a seismic event. Cracks spider-webbed across the rubble as something massive forced its way up from the darkness beneath him.
Ronan stumbled backward, the Titan Greatbow slipping from his shoulder and clattering against the stone.
The golem rose like a mountain being born.
Fifteen feet at the shoulder, just like the original. But where the living version had been covered in segmented plating the color of old stone, this one was darker.
Its body absorbed the violet moonlight rather than reflecting it, making it look less like a failed mad science experiment and more like an urban legend.
Its single eye, the one Ronan had destroyed with the greatarrow, had been replaced by a sphere of pure violet light. The same glow that lived in his skitter’s or Sarael’s eyes.
And it was huge.
Like a helicopter trying to highlight a suspect from above.
The living version had been a mountain of flesh and stone. This thing was a mountain that had been reforged in shadow and sent back meaner.
"What if...?"
[Inherit]
The golem immediately dispersed, its body being pulled into Ronan’s chest like it was being sucked by a vacuum, its entire form creating a small circular darkness on Ronan’s chest and hardened the moment it finished.
[Stats Inherited]
[Ronan Night]
[Class: God-Bound (???)]
[Level: 12]
[STR: 26 +20] → [STR: 26 +20 +110]
[AGI: 24 +20] → [AGI: 24 +20 +15]
[CON: 22 +20] → [CON: 22 +20 +150]
[MAG: 16 +20] → [MAG: 16 +20 +0]
"H-Holy shit...!"
Ronan stared at the numbers until his eyes burned.
’One hundred and ten strength. One hundred and fifty constitution.’
The flesh golem’s stats were absurd. Not balanced. Not elegant. Just raw, brutal power poured into two categories and almost nothing else. The agility boost was negligible—fifteen points, barely worth mentioning. And magic? Zero. The golem had no magic to give.
But strength and constitution?
He’d just added a small fortress to his body.
Ronan flexed his fingers, half-expecting his hands to look different. They didn’t. Same calluses. Same scars. Same porter’s hands that had carried other people’s equipment for three years.
But they didn’t feel the same.
They felt like they could punch through a building.
"Holy shit," he said again, because his brain was too fried to come up with anything more articulate.
The Titan Greatbow lay where he’d dropped it. He bent down and picked it up with one hand.
One hand.
And lifted it like it weighed nothing. The weapon that had nearly pulled him off his feet an hour ago now felt like a toy.
"A hundred and fifty-six strength," Ronan whispered, doing the math in his head. "With Night’s Caress active. That’s..."
He didn’t have a frame of reference. He’d never seen numbers this high outside of S-Rank hunters bragging in guild halls. And he was level twelve.
Level twelve.
He dismissed the stat window and looked down at his chest. The circular darkness where the golem had been absorbed was still there, a perfect black disc the size of his fist pressed into his sternum.
It didn’t hurt or look like anything impressive. It just sat there, a void in his skin that felt cool to the touch.
"System, can I still summon the golem while inheriting its stats?"
[Error: Cannot Summon While Inheriting]
[Discard Inheritance to Summon: Yes/No]
One or the other. Permanent stat boost, or a giant shadow monster at his command.
For now, he’d keep the stats. The lit city was waiting, and whatever was inside it, he’d rather face it with a hundred and fifty-six strength and a hundred and seventy-two constitution than with a summon he could lose in a bad fight.
He could always switch back later.
"Alright." Ronan rolled his shoulders, feeling the new power settle into his bones. "Let’s keep moving."
***
The walk back took another hour.
Ronan didn’t bother summoning the skitter for a ride this time. His body was tired, but his new constitution meant he wasn’t collapsing.
And honestly, after everything that had happened, he needed the silence.
As for Sarael, she hadn’t spoken since she’d vanished from his arms.
But he could feel her. Like a weight in the back of his mind, a second heartbeat pulsing just slightly out of sync with his own.
She was there. freёwebnoѵel.com
Watching and waiting.
Probably still thinking about the kiss.
Like he was.
"You know," he said to the empty air, "if you’re going to be my wife, you could at least walk with me."
No answer.
But the warmth in his chest flared for just a moment before fading back to its usual background hum.
Ronan took that as a yes.
The ridge came into view again as he crested a hill of rubble and a collapsed highway overpass.
Below, the lit city still glowed with those warm orange lights. Still silent and ominous. Nothing had changed in the hours since he’d left, no monsters pouring out, no hunters stumbling in, no signs of life whatsoever.
It was still waiting.
Ronan crouched at the ridge’s edge, the Titan Greatbow planted beside him like a sentinel. The long walk no longer made his body ache, and even his throat had finally stopped burning.
The fatigue was still there, a distant murmur instead of a scream, but it was manageable.
He pulled out his binoculars and scanned the city again.
But all of it was the same.
So Ronan came up with a better way to test if anything was lurking nearby.
He would hurl a stone right into the middle of the highway using his newfound strength and see if anything came to investigate the massive crater he was about to create.
