Chapter 31: The Price of Being Naturally Gifted

Good morning, everyone! 🌤️

Sorry for the late post—I literally just woke up, and damn, it’s cold this morning. My blanket was fighting for custody of my soul, and honestly, I almost let it win. 😂

Anyway, enough excuses. Grab something warm, get comfortable, and enjoy the chapter.

And yes... we have a new character today.

That’s all you’re getting from me. 👀

Now go read. 😂

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While Ethan was lying in the dirt contemplating his life choices, the blonde woman—whose name was Germaine—was currently marching through the forest, still fuming.

"Unbelievable," she muttered, her voice sharp with irritation. "The nerve of that metal-plated idiot. Accusing me of 'stealing' a kill? The monster practically ran into my blade! If anything, I did him a favor by cleaning up the mess he was too slow to handle."

Germaine was a C-Rank hunter, a title that commanded respect in the guild. However, if one looked at her records, there was a glaring discrepancy. Germaine hadn't climbed the ranks through blood, sweat, and a thousand near-death experiences. She hadn't spent years honing her technique in the dark, damp corners of E-Rank sewers.

She had simply been born with it.

Her innate talent was so rare, so overwhelmingly powerful from the moment of awakening, that the system had slapped a C-Rank label on her before she’d even swung a sword in a real fight. While other hunters had to build their power brick by brick, Germaine had been handed a finished castle. But there was a problem: she had no idea how to actually defend the castle. She was a beginner in a professional's outfit, possessing a god-tier engine but having absolutely no idea how to drive the car.

As she pushed through a thicket of ferns, she spotted it.

A lone Ogre was standing in a clearing, casually snapping massive tree branches like they were toothpicks, chewing on the bark with a bored expression.

"Jackpot!" Germaine exclaimed, her eyes lighting up.

To her, this was just another target to add to her resume. She didn't see a dangerous monster; she saw a pile of credits and a chance to prove her superiority. With a confident smirk, she lunged forward, her movements fluid and fast. She gripped her longsword with both hands, raising it high above her head to deliver a crushing, overhead strike.

WHAM!!!

The blade connected with the Ogre's shoulder. In Germaine's mind, this should have been a cinematic execution—a clean split from shoulder to hip.

Instead... nothing happened.

The sword didn't cut. It didn't even penetrate deeply. It felt like she had just slapped a mountain with a piece of cardboard. The ogre didn't even flinch; it merely glanced down at its shoulder, looking at the blonde woman with an expression of mild curiosity, as if a particularly annoying mosquito had just landed on its skin.

The ogre then slowly raised its massive hand.

SLAP!!!

With a casual backhand—the kind of movement one uses to brush away a fly—the ogre struck Germaine.

The force was instantaneous and absolute. Germaine didn't just fall; she was launched. She went skidding across the ground, her boots digging deep furrows into the soil, before coming to a halt in a cloud of dust and crushed wildflowers.

She lay there, staring up at the canopy of trees, her breath gone, her confidence shattered. For the first time in her life, the C-Rank badge on her chest felt incredibly heavy, and the world felt very, very large.

Germaine lay in the dirt, her chest heaving as she struggled to find her breath. Her mind was racing, trying to make sense of the failure.

This doesn't make sense, she thought, her eyes wide with a mixture of denial and burgeoning terror. I'm a C-Rank hunter! A C-Rank monster... a mere grunt like this... it shouldn't have been this hard to kill! It’s just one monster!

She could already see the credits dancing before her eyes—the luxury equipment, the fame, the prestige of being a high-earning solo hunter. If she could just take this thing down, the payout would be massive. She just had to hit it harder. She just had to—

THUMP.

The ground beneath her shivered.

Germaine looked up, and the sunlight was suddenly blotted out. The ogre was standing directly in front of her, towering like a living mountain of muscle and malice. From her position on the ground, the monster looked like a god of destruction, its shadow engulfing her entirely.

While her mind was still trying to insist she was the superior being, her body was telling a completely different story.

Shiver. Tremble.

Germaine’s legs were shaking uncontrollably. Her fingers, still gripping the hilt of her sword, were vibrating with a primal fear she had never felt in her life. The sheer pressure of the Ogre's presence—the aura of a creature that had actually survived and killed in the wild—was crushing her spirit.

The Ogre looked down at her, its expression bored, as if it were looking at a particularly clumsy insect. It didn't roar. It didn't scream. It simply and slowly raised its left hand.

The movement was agonizingly deliberate. Germaine watched the massive palm descend, her pupils shrinking to pinpricks. She tried to move, tried to roll away, but she was paralyzed by the sudden realization that she was completely out of her league.

WHACK!!!

The Ogre's hand connected with her right shoulder with a sickening, meaty thud.

“GHK—!”

A guttural grunt escaped Germaine’s throat—a sound of pure, unfiltered shock and pain. She didn't just slide this time; she was blasted. The impact sent her soaring through the air like a ragdoll thrown by a giant.

CRASH!!!

She collided with a massive oak tree, the impact sounding like a thunderclap. The trunk groaned under the force, and Germaine slammed into the bark with enough power to knock the leaves off the surrounding branches. She slid down the trunk slowly, her sword finally slipping from her grip and clattering uselessly onto the grass.

As she struggled to breathe, the Ogre began to walk toward her, each footstep shaking the earth.

Germaine slumped against the roots of the oak tree, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. Her right arm felt like it had been hit by a falling building—numb, throbbing, and barely responsive. A few feet away, her longsword lay in the dirt, the silver blade reflecting the dim forest light.

She reached out, her fingers trembling, her arm shaking violently as she struggled to close the gap. Get... up... she hissed through gritted teeth. I am a C-Rank... I am not... dying here...

Above her, the Ogre let out a low, rumbling huff. It didn't see her struggle as a threat; it saw it as a final, pathetic twitch. The monster shifted its weight, pulling back its massive leg and lifting it high into the air. It wasn't a kick—it was a stomp. A literal crushing blow designed to flatten her into the soil.

Just as Germaine’s fingers locked around the hilt of her sword, she felt the rush of displaced air.

Now!

With a desperate, instinctive surge of adrenaline, Germaine rotated her body to the side, diving through the dirt.

BOOOOM!!!

The Ogre's foot slammed into the ground exactly where her torso had been a millisecond prior, sending a shockwave through the earth that nearly knocked her unconscious. But Germaine didn't stop. Using the momentum of her roll, she lashed out in a blindingly fast counter-slash.

SHLICK!

The blade tore through the air, slicing deep into the dense muscle behind the Ogre's leg, specifically targeting the Achilles tendon. A spray of dark green blood erupted from the wound.

Seeing the opening, Germaine didn't hesitate. She surged forward, driving the tip of her sword with everything she had, aiming for the Ogre's exposed flank.

THUD-SQUELCH!

The sword entered the flesh, but it didn't bury deep. The Ogre's skin was like reinforced rubber; the blade slid in a few inches and then stopped, hitting a wall of dense, boss-tier muscle that refused to give way.

“Damn it!” Germaine screamed, her face contorted in frustration.

The Ogre didn't even scream in pain; it roared in anger. The sound was a physical force, vibrating through Germaine’s bones. Before she could pull her blade out, the monster swung its massive arm in a wide, sweeping arc, a blow meant to erase her from existence.

“HAAAAAAH!”

In a state of absolute panic, Germaine didn't just swing her sword—she poured everything she had into it. A sudden, violent surge of brown energy erupted from her core, coating the blade in a flickering, earthen aura. She brought the sword down with a desperate, overhead clash.

K-BOOOOOOM!!!

The collision was deafening. The brown energy flared brilliantly for a second before the Ogre's raw physical strength overwhelmed her. The impact was like hitting a brick wall at two hundred miles per hour.

“GAAAH!” Germaine shrieked as the recoil sent her flying backward.

She hit the ground back-first with a sickening THUMP, the wind completely leaving her lungs in a sharp grunt. But the force didn't stop there. The impact bounced her off the forest floor, sending her flipping backward into the air.

CRACK! SNAP! SMASH!

She became a human pinball, hitting branches and thick foliage continuously as she soared through the canopy, her body crashing through leaves and twigs until she finally slammed into a thick cluster of brush with a final, exhausted thud.

The Ogre stepped forward, savoring the silence of a defeated prey. But the silence didn't last.

From the depths of the shattered brush, a sudden, violent eruption of noise tore through the air.

SHRAAAK!

A barrage of razor-sharp stones, compressed into lethal projectiles, blasted forward with the force of a railgun. They didn't just fly; they screamed through the air, shredding nearby bushes and snapping branches into splinters as they tore a path of destruction toward the monster.

THUCK! THUD! SHLICK!

One by one, the stones impaled themselves into the Ogre's body in a relentless, rhythmic percussion of violence. The monster let out a series of guttural grunts, its massive body shuddering as the stones buried themselves in its shoulders, thighs, and chest.

In the distance, amidst the settling dust, Germaine had risen.

She wasn't the elegant, haughty woman from before. She was glowing—a volatile, shimmering aura of brown-yellow energy swirling around her like a miniature sandstorm. Her long blonde hair fluttered upward, defying gravity, framed by the crackling energy of her awakening. She was crouched low, her left hand leaning forward, her fingers digging into the earth with a predatory grip.

Her expression was no longer one of fear. It was something far more dangerous: greed.

“I’m... not... DONE YET!” she shrieked, her voice cracking with a manic edge. “I NEED THOSE CREDITS! I NEED IIIIT!!!” 

"HRAAAAAAH!"

With a primal scream, she slashed her left hand upward in a violent, sweeping arc.

K-BOOOM!!!

The ground beneath the Ogre didn't just break; it exploded. Five massive, crescent-shaped blades of hardened sand erupted from the tectonic plates of the earth, surging forward with bone-chilling precision.

[Skill: Sand Gale]

A high-tier manifestation of Earth-attribute manipulation. Unlike standard earth skills that create walls or boulders, Sand Gale compresses silica and mineral deposits into hyper-dense, rotating blades. These blades possess both the crushing weight of stone and the cutting edge of a diamond, allowing the user to shred through high-durability hide with ease.

The five blades tore through the Ogre in a synchronized dance of death, carving deep, bloody red lines across its legs, arms, and stomach. The monster roared, not in boredom now, but in genuine agony as it was systematically dismantled by the forest floor itself.

But the true secret to Germaine's C-Rank status lay beneath the surface. As she channeled the skill, a faint, golden light flickered across her bruises.

[Unique Passive: Earth's Reciprocity]

A rare, innate talent that links the user's vitality to their elemental output. Every time Germaine activates a skill, the earth "pays her back," knitting her wounds and restoring a small portion of her stamina. It is a parasitic relationship with the world—the more she destroys with her magic, the more she is healed.

It was a broken ability. She didn't need the discipline of a veteran or the strategy of a general because her power simply allowed her to outlast her opponents through raw, innate attrition.

However, there was a cost. As the Sand Gale faded, Germaine gasped, her shoulders slouching. The healing was real, but the energy drain was immense. She was like a candle burning at both ends—blindingly bright, utterly chaotic, and rapidly running out of wax.

She stood there, panting, her eyes wide and bloodshot, staring at the bleeding Ogre.

“Now...” she whispered, a terrifying smile spreading across her face. “Give. Me. My. MONEY!”

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The power of money, ladies and gentlemen. 💰

Give someone enough credits and suddenly getting beaten half to death becomes a minor inconvenience.

Germaine may have C-Rank power, but apparently her true ability is Financial Motivation. 😂

Never underestimate the human desire for money. It can turn fear into stupidity remarkably fast.