Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System! - Chapter 325

Chapter 325: I am Inevitable
A single leaf fell from the nearby oak tree, spiraling gently downward.

It drifted.

Paused.

Then stopped. Mid-air. Just… stuck there. Hovering about two feet from his shoulder. And then it aged from green to yellow to brown to brittle—then crumbled into dust that never hit the ground. The particles just… disappeared.

Parker saw it all—not with his eyes, but through the layers behind them. His vision was no longer a sense. It was a revelation. He could see the veins in the leaf decaying before the color faded. He saw the atoms twitch in the air as the dust spread, smelled the microscopic burn of chlorophyll dying. He could hear the vibration of the particles against the breeze—the way silence sounded when nature surrendered.

Ere said nothing.

Levi didn’t speak.

Even the forest quieted, like it was trying to remember how to breathe in his presence. But Parker… Parker didn’t revel. He endured.

His skin was alive—too alive. Every inch of it now aware of the temperature shift between each droplet of dew on a blade of grass. His hearing reached too far, catching birds from miles away, the movement of ants underground, even the subtle flicker of Ere’s heartbeat changing rhythm in his shadow. His taste had changed—he could taste metal in the wind.

His sense of touch registered the exact weight of air pressing against his body.

A blessing?

Maybe.

But it also meant every false sound scraped at his mind like chalk on glass. Every shift in pressure stabbed at his instincts. Every heartbeat in the forest around him felt like a countdown. His reaction speed? Near divine. His instincts? Animalistic perfection. But it all came at a price.

The world was now too slow for him.

Too fragile.

Too loud.

He couldn’t blink without noticing a ripple. Couldn’t take a breath without measuring it against a thousand environmental variables. Infinity wasn’t just power—it was perception. And perception, when unchecked, bordered on torment.

He exhaled slowly. Calm. Centered. Unmoved.

Not a king.

Not a god.

A force.

He looked down at his hand, flexed it once more. The veins didn’t glow. The skin didn’t shimmer. But gravity around it felt off—like the world wasn’t sure how much he weighed anymore.

Because it didn’t.

He turned to Ere, slow and regal, and finally spoke.

“Let’s head back.”

Ere just stared. “You didn’t even touch anything again.”

He arched a brow. “Exactly.”

And he walked—one step at a time. Grass underfoot folded—not crushed. Folded, like it was parting for something divine. And in that moment, Parker didn’t look like a man who had gained power.

He looked like power had come home. But beneath the silence, beneath the control—his entire being hummed with an ache only gods understood.

The moment Parker turned from the forest’s inner edge, the shift happened—subtle, but seismic to someone like him. The world twitched. Not in movement, but in intent. Like a predator somewhere in the distance had exhaled, just once, and the wind had carried it straight into his blood.

He didn’t lift his head.

Not yet.

But he felt it—down to the molecular level. The change in pressure. The vibration in the bark of a tree over seventy meters away. The heartbeat quickening above the canopy. A string being drawn—not just physically, but spiritually. Woven with myth, bound with oath, and sharpened through centuries of Olympian training.

The forest cracked open—not with sound, but with pressure. A ripple of Ether slammed through the air like a war drum from Olympus itself. Trees bent. The sky blinked. Birds forgot how to fly.

Parker’s pupils tightened.

A blink of green light. A streak of Ether. One step—twenty meters gone. Her bow was already drawn, glowing with magic so ancient even Ere shrank back.

Fwoop—KAHHHHM!

The arrow wasn’t flying—it teleported. It shredded through the air, laced in an Ether enchantment that folded dimensions mid-flight. Time hiccupped around it. Space cracked like old bone.

Parker raised two fingers his eyes flicked sideways. The arrow slowed—just enough for his instinct to catch it, two fingers snapping around it like he was snatching a lie out of the wind.

He caught.

It pulsed with magic Ether radiating off its shaft, spatial runes glowing faintly. It was folded in time—not traveling forward, but sideways, slicing through dimensions

The impact spun the grass backward around him like a turbine. His sandals dug into the soil.

He smiled.

And it was the warm-up.

The forest didn’t whisper.

It listened.

Atalanta stepped out of a shadow not her own—barefoot, bow in hand, eyes glowing with that wild, undomesticated light of Artemis’s chosen. She didn’t greet. Didn’t smirk. Her very presence pulled the leaves toward her like they were magnetized to myth.

Then the field shifted.

She didn’t run—she phased. Her power warped the distance between her and Parker, turning meters into inches, seconds into snaps. The second arrow curved mid-flight. Not bent—willed. Her telekinesis wrapped around it like a jealous god’s hand, jerking it into impossible zig-zags, rewriting its own trajectory.

Parker stepped left. The arrow followed.

He flicked his wrist, and space cracked.

Not shattered—unzipped, just for a second. The arrow vanished through the seam before it could reach him.

Atalanta didn’t stop.

The ground heaved—roots surged upward in a spiral dance, nature responding to her call like soldiers hearing a war horn. Vines looped and snapped, forcing the battlefield into a spiral of shifting terrain.

She fired again.

And again.

Each shot bound with an enchantment. One moved like a beam of light. Another froze mid-air before accelerating backward. One split into a flock of knives, gliding in tandem like coordinated birds.

And Parker?

Still hadn’t taken a full breath.

He was dancing through reality—sidestepping projectiles before they existed, slipping between magic-induced shadows like water bending to avoid fire.

She vanished.

Not with speed. With Stealth—the kind that erased presence entirely. No sound. No Ether signature. No weight. Even Ere flinched, tail stiff, head scanning.

Then—flash.

She appeared behind Parker, dagger already pressed to the back of his neck, smirk breathing down his skin.

“You’re good,” she whispered.

He tilted his head—not surprised.

“I’m infinite.”

He blinked.

She vanished again.

And the next time she reappeared, her bow wasn’t a bow anymore—it was everything. She activated Weapon Time, calling every weapon she’d ever wielded into the same second. Blades hovered. Spears rotated. Arrows locked mid-air, all vibrating, all aiming—each one connected to her through spatial threads too thin to be seen.

Ere cursed under her breath. “She just loaded her inventory into reality…”

Atalanta fired all at once.

The sky darkened—not from clouds, but from choices. The kind of barrage that would humiliate armies. A divine orchestra of death.

Parker exhaled.

The air bent around him—not shielded. It yielded. His senses fired, instincts screaming like alarms in a burning vault. He moved.

Once.

A single pivot.

All the weapons missed.

Not because he dodged. Because he stood in the one spot untouched by fate. She landed behind him again. Breathing hard.

“Okay,” she admitted. “You’re not fast.”

He glanced at her. “I am inevitable.” He tossed the broken arrow from earlier at her feet.

She looked down. Then up. “Rematch!”