Reincarnated With The Degenerate System

The creature rolled one shoulder, and cracked chitin sloughed away in pieces, exposing a newer shell beneath — smoother, darker, already knitting itself whole. The wound I’d opened moments ago was simply gone, as if it had never been there.

It wasn’t healing. It was adapting.

"So that’s your trick."

The antennae on its head twitched once. Then it vanished.

I didn’t bother chasing it with my eyes this time. I let instinct answer instead, sweeping the spear behind me a half-second before its claw came down.

CLANG!

The impact split the ground under my feet, fractures webbing out across the chamber floor. It twisted its wrist and the claw slid along my spearhead, reaching for my throat.

I leaned back just far enough — the hook caught my cheek instead, and warm blood ran down into my collar.

I answered with the spear’s butt, driving it into its ribs. It barely staggered. Its tail was already coiling around my ankle.

"Oh, that’s cheating."

The world spun. It swung me through the air and buried me in the ceiling, then, before gravity remembered I existed, slammed me straight back through the floor. Dust swallowed the chamber whole.

I coughed once. "...Okay."

I climbed out of the crater and rolled my shoulder until it popped back into place. "That actually hurt."

The creature hadn’t moved from where I’d left it. It wasn’t taunting, wasn’t roaring — just watching.

I exhaled slowly and let the lightning crawl back across my skin. The spear trembled in my grip, and the pressure around me climbed high enough to bend the settling dust into spirals at my feet.

The creature crouched. Its wings unfolded, membranes shimmering before vanishing entirely from sight. Then it launched, and the sonic boom came after it like an afterthought.

Our weapons met, and met again, and then a hundred times more, until the chamber dissolved into nothing but flashes — blue lightning against emerald claws, walls shattering wherever we crossed.

Neither of us stayed still long enough for the destruction to catch up. Every collision birthed a shockwave, every shockwave widened the destruction a little further. C

I drove the spear forward. It slipped aside, and its claw raked across my ribs — I ignored the pain and let the spear spin into its tail, the impact throwing us both backward, skidding.

It adjusted its stance, and something about the motion caught in my mind.

"...You’ve been copying me."

It only tilted its head.

"So you’re one of those annoying types huh." I laughed and closed the distance.

"Moonlight Dragon Fang Flash!!!"

The same fifty-thrust storm that had opened it up the first time — and this time its claws met every single one before the tenth thrust landed, the pattern already memorized.

I was running out of new things to show it. Every technique I still had was one it had already seen, which meant every technique I still had was one it already knew how to answer. It wasn’t matching my speed anymore. It was one exchange ahead of it.

Our clash split the nearest pillar clean in half. The upper section hung suspended for a heartbeat before crashing into the chamber.

If I had been using my real body, I could have ended this fight in the blink of an eye. But in this one, I could only rely on my Qi cultivation.

I backed off a step, buying a breath I couldn’t really afford to spend on breathing. My arms wouldn’t stop shaking. Blood loss, or Qi deficit, or both — at that point the difference barely mattered.

"Tough," I said, mostly to hear my own voice.

The Queen’s voice returned, quieter than before.

(Not even my executioner can stop you.) (You truly are... an anomaly.)

I didn’t answer her. My breathing had gone ragged, my muscles trembling from overuse, my reserves burning down faster than they could refill.

Every technique in my arsenal had already been spent and already been answered, and I had nothing left.

The creature, meanwhile, showed no such limit — it was drawing on something beyond itself.

The Hive. Of course. It had never been fighting me alone; the entire nest had been feeding it this whole time, an ocean standing behind a single fist. I was spending a life. It was spending a species.

For the first time since I’d stepped into this ruin, I ran the numbers and didn’t like where they landed.

"...Then I’ll just have to cheat harder."

I planted the spear into the broken floor and closed my fingers around the shaft. There was one technique left.

"Evil Qi!"

Pain detonated through my body all at once. My heart accelerated past any rhythm it was built for.

Veins bulged beneath my skin and burst along my arms. My vision blurred crimson at the edges as I began converting my Qi.

I rarely used this technique. The benefits of going berserk was never been worth it when I had so many other options in my arsenal. But in this world, my Evil Qi could work wonders.

Power flooded through me in amounts my body was never meant to hold. The spear shuddered violently in my grip, its lightning shifting from blue to something closer to white.

Then something snapped — not my body this time, but my mind. A barrier I hadn’t known existed simply gave way, and the world disappeared.

I felt everything. Every heartbeat inside the Hive. Every larva curled in its cocoon, every drone, every humans, every pulse.

Energy poured toward me from every direction at once. Not Qi. The Hive was answering, black veins beneath the walls emptying themselves in my direction.

My body didn’t reject it. It devoured it.

"What...?"

The change came immediately.

My skin darkened.

My nails lengthened into points. Black markings spread across my arms and shoulders, and beneath the skin, plates of hard armor pushed into place as if they’d always belonged there.

Even my blood turned — crimson bleeding into emerald, emerald darkening into black.

My vision sharpened until I could see the creature’s nervous system glowing faintly beneath its shell.

I could hear every heartbeat in the Hive at once, every thought, every instinct, every command passed silently between them. My eyes stopped reflecting light entirely, replaced by two pools of endless black.

It staggered. For the first time, I saw something in it that hadn’t been there before.

Fear.

The Queen’s voice came back, and this time it wasn’t calm. It wasn’t curious. It was shaken.

(How...? How can you resonate with me?)

I looked down at my changing hands.

"I don’t know what’s happening," I admitted. "...but I’m using this to kill you."

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