My SSS-Rank Grim Reaper System-Chapter 85: THE PRICE

Eighteen thousand four hundred HP.

Active regeneration.

Effective level 85.

Alex looked at the numbers with the Fragment’s coldness and arrived at the same conclusion as always.

They weren’t enough.

But they had something Matthias didn’t.

"Alex."

Grim landed beside him. His crimson wings extended, the ground darkening where they touched. Four meters of partial Primordial Reaper looking down at the vessel with fifty-seven HP.

"One more time."

Alex nodded.

One more time.

---

[Fragment Synchronization — Ultimate — INITIATING]

There were no instructions for this in any system.

There was no cataloged skill, no prior warning, no calculated cost.

Just two halves of the same being recognizing each other completely for the first time.

Alex extended his right hand.

Grim extended his.

Bony fingers wrapped around the human hand.

Alex’s black energy and Grim’s crimson energy stopped being intertwined.

They became one.

[SYSTEM — UNCATALOGED EVENT]

[Fragment Synchronization — Ultimate — ACTIVE]

[Vessel and Core: full synchronization]

[Estimated duration: 60 seconds]

[Warning: unknown cost]

The world changed around them.

Death’s Domain didn’t radiate from Alex. It radiated from both of them as a single source. The radius doubled. One hundred meters of active death zone, the air so dense that surrounding rocks began to show cracks without anyone touching them.

Harvest of Thousands at maximum.

Matthias felt the pull on his fused soul, and this time he couldn’t ignore it.

His regeneration dropped to zero.

[Matthias HP: 18,400 — REGENERATION SUSPENDED]

"That—" he began.

Alex and Grim launched simultaneously.

---

There was no exchange this time.

No blows and counterblows and tactical assessment.

Only speed and direction and the shared knowledge of two entities that at this moment could not tell where one ended and the other began.

Grim from above with the scythe.

Alex from the front with the ordinary knife that was no longer ordinary, conducting synchronized energy as if it had been forged for that purpose.

Matthias blocked Grim with both arms. The scythe cut through them anyway.

[Matthias HP: 18,400 → 15,200/25,000]

He spun toward Alex.

Alex was already inside his guard.

[Soul Rend — SYNCHRONIZED — MAXIMUM]

Not just soul damage.

Pull.

As if Matthias’s soul, the fused essence of saint and stolen power, recognized the Core and could not resist its gravity.

[Matthias HP: 15,200 → 11,600/25,000]

Matthias howled.

He retreated five meters, then ten. His left half, the monstrous one, trembling with something that wasn’t physical pain.

"What are you doing?" he said. His voice lacking composure for the first time. "What is this?"

"What we always were," Grim answered.

Alex said nothing.

He kept advancing.

---

The next minute was destruction without pause.

Matthias counterattacked with everything. Holy Corruption in its purest form, explosions of green energy that cratered the ground, fractured cliffs, filled the valley with dust and light and sound.

Alex and Grim passed through them.

[Alex HP: 57 → 40 → 28/1,110]

[Grim HP: 3,720 → 2,800 → 1,900/8,000]

Every blow they received fed the other through the shared pool. Alex’s pain was distributed. Grim’s damage as well.

They survived because they shared what neither could absorb alone.

[Matthias HP: 11,600 → 8,200 → 5,100/25,000]

The exorcist was retreating.

For the first time in the entire battle, he was retreating without choosing it.

[Fragment Synchronization — 18 seconds remaining]

Alex felt it. Time running out. The synchronization couldn’t be maintained indefinitely.

Now.

[Blood Weapon — Overload]: no MP, no execution.

It didn’t matter.

Death’s Domain concentrated on the knife’s blade. Soul Rend channeled in his free hand. Harvest of Thousands pulling Matthias’s soul toward them like an anchor.

Grim descended from above.

The wings closed.

Alex struck from below.

[FRAGMENT SYNCHRONIZATION — FINAL ATTACK]

BOOM.

The explosion wasn’t green or crimson or black.

It was all three together, and then none, and then just white light for two full seconds.

---

The dust took time to settle.

Matthias was on his knees.

His Perfect Fusion form fracturing. The monstrous half disintegrating into green energy that dissipated in the air. What remained was almost human again. Almost.

[Matthias HP: 5,100 → 2,800/25,000]

[Perfect Fusion — COLLAPSING]

He was breathing with difficulty.

Each breath a visible effort.

Alex was three meters away. Standing. Twenty-one HP.

Grim behind him, wings retracted, form still in Manifestation but still.

[Fragment Synchronization — EXPIRED]

The synchronization severed. The two separated again.

Matthias looked at them from the ground.

His left eye, which had been completely green, flickered between green and normal brown as the fusion unraveled.

"Level forty-three," he said. Voice barely audible. "And a skeleton."

Pause.

"Incredible."

He raised his right hand.

Not to attack.

To teleport.

"This doesn’t end here," he said. "When I return—"

Fire came from the north.

Not dark energy. Not green corruption.

Orange-gold fire, clean and bright and absolutely furious, falling on Matthias like a sentence.

[Matthias HP: 2,800 → 0/25,000]

ELIMINATED.

---

Silence lasted two seconds.

Then a voice from the northern rocks.

"Saint or not."

Maya Park jumped down from the cliff with Akari in full form behind her, nine tails extended, golden eyes blazing with no trace of external control.

"I don’t forgive people who mess with the ones I care about."

She landed twenty meters away.

She looked at the battlefield. The craters. The cracks. The remains of the sacrificed creatures. Alex with twenty-one HP and an ordinary knife.

"Did you know Raven hasn’t sent me photos of you... of the group for four days?"

No one responded.

"I was worried."

---

Alex felt the exact moment the synchronization ended.

Not gradually.

All at once.

As if they had been holding something very heavy together and suddenly let go, and the weight didn’t disappear but fell entirely on him.

[Fragment Synchronization — FINAL COST CALCULATED]

[Corruption: 82% → 84%]

[WARNING: Point of no return approaching]

The Fragment that had been acting with him, in agreement, as a partner throughout the battle, changed its stance.

It no longer asked.

It pushed.

This is what we are. Why resist.

You were more effective like this. You know it.

Let go of control. I’ll handle it.

Alex fell to his knees.

Not from physical wounds.

From the weight of that.

Twenty-one HP and the Fragment pushing from inside, and the part of him that was still Alex completely exhausted after hours of letting something else use his body.

[Corruption: 84% → 84.3%]

Let go.

Let go.

Let go.

"Master."

Grim landed in front of him. His Manifestation form contracting, returning to the normal two and a half meters. The wings disappearing. His eyes returning from pure flames to the usual points of red-green light.

Broken. Cracked. Same as before.

But present.

"Listen. To me."

Alex looked at him.

"You. Named. Me."

A pause.

"First day. Everyone laughed. You named me anyway."

[Corruption: 84.3% → 84.1%]

The Fragment pushed harder.

Grim’s voice pushed harder still.

"Grim. Short for Grim Reaper. You said that was what we were."

"We. Were. Both."

"You and me."

"Not you and the Fragment."

[Corruption: 84.1% → 83.6%]

---

From the north, four figures came running.

Raven arrived first. Her spectral crow ahead like a scout.

Emily behind her, still pale, Luna beside her in reduced form. Recovered. Standing. With dark circles that hadn’t existed this morning but standing nonetheless.

Kira bringing up the rear, her bow on her back, a makeshift bandage on her left arm.

They stopped when they saw the field.

The craters. The cracks. Alex on his knees in front of Grim.

Raven opened her mouth.

Closed it.

Emily stepped forward. She knelt in front of Alex without saying anything. Placed a hand on his cheek.

[Purifying Light — Gentle]

Not HP recovery.

Just light. Warm. Without urgency. Without force.

A reminder that something existed that was not darkness.

[Corruption: 83.6% → 82.8%]

The Fragment withdrew.

Not because it lost. Because the arithmetic changed and it decided to wait.

Alex breathed.

A real breath. The first in hours that felt completely his own.

"Hi," Emily said quietly.

"Hi," Alex replied.

His voice came out slightly distorted. Not the double echo of the Fragment taking control. Something more subtle. Like a guitar string slightly out of tune. Almost normal.

Almost.

Maya approached from where she had landed.

"Viktor tracked your location when Raven stopped answering messages," she said. "I arrived twenty minutes ago. I’ve been watching."

"Twenty minutes?" said Raven.

"I wanted to see how it ended."

"There was a man turning into a monster."

"There was an interesting battle," Maya corrected. "Different things."

Akari, in reduced form, approached Grim and sniffed him curiously. Grim looked at her.

"Fox."

"Skeleton," Maya replied for Akari.

---

Alex let himself fall onto his back on the ground.

The ground covered in cracks and dust and battle remnants.

He looked at the sky.

Full blue now. Mid-morning sun.

[Final corruption: 82%]

[Alex HP: 21/1,110]

[MP: 0/535]

He heard someone sit down beside him. By the weight, Raven.

"Your eyes," she said.

"What about them?"

"They have a red tint. They don’t glow. But the tint is there."

"Permanent?"

"I don’t know."

Silence.

"Your voice too," she added.

"I noticed."

He touched his hair. Found the area that had always had the white streak, the Fragment’s mark from the beginning.

Larger now. Much larger. Where before it was a streak, now it was a section. Twenty percent of his hair, at least.

He looked at his left hand, where the Fragment’s mark lived beneath the skin.

It glowed faintly through the sleeve. No effort. No conscious activation.

Just... present. All the time.

"How do you feel?" Emily asked from his other side.

Alex considered the question honestly.

"Like myself," he said finally. "But with more background noise."

"The Fragment?"

"It was always there. Now it’s easier to hear."

"And that’s—?"

"I don’t know yet."

Grim sat on the ground near his feet. His form collapsed to eighty centimeters. Ribs cracked. Left arm still unusable.

They both needed a very long rest.

"We won," said Grim.

"We won," Alex confirmed.

"We’ll need to be stronger."

"Yes."

"Good."

Kira sat on a nearby rock, surveying the landscape with her tracker’s eyes.

"This valley is going to take years to recover," she observed.

"Next time whoever chooses the battlefield should think it through better," said Raven.

"I’ll choose it," said Maya. "With discretion."

Comfortable silence for a moment.

Then Emily, without moving from the ground beside Alex, asked what everyone was avoiding.

"What happens now?"

Alex looked at the sky.

[Corruption: 82%]

[Souls: 674.7/1,000]

[Grim — Core Fragment Manifestation: inactive, recovering]

[Fragment 4: Heralds of the Void — pending]

"We rest, we go to the crystalline mountains," he said. "We heal Grim. We heal those who need healing."

Pause.

"And then we keep going."

"Toward what?" Kira asked.

Alex closed his eyes.

The Fragment murmured something from its quietest corner.

For once, Alex agreed with it.

"Forward."

---