Magic Breaker Ch 1-3

Hi. It's me. Kernoel77 here.

For the last little while, I have been preparing a new fic for upload. In fact, I have been working on this for, uh, months now. In fact, I started this project in February, then took a longer break to focus on finishing Tenets.

Regardless: For now, I am putting the first 3 chapters up for free. Chapters 4-6 will follow in a few days. I'll be doing chapters in packets of 3 to not spam any inboxes, and the first 6 will be free for all.

I'm doing this because patreon for Magic Breaker will be running 40 Chapters ahead of Royalroad and frankly uploading that many chapters the day I drop it there would be wild. So, this is what I came up with.

What is Magic Breaker? Blurb:

The only thing Snow loves more than magic... is breaking it.

When the world starts to end at the hands of the Tower and its Eyes, everyone is granted inherent skills. Snow's [Suppression] can drain anyone's strength. After selecting an anti-magic focused class, it doesn't matter whether someone is stronger or faster or a better mage, so long as Snow has mana. With a near-limitless mana pool, Snow will break them all.

There are just four people Snow needs to find at any cost before the tower fully integrates Earth and they're ready to climb. And they will climb - all the way up. The Eyes, gods looking down from the top of the tower, need to be torn from their arrogant thrones by someone.

And Snow is ready to break them, too.

In short: Magic Breaker is a LitRPG Apocalypse into Tower-Climber story with a mana-maniac debuffer/anti-mage MC.

Chapter 1: End of the World

“Is that a goblin?” Inu asks.

I look at it. Give it a long, hard look, really. It’s small, green, and overgrown with warts. Large, bloodshot eyes, and wielding a primal-looking axe.

“Yeah,” I say. “Goblin, for sure.”

At that, the little monster perks up, then screeches and lunges at Inu. I watch with curiosity as it streaks through the air. Then I catch it and slam its head into the concrete so hard it cracks.

Green blood splatters all over me, sizzling. “Oh, it’s acidic,” I say. “Mildly,” I add, scratching my skin. Inu screams in horror, looking at the scrunched up body of the monster.

I lean down, grabbing its axe. It smells horrible, and it’s poorly made. It’s too small for my hands, and the grip is slick with that same green acidic blood, wrapped in sizzling leather. Some of it gets on my nails, messing with the polish, making the black fade into a sickly grey.

Inu, my best friend, vomits. “You okay?” I ask.

She laughs, pitifully, while crying. “Fuck no.”

I give her a nod. “Take your time.” Meanwhile, I focus on the blue box in the air.

[You have killed a lv. 1 Goblin]

When I swipe my hand through it, the box shatters and dissolves into motes of stardust, then nothing at all. I look at the sky, seeing that it’s covered in eyes. Titanic ones, spanning wider than the sun, and a myriad of smaller ones I could barely make out, as well as everything in between.

My thoughts move at their usual pace, steadily crawling forward. There was a chance I was dead or hallucinating, but that seems doubtful. If I was dead, well, might as well keep on going, and I had no history of hallucinations, personal or familial.

“Do you think the world is ending?” I ask Inu, calmly.

She chokes out a cough, wiping her filthy lips. “Might be,” she said. Her braids are messy, and her dark skin looks a little sickly under the thin make-up. I can see her hazel eyes shaking slightly as she looks down at me. She’s tall, much taller than me, and despite everything, looks reliable.

“You feel any different?” I ask.

“What?” Inu looks at me, confused.

“Powers. Magic. That sorta thing,” I reply.

She blinks at me, then laughs. “Yeah, alright. Magic, sure, I-”

Before she finishes, I swipe the axe through the air, slamming it through the head of yet another goblin. Its skull breaks, spilling hissing blood on me, making my skin itch. “I really liked that hoodie,” I say.

[You have killed a lv. 1 Goblin]

Inu yelps. “That’s horrible.”

“I know,” I say, pulling at the black fabric, coming apart in my hands. “A tragedy.”

“Not that! The killing.”

“Oh.” I nod. “Right. Terrible.”

“Terrible,” she agrees. “And no, I don’t feel that different.”

“Profile,” I try. Nothing happens.

“What are you doing?” Inu asks.

I shrug. “The goblins have levels. So, we probably do too.”

She blinks, then her face twists into a crooked smile. “Fine. Character sheet.”

“Skills,” I try. “Skill Window.”

“Inspect.”

“Appraisal.”

“Analysis.”

Another goblin gets ruthlessly broken into pieces by my axe. 

“Status.” 

That one causes a mote of starlight to appear in the air in front of me.

Name: Snow Okiyama

Floor: 0

Class: None

Job: None

Lv. 0

Heart: 1

Power: 1

Vessel: 1

Skills:

• [Suppression lv. 1]

• [Selection lv. 1]

“You’re grinning,” Inu informs me.

I touch a finger to my face, and, indeed, my lips are curled upwards. “Funny how that works, huh,” I tell her.

She shakes her head, placing it in her palm. “Of course you are. Dumbass.”

Another goblin approaches us. It’s sneaking behind a tree, planted in the small green area next to the road. Without hesitation, I sprint at it.

The creature flinches, afraid, then brandishes a knife, carved from obsidian. It looks wickedly sharp - but I slam the hatchet into its skull before it even gets to use its weapon. Then, I pick up the knife.

For a moment, I consider throwing it to Inu, then think better of it, slowly approaching her and handing it over. It’s mostly clean of blood.

“You smell like shit,” she comments.

“Good point,” I reply, moving to brush some of my hair aside. Then I pause and wipe my hand first. I don’t want the blood to mess with the white dye in it. “Let's find an area with flowing water. How long do you think infrastructure will last?”

She blows out a puff of air. “Dunno. Might be days. Might be months, if we’re lucky. Certainly a week, I’m sure.”

I nod. “Makes sense. Know any nearby rivers? Just in case.”

Tilting her head, she looks at me. “No. But I know where we can find a map. Ranger station is to the east of town.”

Without hesitation, I start walking, the axe slung over my shoulder. “Nearby grocery stores?”

“A few.”

“Gotcha. We’ll raid them on the way,” I say. I’d always wanted to steal from a store. This seems like as good a chance as any.  

Inu smiles, ever so faintly, for the first time. “It’s only stealing if they need it more than you…”

“You get it.” 

For a few minutes we walk in silence - well, moderate silence. Turns out, the ending of the world isn’t quiet. People are screaming, goblins cackling. There’s gunshots going off, roaring car engines, and we do our best to stay away from the roads. No sense in getting run over.

Inu looks at me, quietly following. 

I look back at her. She seems to want to speak, but is unable to find the words. I sigh, internally, letting none of it show on my face. It’s okay. I like her lots, so I’ll happily bear with it. Smiling slightly, I ask her, “So. What are your skills?”

She blinks, then frowns. “Should we talk about those out loud?”

“Well, it would be helpful to know.”

“Right,” she hums. “Well. Mine are [Empathy] and [Resistance].”

I tilt my head a little. They suit her. “[Suppression] and [Selection].”

“Two each,” she notes. “A universal standard, maybe?”

I nod along. It makes sense. Two skills to start. “Probably with a chance to gain more in the future.”

Another screaming goblin, another swing of the axe…

[You have killed a lv. 1 Goblin]

[Level up! 0 > 1]

I stop in my tracks. There is a tugging at my mind, demanding to know my future path. Heart, Power, Vessel. “I levelled,” I tell Inu.

“Makes sense. You’ve been doing the killing. How many points?”

“Three,” I reply.

“Even spread?” she asks.

I shake my head. “We should test them. In which case, it will be easier to notice the differences if we specialize.” I take a long look at the stats again.

Heart, the first of the three. I stare at it, as hard as I can. There is a tingle on the back of my mind, an iron taste on my tongue. I feel a small tether, and then the feeling intensifies; that of my heart beating in my chest, of blood coursing through me, keeping me alive.

“Heart is the designated health stat,” I tell Inu. 

Without hesitation, she accepts it. “Got it. What do the others do?”

I focus on power, and the tether to heart falls apart. Instead, there is a new connection. The smell of sweat, of movement, of exertion. The kind of thing that might hit you upon heading to a gym. “Power smells of strength. But it’s more ephemeral. It’s… your capacity for exertion,” I say.

“That makes no sense,” Inu chuckles. “Well, a little, I suppose. That one has the simplest name.”

“Right,” I agree. Then, finally, I tether to vessel. This one feels like an ice-cold bath, like sticking my head underwater and seeing an ocean in front of me. “It’s… capacity?” I tell her. “Feels mysterious. I love it.”

All three of my points go into it.

Lv. 1

Heart: 1

Power: 1

Vessel: 4

Electricity tingles in my fingertips. I feel deeper. The tether connecting me to the stat grows a little thicker. “I think vessel is something like… how much mana you can hold? How much you can use your skills.”

If that’s the case, then that tether I felt is probably [Selection]. It feels thin and ephemeral, a tiny touch upon the world, but it also holds more personal meaning to me than that. Selection is, in a way, what I do.

I breathe out, letting the feeling wash over me. The insistent poking at the back of my mind disappears. “Using your skills is possible with just one vessel. I used [Selection] to learn what the stats do.”

Inu smiles and nods. “I know. Been using [Empathy] to borrow some of your calm.”

That sneaky girl. “What do you want to do after we get the map?”

“Family,” she says. “My parents are probably worried.”

“We’ll head there next. Food and water first. Shelter shouldn’t be too much trouble. Afterwards…” I look at the eyes in the sky. “Levels.”

Chapter 2: Ranger

Gradually, the screams die down.

One after another is silenced. Either their lungs are hoarse, or they’re cut down by monsters. People stop driving their cars through shop windows, and the initial carnage is dealt with in a few hours. Police are all about, like scurrying little cockroaches. The fire department is desperately trying to save people from rubble - cutting into goblins with those red axes.

Throughout the carnage, I don’t mind them too much. Some of the older people try to tell me off about restricted areas and being safe and all that, but I just walk on. They don’t matter, not anymore, and as long as they aren’t dangerous, I don’t let them slow us down.

Inu pulls me up over another piece of rubble, the car alarm beeping beneath us, and the ranger store comes into sight. It’s a minor tourism attraction, and the windows are already shattered. “Think people took all the maps?” Inu asks.

I shake my head. “Not while the internet still works.” My phone beeped a while ago with an emergency alert, but I paid it no mind. Right now, satellite footage of Earth was still available - not live, though, since a dome of eyes blotted out the sky. 

Whenever I look up, some of those eyes seem to have disappeared, and new ones emerge. It’s rather creepy. ‘Voyeurs,’ I chide the things up there in my mind.

Inu nods. “Right. They probably just grabbed the rations.”

As we approach the station, though, there are more screams. And growls. Not the kind of growls the goblins make, which is more of a humanoid snarl. Genuine, deep growls, like those of a wild animal.

[Wolf lv. 3]

Its snout is drenched in red blood. I see the bodies of a few kids around. A school excursion out here? They must have huddled in there for safety. The teacher is nowhere to be found, and there aren’t enough for it to have gotten the whole class, but there sure are a few.

Behind me, Inu retches, disgusted at the sight of the creature, or maybe the corpses. I simply walk forward, the axe firmly in my grip. There’s a dagger in my second hand. Sharp obsidian, with a too-small wooden handle.

Fear bubbles in my chest. I curiously examine the emotion, then gently embrace it. It’s okay to be afraid. But it doesn’t control me. The wolf snarls louder, giving me a terrifying bark, but I keep my pace toward it steady and measured.

I [Select] it.

A tether builds between me and the wolf. Curiously, I play with the skill. What does [Selection] mean? Well, obviously I select something, targeting it to some degree. But with what? 

When figuring out the stats, my intent was to figure out their purpose. I was selecting them while wanting to gather information. I don’t need to know more about the wolf. Instead, I [Select] it as a target to receive damage, and suddenly it doesn’t look as terrifying anymore. In fact, I feel like I can take it.

Slowly, gently, I step towards the creature. We’re 10 steps apart, then five, then three. At that moment, it lunges.

It’s terrifyingly fast, flying at me. It’s also predictable. Almost lazily, I step to the side, snapping out my knife, and catching the wolf. 

Carried by its own momentum, a large gash appears in its side, tearing the weapon from my hand. My wrist hurts, having been wrenched to the side, but the pain is minor. My skin also still itches. I hate the feeling. The wolf howls in pain and fury, snapping towards me. For a moment, I feel almost bad for the hungry animal.

Then, I [Select] it as the target for my second skill. [Suppression] snakes out of me, leaving me gasping for air. My vessel feels strained, and the air begins to tingle up against my skin. But while I’m left gasping for breath, the wolf finds itself [Suppressed].

Suddenly, its heart struggles to pump blood. Its legs struggle to move. Its blood struggles to clot, and more of it pools from the gnarly wound. The wolf crashes to the ground and rolls - breaking off the obsidian knife inside of it.

By then, it’s already dead.

Inu walks towards me, handing me a new knife with shaky hands. I accept it calmly, watching as the wolf dies.

[You have killed a lv. 3 Wolf]

I nod at the notification, slowly accepting the pointless death, then turn to the ranger station. The windows are shattered, and the door blown off its hinges. Inu walks inside, and I follow her, this time. She knows it better, though with the mess it’s in, I don’t know how much that matters.

Wrappers and pieces of dried meat are strewn all over the floor. There are also the bodies. They don’t smell too bad yet, but ants are already crawling over the floor. I select one of them.

[Lv. 0.01 Ant]

I blink. “Huh,” I say. “Ants have levels.”

“What?!” Inu’s head snaps to me. 

“Ants have levels. In fact, I imagine everything that classifies as ‘alive’ might, then.”

“Terrifying,” she says, shaking her head. “A bacteria that kills a human… how much would it grow? How long until a plague wipes us all out?”

I grab a packet of orange juice from one of the shelves, poking the straw inside, then sip from it. “Dunno,” I reply, brushing my hair aside again. “Troublesome for real.”

The girl stares at me for a long moment. I look at her short, black hair, the braids in it coming undone already. She looks at me with those hazel eyes and a button nose, and I just wait. “You’re not concerned at all,” she notes.

With a shrug, I sip some more orange juice. “Nope,” I say. “This is all very real, I’m pretty sure. But… whatever. I’ll just save who matters to me. Don’t care about the rest of humanity.”

“Who matters to you?” she asks. It’s a loaded question, but thats okay.

I smile. “It’s a short list. You, Thatch, Opal, Sylves. Everyone else is too far away to worry about.” I had online friends, and some might’ve already left me messages, but out of all of those, only a few really matter. If I reach them, I reach them. We’ll see.

Inu looks at me. “Well,” she says slowly. “I’m glad I made your list.” There’s a tiny, faint smile on her lips.

“Agreed,” I say. “Couldn’t think of a person I’d rather be spending the apocalypse with.”

Sure, there were people who were better equipped. I’d imagine that farming levels early would be pretty easy with a gun, for example. I could’ve tagged along with a police officer, with some street thugs, with anyone who’s a bit more hardened than the empathetic girl with me. 

But I don’t wanna. 

“Right,” she says. “Thanks, Snow. I’m glad to be with you, too.”

“You should. I saved your life a couple times already,” I deadpan.

At that, the girl gives me a long look, then snickers. “Oh, shut up,” she says. “I was fi-”

Then there’s a hiss, and she screams as an arrowhead pokes out from her shoulder.

Chapter 3: Supplies

The world was ending, and I couldn’t care less. Now, Inu is hurt. Suddenly, it matters.

I look at the arrow, and select it. I want to know everything about it. Energy tears out of me, my vessel emptying, yet I pull more. It hurts. My heart aches, but I need to know more. 

The whistling sound replays in my mind, time playing in reverse, and then I see it - my tether, streaking through the air, along an almost-straight, invisible path. Then it swerves. Down to where the archer is.

Without hesitation, I break off the obsidian from my knife, cutting open my hand, then throw it with all my might. The cut hurts and bleeds. I’m in pain, but that’s okay.

It wasn’t a very skilled archer. They’d been close, only moved after shooting, and hidden behind a bush. As I throw the obsidian shard, it tears through the air, then impacts. There’s a very human scream, and I arrive at the bush only a little later, seeing the bloodstains and a cowering old man.

His fingers shake. A piece of obsidian juts out of his elbow. “Oh. Oh no, please, I-”

My axe finds his skull. He falls over, dead. 

[You have killed a lv. 1 Human] 

There was no justification. No reasoning, no excuse. I had selected him as someone to die, and so he died. I had selected Inu as someone to care about, and so I cared.

Simple decision making.

With the old archer dead, I take a deep breath and stalk back towards the ranger outpost. Inu kneels on the ground, crying, gritting her teeth. “Use [Empathy]. Share some pain with me,” I tell her. She turns to me, seeing the blood covering my clothes, and grits her teeth harder.

I don’t know if the skill works that way, but it seemed to matter more whether she believed it could be used that way, rather than if it actually could. Inu hesitates. She wants to speak, but her jaw doesn’t move, all her muscles clenched.

“Don’t worry,” I tell her, patting her head softly. “I can take it.”

The pain is exquisite. 

It burns, searing its way through my shoulder. I almost gasp, but don’t permit myself to. I [Suppress] the pain, even as I scrape the bottom of my vessel. There’s little left to give, but that was fine. It hurts, and yet I stand.

I breathe. Slowly, but surely, then give Inu a smile. “Better?” I ask.

She looks at me, teary-eyed, and nods. “Better,” she says. Her eyes shake. I’m glad the corpse is in a bush so she doesn’t have to see it. She’d recognize the tragedy in it. Maybe even shed a tear for him. I don’t want her to cry more than needed.

“Okay. We should get that arrow out.”

“I’ll bleed out,” she says.

I smile, just a little. “[Resist] the bleeding, then.”

Her eyes widen, just a bit. In truth, I was rather sure that Inu is the tougher one among us. She had always been. Faster than me, stronger than me… And I was her stability. The deep, uncaring anchor. Even as her make-up smudges from the tears, I see her turn determined.

“Right,” she whispers. “Right.”

The arrow has only barely pierced through her, thanks to that same skill, I imagine. So there’s plenty for me to grab at the back. It was made from wood, tough wood, too, but with so much leverage, I can snap it. “This might hurt,” I warn her, then break the wood.

Inu gives a gasp of pain, and I’m tempted to go stomp on the old man’s head. Then, I draw more on my fading vessel stat, and suppress the pain. I put the handle of one of the daggers in Inu’s mouth. “Bite down on that. This’ll hurt worse.”

She nods bravely. I take a deep breath. [Empathy] still links us together, so it might hurt me just as bad as her. Well, I’ve always had a good pain tolerance. Time to put it to the test.

I shove the arrow all the way through her shoulder, pulling it out in one fell swoop. 

It’s liquid fire, pouring into my veins. My shoulder screams in agony, and Inu roars into the leather-wrapped wood. The world goes blurry for a bit, spinning, as my body reels to catch up. I knock into and then lean on a counter, but remain standing, barely. Inu sinks forward, her head touching down on the wooden floor. The glass shards don’t even mar her skin.

A long few moments pass, as the pain slowly fades. She resists it, as I told her. The hole is smaller than the arrow was, but still passes all the way through her. Another few moments pass by. Inu spits out the dagger, then screams in pain. “Fuck!!!”

I nod. “Sounds about right,” I say, same monotone as always, though a little strained, then hand her a bottle of water. She rips it open and downs it in one, like an animal. I brush white strands of hair out of my face as I watch her drink.

At the end, she throws the bottle aside, discarding it haphazardly. “What happened to not littering?” I ask her.

A low, rumbling laugh tears itself from her sore throat. “I find myself a lot more apathetic at my responsibility towards the world all of a sudden,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say. “Same. You okay?”

She pushes herself off the floor with her good arm, shakily standing. “I’ll survive. So long as [Resistance] works on infections.”

“I’m sure it does.” Feeding her confidence likely makes it true, so that’s what I do. “Especially if you level up heart.”

“Right,” she says after a pause. “Right. Because that’s a thing now.”

I nod, then grab both of us a backpack each, replacing the one I brought from home, stuffing them with water, beef jerky, cereal bars, dried berries, and all the other food items around the shop, as well as the stuff I brought, like my headphones. The backpacks are big, meant for hiking, and can fit an awful lot. I also put multiple maps in each one. Knowing where to find a river could be life or death.

Inu watches me throughout it all, leaning against a counter. The link of [Empathy] is still active. I feel her borrowing some of my calm, and I share it easily, having plenty to spare. In return, she gives me some of her pain, which I handle without complaint. 

Eventually, we’re ready to head off. Her wound has scabbed over already, dried blood sticking to her cardigan. It’s late spring, and not too cold, but she still looks at the stain mournfully. “I loved that cardigan,” she says.

I smile. “Yeah. I liked my hoodie, too.” It was long and black, the kind that went down to my mid thighs.

“Rectangle,” Inu teases.

My smile brightens. “Wonderful, right?”

She shakes her head. “You’re impossible.”

“And you sound ready to walk,” I say, holding out the backpack to her. She reaches out, then flinches back, having stretched her hurt arm. Instead, she slings it around her left, and I help her get the strap around her other shoulder.

It’s finicky, and takes some time, but we get it done in the end. Then, we head off. “Your home, right?” I ask. We could go to my flat, but… no. I have everything I need with me.

Inu nods slowly. “Yeah,” she says. “My parents…”

“Yeah,” I say. “I know. Your family. Then Thatch, Opal, Sylves.”

She nods again. “Okay. I’m fine with that.”