Tyler was going to die.

  He knew it with a certainty that left no room for hope. His leg had given out—the same leg that had never fully healed, that had been slowing him down since the first day of this nightmare—and now he was on the ground with two monsters lunging for his throat.

  He saw their jaws open. Saw the rows of teeth, the hungry eyes, the claws extended for the kill.

  He thought about Mira. About his parents, who were probably dead. About all the things he'd never get to do, all the words he'd never get to say.

  He closed his eyes.

  The impact never came.

  Something whistled through the air—a sound like a freight train passing inches from his face. Tyler's eyes snapped open just in time to see the first hound explode.

  Not die. Not get knocked away. Explode.

  One moment it was mid-leap, jaws inches from his face. The next, its head simply ceased to exist. Blood and bone sprayed outward in a red mist, and the body tumbled past him, headless, dead before it hit the ground.

  The second hound met the same fate. A blur of motion—Tyler couldn't even track it—and then it was flying backward, its chest caved in so completely that its spine was visible from the front.

  Someone was standing over him.

  Tyler looked up.

  For a moment, he didn't recognize the man. He was tall, wearing a long black coat that seemed to drink in the light, his body radiating a presence that made Tyler's hindbrain scream predator. His fists were raised, blood dripping from his knuckles, and his eyes...

  His eyes were cold. Focused. The eyes of someone who had seen things that would break a normal person.

  Then the man looked down at him, and something shifted in his expression. A flicker of warmth. Recognition.

  "Stay down," Nate said.

  And then he was gone.

  Tyler pushed himself up onto his elbows, ignoring the pain in his leg, and watched.

  He'd seen Nate fight before. In the tower, when they'd first met, when Nate had saved them from the stalkers. He'd been impressive then—fast, brutal, efficient.

  This was something else entirely.

  Nate moved through the horde like a scythe through wheat. He didn't dodge. Didn't weave. Didn't do any of the things Tyler associated with fighting. He just walked forward, and everything in his path died.

  A hound lunged at him from the left. Nate's fist snapped out, almost casual, and the creature's skull collapsed. He didn't even look at it. He was already turning, already striking, already killing the next one.

  Two more came from the right. He caught one by the throat and used it as a weapon, swinging it into its packmate hard enough to shatter both their ribcages. The bodies hit the ground twitching.

  Three from behind. Tyler opened his mouth to shout a warning, but Nate was already spinning. His foot came up in a kick that caught the lead hound under the jaw and sent it flying twenty feet into the air. The other two died before it landed—one to an elbow that crushed its spine, one to a knee that drove through its skull.

  "Oh my god," Mira whispered. She was beside Tyler now, helping him sit up, but her eyes were locked on the carnage unfolding in front of them. "What... what happened to him?"

  Tyler didn't have an answer. He just watched.

  The hounds were starting to notice that something was wrong.

  They'd swarmed into the camp expecting easy prey—unarmed survivors, weak defenders, food that couldn't fight back. Instead, they'd found a monster wearing human skin.

  Some of them tried to run. They didn't make it far.

  Nate was faster than anything Tyler had ever seen. One moment he was in the center of the camp, the next he was at the barricade, cutting off a group of fleeing hounds. His fists rose and fell like hammers, each blow ending a life.

  The sounds were horrific. Wet crunches. Splattering impacts. The high-pitched yelps of creatures dying too fast to understand what was killing them.

  Tyler had seen violence before. The first days of the integration had been nothing but violence—monsters and death and the collapse of everything he'd known. He'd thought he was numb to it.

  He wasn't numb to this.

  This wasn't violence. This was extermination.

  "Is that... is that really Nate?"

  Tyler turned. Frank had appeared beside them, his baseball bat hanging loose in his grip, his face pale. Blood ran down his forehead from a cut somewhere in his hairline, but he didn't seem to notice. His eyes were fixed on the man dismantling the horde.

  "Yeah," Tyler said. His voice came out hoarse. "That's him."

  "He's Level 10. He told me he was Level 10 when he left."

  "I don't think he's Level 10 anymore."

  As if to prove his point, Nate caught a hound mid-leap and slammed it into the ground so hard the earth cratered. The creature didn't even twitch. He stepped over it and kept moving, kept killing, kept walking through the horde like it wasn't even there.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  "How long was he in the tower?" Frank asked.

  "I don't know. Two weeks? Three?"

  "Three weeks." Frank's voice was hollow. "He went from Level 10 to... to that in three weeks."

  Tyler didn't respond. He was watching Nate tear the throat out of a hound with his bare hand.

  The battle—if it could even be called that—lasted less than five minutes.

  Five minutes. That's all it took for one man to kill what must have been sixty or seventy monsters. Tyler tried to count the bodies, but they were already starting to dissolve, the System reclaiming whatever it was that made them real.

  Nate stood in the center of the camp, surrounded by fading corpses, and he wasn't even breathing hard.

  No. That wasn't quite right. He was breathing—Tyler could see his chest rising and falling—but it was controlled. Even. Like he'd just finished a light jog instead of single-handedly slaughtering an army.

  The survivors were emerging from their hiding spots. Crawling out of tents, stepping through doorways, climbing down from rooftops where they'd fled. They moved slowly, cautiously, their eyes fixed on the man in the black coat.

  No one spoke.

  Nate turned, scanning the camp, his gaze passing over the survivors without really seeing them. He was looking for something. Checking for threats, maybe. Making sure the fight was really over.

  His eyes found Tyler.

  For a moment, they just looked at each other. Tyler on the ground, his useless leg splayed out beside him. Nate standing amid the carnage, blood dripping from his hands, his coat, his face.

  Then Nate walked toward him.

  Tyler's heart rate spiked as Nate approached. He couldn't help it. Every instinct in his body was screaming that this man was dangerous, that he should run, that he should hide.

  But his leg wouldn't work. And besides, this was Nate. The guy who'd saved them in the tower. The guy who'd sat with them by the fire and told them about his parents, his past, his reasons for climbing.

  The guy who apparently turned into a one-man apocalypse when he wasn't around.

  Nate stopped in front of him and crouched down, bringing them to eye level.

  "You okay?" he asked.

  His voice was the same. That was the strange thing. His body was different—harder, somehow, more solid—and his eyes had that cold edge that hadn't been there before. But his voice was the same voice that had awkwardly accepted their gratitude weeks ago.

  "I'm... yeah." Tyler swallowed. "My leg gave out. Same old problem."

  "Mira?"

  "I'm fine," Mira said. She was still staring at Nate like she'd never seen him before. "We're fine. You... you killed all of them."

  "Yeah."

  "By yourself."

  "Yeah."

  Silence. Nate glanced around the camp—at the bodies that were still dissolving, at the survivors who were still staring, at the destruction the hounds had caused before he'd arrived.

  "How many did you lose?" he asked.

  Tyler looked at Mira. Mira looked at Frank, who had limped over to join them.

  "We're still counting," Frank said. His voice was steadier now, but there was something in it—awe, maybe, or fear. "At least five dead. Maybe more. A lot of wounded."

  Nate nodded slowly. His expression didn't change, but something flickered in his eyes. Regret? Guilt?

  "I should have been faster," he said.

  Tyler almost laughed. Almost. "Faster? You killed seventy monsters in five minutes. How could you have been faster?"

  "I stopped to check my gear. After the tower fell. I should have come straight here."

  "You cleared the tower?"

  Nate looked at him. "Yeah. It's gone. One down, five to go."

  The words took a moment to register.

  One down. He'd cleared the tower. The massive black spire that had loomed over the camp for weeks, that had killed everyone who'd tried to climb it, that everyone had assumed was unbeatable.

  Nate had beaten it. Alone.

  "What level are you?" Tyler asked. He had to know. Had to understand the scale of what he was looking at.

  "Twenty."

  Tyler's brain stuttered. "Twenty. You were Level 10 when you left. You gained ten levels in—"

  "Twelve days. Give or take." Nate stood up, offering Tyler a hand. "The tower had good experience. And a generous boss."

  Tyler took the hand. Nate pulled him up like he weighed nothing—and Tyler was not a small guy. His leg wobbled, threatened to give out again, but Nate caught him, steadied him.

  "You need to get that looked at," Nate said, nodding at the leg.

  "It's an old injury. From before the integration. Never healed right."

  "The System should have fixed it."

  "Should have. Didn't." Tyler shrugged. "Story of my life."

  Nate studied him for a moment. Then he reached into his coat—no, not into his coat, into something else, some space that didn't quite exist—and pulled out a small vial filled with glowing red liquid.

  "Drink this," he said.

  Tyler stared at it. "What is it?"

  "Healing potion. From the tower."

  "A healing potion." Tyler took the vial, turning it over in his hands. It was warm to the touch, almost alive. "Like... a fantasy healing potion. That actually works."

  "Only one way to find out."

  Tyler looked at Mira. She shrugged. "You've seen what he can do. If he wanted to hurt you, he wouldn't need poison."

  Fair point.

  Tyler pulled the stopper and drank.

  The effect was immediate.

  Warmth flooded through him, starting in his stomach and spreading outward. It felt like stepping into a hot bath after being out in the cold—comfort and relief and something that might have been joy, all mixed together.

  And then his leg started to burn.

  Tyler gasped, nearly dropping the empty vial. It wasn't pain, exactly—not the sharp, stabbing pain he'd felt when the original injury happened. It was heat. Intense, focused heat, concentrated in his calf, in the muscles that had never worked right, in the tendons that had been torn and badly healed.

  He could feel them moving. Shifting. Reweaving themselves into something new.

  "What—" he started, but Nate held up a hand.

  "Let it work."

  The burning lasted maybe thirty seconds. Then it faded, leaving behind a warmth that slowly dissipated into nothing.

  Tyler stood there, breathing hard, waiting for something to happen.

  Then he realized something already had.

  His leg wasn't hurting.

  For the first time in weeks—for the first time since the integration, since that first desperate flight through monster-filled streets—his leg wasn't hurting. He shifted his weight onto it, expecting the familiar wobble, the weakness, the grinding ache.

  Nothing. Just... a leg. A normal, functional leg.

  He took a step. Then another. Then a third.

  "Holy shit," he breathed. "Holy shit."

  Mira grabbed his arm. "Tyler? Is it—"

  "It's fixed." He was laughing now, he couldn't help it. "It's actually fixed. I can walk. I can—"

  He took off running. Just a short burst, maybe twenty feet, but it was running. Actual running, without the limp, without the pain, without the constant fear that his leg would give out and leave him helpless.

  He turned around, grinning like an idiot, and found Nate watching him with something that might have been a smile.

  "Thank you," Tyler said. "I don't—thank you."

  Nate looked at him for a moment. Then he nodded.

  "Don't mention it."