Lily watched the blur of motion that was John and did her best to track his trajectory. It was becoming a familiar rhythm she was slowly learning the steps to. He moved like a movie fast-forwarded to the max while everything else moved at regular speed, all flickering light and sudden, violent motion. His aptly named Aurora Blade was a ribbon of captured colours that left incandescent trails in the red mist that was increasingly choking the aisles as they passed violently through.

He'd just used one of his two teleportation techniques to appear behind a hulking, beetle-like creature—she was getting good at recognizing the tells to distinguish between the two: one was physical, with a subtle tensing of his legs a split-second before he blurred forward so fast the naked eye couldn't hope to follow it, while with the other he simply vanished and reappeared elsewhere.

The monster was still turning, its multiple spindly legs scrabbling on the slick linoleum, trying to locate the threat that had just been in front of it. It was too slow. John's blade came down in a fluid arc, shearing through the thick chitin of the creature's back with a sound like a giant celery stalk being snapped in two. Greenish-yellow bug blood fountained into the air.

That was her cue.

Her crossbow was already at her shoulder, the string magically drawn taut without any effort on her part. She didn't even have to think about it anymore; her body knew what to do. The muscle memory was a bitter curse, a ghost of a past she'd tried to bury in the swampy soil of her memories. A bead of sweat trickled down her temple, but her hands were rock steady. Her System didn't reward shaking hands.

She loosed a single bolt. It wasn't one of her venom-tipped or explosive ones. Just a simple, steel-tipped quarrel, enchanted for sharpness. It flew true, crossing the ten yards between them in the blink of an eye, and embedded itself in the multifaceted eye of another beetle that had been scuttling to flank John's position.

+500 Accuracy

The notification chimed in her mind, a clinical affirmation of a perfect, lethal shot.

For a sickening moment, the coppery tang of monster blood was replaced by the thick, humid scent of cypress and swamp water, the air so heavy it felt like breathing through a wet cloth. The flickering supermarket lights dissolved into the dappled, oppressive green of a Florida afternoon.

She was sixteen again, hiding behind the gnarled trunk of an old tree, the familiar weight of a hunting rifle in her hands, though this was no hunting trip. Her father stood in the clearing, not twenty feet from her. He wasn't yelling. He never yelled. His voice was low, calm, the same voice he used when explaining how to gut a deer.

But he was talking to a man, not an animal. A neighbour named Cletus, whose face was slick with sweat and pale with fear. The argument was stupid, something about a borrowed generator that had come back broken. It was nothing. It was everything.

Lily watched her father's hand, the one not holding his rifle. It was relaxed, hanging loose at his side. He wasn't angry. Anger was hot and messy. This was something else. This was cold.

He shifted his weight, and the rifle came up, the movement so smooth and practiced it was almost lazy.

Cletus started to babble, a string of apologies and promises, but the sound was cut short by a deafening crack that sent a flock of birds screaming into the sky.

Cletus didn't fly backwards like in the movies. He just folded, his knees buckling as if his strings had been cut, and dropped into the mud with a soft, wet thud.

The silence that followed was worse than the shot. It was a void, an absence broken only by the buzzing of insects. Then came the laughter. It started as a low chuckle from her uncle, then her older brother joined in, a full-throated bark of amusement. Her grandfather, leaning against his truck, slapped his knee and let out a wheezing cackle. They laughed like they had just heard the funniest joke in the world.

Her father just spat a wad of tobacco phlegm into the dirt next to Cletus's head. Lily had stayed behind the tree, her own rifle feeling impossibly heavy, revulsion churning in her stomach. She wasn't just watching a murder.

She was realizing that she was a stranger to these men. She was not one of them.

She had run that night, and she had never looked back.

The memory dissolved as quickly as it came, leaving her back in the blood-soaked aisle, the haunting music of the faux supermarket a welcome replacement for the sound of her family's laughter. The hatred she felt for the System, for the cold points it awarded her for reenacting her father's casual lethality, left a familiar bitterness.

Another monster shrieked and reared up, hefting its blade-like forelimbs. John didn't even look. He just spun, his cape of shadows flaring out around him in a way that was too perfect to be anything but carefully choreographed, and his blade lanced out, impaling the wounded beetle through the throat. He was already moving on to the next target before the corpse had finished its shuddering collapse.

John was their ace. His power, his versatility, his sheer, unpredictable lethality, was on a different level. Their best bet, Doug had argued, wasn't to fight as five individuals, but to fight as one unit with John as its spearhead. Their job was to support him, to cover his weaknesses, to create the openings he needed to unleash his full potential.

It was a humbling admission, but a necessary one. They were the support, he was the star. And if his performance got them all through this alive, then she was more than happy to play a bitpart role.

She watched him now, a critical part of her mind analysing his every move. He was a paradox. In battle, he was a creature of terrifying grace and confidence, every action precise, every kill executed with a flair that was as breathtaking as it was unnerving. He moved with the certainty of a man who knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was the most dangerous thing in the room.

And yet, she'd seen the other side of him. The awkward, anxious young man who flinched from conversation, who retreated into a stony silence at the slightest chance. The boy who was so terrified of being seen that he hid behind a wall of cool-guy platitudes and shimmering sunglasses. Doug's theory was that John's System was the cause, that it rewarded him for this specific, over-the-top persona. After their conversation, Lily was certain of it. She saw the same pressure she felt, magnified a hundredfold. A prison of performance.

When they'd been forced to leave him behind in the school portal, a cold dread had settled in her gut. The thought of John facing that talking monster alone had been nauseating. Yet, beneath the fear, there had been a strange, unshakeable certainty. A quiet little voice in the back of her mind that had whispered, He'll be fine. He's John.

Seeing him again, descending from the sky with with great black wings sprouting from his back and an honest-to-god katana in one hand and a scythe in the other, had felt less like a surprise and more like a confirmation of a fundamental truth of this new, broken world.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

He'd changed, though. This new version was harder, sharper. The fear was still there. She could see it in the rigid set of his shoulders when one of them got too close, now that she knew to look for it. But it was buried deeper now, encased in layers of something new she didn't quite know how to name.

The last of the beetles fell, its legs curling up as Jade's golden projection slid from its underbelly. The aisle fell silent, save for the faint, discordant music still drifting from the café and the wet dripping of monster blood.

"Clear," Doug grunted, wiping a smear of monster blood from his wispy beard.

This was her chance. Emboldened by the fragile thread of understanding that now existed between them, she decided to push her luck. She walked over to where John was standing, his back to them as he theatrically shook the gore from his blade.

"You know," she said, her voice deliberately light, "for a guy who seems to hate talking to people, you sure do love an audience."

He flinched, just a tiny, almost imperceptible tightening of his shoulders, before he turned to face her. The black sunglasses were in place, hiding his eyes. "The System rewards efficiency," he said, his voice a level monotone. "An audience is irrelevant."

"Is that what you call it? Efficiency?" she teased, a small smile playing on her lips. "Looked more like you were trying to style on 'em. I was half-expecting you to start breakdancing mid-fight."

A flicker of something crossed his face before the mask slammed back down. Panic? Annoyance? It was gone too quickly for her to be sure. He was overthinking it. She could almost see the gears turning in his head, his brain frantically searching for the 'correct' cool-guy response. There was an awkwardness to him, a vulnerability beneath the layers of leather and shadow, that she found… endearing. It was cute, in a tragic sort of way.

"Breakdancing would be an unorthodox combat style," he said finally, the line delivered with such deadpan seriousness that she couldn't help but let out a short, sharp laugh.

"You should suggest it to the System," she shot back. "You might unlock a new Skill. 'B-Boy of the Apocalypse' or somethin'."

He just stared at her for a long moment, and she saw the vague outline of the conflict behind the lenses, if not the true shape of it. Maybe he wanted to respond, even to smile, but the persona wouldn't let him? It was a cage of his own making, and she felt a pang of sympathy for him. Her own System demanded a performance, to a degree, but at least it was a role she could take off when the fighting was done. His, it seemed, was a 24/7 gig.

"We should keep moving," he said, turning away and starting down the aisle.

She fell into step beside him, the others following behind. "Whatever you say, superstar," she murmured, just loud enough for him to hear.

Their progress through the rest of the supermarket was a testament to their growing synergy. They moved as a single, cohesive unit, a whirlwind of steel, shadow, light, and magic. Lily found her role with increasing ease, her bolts becoming an extension of John's will. When he lunged, she would pick off the targets on his periphery. When he used that superspeed power of his, she learned to anticipate where he would reappear, laying down a hail of covering fire for any monster that tried to interrupt him.

As they moved, a strange thought began to take root in Lily's mind. She looked at the men walking with her, their forms silhouetted by the flickering, hellish lights of the supermarket.

There was Doug, his broad back a moving wall, his usual grumbling quiet for now as he kept a watchful eye on Jade's flank. He was a protector, through and through. His strength wasn't loud or boastful; it was a quiet, stubborn fact. He reminded her of the ancient oak trees back home, the ones that had stood for generations, unmovable and steadfast.

He was nothing like her father. Her father's strength had been a weapon, a tool of intimidation used to cow and to hurt. Doug's was a shield, held up to protect those he cared about.

Her eyes found Chester next. He was walking near the back, clutching his own arms, his knuckles white. Even from a distance, she could see the faint tremor in his hands, the way his eyes were wide and constantly darting into the shadows. He was, to put it mildly, a mess of raw, exposed nerves. He was terrified, all the time.

But he was still here. He hadn't run. Every step he took forward was an act of defiance against the fear that was so clearly trying to swallow him whole. Bravery, she was beginning to understand, wasn't the absence of fear. Her brother and uncles had never been afraid, but their courage was just the empty bravado of bullies who knew they held all the power. Chester was afraid every second of every day, and yet he still chose to stand with them and call upon his radiant light, drawing the attention of monsters that made her own skin crawl. That was real courage. The kind her family wouldn't have even been able to recognize.

Then there was John. A walking contradiction of crippling anxiety and earth-shattering power. She watched him now, the way he moved with that theatrical flair, and she saw it for what it was: a desperate attempt to project an image of control in a world that had taken all control away from him. His violence wasn't joyful. It wasn't the gleeful cruelty she'd seen in her brother's eyes after a successful hunt. It was a a grim necessity born of a System that demanded a spectacle. He was playing a role, and it was killing him, but he was doing it to get stronger, to protect them.

These men… they were good men. The thought was so startling, so foreign to her experience, that it almost stopped her in her tracks. The world she had grown up in was ruled by a casual monstrosity, a belief that strength was the right to dominate. Her family had been a pack of predators, and she sometimes felt she had been born a lamb.

Here, in the ruins of the world, surrounded by literal monsters, she had found something she never knew she was looking for: a pack that protected its own. The realisation solidified into a new, fierce purpose in her heart. Survival wasn't enough. She had to protect this. This fragile thing they were building in the blood and the gore. She would use the skills she despised, play the part her System demanded, and become the perfect, cold-hearted hunter, if it meant keeping this team safe. She would not let this world turn them into the monsters she had left behind.

Their confidence grew with every encounter. The oppressive dread of the supermarket began to recede, replaced by a grim but determined optimism. They were a team. A real team. And they were winning.

The aisles wound on and on, a seemingly endless labyrinth of grotesque displays and lurking horrors. They fought through the 'Dairy & Disease' section, battling insect creatures that looked like bloated wasps with weeping sores. They cleared out the 'Bakery & Burning', where worms clumped together into forms that looked kind of like gingerbread men shambled towards them, forcing them to kill each individual worm, which was a pain in the ass.

With each victory, the mood lifted by a hair. Doug started cracking jokes, Chester's light seemed to burn a little brighter, and even Jade's perpetual frown seemed to lessen, if only by a fraction.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of blood and slaughter, they saw it. At the very back of the store, past the 'Butchery & Betrayal' counter, was a set of imposing double doors made of some kind of polished black metal. A simple, inelegant sign was engraved above it: 'Management' flickering in red neon letters.

"Well," Doug said, rubbing his hands together. "Looks like we're here for our performance review."

They approached the doors cautiously, weapons at the ready. The atmosphere here was charged with a palpable sense of menace. The faint, discordant music that had haunted them throughout the store was louder here, seeming to emanate from beyond the black doors.

John moved to the front, his Aurora Blade at the ready, its light casting long, dancing shadows down the corridor. He reached out a hand to push the door open.

He never got the chance.

With a deafening bang that echoed like a gunshot, the doors flew open inwards, slamming against the interior walls, forcing them all to scramble back.

A figure emerged, silhouetted against a dim, red light from within the office. It was tall. Impossibly tall and thin, like a creature made of twigs and wire. It unfolded itself as it stepped into the corridor, its limbs moving with a jerky, unnatural gait. Lily blinked. Then grimaced. She'd always hated these fucking things. So creepy looking.

It was a stick bug, easily ten feet tall, its body a segmented collection of brown chitinous rods that looked way too much like twigs. Its head, a triangular nub with long antennae swaying like flags, swiveled towards them, and two bulbous black eyes fixed on them with an alien intelligence. It was a ridiculous sight, a parody of a monster.

But what truly stole the air from Lily's lungs was the giant, laminated name tag tied to its head with a piece of what looked like dried intestine. It was a standard, cheerful office name tag, the kind you'd see at a corporate retreat. In big, friendly, handwritten letters, it read:

"Hi! I'm YOUR DOOM!"

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.