The monsters swept over the edge of the fourth district like a slowly creeping serrated tsunami.

I roared up at the amorphous flapping creatures, wielding the burnt remains of two car-wrecks like my own oversized tower shields. The flock dove at me with bodies that tore and broke like cardboard, dozens of them were torn with every swing of my massive improvised weapons.

Every few seconds my attention flicked at the system, and it could only beep and screech back, mirroring my own confusion. No matter how many of these monsters I mulched, not a single AP was to be found. The feeling of that 'something' from the monster being absorbed just was not there, as if there was nothing to be absorbed to begin with.

My feet were slick with the effervescent monster blood, each corpse bubbling away into clouds of rancid throat-cloying smoke. At first the smoke was tolerable, but the more monsters I killed the thicker it became, until I was eventually forced to start changing locations every handful of seconds or else risk being blinded.

I moved in a slow frantic retreat, the swarm of flying monsters was irregular, and with every break, I would move further into the district. I'd stopped using the rooftops since they lacked the stability to hold me and my improvised weapons. The flying serrated blankets kept swarming me from above, like flat mouths trying to swallow me whole. Here and there, their frenetic flailing tore at the skin, superficial scratches that kept piling up and turning my arms into a ragged bleeding mess. Even with the healing-factor, their attacks were too frequent, not giving me time for my body to patch itself back up.

Though the situation was manageable for now, I did not like my odds in a prolonged encounter without any AP gain from my kills. Either there was something wrong about the system, or the monster, and I needed an answer now rather than later.

AP:

0

I ignored the system's insulted beep of indignation, changing course, breaking into a full sprint back towards the front of the district. The flock overhead responded in kind, diving at me with a new level of desperate ferocity I had not expected. After just barely a few blocks, I'd gone from having to fend off four or five at a time to well over a dozen. Their bladed edges tore at the scrapped cars I was using as improvised shields, turning the blackened chassis into metal filings and bits of spare scrap.

The change in attitude raised all sorts of alarms in my head. Was this some kind of hive-type monster? I gnawed at the possibility. According to the academy's records, hives always came as a family of monster species, each one its own classification, weaknesses, and strengths. They also came with a "queen" in some form or another.

But if it was a hive, where were the other monsters?

A split chassis went spinning as I swatted the nearest shredding vermin out of the air, then plowed through the stink of their liquefying guts. I needed breathing room, so I thundered into cramped alleys, spaces too tight for the monsters to glide through. Several times I jammed wrecks across the mouths of those corridors, slowing pursuit and buying precious seconds for the bleeding to clot. Wrecking my way through houses was the only consistent way to avoid attention from above while I desperately sought for any monster that was not the bladed crunchy tissue.

With how much aggression the monsters were putting up at me, there was undoubtedly something important going on.

When I burst back onto open pavement they rained down again, serrated bodies clacking against my flailing limbs. I grabbed two at once, ripped them like soaked crunchy paper, and pitched the halves into their screeching flock.

Smoke rolled off my hide, metallic and rotten, while the number of assailants overhead kept growing. I moved, smashing rusted fences, vaulting overturned buses, hurdling cracked barriers, sliding behind debris whenever the swarm thickened beyond what I could handle at a time. My arms were a roadmap of half-closed cuts, and I'd already lost several good car wrecks to the flying blender.

I tore into a house near the district edge to catch my breath, creating a me-sized hole through the wall, forced to duck under the low ceiling and throwing every bit of furniture I could find to block the entrance. It would only buy me a few minutes, time I spent scouring for any sort of cloth I could wrap around my arms.

Some corner of my mind kept trying to plug into a neuralink that was no longer there to keep track of everything I was destroying. Some vain attempts to catalogue damages for proper compensation to the owners once this crisis came to an end. But there was no neuralink, and this was not the time.

The question of what I was fighting kept slamming into the side of my head. Every lesson in the academy had drilled in how soldiers were meant to disengage when encountering an unknown. Video upon video of wasted resources shooting at a monster that could just shrug it all off, which was not too far off from what I currently felt.

As if, despite killing so many of those flying monsters-

An ear-splitting howl rattled through the house. My heart caught.

Could it be?

I lumbered through a new set of walls to exit in the direction of that most melodious grating sound, not much unlike that of someone gargling gravel. I swatted away at the flying monsters, lips spreading into a feral grin, locking in on the familiar quadrupedal monster.

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A marauder.

The system cheered in bloodthirsty enthusiasm, and I joined it in joy as I lunged at the massive stone-canine.

It hesitated, not having expected me to engage with that much enthusiasm, but recovered as it tried to lash out with its obsidian fangs. It didn't get a chance to bite me, instead getting a mouthful of car battery, the container exploding in a spray of stone-melting sparks. The monster squealed and whined in sudden pain, buying me the opportunity to mount its back, wrapping my arms around its throat.

The marauder's core pulsed desperately, this close I could practically feel it like a heartbeat against my own skin. It struggled, twisting, snarling, trying to break free even as I pushed with everything I had. The lack of stats glaringly apparent as I trembled from the effort of twisting its head little by little.

Until, finally, the head tore off in a spray of sand and dust.

Instantly, the system lashed out at the vulnerable core, tearing it to pieces as I ravenously absorbed it.

E-class monster "Marauder" defeated! +5 AP

Pick your Reward! +10 AP / 'P: Unbreakable Bones' / Obsidian

The system roared in triumph and validation. I didn't waste a moment to pick the 10 AP, feeling my stagnated progression kick back into gear, mending wounds, and refilling spent stamina. I roared up at the things that dove down on me with even greater determination than before.

Another leathery-bladed monster descended upon me, but I did not kill it right away, instead snatching it midair and taking it as a hostage. I ran, trying to either find cover or more monsters to consume. As I did, I focused on the creature as it wiggled wildly in my grasp. Now that I was paying closer attention, I could vaguely feel a monster's core from it, but it wasn't quite a core, either.

The deeper I looked, the surer I became it was something mimicking an echo of a core.

I crushed the monster, observing as the system fruitlessly lashed out at this echo in an attempt to consume it, but the echo had vanished already.

I was certain, now.

The flying bladed monsters felt more akin to… something artificial, a monster but a pale imitation of one. Making my way deeper into the district and further away from the swarm, I kept snatching and observing. The more of them I destroyed the surer I became they all came from the same source. There were no known monsters in G, F, E or even D classifications that could do this, none publicly known at least. It was too vast, too numerous.

It was a C-class, too spread out for low-level automatic CYPHER systems to detect its true threat.

It was a cold dread that settled in the pit of my stomach. C-class, the first and weakest of the three "City-killer" classes. A threat that could, and would, eradicate a population center that did not have a powerful enough meguca to protect it. A classification of monster where the "economically viable suggestions" section was blank.

Every shred of training, every hour of study had hammered down the only three things a human could do in the event of encountering a C-class.

Raise the alarm. Buy time for meguca aid to arrive, at any cost.

I had to tell the others.

I ran.

Shadow's form swirled into nothingness, dispersing among the countless spaces she might occupy. The thick black smokescreen had hidden her from most monsters in the field, yet some could still sense her, their perceptions ringing like radioactive echoes she had to weave around.

With every step she took, the cold, unflinching sensor suites of several thousand drones swept the area tens of thousands of times per second. It felt as if someone were dropping pebbles into her shoes; every motion lost a sliver of grace, every stride a breath of speed. Still she pressed on, moving away from the rubber wall and the drones, deeper into the badlands, dancing through the monster bog like a mountain stream.

Her target was a massive lumbering thing, a mass of rotten wood, fungus, and steel the size of a factory and just as ugly. There was no rhyme or reason to its amorphous shape as it dragged itself along the ground by millions of hair-thin filaments, each one a kilometer long. Despite its size and the apparent fragility of its means of movement, the B-class still moved faster than it had any right to.

Shadow had been assigned this target because of those tendrils. Though nearly invisible to the naked eye, to the assassin meguca they might as well have been glowing neon. The monster's senses were fixed on the filaments, able to notice the tiniest shifts in air pressure, temperature, and far more besides.

Shadow's heart raced at the prospect of slipping through such a fortress of capillary sensors. Every step she took and every aborted attempt tuned the rhythm of a battle her enemy did not know was taking place as she threaded the follicle labyrinth. Jump after jump, she wove her existence through the valley shadows, using the darkness under the monster horde itself as stepping stones.

The B-class creature, though lacking proof of her presence, sensed something amiss. Tendrils tensed and flailed, forcing her to retreat just when she thought she had found a way in. Its movements grew stiff and erratic, clearly searching for the source of its unease.

There was nothing to do but wait, to grant it a false sense of safety, yet her system whispered another course into her ear. It mingled with the song of her neuralink and added a staccato of urgency to the normally soothing formless voices.

Shadow steeled herself, watching her prey and stifling the system's urging. She already knew why it pressed her, but she had to trust her student to manage on his own.

There!

A slender gap appeared in the chaos of tendrils. She pinged the network and, as one, the drones' video feeds shut down. She lunged.

Her breathing ceased.

Her heart fell silent.

Thoughts, concerns, emotions, all were swallowed by a void within her, and the world turned black. No one could sense her, not even she herself. For a single perfect instant, the meguca was nothing and everything.

Reality slammed back the moment her blade entered the monster. Flesh and gore erupted as a nova of darkness burst from the blade's tip, expelling every ounce of uncertainty she had stored. The blast punched through the far side of the creature, leaving a hole many times her own size.

Yet it did not die.

Something struck Shadow's side, hurling her clear in a desperate flail; tendrils sliced through her skintight armor and flesh like razors. Too close for comfort, she dashed away at once, sparing only a glance at the low B-class as her sisters rained down fire and lightning.

Her mission was complete: the monster lay crippled. By CYPHER's plan, the other megucas alongside one elder needed only to keep pressuring the monster and, within the next few days, it would eventually give out.

Shadow's neuralink beeped, a million plastic trackers and eyes focused on her location, emergency extraction already racing to her. The meguca spared just a glance at her shredded limbs and still bleeding torso, the pain numbed by the void of the system's song.

Her gut twisted in guilt.

Her resonance with Axel's core had caused this.

And she needed to fix it.

So she allowed the rescue team to take her to elder Emerald.

Shadow focused on the task ahead, downloading the dossier on the next target.

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