The mud swallowed his landing silently. He moved to the beast’s side. The Crusher’s neck was thick, protected by overlapping plates of bone. But underneath, where the skull met the spine, there was a gap. A soft, unarmored strip of flesh no wider than a finger.
He summoned his sword but didn’t ignite it.
He slid the blade into the weak spot, twisted, and severed it. Its eyes flew open, pupils blown wide, before the life drained out of them.
fwump.
A glow appeared.
Silver light burst from the beast’s chest, cutting through the rain like a beacon. A Silver Chest, hovering above the corpse, spinning slowly.
His hand shot out and grabbed it. The chest dissolved into his System Inventory instantly.
[Abyssal Crusher (Rank 2, 6-Star) Defeated! +3,000 KP!]
[2x KP Booster Active! +6,000 KP!]
[Silver Chest Acquired!]
He was already moving.
The second target was resting against a collapsed section of trench wall. A Rank 2 Shadow-Stalker, a lean, multi-limbed predator that hunted by ambush during the day. It was curled in a tight ball, its blade-like limbs tucked against its body, its barbed tail wrapped around its face.
He approached from behind.
The blade went in behind the skull. The beast didn’t wake up.
pop.
A Gold Chest this time. Brighter than the Silver. The glow painted the mud around the corpse in warm gold light for the half-second it existed before he swept it into his inventory.
[Shadow-Stalker (Rank 2, 8-Star) Defeated! +4,000 KP!]
[2x KP Booster Active! +8,000 KP!]
[Gold Chest Acquired!]
He moved to the third. Then the fourth. Then the fifth.
Each kill was identical in its efficiency. Silent approach. Single strike. Loot extraction. Departure.
The rain kept falling, washing the mud over the corpses, hiding the evidence before the night watch could spot anything.
The soldiers on the walls saw nothing.
But they heard things. Small sounds in the dark that could have been rain.
One watchman thought he saw a flash of gold light in the distance. He blinked, and it was gone. He rubbed his eyes and decided it was a trick of the firelight.
Another heard something heavy hit the ground. A wet, heavy sound, like a sack of grain being dropped.
thud.
He looked out into the dark.
"Thought I heard something," he muttered to the man next to him.
"You’re hearing things. Get some coffee."
He crossed the field like a ghost. Target to target. Kill to kill. The System notifications stacked silently in his vision.
[+6,000 KP.]
[+8,000 KP.]
[+6,000 KP.]
[+10,000 KP.]
[+8,000 KP.]
[+6,000 KP.]
Silver and gold chests as well. Each one snatched from the air before its glow could betray his position.
The rain intensified. The mud deepened and Holden kept moving.
Then he found the first Rank 3.
It was enormous. A Corpse-Beast, a quadruped monstrosity the size of a small house. Its body was a mass of corrupted flesh, covered in bony protrusions and weeping sores that glowed faintly purple in the dark. It was surrounded by the corpses of smaller monsters it had eaten during the day.
The energy signature was massive. Rank 3, 2-Star. Stronger than the Glacial Tyrant he had killed in the Valleys.
He studied it for a moment. His processor mapped every weak point. The joints. The eye sockets. The soft tissue beneath the jaw. The unarmored section of the throat where the corrupted flesh was thinnest.
He moved in a flash.
Holden climbed onto its back. The bony protrusions provided handholds. The beast didn’t stir. Its sleep was deep, the sleep of something that had never been threatened.
He raised his sword and drove it down into the base of the beast’s skull. The blade punched through bone and into the brain stem. Every nerve in the creature’s body went dead simultaneously.
The Corpse-Beast didn’t even shudder. It simply stopped. Like a machine being turned off.
A Platinum Chest appeared from its body. The glow was blinding in the dark, a column of pure white light that shot upward.
He grabbed it and the light died.
[Corpse-Beast (Rank 3, 2-Star) Defeated! +10,000 KP!]
[2x KP Booster Active! +20,000 KP!]
[Platinum Chest Acquired!]
The second Rank 3 was a Winged Terror, a leathery, bat-like creature with a fifty-foot wingspan that had been dive-bombing the wall crews during the day. It roosted on a rocky outcropping three hundred meters from the Outpost, its wings wrapped around its body like a leather tent.
Holden scaled the outcropping in silence. He found the gap between the wing membrane and the ribcage. His blade found the heart.
The beast died without opening its eyes.
A Gold Chest appeared. He took it.
The third Rank 3 was the most dangerous. An Abyssal Maw, a serpentine creature with a body over sixty feet long, coiled in a massive spiral in the mud. Its head, buried beneath its own body, was a mouth ringed with concentric rings of teeth.
He found the exposed section of its spine near the tail. He worked his way along the body, driving his blade into each spinal joint, severing the nerve connections one by one. It took eleven strikes. The beast never woke.
Three Platinum Chests appeared in rapid succession. He swept them into his inventory before the glow could reach the walls.
The rain kept falling and Holden kept moving.
Smaller targets filled the gaps between the bigger ones. Rank 2 brutes half-buried in mud. Rank 2 leapers curled in craters. He killed them all. Each one dropped a chest. Each chest vanished into his inventory in a flash.
The notifications became a river.
[+6,000 KP.]
[+8,000 KP.]
[+20,000 KP.]
[+6,000 KP.]
[+10,000 KP.]
[+8,000 KP.]
[+20,000 KP.]
By the time the rain began to lighten and the sky started to shift from black to dark grey, he had crossed the entire battlefield twice. Every dormant Rank 2 and Rank 3 monster within five hundred meters of the Outpost was dead.
The field was quiet.
Not empty. Full. Full of things that had been alive an hour ago and weren’t anymore. The rain washed over them, filling the craters, smoothing the mud, burying the evidence. By dawn, there would be nothing left but shapes in the earth.
Holden stood at the edge of the battlefield. Rain ran down the gold mask. His cloak was heavy with water. His boots were buried in six inches of mud.
He turned and walked back toward the wall.
He scaled it silently, crossed the compound without disturbing a single sleeping soldier, and slipped through the barracks window.
The room was still dark. Emric snored. Renna snored louder. Lyra’s cot was empty.
She was sitting on his cot, in the dark, waiting. Her eyes glowed faintly in the dim room. She had heard him come in.
Lyra looked at the mud on his cloak. At the mask in his hand.
She didn’t say anything.
She stood, walked to her own cot, lay down, and closed her eyes.
Holden put off the cloak and kept the mask. He lay down on his cot.
The System interface glowed softly in his vision.
[Total KP Earned: 120,000]
[Current KP: 542,290]
[Multiplier: 10,000x]
[KP Booster: 2x Active]
[Fighter Rank: Rank 3 (1-Star)]
[Inventory: 11 Silver Chests, 7 Gold Chests. 3 Platinum chest Unopened.]
Outside, the rain fell on a battlefield full of dead things that nobody had seen die.
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