I didn't even turn to see the visual spectacle of the explosion. In the brutal mathematics of survival, curiosity was a luxury that cost lives. My only objective was to put as much distance as possible between my fragile, unenhanced body and the impending thermal bloom. If I was caught in the epicentre, I wouldn't just be a casualty; I would be fuel.
"Bang!""Bang!""Boom!"
The sounds were staggered, a discordant symphony of destruction. I cleared two staggering hyenas from my path with a desperation that bypassed my physical limits, my feet barely touching the grass as I sprinted.
The first explosion was relatively small—the nearly empty tank I had abandoned as a fuse. Its primary purpose wasn't destruction, but distraction.
The sudden, violent burst of white-hot light and searing heat acted as a physical wall, forcing the hypersensitive hyenas to recoil. Their pupils, adjusted to the violet twilight, were instantly overwhelmed.
This was my window. I slipped through their shifting, panicked ranks like a ghost. I didn't look back. I could feel the hesitation radiating from the monsters behind me—a cocktail of animal fear and sensory overload. Yeah, shake in your skin, you bastards, I thought, a grim satisfaction blooming in my chest. That's the price of trying to hunt a man who has already seen the end of the world.
I had crossed twenty meters, closing the gap toward the flickering shadows of my group, when the second explosion hit.
This one was a monster. It was a violent, earth-shaking eruption that felt as if a Golem had struck the planet with a fist made of thunder. The shockwave was a physical hand that swatted me out of the air. I lost my footing, falling forward and skidding for meters across the dirt, rolling like a ragdoll until my momentum finally died.
"Damn! I never thought it would be this violent!" I wheezed, the air forced from my lungs in a painful rush.
I struggled to my feet, my head spinning, and finally turned my gaze toward the source. A massive, roiling tongue of fire licked the sky, turning the night into a hellish noon. The secondary explosions followed in rapid succession—the remaining fuel tanks inside the shed succumbing to the heat.
"I hope you enjoy the ride, Arnold," I snorted, my voice a raspy whisper. I didn't have a shred of pity for the traitor. I adjusted the weight of the five tanks I had managed to salvage, my ribs screaming in protest, and turned my focus back to the survivors.
I was surprised, and quietly impressed, by what I saw. I had expected the group to be decimated by the hyenas' retaliation after the lights went out, but over a dozen youths remained on their feet.
They had formed a tight, disciplined circle, their clubs raised in a desperate but effective defence. In the centre, five or six others lay on the ground, their bodies marked by deep, jagged wounds, but they were still breathing. Isabella wasn't hiding in the centre; she was on the front line, her movements feral and precise as she fended off the shadows.
"Hye! This way... hurry!"
Isabella's voice cut through the roar of the fire. I didn't need the prompt; I was already moving, but my body was failing me. As I tried to accelerate, a white-hot spike of agony shot up from my leg. I was limping. The fall from the shockwave had done more than just knock the wind out of me; I had likely sprained or torn the ligaments in my ankles and knees.
I pushed through it, dragging my leaden leg across the grass. The hyenas surrounding the field were in a state of total paralysis. Those caught near the shed were literal pillars of fire, their roars of agony echoing across the park. The others were simply stunned, their predatory instincts overridden by the primal terror of the flame.
As I reached the perimeter of our small circle, I didn't stop to rest. "Take these," I grunted, dropping two of the gasoline tanks at the feet of the nearest youths.
"What... what do we do with these?" one of them asked, his eyes wide as he looked at the suitcase-like containers. They were finally catching their breath, but they looked utterly lost.
"Spill the content. Now!" I commanded, pointing to the grass around our feet. "Make the circle wider. Empty both tanks in a continuous ring around us. Do it fast!"
The youths didn't argue. Under the flickering, orange glow of the distant inferno, my presence had taken on a legendary quality. I was the man who had brought the light, found the weapons, and now, summoned the fire. They began to pour the volatile liquid, the pungent scent of gasoline masking the smell of blood.
"Where are you going?" Isabella demanded. She noticed I wasn't stepping into the circle. Instead, I was turning back toward the darkness, my club gripped tight, my gait a painful, lurching hobble.
"We need to clear a killing floor," I said, my voice cold. "And I have a debt to settle."
I wasn't just being tactical; I was being greedy. I needed the experience, the mental conditioning, and—eventually—the rewards that came from high kill counts during the initial quest.
I launched into a hunting spree, my club a blur of aluminium and spite. I regretted the state of my body; I missed the effortless strength of my past life, the way I could have cleared this field in seconds if I had my stats. But even in this broken vessel, I had a century of muscle memory.
Around me, the survivors began to find their voices. The fear was being replaced by a righteous, burning anger. They saw me, wounded and limping, still taking the fight to the monsters, and it triggered something primal in them.
"We're ready!" the youth with the gasoline shouted. "Hye, get back! The perimeter is set!"
"Not yet!" I roared back. I wasn't ready to trigger the trap. I needed to draw more of them in.
I kept moving, a lone reaper in the dark. A mighty roar erupted from the northern tree line—the sound of the hyena pack finally shaking off their shock. They were recovering, and they were enraged.
"Just in time," I whispered.
The fire at the generator shed was my greatest asset. The monsters couldn't pass it, so they naturally gravitated toward the opposite side of the field—the side where I was standing. They were animals, driven by a simple survival instinct to avoid the largest source of heat, and I had read their movement like a map.
I stood my ground, waiting for the wave. I deliberately left a trail of carcasses in my wake, creating a bridge of dead meat between myself and the group. I knew that gasoline on grass would burn out quickly, but gasoline-soaked fur and fat? That was a bonfire.
"Roar!""Roar!"
The wave was massive. It was a sea of yellow fur and ivory tusks. My odds of survival had shifted. By creating the fire, I had funnelled the entire pack into a single, predictable lane.
"Should we light it?" Allen yelled, his voice cracking with nerves.
"Not yet!" I stood beside Isabella, who was fighting with a fervency that bordered on the divine. She was a natural, killing more than anyone else in the group. She didn't have my experience, but she had a raw, instinctive grace that was terrifying to behold.
The hyenas surrounded us, layers deep, their bodies forming a wall of muscle. They didn't attack immediately; they were trying to invoke terror, a primitive tactic to break our morale before the slaughter. They didn't realise that for me, this was just another Tuesday in the apocalypse.
"Give me your club," I said to Isabella, extending my hand. With my other hand, I grabbed one of the remaining tanks.
She didn't hesitate. The look she gave me was one of absolute, unwavering trust. In a world where everyone else would have hoarded their only weapon, she handed it over without a word. She knew I had a plan.
"Watch and learn," I said, stepping outside the circle. "When I give the mark, you hit them with everything you've got."
I opened the lid of the tank, and the gasoline glugged onto the dirt. "For those we lost today," I said, a grim toast to the fallen. I could feel the group watching my back, their gazes burning with a mix of awe and confusion. They thought I had finally snapped.
I threw the tank. It sailed through the air, landing precisely among the pile of carcasses I had prepared.
"Clang! Clang!"
I struck the two metal clubs together. One strike. Two. On the third, a spark was born. It touched the gasoline at my feet and raced away from me like a living thing, a thread of orange fire chasing the trail to the centre of the monster pack.
"Whoosh!"
The fire hit the bridge of dead hyenas. They weren't just monsters anymore; they were fuel. The fire roared to life, expanding with a predatory hunger of its own.
"BOOM!"
The tank I had thrown exploded, a secondary burst that knocked the nearest hyenas off their feet. The fire followed the gasoline ring the youths had poured, forming a perfect, blazing arch that cut the monster army in half.
"ROAR!"
The monsters were trapped. Those inside the circle were cut off from their pack, blinded by the sudden wall of flame. Those outside could only watch as their comrades were isolated.
"Attack!" I screamed, tossing the club back to Isabella.
I didn't wait. I charged into the trapped group. I wanted every soul, every point of experience. This was justice. This was the first lesson of the new world: humanity wouldn't go quietly into the night.
"Thud! Thud! Thud!"
The sounds of falling bodies were a rhythmic percussion against the roar of the fire. The group behind me was transformed. They weren't cowering students anymore. They were shouting, crying out in anger, their clubs rising and falling in a frantic, bloody rhythm.
"Don't leave a single one alive!" "Kill them! Kill them all!"
I smiled, a bloody, exhausted thing. This was the baptism. The first quest was the line in the sand—the moment the old world died and the new, brutal one was born. These survivors would be the elite of the future.
The remaining minutes ticked away. I knew the wolves wouldn't come. They were smarter than the hyenas; they saw the fire, saw the coordinated slaughter, and they retreated into the deeper shadows of the park. Without a system-augmented leader to force them into the heat, their role was over.
[Quest 1: Complete – 00:00]
The world seemed to tilt. The adrenaline that had been holding my shattered body together evaporated in a single breath.
"Huff... huff... where... where are they going?" Isabella leaned on her club, her chest heaving, her face covered in soot. She wasn't the only one. The entire group was sagging, the reality of their exhaustion finally catching up.
"The quest is over," I said. My knees buckled, and I hit the ground hard. The blood loss and the internal injuries finally took their toll. I didn't care. I knew what was coming next.
"Damn! Hye, you're hurt bad!" The group gathered around, their faces full of a sudden, sharp concern. They saw the stains on my clothes, the way my leg was twisted, the blood matting my hair.
"Hye... you fool! You didn't even try to stop the bleeding!" Isabella's voice was a mix of fury and terror. She knelt beside me, her hands hovering over my wounds, afraid to touch me.