I raised my sword, the steel cold against the humid night air, holding the hilt with both hands just slightly higher than the level of my head. I had never been a professional swordsman in my previous life—certainly not in the formal sense—but I had spent years as a silent observer.
I had watched countless warriors spar, witnessed the desperate training of those who knew they were destined for the front lines, and seen them fight for their lives against monsters far worse than these. I had memorised their footwork, their breathing, and the exact moment their blades bit into flesh.
"Come closer…" I whispered, my voice a low challenge that barely travelled past the tip of my blade.
The Alpha didn't need a second invitation. It lunged forward with a ferocity that seemed to vibrate the very ground. Its speed was a blur of black fur and predatory intent; it was clearly enraged that a mere piece of prey had challenged its divine authority and dared to raise a simple human sword against a king of the park.
These System-wolves were structurally different from the hyenas I had faced earlier. They were slightly larger, but they lacked the thick, matted, annoying fur that acted like natural gambeson for the hyenas. Instead, their skin was taut over lean muscle, even showing bare, leathery spots where no hair grew at all.
However, what they lacked in passive defence, they more than made up for in terrifying offence. I didn't plan on evading its initial charge too early. Wolves were famous among survivors for their lightning-fast reflexes and their ability to adjust their trajectory mid-air.
If I moved too soon, it would simply recalibrate and tear my throat out. I had to let it enter the "death zone"—a specific range where I could evade and counter-attack before it could possibly recover its momentum.
"Howl!"
The beast overestimated its own speed and underestimated my control. The moment it crossed the threshold I had mentally marked, I planted my weight and shoved my legs hard to the right. Just as the wolf began to tilt its body to follow my movement, I slammed my heels into the dirt, putting all my weight into a dead stop.
It was a feint—a jagged, high-speed trick to make this monster realize I wasn't just another terrified human. My first movement forced it to overcommit its direction, and my second explosive jump back to the left made its follow-through look sluggish and clumsy. It was wide open.
Slash!
I poured every ounce of my baseline strength into the swing. The blade bit deep into the junction of its head and neck. I didn't linger to admire the work; I instantly retreated, backpedalling as the Alpha's massive, hooked claws swiped through the air where my chest had been a millisecond before.
"Grrr…"
"Now we're talking," I snorted. The Alpha gnashed its teeth, the sound like stones grinding together, exposing fangs as long as daggers. It was maddened by the pain, its pride wounded far deeper than its flesh.
But those initial strikes weren't enough. They were a warning, not a kill-shot. The beast hadn't begun to feel the cold touch of weakness yet.
"C'mon," I said, motioning with my sword in a taunting, beckoning gesture. "Show me why you're the leader. I don't have the entire night to waste on garbage like you."
"Howl!"
It didn't hesitate, charging again with even greater velocity. This time, I knew it would be wary of my footwork tricks, so I changed my strategy entirely. As I kicked off the ground toward the left, the Alpha headed straight forward, anticipating that I would zig-zag back to the right as I had done before.
I didn't.
I maintained my line, letting my sword do the talking. As we passed each other, I flipped the posture of my weapon, holding it reversed like a combat dagger.
Slashing across its hide looked impressive, but it didn't leave the kind of deep, debilitating wounds needed to end a fight quickly. By using the sword to stab and tear in a downward motion, I could rip through muscle groups and weaken its structural integrity.
After a dozen more rapid-fire clashes, the massive wolf—distinguished by the strange, bony outlining of its lower jaw—slammed heavily into the dirt. It tried to rise, but its front legs buckled.
The once-silken black hair was now a matted mess of crimson. I had inflicted over a dozen deep punctures and twice as many superficial slashes. The fight was effectively over.
However, just as I stepped forward to deliver the final blow, my Sixth Sense flared with a sudden, sharp warning.
"How can you dare to break the challenge?" I growled, spinning around.
A group of five subordinate wolves had broken the circle, their hunger for my blood overriding the "sacred" code of the duel. This was supposed to be a duel of honour between an Alpha and a Challenger, but these dark creatures apparently had no more code than the Angels who watched from above.
Slash!Stab!Stab!
"If your own Alpha couldn't stand a chance against me, what makes you think you can?" I snarled. My arms moved in a frantic, rhythmic blur, parrying claws and counter-stabbing with lethal efficiency
I stood amidst the carnage, my chest heaving as I sucked in the cold, metallic air of the park. My stamina was a finite, precious resource; I knew I lacked the stamina required to slaughter every one of these monsters head-on in a prolonged war of attrition.
To survive the night, I couldn't just be a killer—I had to be a nightmare. I needed to sow a seed of primal fear so deep in their collective soul that they would hesitate to ever bare their teeth at me again.
Thud!Thud!Thud!
The five interloping wolves collapsed, their bodies hitting the dirt with the heavy, final sound of dead weight. The remaining pack members bristled, their low growls vibrating in the dark, but they didn't lunge. I slowly rotated my blade, the tip dripping with gore, pointing it at every yellow eye in the circle as a silent, lethal warning.
I could see the shift in their posture. They weren't acting out of loyalty anymore; they were acting out of terror. It was no surprise—in a matter of minutes, I had dismantled their Alpha and executed five of their strongest guardians without breaking a sweat.
"Oh, you want to run now?"
I turned back to my primary prey. The Alpha was no longer a king; it was a pathetic, limping wreck. One of its hind legs was clearly shattered, and it was dragging its heavy body toward the tree line, leaving a thick, steaming trail of crimson behind it. If I let it crawl into the shadows, the infection or the scavengers would finish it eventually, but I couldn't afford to be merciful.
My objectives were twofold: I needed to disperse this annoying pack, but more importantly, I needed to harvest. In the cold economy of the apocalypse, a normal wolf might yield twenty to a hundred coins at most.
To reach my current goal of two thousand coins, I would normally have to wade through a hundred of these beasts—an impossible feat given my current level of fatigue. The Alpha, however, was a walking jackpot.
"Time to end this," I muttered.
I didn't walk; I sprinted. I cut a direct path toward the wounded leader, my sword singing through the air to decapitate a daring subordinate that tried to block my path.
Splash!
The blade found the Alpha's throat, a single, decisive strike that ended its struggle. I stood over the carcass, my clothes and skin painted in the warm, thick blood of the pack's heart. In the flickering moonlight, I must have looked like a devil birthed from the very soil of the park.
"Ahhh!" I let out a roar—a sound that wasn't human, but a challenge to the world itself.
The effect was instantaneous. The remaining wolves, seeing their god dead and their killer bathed in its essence, turned tail and bolted into the darkness.
"Good... I doubt I could have fought a hundred more of you tonight," I admitted to the silence. I slumped slightly, resting my weight against the Alpha's cooling flank. I looked around at the bodies scattered across the grass and felt a rare spark of pride. "Yeah... I can be strong. If I'm just given the chance."
Deep down, a part of me still struggled with the reality of my situation. I was classless, a statistical nobody in a world governed by tiers and rankings. I had held lingering doubts about my ability to truly change the future. What if I'm just living in an illusion? What if I'm not special at all?
But as I looked at the dead Alpha, a beast that would have slaughtered an entire neighbourhood of humans, my resolve hardened. I clenched my fist, feeling the tacky blood dry on my knuckles. "No. I can do it."
I focused on the interface hovering at the edge of my vision. "So, a thousand coins for the Alpha alone... not bad at all." I checked my balance and felt a surge of satisfaction; the total now exceeded two thousand coins.
[Notification: You have accumulated enough currency to obtain one Stat Point via the Beginner's Pack. Do you wish to convert your coins now?]
"Sure," I said without a second thought. I felt a brief, sharp hum of energy ripple through my nervous system as the point was allocated. "Now, let's see how much more I can squeeze out of these carcasses."
I moved through the battlefield like a scavenger, stripping the monsters of everything the System deemed valuable. Cores, jagged claws, ivory teeth, and even the toughened skins—I harvested them all with clinical efficiency, listing them on the Global Market as I went.
[Notification: You have listed an Alpha-Grade Core on the Market. You may place this item in an Auction for a potentially higher yield. Note: Auctions require one hour to conclude.]
"Oh?" My eyes widened. I hadn't expected an auction prompt this early. I clicked 'Agree' instantly. In the System's logic, if an item was eligible for auction, it was officially recognised as rare.
"So, the Alpha doesn't just give a flat bounty, but a core that the world actually wants," I muttered. I watched a small, translucent window appear, showing the core's description and a ticking sixty-minute timer.
"I listed it at a base value of five hundred coins. The auction starts there. Even in the worst-case scenario, I walk away with five hundred. But in this market? I'm going to make a fortune."
The feeling of accumulation was addictive. In this new world, coins weren't just currency; they were the literal building blocks of my existence. The more I gathered, the more stat points I could harvest from the System, and the further I moved from being a weak, classless casualty of fate.
I didn't see much reason to hoard liquid coins during this specific quest. If that Alpha core managed to sell for double its base price—or more—I might even consider postponing my main objective to become a part-time wolf hunter. Why not? It was the most efficient way to grind for power.
As I moved from carcass to carcass, extracting materials with the System's automated assistance, the labour was minimal. I could feel my body recovering, the adrenaline smoothing out the remaining edges of my fatigue.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was close now; I could feel its presence to the east. Yet, a nagging sensation of wrongness began to settle in my gut.
"I knew they survived in significant numbers, but I still don't know how," I muttered, my boots crunching over the dead grass as I began my trek eastward. The sky remained a bruised, dim purple, and the city's artificial lights had almost entirely flickered out.
Strangely, as I looked toward the museum's coordinates, I couldn't even spot the outlines of the surrounding buildings in the distance. The darkness seemed thicker there, almost unnatural.
I had initially assumed they might have discovered a trick of light—something similar to the fires I had used to weaken the monsters—but that didn't feel right. "They should only discover those tactics in the later quests. The records are silent on how a bunch of untrained youths managed to weather the early stages of this slaughter."
There had to be a catalyst. Was everyone in that group a traitor? No, that was statistically impossible. The Angels wouldn't invest that much dark energy into a single location this early.
Besides, the old man's records mentioned that the museum group was eventually wiped out before Quest Five. It created a logical paradox: how could a group of people who weren't strong enough to survive the middle stages of the apocalypse somehow thrive during the initial, most chaotic cull?
I wasn't worried about my own safety—I was already leagues ahead of any normal survivor in terms of combat experience and raw stats. Since I was using this detour to mask my real goal from the celestial observers, I had no problem checking in on this anomaly.
But after walking for ten minutes, the air suddenly grew cold. A needle-sharp sensation of killing intent pricked at the side of my neck. I spun around, scanning the scattered, skeletal trees nearby. I saw nothing but shadows, yet the feeling was unmistakable.
"Someone—or something—is watching," I whispered.
It was obviously one of the two dominant monster species dwelling in this zone. However, contrary to my expectations, the watcher didn't lunge. There were no snapping twigs, no low growls. Just a heavy, predatory gaze that followed me until the massive, neoclassical silhouette of the museum finally appeared in the distance.
I didn't find the museum through sight alone; I found it by the sound of the massacre. A massive, swirling tide of hyenas was throwing itself against the museum's grand entrance.
Just from the sheer volume of the monsters, I could calculate the human presence inside. The System's spawning logic was cruel: at least a hundred humans had to be inside that building to trigger a siege of this magnitude.
"Roar!""Roar!""Clang!"
The sounds of steel hitting bone and the guttural cries of the beasts grew deafening as I closed the gap. I gripped the hilt of my sword, my knuckles white. That persistent killing intent still hovered just behind my shoulder, trailing my every step like a ghost.
"Do they just want to track me? Are they waiting for me to engage?" I felt a surge of irritation. I hated being followed, and I hated being an unknown variable in someone else's hunt.
But I couldn't risk a blind fight against an invisible stalker. "If you won't show yourselves, I'll give you a reason to," I decided. I broke into a dead sprint, heading directly toward the chaotic front line of the museum siege.
Hyenas were a piece of cake to me now. To a normal, terrified youth, they were nightmare fuel—stinking, cackling heralds of death. But as I got closer, the scale of the battle made me frown in genuine disbelief.
The museum held a much larger number of survivors than I had ever imagined. It wasn't just a hundred people; there had to be at least five hundred youths inside, fighting neck-and-neck with a combined force of wolves and hyenas. They were using makeshift weapons, pieces of furniture, and museum displays to hold the line.
"This... how is this even possible?!" I couldn't wrap my head around the logistics of five hundred people coordinating a defence this early.
But there was no time for a sociological study. The humans were being pushed back.
"Let's kill these bastards first," I growled. I unsheathed my sword, flipping the blade so the duller, heavier edge was forward. I knew exactly where to strike to shatter a hyena's spine in a single blow. Compared to the Alpha wolf I had just executed, these hyenas were a walk in the park.