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Chapters 6-11 have been edited as they were a part of an old draft. Please reread if you haven't already. Edit: Dec 12, 2025.
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The sky above was like a rolling sea of yellowish grey clouds, spitting radioactive rain.
Along a crumbling roof, Deacon sprinted, the bottom hems of his Poncho of the Radiation Walker streaming behind him, and created a smoky after effect as he ran through the rain. The poncho clung to his body as he leaped from rooftop to rooftop, and now onto a radioactive rain slick rooftop vent.
His boots scraped against rusted metal, but he kept moving, spotting a boarded-up stairwell entrance two rooftops over. The storm boomed overhead and a moment later, a massive strike of yellow lightning struck the lightning rod a few feet away from him.
"Where's Sam and his magic when you need him," Deacon grumbled. "He'd know how to get the lightning to get off my ass."
He cleared the last rooftop in seconds before converting his gained momentum into force as he slammed his foot against the wooden barrier. He smashed through the barriers and smashed the door open with a sharp crack as it banged against the stone wall, barely still attached to its own hinges on the wall. He rushed inside and descended down the steps, leaving the door to slam right behind him as he smacked it with a mana string.
The narrow stairwell opened into a dimly lit attic that was filled from wall to wall with stacked cargo crates, half-rotted shelving, and home to a quarter of a thousand mouse traps. His boots landed with a muted thud on the old, wooden floorboards.
His stomach rumbled as he'd run out of snack bars to munch on – who knew the ten snack bars could only last him a day.
One of the crates had long since burst open, and bags of chips, still sealed, lay scattered across the floor.
"Oh, thank you, glorious System," Deacon muttered as he yanked off his poncho, shaking it out, and pulled off his soaked leather gloves that had numerous patches that were quickly repaired due to the Self-Repair enchantments on them.
Unstrapping the two lengths of fabric that had kept the laptop secured to his chest, Deacon carefully set the laptop to rest atop the crate beside him. Now with the laptop out of harm's way, Deacon immediately lunged into the open crate to his left and, without a hint of patience, he tore open a nearby bag, shoved a handful of its contents into his mouth, then another.
The salty, chemical crunch hit like heaven after only eating stale snack bars for a day.
A faint creak resounded from the floor below, which was then followed by a low, pained whine - human sounding.
Deacon froze mid-chew before he slowly placed the half-empty chip bag on top of a crate, wiping the crumbs off his chin with the back of his left forearm. His hand moved instinctively to the hilt of one of his short swords while the other was pressed against the wall that hugged the staircase with the other short sword already present.
For suck's sake man, Deacon grumbled. Can't a guy eat his chips in peace?
He carefully and silently crept down the stairwell at the far side of the cargo floor.
At the foot of the stairs, just visible through the broken railing, lay a cadet, a Class E graduate judging by the uniform he still wore, bloodied, dragging himself across the tile with one arm. While his other hand clutched at where there was a large gash across his ribs, blood trailing behind him in a smearing streak.
"P–Please… anyone…"
[Human Lv 2]
Deacon's eyes shifted, scanning the inside of the convenience store. There was no need to risk his life over this idiot who decided to climb with no proper gear on him other than his wand if the thing that was killing him was more than what he could tackle.
Perched high on a dented steel shelf in what used to be the cereal aisle, its silhouette crouched low and unmoving, was a fungus-covered and feral-looking cat.
[Mutant Spiketailed Cat Lv 5]
Twice the size of a normal feline, its frame was rail-thin but muscular, covered in sleek black fur that shimmered faintly with dark yellow veins. Its eyes burned a deep amber, fixated not on the bleeding cadet, but on Deacon himself. A long, spiked tail twitched behind it.
His hand flashed to his left leg's pouches, and when his fingers wrapped around the hilt of one of his throwing daggers, he hurled it with a snap of his wrist. The blade spun, slicing through the air toward the mutant cat - not to kill, but to draw its attention. The creature hissed and twisted sideways, the dagger glancing off the metal shelving with a sharp ting.
Deacon was already moving.
Boots pounding against cracked tile, he sprinted toward the cadet. The young man lay slumped halfway behind a knocked-over shelf display, his face pale, sweat-slicked, and streaked with blood. Deacon dropped to one knee beside him, yanking open the cadet's potion pouch.
"Shit," he muttered. The inside was a mess, soaked in streaks of red, green, and yellow liquid, with every glass vial he'd stored having shattered into shards.
Without wasting time, Deacon flung another dagger at the mutant cat before reaching for his own potion pouch and taking out his second potion vial. He uncorked it with his teeth, gripped the cadet's jaw, and poured the red, viscous contents down his throat.
"Drink, you idiot," Deacon hissed. "Second fucking thing in Survival Class, they tell you is to never head into food zones like this, solo on Day One. There's always a damn guard in places stashed with food."
As if on cue, a sharp crack split the air - milliseconds before Deacon's instincts flared. His head immediately whipped to the left, just as a spike whistled past his face, embedding itself into the floor where his head had been. A second flew wide. The third shot toward the downed cadet.
The cadet cried out as it lodged deep into his shoulder and sent him back against the floor. Blood began to well around the wound, but the healing potion was already working, closing flesh around the spike even as he writhed in pain.
Crap. Deacon's jaw clenched.
His eyes locked onto the cat as it crouched, coiled, eyes dilated. The tail arched upward, one of its three spikes already having regenerated.
"You're done," Deacon growled.
He surged forward, drawing both short swords in a hiss of steel. Mana surged down his arms and up his blades as he cast Flame Armament. Flames licked up his twin short blades and cast erratic shadows against the aisles of twisted metal and old snack wrappers.
The cat leapt down to meet him.
Deacon ducked low before slashing upwards, one short sword colliding with its foreleg as it was mid-pounce, while the other short sword carved a searing gash against its ribs. The mutant cat shrieked, twisting itself mid-air with its spiked tail lashing out in a blur in a countermeasure against Deacon.
Deacon barely brought a blade up in time, catching the strike and pushing back, the impact jarring through his arm. He staggered slightly, boots skidding on a patch of spilled instant noodles, then threw himself sideways as another spike shot from the cat's tail and shattered a glass freezer behind him.
It circled him now, eyes gleaming, hissing at him as eyes narrowed to needle thin slits.
Deacon adjusted his grip.
"Let's see if cats really have nine lives," he muttered, and charged again, blades whirling in arcs with flame trailing behind each one.
But the cat was fast, too fast. It weaved around his strikes with unnatural grace, claws skimming his jacket, tail snapping like a whip.
The hell? He thought as his boots skidded once again, much to his confusion.
Glancing down, he frowned as he saw that the tiles beneath his feet were slick with a thin coating of water. And to go along with the water was a thin, almost glass-clear cold mist that clung to the floor in scattered patches, frost crusting over broken glass and the bottom edges of the nearby shelves and a couple more of frosted over cereal boxes and staplers with a couple of them looking to have been pierced by something, but the thing that pierced them was gone and they boxes were soggy.
Ice?
He twisted just as the mutant cat lunged again, teeth bared, and then a crack of cold mana split the air.
Fwssshh – Pop!
A jagged bolt of frost flew past Deacon's shoulder and struck the cat square in the side, erupting in a burst of ice and vapor. The mutant cat screeched in pain as it collided with an aisle filled with soup cans, its leap had been thrown off as one of its hind legs was covered in a heavy coat of ice.
Deacon blinked and turned.
The cadet had pulled himself into a sitting position against the wall, blood-streaked and still pale, but one hand outstretched. Frost crackled faintly along his arm, fingers still glowing with residual magic.
"Thanks for the potion," the cadet muttered through gritted teeth, wincing. "I'll cover you."
Deacon gave him a quick nod.
The mutant cat howled again, breaking free of the ice with a violent twist, shards flying as it launched toward them in a renewed frenzy.
Deacon stepped forward to intercept, the fire along his blades intensifying. His lip curled. "We'll break bread once we kill the cat."
The beast slammed into him mid-charge. Deacon planted his boots, skidding back a few inches across the tile. He twisted his torso, allowing the cat's momentum to carry it off balance, and brought his short sword in a low arc across its belly, causing dark yellow blood to spray across the floor and aisles with a sizzle.
It screeched, and Deacon ducked just as a spike buried itself into a jar of pickles behind him.
"Shit," he growled.
Water pooled across the floor near the cadet as one of the cat's spikes struck a jug of water beside his head. Deacon's boots slipped slightly, then he noticed the fine sheen of frost webbing across the cat's hind legs.
"You got enough mana for one more attack?" Deacon called.
The cadet was already pushing himself to his feet, his trembling hand aglow with faint blue light. "Yeah, just about one more."
"Wait for my mark," Deacon said.
The cat hissed and feinted left. Deacon mirrored it, sword raised, watching the twitch of its haunches.
It darted toward him.
"Now!"
A crackling bolt of frost erupted from the cadet's palm. It struck the cat mid-air, freezing part of its shoulder and slowing its pounce just enough for Deacon to step inside its guard and thrust both his flaming short blades directly into the cat's ribcage.
The blade ignited again, fire rushing along the steel and catching the beast's fur like kindling. The cat wailed in pain, flailing wildly, trying to throw him off.
It raked his shoulder with its claws, but they'd barely caused any damage to his armor.
Looks like these guys focused more of their evolution on their spiked tails than their claws, Deacon noted as he twisted the blades deeper, stopping only when he felt them pierce something soft inside.
The cat convulsed for one last time before going limp on his blades, the Flame Armament on his short blades sputtered out in a curl of smoke and singed fur as he stopped casting it.
Deacon exhaled hard and pulled his short swords free from the confines of the mutant cat.
The cadet slumped to the ground, clearly spent. "We good?"
*[Mutant Spiketailed Cat Lv 5] has been slain – Partial XP has been given.*
Deacon gave the corpse one last kick, making sure it stayed dead, then nodded. "Yeah. We're good. You got the notification?"
"Yeah," the cadet answered as he looked at the System Notification that popped out in front of him. "Got a level from it."
He looked up at Deacon, eyes still wide with the aftershock of battle. "I thought I was dead back there. My potions were all destroyed and I…" he trailed off, looking at his own reflection from a stainless steel tray that was still in its plastic casing.
"How did you get your potions all destroyed, not even two days in?" Deacon asked, yanking a rag from its plastic wrap on a nearby shelf, and started to wipe his blades clean from the fur, blood, and charred flesh that clung to it.
"Fucked teleport," the cadet muttered, pushing himself up from the floor and steadying himself with a grip on the nearby aisle rail. "When I landed on this floor, I was right next to someone named Jasmine. Figured we should party up, but she went completely feral and tried to take my head off."
Deacon froze mid-motion, the bloodied rag in his hand going still.
"Jasmine Pines?" he asked, his brow lifting just slightly. "Short hair and wields a glaive?"
"Yeah, how'd-"
The cadet didn't finish.
Deacon's arm flashed out in a blur and the cadet's head tumbled from his shoulders with a wet thunk, rolling to a stop beside a crushed can of beans a heartbeat later.
The body followed a heartbeat later, crumpling to the ground in a heap.
*[Human Lv 2 // Mage Lv 2] has been slain – XP has been given.*
Deacon exhaled slowly and let the rag drop out of his other hand and onto the floor. "Jass doesn't talk to anyone besides Esmerelda, Bonehead, Sam, and me, and if she attacked you, that means you deserved it."
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