Rust moved through the gray-painted streets with heavy, measured steps. The white ash falling from the sky had formed a thin layer on the shoulders of his black tactical gear.

  Outside, there was only the rusty howl of the wind. But the inside of Rust’s mind was filled with deafening questions.

  He slowed his steps and stopped. He reached into his coat pocket with his left hand and pulled out that crumpled, bloodstained photograph. He stared for a long time at the innocent smile of the little girl on the piece of paper with torn edges. That photograph weighed only a few grams, but in Rust’s hand, it felt like tons.

  "Why did I accept that man's dying wish?" he muttered to himself. "Why did I take this photograph?"

  He rewound what he had just experienced in his mind. The explosion of the man's stomach under terrifying pressure, his internal organs scattering across the tiles, those blind and wet creatures pouring out of the darkness... Why hadn't he felt anything while watching that brutality, that blood, and death? Why hadn't his stomach turned, why hadn't his heartbeat quickened by even a single rhythm?

  Everything felt... too normal to him. It was as if slaughtering those disgusting creatures was as ordinary an action as taking a breath. That cold emptiness inside him had swallowed every kind of fear and shock that was human.

  If everything was this normal, if he had no mercy or empathy... why had he accepted the dying wish of a scavenger he had never met, who was drowning in his own blood? Was he stupid? No, he knew very well he wasn't stupid.

  Rust tore his gaze away from the photograph and fixed it on the gray sky where ashes were falling. At that moment, the dream he had seen on the roof of the unfinished skyscraper last night struck his mind like lightning.

  That family photograph. In that broken memory deep within his mind; there was a man standing tall, a woman holding a small baby in her arms, and a child standing right next to them. But none of them had faces. Just like a photograph held to a fire, the places where their faces should have been were melted, blackened, and erased. Rust couldn't remember the faces in that dream, but he knew the suffocating emptiness, that feeling of 'loss' that frame made him feel, to his very marrow.

  Maybe that was why he took this bloody piece of paper. Not to save that man's daughter... but because he found the echo of that faceless family in his own mind, that 'human' side he had lost, in this photograph...

  "Maybe..." Rust whispered, his voice fading into the silence of the dead street. "Maybe it's just to remember."

  He carefully folded the photograph and placed it in his breast pocket, closest to his heart. That relentless compass inside him, that silent command in his veins vibrated again. And Rust, as always, continued walking toward the North.

  [TWO HOURS LATER]

  The city... was colossal.

  As Rust walked, the true scale of this abandoned metropolis pressed down on him like a nightmare. This wasn't an ordinary settlement. It was an endless labyrinth composed of massive skyscrapers piercing the sky with shattered windows, dead highways tangled together, and concrete canyons stretching to the horizon. Walking from one end of the city to the other would be a grueling, impossible task that would take days for a healthy human. But Rust didn't get tired. That mechanical and flawless power in his legs silently swallowed the kilometers.

  Despite his long and silent journey, his instincts told him he was on the right path. In this district where the air grew heavier and the buildings grew even darker, he felt deep down that he was getting closer to his destination.

  Right at that moment, a sound that cut through the dead silence like a knife was heard.

  BANG!

  A gunshot. It came from the alleyway just ahead.

  Rust’s steps stopped instantly. Those cold hunter reflexes inside him kicked in within a second. He tilted his head slightly to the right, analyzing the sound. Accelerating his steps, he advanced toward the corner of the street without letting his boots make the slightest sound.

  Just as he was about to turn the street...

  CRASH!

  A deafening sound of metal colliding and tearing shook the ground. A two-ton, scrap-turned civilian vehicle was hurled out of the street with incredible force! The car flew through the air, flipping just a few meters in front of Rust, smashed into the asphalt, dragged in a shower of sparks, and embedded itself into the wall of the building opposite.

  And immediately after, from the dark alley where the wreckage came from, the desperate, agonizing scream of a man echoed.

  Rust slowly brought his right hand to the hilt of the tactical knife at his waist. With that cold darkness in his eyes, he turned right, toward the street where the car had been thrown.

  When Rust turned the corner, he was met with a nightmare where the world was literally split in two.

  The wide asphalt road had collapsed down the middle, forming a massive crater that opened into the dark, rotting sewer system in the depths of the city. Broken concrete slabs, twisted rebar, and severed pipes dangled into a bottomless darkness.

  But what caught Rust’s attention wasn't the crater, it was the two people struggling on the edge of that abyss.

  A young woman in her early twenties, her face covered in soot, sweat, and ash, was trying to pull a hulking man up from the edge of the abyss. The woman's hands were covered in blood. Gripping the man's jacket like a vise, she was dragging him out of that pit onto the asphalt with all her might.

  The right leg of the man lying on the ground—Vance—was bent at a horrific angle from below the knee. The jagged ends of the bone had torn through his pants, leaving a thick, red trail of blood behind him as he was dragged across the asphalt. The man's face was chalk-white from the pain.

  "Nia, get out of here!" Vance yelled, gritting his teeth. His voice trembled, but he tried to maintain his authority. "If you try to escape with me, you'll drag yourself down to the bottom with me! Leave me!"

  "Shut up!" Nia sobbed. Tears washed the black soot stains on her face, streaming down to her chin. "Vance, come on... I'm not going back alone this time... I won't leave you!"

  Vance groaned in pain, trying to push the woman away with his hand, but he had no strength left.

  Right at that moment, Nia raised her head and saw Rust standing in the shadows at the corner of the street.

  Time froze for both of them at that moment. Nia’s eyes went wide. The eerie, inhuman coldness in the posture of the man standing before her; his pitch-black, undamaged tactical gear, and those blankly staring eyes terrified her. For a moment, she thought Rust was one of them too, another monster.

  But that silence was shattered by a terrifying sound rising from the depths of the crater.

  Screeeeech...

  The deafening shriek of tons of rusty metal grinding against each other, tearing steel, and crushing concrete echoed. Orange sparks shot up from inside the pit.

  "Go! Do as I say and run, don't try to be a hero!" Vance roared, feeling the hot, putrid stench and the darkness rising from the abyss.

  Nia said nothing. She only screamed as she tried to shoulder Vance, struggling to stand up, but she crumbled to her knees, crushed under the man's dead weight.

  And that thing behind them rose, clinging to the edge of the crater like a disaster vomited out of the mouth of hell.

  This was unlike anything Rust had seen so far. There was no trace left that it might have once been a human. The black, pulsating mass of pitch had reached a massive size, but it wasn't naked. It must have caught the infection in a junkyard or at a barricade; because the pitch had melted every kind of metal around it and welded them to its own body. There was a crushed car hood on its chest, a rusty streetlamp pole with a concrete block at the end in place of its left arm, and razor-sharp rebar jutting out like a hedgehog on its shoulders and back. It was like a walking, three-meter-tall asymmetrical 'Iron Maiden'. Where its jaw should have been, there was a dented radiator grille, and a sickly, red light leaked from behind that grille.

  The creature slammed its massive, metal-plated right hand into the asphalt. CRACK! The asphalt shattered like paper.

  Rust stood motionless in the shadows. His logic told him to "turn around and walk away." These two scavengers were not his problem. But the weight of that photograph in his pocket pressed against his chest. If these men knew anything about that girl, that gang, or the North Camp... He needed them.

  Rust took a deep breath. That dark, silent mechanism inside him numbed his senses, locking his heartbeat into an ice-cold constant. The decision was made.

  He lunged forward in an instant. As a light cloud of dust rose from the footprints he left on the asphalt, he closed the distance in seconds like a ghost.

  The moment Nia closed her eyes, screaming under the massive metal shadow collapsing upon them, Rust leaped into the air right beside them.

  Utilizing his kinetic energy flawlessly, he flew like an arrow right over the duo and crashed with both feet violently into the chest of the massive metal monster trying to stand up on the asphalt—right into that car hood!

  THUD!

  The force of the impact caused the monster's massive bulk to lose its balance. That tons-heavy pile of scrap and pitch stumbled backward with clumsy steps and rolled back down into the massive sewer crater it had come from, falling into the void. But as the monster fell, it swung its massive arm made of rusty iron and pulled Rust along with it into that dark pit, into the abyss.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  With the wind cutting his face, Rust was in freefall. Below was an underground labyrinth filled with rusty pipes and concrete columns, at least twenty meters deep.

  Rust didn't panic in the slightest while in the air. He violently kicked the torso of the falling monster with his boot one more time, launching himself in the opposite direction, toward the opposite wall of the crater. He spun on his own axis in the air and crashed into a massive, old, rusty metal grate platform mounted on the sewer wall. His fingers ripped through the steel mesh and gripped it; his shoulders strained as if they were going to pop out of their sockets, but he managed to slow his fall. Sliding down a few meters, he made a relatively soft landing into the freezing, foul-smelling sewer water that came up to his knees.

  Just ten meters away, the creature, which had crashed into the water like a massive meteorite, was slowly straightening up.

  This place was like the waiting room of hell. A massive underground water cistern with a collapsed ceiling, illuminated only by the pale light leaking from the crater above. Broken concrete columns, thick industrial pipes hanging from everywhere, and pitch-black shadows…

  When the monster stood up with that heavy pile of scrap on it, the water rippled. Its red, sick eyes found Rust directly. Steam and a metallic hiss came out of its mouth, which resembled a radiator grille. Every concrete floor it stepped on cracked under that terrifying weight.

  Rust, without showing the slightest sign of emotion, reached to his waist with his right hand and drew his P.A.R.A.D.O.X. pistol. He pulled the trigger three times in a row with a flawless rhythm.

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  The bullets tore through the air and hit the creature's head directly, exactly where that red light was coming from. However, no blood or pitch came out. Only deafening clink, clink, clink sounds echoed, and all three bullets struck the thick steel plate welded to the creature's head, sparked, flattened, and fell into the water.

  Guns were useless. This thing was no different from a tank, not flesh.

  The monster roared and lunged at Rust, parting the water with massive strides.

  It raised the streetlamp pole with the concrete block on its end like a baseball bat and swung it, aiming directly for Rust's head.

  Rust, with reflexes even faster than a bullet, slid onto his knees at the last second. The massive pole passed a millimeter above Rust and smashed into the thick concrete column right behind him. CRASH! The column exploded in half; rubble and a cloud of dust poured into the sewer water. If this blow had hit a normal human, it would have turned them into a bloody mist.

  The moment Rust slid to the side of the creature, he holstered the pistol in his left hand and drew his black, deadly tactical knife with his right. His target was those narrow joints where the metal plates met. With all his might, he plunged the knife into the pitch-filled gap behind the creature's kneecap.

  However, instead of piercing through the pitch, the knife hit another metal component inside. Instead of black blood, a high-pitched metal screech was heard, and a massive recoil struck Rust's arm. The knife was stuck.

  As if feeling that tiny needle in its leg, the creature quickly spun around. While Rust pulled to keep from letting go of the knife, the creature used its massive left shoulder, which had a car door welded to it, like a battering ram and shoulder-checked Rust.

  Rust crossed his arms to block the blow and took his guard. However, this physical strike, which was 4-5 times his own strength, sent him flying through the air as if he had been hit by a semi-truck.

  THUD!

  Rust flew through the air for ten meters and smashed into the brick wall of the cistern with terrifying violence. The wall cracked, and Rust fell mercilessly into the sewer water. He was dragged a few meters underwater.

  He felt the bones in his back crack. As he slowly stood up from the water, soaking wet, a single word spilled from between his lips:

  "Fuck..."

  He wiped his throbbing jaw with the back of his hand. This thing couldn't be fought with brute force. His knife didn't work, his bullets bounced off.

  The creature began to walk slowly toward him, dragging the concrete mace in its hand through the sewer water, sending sparks flying. Its red eyes were locked onto Rust in the darkness.

  Rust’s breathing was terrifyingly steady; his chest didn't rise or fall even a millimeter. Only sewer water dripped from his black clothes. Since his weapons were useless, he would turn the arena itself into a weapon. He quickly scanned his surroundings. The massive, rusty water pipes hanging from above; the thick high-voltage cables exposed on the walls, and the creature's own blind, lumbering strength…

  The dance was now truly beginning.

  As the creature approached him, Rust splashed the water and sprinted rapidly to the left. The creature roared, changed direction, and swung that massive concrete mace horizontally once again.

  Instead of stopping, Rust increased his speed. Just as the mace was about to reap his body, he slid on his knees across the slippery concrete floor, passing right under it. The mace whistled through the air and smashed directly into those thick, rusty industrial pipes running along the side wall of the cistern.

  CLANG!

  The pipes burst under terrifying pressure. The high-pressure, boiling industrial steam inside sprayed out like a massive fog cloud directly into the creature's face, into that radiator grille.

  The creature stumbled back, letting out an agonizing, metallic scream. The steam had blinded it but couldn't melt its armor. It only distracted it. This gave Rust the two-second window of time he needed.

  Rust leaped onto the ruined column right next to the bursting pipes. From there, with an agile move, he grabbed the underside of the massive, rusted steel maintenance platform hanging right above the creature. As the creature emerged from the steam cloud and roared, destroying the spot where Rust had stood moments ago, Rust was right above it.

  He struck the main bolts holding the platform's rusty iron bars like a sledgehammer with the thick hilt of his tactical knife. Using his own superhuman strength to the fullest, he bent and snapped the irons.

  "Take this..." Rust whispered.

  The tons-heavy steel maintenance platform detached from the ceiling with a horrific creak and collapsed right on top of the massive metal monster trying to figure out what was happening below!

  A terrifying sound of collision echoed in the sewer tunnel. Water splashed meters into the air. The platform had crushed the rebar on the creature's shoulders, pressing it down into the water.

  Rust landed gracefully. However, that coldness of a hunter in his eyes was still there. He knew the fight wasn't over.

  That furious roar coming from under the water made the walls of the tunnel tremble. The steel platform slowly, inch by inch, began to rise. That disgusting mass of pitch and the muscles beneath it were pushing tons of metal and standing up.

  But the weight of the platform had cracked the creature's flawless scrap armor at one point. That car door on its left shoulder was crushed and bent backward, completely exposing that pure, vulnerable, and disgusting mass of black pitch right below its neck.

  The armor was breached. Its heart was there.

  Rust twirled his knife in his hand and gripped it in reverse.

  Throwing the steel platform completely off itself, the monster, with its exposed, fatal spot, roared one last time toward Rust with a desire for revenge.

  Rust slightly bent his knees.

  The prey's neck was exposed. Now, all that was left was to sink his teeth in.

  The moment the monster raised that massive streetlamp mace into the air with one final desperation, Rust released all the kinetic energy in his legs. He launched from his spot like a black bullet. The mace had barely begun its arc in the air when Rust had already leaped to the creature's chest level.

  Spinning on his axis in the air to gain momentum, he ruthlessly plunged the tactical knife in his right hand dead center into that black, pulsating mass of pitch exposed from under that car hood!

  When the knife sank into the creature's hideous heart, Rust didn't stop. Using his superhuman strength and gravity, he gripped the knife with both hands, pulled it downward, and ripped that soft tissue wide open from the creature's neck all the way to its chest.

  The sickly red light leaking from the creature's radiator grille flickered violently. A deafening, metallic shriek echoed off the cistern walls. And within seconds, that red light completely extinguished.

  Just like the parasites in the supermarket and the skyscraper, that massive mass of pitch began to melt with a disgusting hiss, turning into black and gray ash. But this time, it wasn't just flesh dissolving. As the pitch melted, the tons-heavy scrap armor holding that monster together lost its connection points.

  Car doors, the streetlamp pole, rebar, and concrete blocks collapsed on top of each other into the sewer water with a deafening crash. Nothing was left of the monster that had been an unstoppable killing machine seconds ago, except a pile of lifeless scrap abandoned to rust in the water and black ashes floating in the air.

  While standing in the filthy water up to his knees, Rust just noticed the sting in his left hand. During that horrific crash against the cistern wall, the fabric of his black tactical glove had torn, cutting the skin underneath. He wiped the tear with the thumb of his right hand.

  His eyes locked onto the liquid left on the fingertip of his glove. Even in the dim light of the dark cistern, its color was clear.

  It wasn't red.

  It was dark, thick, and pitch-black, just like the pitch flowing through the veins of the monsters he had just killed.

  No expression of shock, no terror formed on Rust’s face. He just stared at that black liquid for seconds with blank eyes. The source of that dark hunger inside him, that abnormal strength that allowed him to dodge bullets, was now seeping out of his own veins. He was one of them too.

  But why didn't he look like them? he thought to himself. If the same black poison, the same disgusting parasite flowed through his veins; why hadn't he turned into a flayed, mindless mass of flesh welded to piles of metal like those monsters? What separated him from those savage, blind mutations? Why did his body maintain its flawless human form?

  He pushed these questions, to which he had no answers, to the depths of his mind. He slowly clenched his fist, hid the black blood by rubbing it into the dark fabric of his glove, and raised his head toward the mouth of the crater above.

  Up there, on the edge of the crater, Nia’s breath hitched in her throat. This man who single-handedly destroyed that massive, unstoppable pile of metal... that nightmare that tore their entire squad apart, and did so without taking a single scratch, couldn't be human. Alarm bells were ringing in Nia’s mind.

  She quickly turned around and knelt next to Vance, who was on the verge of losing consciousness from pain on the ground, whose leg she had just bandaged together haphazardly. "Come on... we have to go right now," she whispered in a trembling voice. She grabbed the man, who was much larger than herself, by the arms and desperately tried to shoulder him.

  But right at that moment, she felt an ice-cold wind, a deadly shiver on the back of her neck.

  When she turned around, she gasped. That man in black was standing right behind her like a shadow, before she could even see when or how he had climbed that twenty-meter steep and shattered crater wall. He wasn't out of breath, nor was he tired.

  With that wild instinct born of panic, Nia grabbed the rusty pump-action shotgun lying on the ground and pointed it directly at the man's chest. Her hands holding the gun were shaking uncontrollably.

  Despite standing at the end of the barrel, Rust didn't flinch in the slightest. With a flat, ice-cold voice, he said, "Hello. I want to ask you a ques—"

  Just as he slowly reached his hand toward his breast pocket, toward that bloody photograph to finish his sentence, Nia shouted in panic.

  "Do... Don't you dare reach into your pocket! Raise your... hands!"

  Rust looked at the terrified girl in front of him. A very slight, exasperated muscle twitch appeared on his expressionless face, and he rolled his eyes slowly. He didn't care in the slightest about being at the end of a barrel, but he also didn't want to waste time on this meaningless panic. He raised his hands to shoulder height, slowly and in a non-threatening manner.

  "If you're happy now," Rust said in the same monotone voice. "Can I ask my question?"

  Nia’s eyes scanned the black clothes on the man. "Reveal your... your neck," she stammered.

  Understanding what the girl was looking for, Rust tilted his head slightly to the side with a patient movement and pulled back the collar of his coat. His neck was completely clean; there were no brands, tattoos, or scars.

  When Nia didn't see that dreaded gang brand on the man's neck, her tense arms holding the gun relaxed just a bit. She took a deep, shaky breath.

  "Alright," she said in a defeated voice. "I'll answer your question... But you're going to help me carry Vance to the camp. He's lost a lot of blood and..."

  Before Nia could finish her sentence, Rust took a single step forward. He wrapped his left arm around the waist of the hulking man lying on the ground, and without struggling in the slightest, as if he were lifting a sack of feathers, he hoisted him into the air in one smooth motion and threw him over his right shoulder. While carrying a hundred-kilo man, his posture didn't falter a millimeter, and his boots didn't experience the slightest tremor on the asphalt.

  Nia froze, terrified once again in the face of the man's terrifying, inhuman physical strength.

  Rust turned toward Nia, with the half-unconscious Vance lying on his shoulder. Looking into the girl's eyes with those cold, bottomless dark eyes, he asked:

  "So, which way are we going?"

  And that's Chapter 6! We finally introduced the 'Scrap-Weaver' concept to the battlefield. How did you guys like the boss fight? Also, Rust finally realizing the color of his own blood... what do you think this means for his humanity moving forward?

  If you enjoyed the chapter, don't forget to drop a rating/review or share your thoughts in the comments. Your support is the fuel that keeps this story going. See you in the next chapter as we head to the North Camp!