Nate entered the tower at dawn.
The darkness swallowed him, and when it released him, he was back in the ruins. The same crumbling buildings, the same purple vines, the same crimson sky shot through with veins of black.
But something was different.
The stalkers were gone.
He walked for an hour before he found the first one—a lone hunter, picking through the rubble near the cathedral. It saw him coming and froze. Not because of [Killing Intent]. He hadn't released it yet.
It froze because it remembered him.
The stalker turned and fled, chittering in alarm, disappearing into the shadows between buildings. Nate let it go. He wasn't here to chase stragglers.
He was here to hunt.
He pushed deeper into the ruins, past the cathedral, into sections he hadn't explored before. The buildings here were older, more decayed. The vines grew thicker, carpeting entire streets in pulsing purple. And the stalkers were different—larger, darker, with chitin that looked almost black in the dim light.
[Ruin Stalker — Level 10]
[Ruin Stalker — Level 11]
Higher level than the ones near the entrance. Better experience. Harder to kill.
Nate smiled and got to work.
The first pack found him near a collapsed overpass.
Three stalkers, moving in formation—two flanking wide while the third approached head-on. They'd learned. Adapted. These weren't the mindless hunters he'd faced before.
The center stalker lunged first, jaws splitting open to reveal that ring of teeth. Nate sidestepped, felt the wind of its passage against his face, and drove a fist into its flank as it went.
[Pressure] hummed through his bones. The punch landed with a wet crunch, ribs caving inward under the force. The stalker hit the ground twitching, legs scrambling against the stone, and then went still.
The flankers came in fast, trying to catch him while he was committed. He felt them more than saw them—that sharpened awareness he'd been developing, the fighter's instinct that told him where the next attack was coming from.
He dropped low, letting the first one sail over his head. Its claws raked through empty air where his skull had been, so close he felt the displaced air against his scalp. Before it could land, he was already rising, legs coiling, driving an uppercut into the second stalker's jaw.
[Impact].
The click. The focus. The multiplied force.
The stalker's head snapped back so hard its neck broke with an audible crack. It dropped like a puppet with cut strings, body going limp mid-air, hitting the ground in a heap of twitching limbs.
The last one scrambled to recover from its missed leap, clawed feet scraping against stone as it tried to turn and face him. Too slow. Nate was on it before it finished the turn, closing the distance in two strides. His knee drove into the joint where its head met its body, the weakest point on any stalker.
Chitin cracked. The stalker screamed—that horrible chittering shriek that echoed off the ruined buildings—and he silenced it with a second blow. His fist punched through the weakened armor, through the soft flesh beneath, until his arm was buried to the wrist in the thing's neck.
He ripped his hand free. The stalker collapsed.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
Experience gained.
Three kills. Maybe thirty seconds.
Nate looked at the blood dripping from his fist—not his blood, the stalker's—and flexed his fingers. Everything worked. Everything felt strong.
The grind was different this time.
Before, he'd been surviving. Scrambling from fight to fight, taking wounds, setting traps because he couldn't win straight battles. He'd been Level 9, underpowered, desperate.
Now he was Level 10, Grade E, an Enforcer with skills that made every strike count. The stalkers that had nearly killed him before went down in three hits. Four. Sometimes two, if he caught them right.
He wasn't struggling anymore.
He was farming.
Days blurred together.
He fell into a rhythm. Hunt during the light. Rest during the dark. Find water where he could—the same rusted pipes, the same mineral taste. Eat the tasteless plants that grew in the cracks of buildings. Sleep in defensible rooms with the entrances blocked by rubble.
The experience came slowly at first. Level 10 stalkers weren't worth much to someone who was Level 10 himself. But he found the Level 11s. Then the Level 12s, lurking in the deepest parts of the ruins. Each kill added a little more, a trickle that built toward a flood.
On the third day, he found a hunting ground.
A section of the ruins where the buildings had collapsed inward, creating a maze of rubble and half-standing walls. The stalkers used it as a territory—he could see their marks on the stone, smell their musk in the air. They'd claimed this place.
He walked in anyway.
The first stalker came from behind a broken wall. Level 11, bigger than the ones near the entrance, its chitin scarred from old fights. It didn't hesitate, didn't test him—just launched itself at his throat with killing intent.
Nate caught it by the leg.
The stalker's momentum worked against it. He used its own weight, pivoting, swinging it in an arc that ended against a concrete pillar. The impact shattered chitin and cracked stone. The stalker bounced off, landed in a heap, tried to rise.
He stomped on its head. Once. The skull cracked. Twice. It collapsed inward.
Movement behind him. He spun, fists up, and found two more stalkers emerging from the rubble. They spread apart, circling, learning from their packmate's mistake.
Smart. But not smart enough.
Nate feinted left, and the stalker on that side flinched back. He used the moment to close with the other one, getting inside its reach before it could react. His elbow found its eye cluster, driving deep into the soft tissue. The stalker screamed and thrashed, blinded, and he grabbed its head and twisted until the neck gave way.
The last one came at him while he was still holding its packmate's corpse. He let the body drop, sidestepped the lunge, and drove a knee into the stalker's ribs as it passed. Chitin buckled. The stalker hit the ground gasping, legs scrambling weakly.
He finished it with a punch to the skull.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
Experience gained.
More came. The noise had drawn them—stalkers emerging from burrows and shadows, converging on the intruder in their territory. Five. Then eight. Then a dozen, their chittering filling the air like static.
Nate didn't run. He planted his feet and let them come.
The first wave hit him in a rush of claws and teeth. He wove through them, slipping attacks by inches, countering with strikes that shattered chitin and broke bones. [Pressure] made every blow count. A jab that would have staggered a stalker now cracked its skull. A body shot that would have winded it now collapsed its ribs.
A stalker got behind him, jaws closing on his calf. Pain flared, sharp and hot. He reached back, grabbed its head, and ripped it off his leg along with a chunk of muscle. Blood poured down his shin. He smashed the stalker's skull against its packmate and kept fighting.
[Impact].
He threw the skill into a committed right hand, aiming for the largest stalker in the pack. The punch connected with its chest, and the force blew through it—ribs shattering, organs rupturing, the body lifting off the ground and crashing into two others behind it.
The survivors scattered.
Nate stood in the center of the territory, surrounded by dissolving corpses, blood running down his leg. His chest heaved. His hands shook—not from fear, but from the adrenaline still singing in his veins.
Seven kills. Maybe eight. And he was still standing.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
Experience gained.
Level Up! Level 10 → Level 11
The level-up warmth spread through him, and he felt the wound on his calf begin to close. Not fully—the damage was too severe for one level to fix—but enough to stop the bleeding. Enough to keep moving.
He limped deeper into the ruins and kept hunting.
By day five, the stalkers had adapted.
They didn't flee on sight anymore—they'd learned that running just meant dying tired. Instead, they fought in larger groups. Coordinated. Set ambushes of their own.
Nate walked into a building on the sixth day and found twenty of them waiting.
They came from everywhere.
The ceiling collapsed inward, rotten beams giving way to reveal stalkers clinging to the rafters. More burst through doorways on either side, chitin scraping against the frames. Still more crawled up through holes in the floor, emerging from basements and tunnels below.
Twenty of them. Maybe more. All Level 11 or 12, their dark shells gleaming in the dim light filtering through the broken windows.
Nate had walked into a trap.
The first wave hit him before he could think. A stalker dropped from above, claws extended, raking across his back. The pain was immediate—hot lines of fire from shoulder to hip. He spun, grabbed it by a leg, and slammed it into the one coming through the door on his left. Both went down in a tangle of limbs and thrashing claws.
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More coming. Always more.
He put his back to a wall—couldn't let them surround him completely—and started swinging. [Pressure] hummed in his bones, adding weight to every blow. A stalker's skull caved in under his fist, chitin crumpling like paper. Another folded around his knee, ribs shattering from the impact. A third took an elbow to the neck joint and dropped, head lolling at an impossible angle.
But there were too many.
Teeth sank into his shoulder, grinding against bone. The pain was blinding—white-hot, overwhelming. He roared and grabbed the stalker's head, fingers digging into its eye sockets, and ripped it off him. Skin tore. Muscle ripped. Blood—his blood—sprayed across the floor in a hot arc. The stalker thrashed in his grip, legs kicking, and he slammed it into the wall hard enough to crack the stone and its skull simultaneously.
Another one got his leg, jaws clamping down on his wounded calf. The pain layered on top of the old injury, magnified, unbearable. He stomped down on its head with his other foot, felt chitin crack but not break. Stomped again. Again. On the third stomp, the skull collapsed and the grip went slack.
He was bleeding from a dozen wounds. His back was laid open. His shoulder screamed with every movement. But the stalkers kept coming, and he kept killing them.
[Impact].
He threw the skill into a committed strike at the nearest stalker, putting everything behind it—all his weight, all his focus, all his intent. The punch connected with its chest, and the ribcage didn't just break. It exploded. Bone fragments and ichor sprayed outward, showering the stalkers behind it.
They flinched. Hesitated.
[Killing Intent].
He let it loose. Not aimed, not controlled, just a wave of pressure rolling off him in every direction. The air itself seemed to thicken. The shadows deepened.
The stalkers felt it. Some of them broke immediately, scrambling for the exits, climbing over each other in their desperation to escape. Others froze, paralyzed by something older than instinct, their legs locked and their jaws hanging open. A few—the strongest, the most desperate—kept coming.
Nate met them.
His fist found the first one's throat and crushed the windpipe. The second took a knee to the skull that caved in the entire top of its head. The third and fourth came together, flanking, and he grabbed them both—one in each hand, fingers digging into chitin—and slammed their heads into each other. Once. Twice. Until both skulls cracked and the bodies went limp.
The rest ran.
Nate stood alone in the center of the room, surrounded by dissolving corpses, blood pooling at his feet.
He counted the bodies before they faded. Eleven kills. The rest had scattered into the ruins, spreading the word: the hunter had become something worse.
His back was laid open to the muscle. His shoulder throbbed where the teeth had ground against the joint. His calf was a mess of torn flesh and old scars reopened.
He found a basement, blocked the entrance with rubble, and spent the night in darkness. Eating tasteless plants. Drinking rust-water. Sleeping in fits and starts, waking at every sound. Waiting for his wounds to close.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
Experience gained.
Level Up! Level 11 → Level 12
The level-up came while he was lying in the dark, and it was the only thing that saved him.
The warmth flooded through his body, knitting torn muscle, closing wounds, pulling him back from the edge. When it faded, he was still hurt—still scarred, still aching—but he could move again. Could fight again.
He crawled out of the basement and went looking for more stalkers.
On day eight, he found the nests.
Deep in the ruins, in the basements of collapsed buildings, the stalkers had made homes. Not just hunting grounds—actual nests, filled with eggs and young and the broodmothers that spawned them.
Nate had killed one broodmother before, during his first time on this floor. It had been Level 12, and the fight had nearly cost him his life.
Now he was Level 12 himself. Stronger. Smarter. Better equipped.
He descended into the first nest with [Killing Intent] blazing.
The nest was in what had once been a parking garage, three levels deep underground. The stalkers had filled it with some kind of organic matter—webs or secretions or something worse—that covered the walls and ceiling in pulsing sheets. The air was thick with a smell like rotting meat and ammonia.
Eggs clustered in the corners. Hundreds of them, translucent shells pulsing with the movement of the things inside. Some were already hatching, tiny stalkers crawling free with wet, glistening chitin.
And in the center, surrounded by her children, the broodmother waited.
[Ruin Stalker Broodmother — Level 13]
She was bigger than the one he'd killed before. Older. Her chitin was darker, almost black, and those too-human eyes tracked him with cold intelligence as he descended the ramp.
She screamed.
The sound echoed off the concrete walls, piercing, primal. And the nest came alive.
Stalkers poured out of the shadows—adults, juveniles, hatchlings barely bigger than his fist. They flooded toward him in a chittering wave, dozens of legs scraping against stone.
Nate let [Killing Intent] roll off him in a sustained pulse.
The hatchlings died instantly. Not from the pressure itself, but from the fear—their tiny bodies simply stopped, hearts giving out, legs crumpling beneath them. Dozens of them collapsed in a wave, their soft shells going still.
The juveniles scattered, trampling each other to escape, their half-formed minds unable to process what they were feeling. They fled up the ramps, out of the garage, into the ruins above.
Even some of the adults broke, fleeing past him without attacking, their survival instincts overriding their loyalty to the nest.
But the broodmother didn't run. And neither did the dozen adults that clustered around her, shielding her with their bodies, their chitin clicking as they readied themselves to fight.
Nate walked forward.
The first defender came at him fast, jaws splitting wide. He caught it by the head, one hand on each side of its skull, and pulled in opposite directions. Chitin cracked. Flesh tore. The head split apart in his hands, spraying ichor across his arms.
He dropped the body and kept moving.
The second and third came together, trying to flank. He ducked under the first one's lunge, letting it sail over him, and drove an uppercut into the second one's exposed belly. His fist punched through the softer chitin there, sinking into organs. The stalker convulsed around his arm. He ripped free, trailing viscera, and spun to catch the first one as it landed.
His knee found its spine. Something snapped—a wet, grinding crack. The stalker's legs stopped working. It hit the ground and he stomped on its head before it could drag itself away.
Four more came at once.
[Impact].
He threw a committed punch into the lead stalker's face, and its entire head disappeared in a spray of bone and ichor. The body stumbled forward two more steps before collapsing.
The other three hesitated.
Nate didn't.
He closed with the nearest one and grabbed its leg, pivoting, using it as a weapon against its packmates. The stalker shrieked as he swung it in an arc, its body crashing into the others, chitin cracking against chitin. He released it at the apex of the swing and sent it flying into a concrete pillar.
The remaining two tried to flee. He ran them down.
One took an elbow to the back of the skull that dropped it mid-stride. The other made it almost to the ramp before he caught it by the tail, dragged it back, and crushed its head under his heel.
Then the broodmother herself came.
She was faster than the others, despite her size. She hit him like a truck, all six legs churning, mandibles snapping for his face. He got his arm up and felt the jaws close around his forearm instead, chitin edges grinding against bone.
The pain was immense. He could feel his bones bending, threatening to break. Her mandibles were stronger than the regular stalkers'—designed to crush, to rend, to tear.
Nate didn't pull away. He stepped closer.
His free hand found her eye cluster—those too-human eyes that watched with such cold intelligence. He dug his fingers in and pulled.
The broodmother screamed—a different sound now, higher, desperate—and released his arm. She thrashed backward, ichor spraying from her ruined eyes, blinded and panicking. Her legs churned against the concrete, cracking it, as she tried to get away from him.
Nate followed her.
He climbed onto her back, fingers finding the gaps in her chitin, hauling himself up despite the pain in his mangled forearm. She bucked and twisted, trying to throw him off, but he held on.
His good hand found the joint where her head met her body—the weak point, the same place he'd killed so many stalkers before. He made a fist.
[Pressure].
He drove his fist down into the joint. Once. The chitin cracked. Twice. It shattered. Three times, and his fist sank into flesh.
On the fourth punch, something ruptured inside her. She convulsed once, legs spasming, and then went still.
Nate slid off her back and landed on the concrete, gasping. His forearm was a ruin—the broodmother's jaws had gone deep, scraping bone, tearing muscle. Blood dripped from his fingers.
But she was dead. And so was her nest.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker Broodmother] defeated.
Experience gained.
He found the eggs and crushed them, one by one. Methodical. Thorough. His wounded arm screamed with every movement, but he didn't stop until the last shell was broken and the last unborn stalker was dead.
Then he climbed out of the garage and went looking for the next nest.
The broodmothers were worth the most experience. Each one pushed him closer to the next level, the next threshold.
He hunted them systematically over the next two days. Found three more nests in the ruins—one in a collapsed subway station, one in the basement of what had once been a hospital, one in an underground cistern that flooded ankle-deep with stagnant water.
Each fight was brutal. The broodmothers were all Level 13 or 14, stronger than him, surrounded by defenders. He took wounds in every battle—claws across his chest, teeth in his legs, mandibles that left deep gouges in his arms.
But he won. Every time, he won.
[Ruin Stalker Broodmother] defeated.
Experience gained.
Level Up! Level 12 → Level 13
[Ruin Stalker Broodmother] defeated.
Experience gained.
[Ruin Stalker Broodmother] defeated.
Experience gained.
The ruins were becoming quiet.
He'd killed so many stalkers that the survivors had learned to avoid the sections where he hunted. He could walk for hours without seeing a single one—just empty buildings, pulsing vines, and the distant echo of chittering from creatures too afraid to approach.
He was running out of things to kill.
Day twelve. Maybe thirteen. He'd lost exact count somewhere around the nest clearing, but he knew roughly how long he'd been inside.
Which meant the timer was running out. Thirty days from integration. He'd entered the tower on day ten. That left... what? Seven days? Eight?
Not enough time to keep grinding slowly. He needed to move faster.
With time running short, he stopped playing it safe.
Instead of hunting stalkers one pack at a time, he started drawing them together. Making noise. Letting them see him. Leading them on chases through the ruins until he had dozens behind him, their chittering rising into a frenzy.
Then he'd turn, release [Killing Intent], and kill everything that didn't run.
It was reckless. Stupid. The kind of thing that got people killed.
It was also working.
He led a pack of fifteen into an ambush of his own—a narrow alley with vine patches on both sides. When they poured in after him, he triggered the vines with thrown rubble and watched as half the pack was dragged down screaming.
The rest he killed by hand.
He found a nest he'd missed, smaller than the others, and slaughtered everything inside in less than ten minutes. The broodmother was only Level 12—weaker than him now—and she died before she could land a single blow.
He drew two packs together and let them fight each other before finishing off the survivors.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker] defeated.
[Ruin Stalker Broodmother] defeated.
Experience gained.
Level Up! Level 13 → Level 14
Level 14.
One more level to 15. One more threshold before Floor 4 became reasonable.
Nate sat on the roof of a half-collapsed building and watched the crimson sky pulse overhead. His body ached. His wounds had healed, mostly, but the scars remained—a map of every fight, every near-death, every moment when he'd been slower or weaker than he needed to be.
He was close now. So close he could feel it.
Just a little more.
He was tracking a pack of Level 12 stalkers through the eastern section of the ruins when he heard something that made him freeze.
Voices.
Human voices.
Nate pressed himself against a wall and listened.
"—telling you, this place is picked clean. Someone's been through here."
"Look at these tracks. Fresh. One person, moving fast."
"So what, we're following some solo idiot? What's the point?"
"The point is anyone still alive on floor three has to be high level. High level means good gear. Good skills. Things we could use."
Three voices. Two men and a woman, from the sound of it. Coming closer.
Nate's jaw tightened. That didn't sound like friendly conversation.
"And if they don't want to share?"
A laugh. Low, ugly. "Then they don't get a choice."
He could hide. Let them pass. Avoid the complication entirely. He was here to grind, not to deal with other people.
But something in their voices—the casual cruelty, the predatory confidence—reminded him of the raiders. Of the scarred man who'd promised to return. Of the world outside the tower, where humans had already started hunting each other.
Nate stepped out of cover.
Three people stood in the street, maybe thirty feet away. Two men and a woman, armed with makeshift weapons—a machete, a metal pipe, a knife that looked like sharpened scrap. They wore torn clothes and hard expressions, and they'd clearly been in the tower for a while.
They saw him at the same moment he saw them.
For a long second, nobody moved. Nobody spoke.
Then the man in front—big, broad-shouldered, with a shaved head and a scar from eyebrow to jaw—smiled.
"Well, well," he said. "Looks like we found our solo idiot."
