The sun was setting by the time Nate reached the outskirts of the warehouse district.
The buildings here were larger, more industrial—squat concrete structures with loading docks and rusted fences, parking lots filled with dead trucks and abandoned cargo. Everything was quiet. Too quiet. No monsters, no survivors, no signs of life at all.
Just silence and the fading light.
Nate slowed his pace, scanning the shadows between buildings. Something felt wrong. He couldn't pinpoint what, but his instincts were screaming at him to be careful.
He'd learned to trust those instincts.
The first sign of trouble was the smell.
It hit him as he rounded a corner—a thick, rotting stench that made his eyes water. Death. Not fresh death, either. Something that had been dead for a while.
He'd smelled corpses before. The destroyed settlement he'd passed through earlier had that same odor, faint but present. This was stronger. Closer.
He followed it.
The body was in the middle of the street.
A man, maybe forty, wearing the tattered remains of a security uniform. He'd been dead for at least a week, judging by the bloating and discoloration. Animals had been at him—or monsters, more likely. Parts were missing. The face was barely recognizable as human.
Nate had seen plenty of corpses since the integration. This shouldn't have bothered him.
But something was wrong.
He stared at the body, trying to figure out what was setting off his alarms. The position? The wounds? The—
The body moved.
Nate's fists came up instinctively.
The corpse twitched. Once. Twice. Then, with a horrible grinding sound, it started to rise.
The movement was wrong. Not like a person getting up—more like a puppet being pulled by invisible strings. Limbs jerked and spasmed. The head lolled at an angle that would have been impossible for a living person. Dead eyes, filmed over with white, stared at nothing.
It got to its feet. Stood there, swaying slightly, like it was waiting for instructions.
Then it turned toward Nate.
[Risen Corpse — Level 3]
The notification hung in the air, cold and clinical. Level 3. Pathetic.
But that wasn't what made Nate's stomach turn.
It was real. The rumors were true. Someone out there could raise the dead.
The corpse lurched toward him, arms outstretched, mouth hanging open. It didn't make a sound—no moaning, no growling, just the wet shuffle of rotting feet on pavement.
Nate waited until it was close.
Then he punched it.
The head disintegrated.
Bone fragments and rotted brain matter sprayed across the pavement. The body collapsed, twitched once, and went still.
[Risen Corpse] defeated.
Experience gained.
The experience was negligible. Less than killing a scavenger hound. But that wasn't the point.
Nate stood over the body—the truly dead body now—and thought about what this meant.
A necromancer. Someone who could take the dead and make them walk again.
A sound made him turn.
More shuffling. More footsteps. Coming from everywhere.
They emerged from the shadows.
Corpses. Dozens of them. Shambling out of alleys, stumbling through doorways, crawling from beneath wrecked vehicles. Men, women, some so decayed he couldn't tell what they'd been. All of them moving with that same jerky, puppet-like motion.
[Risen Corpse — Level 4]
[Risen Corpse — Level 2]
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[Risen Corpse — Level 5]
[Risen Corpse — Level 3]
The notifications flickered past as he scanned them. Level 2 to 5. Thirty of them, maybe more, forming a loose circle around him.
In any other circumstance, this might have been terrifying. An army of the dead, surrounding a lone man in the fading light.
Nate cracked his knuckles.
"Alright," he said. "Let's get this over with."
He moved through them like a scythe through wheat.
The first corpse lost its head to a straight punch. The second folded around his knee, spine shattering on impact. The third and fourth he grabbed by their skulls and slammed together, both heads exploding in a spray of rot.
[Killing Intent].
He let it loose, not because he needed to—the dead felt no fear—but out of habit. The corpses didn't react. They just kept coming, mindless, relentless, driven by whatever dark magic animated them.
It didn't matter. They were too slow. Too weak. Too fragile.
Nate waded into the horde and started killing.
A corpse grabbed his arm. He ripped it free, taking the corpse's arm with it, then used the severed limb to club its former owner into paste.
Three more came from behind. He spun, driving an elbow through one skull, a backfist through another, a stomp that crushed the third into the pavement.
[Impact].
He threw a committed punch into a cluster of corpses, and the force blew through them like a cannon shot. Bodies flew apart. Limbs scattered. The ones still standing stumbled over the ones that had fallen.
More kept coming. He kept killing.
[Risen Corpse] defeated.
[Risen Corpse] defeated.
[Risen Corpse] defeated.
[Risen Corpse] defeated.
[Risen Corpse] defeated.
Experience gained.
The notifications scrolled past in an endless stream. He stopped counting after twenty.
The corpses were everywhere now—emerging from buildings, crawling over fences, shambling down every street that led to his position. Forty. Fifty. Sixty.
It didn't matter. They were slow, and he was fast. They were weak, and he was strong. They were Level 2 through 5, and he was Level 20.
This wasn't a fight. It was pest control.
He lost himself in the rhythm of it.
Punch. Shatter. Step. Punch. Shatter. Step.
[Pressure] added weight to every blow, turning his fists into wrecking balls. [Iron Body] absorbed the occasional hit—a clawing hand, a biting mouth—without slowing him down. The Enforcer's Mantle deflected the worst of it, keeping him clean while everything around him turned to pulp.
Five minutes. Ten. The corpses kept coming.
He kept killing.
The last one fell as the sun finally dipped below the horizon.
Nate stood in the middle of the street, surrounded by the scattered remains of what had once been an army. Body parts littered the pavement. The stench was overwhelming—rot and decay and something else, something chemical, like whatever magic had animated them was finally dissipating.
He counted the bodies. Tried to, anyway. Most of them were in too many pieces to count properly.
Sixty-three. Maybe more.
Experience gained.
The experience was still negligible. Sixty corpses at Level 2 through 5 barely moved the needle compared to what the tower had offered. But that wasn't why he'd killed them.
He'd killed them because they were in his way.
And because every corpse left walking was a soldier for the enemy.
Nate wiped the rot from his hands and kept moving east.
The warehouse settlement should be close now. Less than a mile, if Frank's directions were accurate. He could see larger buildings ahead—actual warehouses, with reinforced walls and loading bays that would make decent fortifications.
If anyone had survived, this is where they'd be.
He found the settlement twenty minutes later.
It was exactly what he'd expected—a cluster of warehouses surrounded by makeshift walls. Vehicles had been pushed together to form barricades. Guard towers rose at the corners, cobbled together from scaffolding and scrap metal. Torches burned along the perimeter, casting flickering light across the walls.
It was intact. Defended. Alive.
Nate felt something loosen in his chest. They'd made it. Someone had made it.
He raised a hand and started walking toward the main gate.
"Hello!" he called out. "I'm a survivor from a camp to the west. I'm here to—"
The arrow took him in the shoulder.
Pain exploded through his arm.
Nate staggered, looking down at the shaft protruding from his flesh. An arrow. An actual arrow, with fletching and everything.
"What the—"
More arrows. A volley of them, raining down from the guard towers. He dove to the side, rolling behind a wrecked car as shafts thudded into the pavement where he'd been standing.
"Hold your fire!" he shouted. "I'm not—"
"Kill it!" someone screamed from the walls. "Don't let it get close!"
More arrows. And now people were emerging from the gate—actual people, living people, armed with makeshift weapons. Spears, clubs, a few swords that looked like they'd been scavenged from a sporting goods store.
They charged toward him, faces twisted with fear and determination.
"Kill the dead walker! Kill it before it gets inside!"
Nate raised his hands.
"Wait! I'm not dead! I'm—"
A spear thrust toward his chest. He knocked it aside, careful not to break the weapon or the arm holding it.
"Listen to me! I'm alive! I'm human!"
They weren't listening. More of them poured through the gate, surrounding him, weapons raised. Torchlight flickered across their faces, and Nate saw the terror in their eyes.
They weren't attacking out of malice. They were attacking out of fear.
They thought he was one of the corpses.
Another spear came at him. He caught the shaft, held it, looked into the eyes of the man holding it.
"I'm not dead," he said, keeping his voice calm. "Check my pulse. Feel my breath. I'm alive."
The man hesitated. Behind him, the others hesitated too.
But the archers on the walls were still drawing. Still aiming.
"Please," Nate said. "Just give me a chance to explain."
The arrow flew before anyone could stop it.
