The "Central Plaza" Mall used to be a temple to the middle class's boring consumerism; a place of waxed floors, excessive air conditioning, and generic pop music. Now, it stood as a makeshift, grotesque fortress amidst the apocalypse.
Kael observed from the roof of an overturned delivery van about a hundred meters from the main entrance. Night was falling, and the mall's emergency lights flickered in red, giving the building the appearance of a bloody mouth.
The automatic glass doors had been blocked with a barricade made of patio furniture, wooden pallets, and... Kael adjusted his vision. Yes, they were. Corpses. A pile of human and Vector bodies, stacked like sandbags to absorb impacts and, more importantly, to send a clear message: We kill here.
On the second floor, behind the windows of the sports store, Kael saw movement. The glint of a lens, the reflection of a watch. Snipers. Not with high-power military rifles—those weapons were still rare—but with compound bows and hunting crossbows looted from the mall's own "Hunt & Fish" shop.
"Fast organization," Kael muttered, impressed despite himself.
The Global Announcement had changed the rules of the game less than an hour ago, and a local warlord had already emerged. The power vacuum filled faster than a Vector's stomach.
Kael activated his [Neural Synapse Enhancement] to focus his sight and read lips or catch details of the guards watching the main entrance.
There were three men. They wore private security vests (likely stolen from the mall's original guards, who were now dead or turned) and wielded baseball bats modified with long, rusty nails. One of them, a huge bald guy with a fresh, ugly scar crossing his face, was screaming at a family of four trying to enter.
Kael tuned his hearing, filtering out the wind noise and the distant moans of the city.
"Entry fee is 10 Essence Points per person!" the bald man bellowed, spitting on the ground. "Or give us all your food and the girl! Rules of 'The Kings'!"
"Please!" the father pleaded, a man with broken glasses hugging his wife and two small children. "We don't know how to transfer Essence. We're barely Level 1. My children are hungry. We don't have food, everything was stolen on the street."
"Then get lost or die," the bald man raised the bat.
The bat glowed with a faint, ominous red light. Kael recognized the phenomenon. It wasn't complex magic like Elena's. It was a basic melee combat skill from the Common System: [Heavy Strike]. It increased the damage of the next impact by 200%.
Kael analyzed the scene coldly. That red glow... was a standard skill. Anyone could learn it if they found a low-level "Skill Book" or practiced enough with a blunt weapon. It wasn't like his thing.
His [Biomass Harvest] wasn't something you could learn. It was part of his rewritten DNA. An Innate Ability.
According to internet forums he had frantically read before the net went down for good, fewer than one in a thousand survivors had an Innate Ability upon awakening. They were called "The Chosen," "Pure Awakened," or "Anomalies." The rest of humanity had the standard "Hero System" and had to grind to get what Kael had by biological birthright.
The bald guard, bored with the conversation, struck the father with the handle of the bat—not the nail part—but it was enough to drop him. The man fell, bleeding from his nose. The other two guards laughed, a cruel, nervous laughter of men who know there is no police to call.
Kael felt a pang of cold anger in his chest. He didn't consider himself a hero—heroes died first in movies—but he hated bullies. And, from a purely pragmatic perspective, those guards were bags of experience (or biomass) with legs that were blocking his access to the mall's resources.
"Three targets. Low level, but armed and with basic skills. Morale: non-existent."
Kael climbed down from the van. He wasn't going to ask for permission to enter.
He approached the entrance, walking down the middle of the street with a calm that contrasted with the surrounding chaos. He held the claw hammer in his left hand and the chef's knife in his right, both relaxed at his sides. His bloody clothes and empty, predatory stare made the family back away in fear as he passed, forgetting the guards for a moment.
The bald guard saw him approaching.
"Hey, you! The bloody hobo!" he shouted, pointing the glowing bat at him. "You got the fee or are you here to donate your organs to the cause?"
Kael stopped five meters away. The perfect range for an explosive sprint.
"I'm here to make a return," Kael said, his voice quiet.
"What?" The guard frowned, confused.
"Of pain."
Kael activated [Reinforce Muscle Tissue] to the max. His legs tensed, muscle fibers contracting with the force of hydraulic pistons beneath his skin.
He lunged forward. He was a blur of motion.
The bald guard tried to activate his [Heavy Strike] skill to attack, but the Standard System had a fatal flaw that Kael didn't suffer from: Cooldowns and Cast Times. The red glow of his bat flickered; he needed a second to charge the strike to maximum.
Kael didn't give him that second.
He closed the distance in a blink. The first hammer blow went straight to the bald man's right knee.
CRACK.
The sound was wet and crunchy, like snapping a green branch. The patella shattered. The man fell screaming, his skill canceled by physical trauma.
The second guard, a young man with a makeshift spear (a kitchen knife taped to a broom handle), tried to thrust at Kael's chest.
"Slow," Kael thought.
His [Neural Synapse] saw the attack coming in slow motion. Kael didn't even need to block. He simply twisted his torso forty-five degrees. The spear grazed his jacket. Kael caught the spear shaft with his left hand, yanked the kid toward him, and drove his own chef's knife into the youth's throat.
Fluid movement. Efficient brutality.
The third guard went into total panic. He dropped his bat and raised his hands, trembling. A blue window floated above his head, visible to Kael thanks to his enhanced perception.
[User: Guild Rat]
[Level: 2]
[Status: Terrified (Debuff: -30% Defense)]
"Wait! Don't kill me! I have an Innate Ability!" the guard screamed, lying desperately, his eyes darting around looking for an exit. "I'm valuable! The King needs me!"
Kael paused for a second, with the guard's partner's blood dripping from his face.
"Oh yeah?" Kael asked, tilting his head. "Which one?"
"Uh... I can... I can grow my fingernails!" the man stammered, inventing the first thing that came to mind. "They're like claws!"
Kael snorted in contempt. A lie. And even if it were true, it was pathetic compared to real evolution.
"Lying to the System is rude. And lying to me is fatal."
Kael threw the hammer with a flick of his wrist. The weapon spun once in the air and struck the guard in the center of the forehead with the flat side, dropping him instantly with a fractured skull.
Silence fell over the entrance, broken only by the agonized moans of the bald guard on the ground, clutching his shattered knee. Kael silenced him with a precise kick to the temple.
The family stared at Kael with a mix of reverent awe and absolute terror. He had just killed three armed men in less than ten seconds, using no visible magic, no fireballs or lightning, just speed and pure physical violence.
Kael's notification windows flickered on his retina, demanding attention.
[You have eliminated Human (Level 2).]
[You have eliminated Human (Level 2).]
[You have eliminated Human (Level 1).]
[SYSTEM WARNING: Consuming Biomass of one's own species (Homo Sapiens) may have psychological side effects and degrade mental stability. Do you wish to proceed with the Harvest?]
Kael looked at the bodies. Red blood mixed with the dust of the ground, forming a dark mud.
It was a line. A very thick moral line, perhaps the last one he had left. Eating zombies was survival; they were monsters. Absorbing humans... that turned him, biologically and ethically, into a predator of his own race. A cannibal.
But then he heard the screams from inside the mall. Cruel, drunken laughter. Screams of women calling for help. The unmistakable sound of "normal" people abusing their petty new power. "The Kings" were no better than the Vectors. In fact, they were worse. They had a choice, and they chose to be monsters.
If he wanted to destroy "The Kings," clear this place, and survive the night, he needed to be stronger than them. He needed them to fear him more than the zombies outside. He needed that energy.
"I won't eat their meat," Kael muttered, trying to rationalize the horror. "I'm just... recycling their wasted energy. They don't need it anymore."
[Yes. Proceed.]
Kael extended his hand. The red blood of the three guards began to move toward him, defying gravity. It didn't feel as "clean" or instinctive as the black blood of the Vectors. It felt heavier, denser, hot and sticky. A murky energy that tasted of iron and fear.
[Biomasa acquired: 12 units.]
[You have acquired a Muscle Memory Fragment: {Basic Bat Handling}.]
Kael blinked, surprised. Could he steal skills too?
No, he analyzed quickly. He hadn't gained the System skill [Heavy Strike]. He had gained the physical experience of the bodies he absorbed. His muscles now "remembered" how to swing a blunt object with a bit more technique, how to transfer weight from the hips to the strike. It was learning by bloody osmosis.
He looked up. The security camera above the entrance had its red light on. Someone was watching him from inside. Someone in the control room.
Kael looked directly into the lens, his dark eyes promising an imminent storm. He raised the bloody hammer and slowly pointed toward the interior of the building.
"I'm coming up," he said, knowing they couldn't hear him, but the visual message was universal.
He turned to the family, who were still trembling, unable to move.
"Leave," he told them, his voice devoid of human warmth. "This place is going to turn into a slaughterhouse in five minutes. Find a basement and don't come out."
The father nodded frantically, grabbed his children, and ran toward the dark street, preferring to take his chances with the zombies rather than stay near Kael.
Kael adjusted his grip on his weapons. He had 12 new Biomass points. Enough for a minor upgrade before the main course.
[Spend 10 Biomass: {Harden Epidermis I}.]
He felt an intense itching all over his body. His skin tightened, turning slightly greyer, losing its pink human tone and acquiring a texture harder to the touch, similar to cured leather. Broken glass or dull knives wouldn't cut him anymore. It was Level 1 biological armor.
Kael kicked the barricade of corpses and furniture, forcing his way into the mall.
The hunt for "Kings" had begun.