The impact wasn't just a physical collision; it was a tectonic event contained within the concrete walls of the loading bay.
When the Ironhide Kong—a four-meter nightmare of muscle and chitin—crashed into Kael, the laws of physics seemed to scream in protest. Kael had raised his sledgehammer in a horizontal block, bracing his elbows against his ribs and planting his feet wide. He had activated every defensive mutation his body possessed: his skin was rigid leather, his muscles were steel cables, and his bones were dense lead.
It barely mattered.
CRUUUNCH.
The sound was sickeningly loud. It was the sound of the sledgehammer's hickory handle disintegrating instantly. The Kong's fist, the size of a wrecking ball, smashed through the wood and drove the steel head of the hammer directly into Kael's chest.
Kael didn't fly backward. The force was too downward, too crushing. Instead, he was driven into the floor. The concrete beneath his boots exploded, creating a crater of dust and rubble. His knees buckled, threatening to snap backward, but his enhanced tendons held with a groan that sounded like tearing metal.
For a microsecond, time froze. Kael was face-to-face with the Alpha. He could smell the beast's breath—rotten meat and ozone. He could see the madness in its four glowing red eyes.
Then, the kinetic energy won.
Kael was swatted aside like a fly. He skipped across the loading bay floor, tumbling violently, crashing through a stack of wooden pallets before slamming into the far wall. The impact left a spiderweb of cracks in the brickwork.
"Kael!" Elena screamed, her voice bordering on panic.
She had expected him to hold the beast for a few seconds, maybe divert its path. She hadn't expected him to be launched like a ragdoll.
The Kong roared in triumph, beating its armored chest with a sound like thunder. It turned its massive head toward Elena. The threat was gone. Now, it wanted the snack.
But from the pile of broken pallets and dust, a sound emerged.
A low, guttural cough. Then, a laugh. A wet, broken laugh.
"Is that... all you got?"
The Kong stopped. It turned back.
Kael pulled himself out of the debris. His chest looked caved in. His left arm hung at a wrong angle. Blood—bright, oxygenated red—poured from his mouth, staining his grey chin.
But as he stood, a sickening pop echoed in the quiet bay. Kael grabbed his dislocated left shoulder with his right hand and slammed it back into the socket. He gritted his teeth, his eyes flaring with that violet predatory light.
[Critical Damage Detected: Rib fractures (x4). Sternum hairline fracture.]
[Adrenaline Burst active. Pain receptors dampened by 80%.]
[Regeneration Protocol: Prioritizing internal organs.]
"Hey, ugly!" Kael spat a tooth onto the floor. "I didn't hear no bell."
He picked up a piece of the broken pallet—a jagged 2x4—and gripped it like a shiv. It was pathetic against a Level 15 Alpha, but it was an insult. And Alphas hated insults.
The Kong shrieked in rage. It abandoned Elena and charged Kael again.
Good, Kael thought, his vision swimming with red warnings. Keep looking at me.
"Now, Elena! Cut him!"
As the beast thundered past her, focused entirely on the unkillable cockroach that was Kael, Elena moved. She didn't use a skill immediately; she used her raw agility. She sprinted parallel to the beast, waiting for the moment its arm extended to crush Kael.
The Kong swung. Kael ducked under the blow, the wind of the fist ruffling his hair. He stabbed the jagged wood into the beast's armpit—a soft spot. The wood splintered harmlessly against the thick hide, but it was annoying enough to make the beast flinch.
That flinch was the opening.
Elena leaped off a forklift, soaring through the air.
"[Wind Blade: Piercing Gale]!"
She thrust her sword forward. The wind magic concentrated at the tip, forming a drilling vortex. She aimed for the beast's right elbow, the inside of the joint where the armor plates had a gap.
SHH-THUNK.
The sword sank deep. Blood, black and oily, sprayed into the air.
The Kong howled, a sound of genuine pain this time. It thrashed, spinning around with a backhand swing that caught Elena in mid-air. She tried to block with the flat of her sword, but the force was overwhelming. She was sent flying, crashing onto the hood of a delivery truck.
"Elena!" Kael shouted.
He saw her slide off the hood and fall to the ground. She wasn't moving.
The Kong looked at her, then at its bleeding arm. It decided the girl with the sharp stick was the bigger threat. It began to lumber toward her, dragging its injured arm.
Kael felt a cold dread wash over him. If that thing reached her, she was dead. Paste.
He looked around for a weapon. His sledgehammer was gone. The wood was useless. He needed mass. He needed something heavy enough to hurt a mountain.
His eyes landed on the forklift Elena had jumped from. It was an industrial model. Heavy steel forks.
Can I lift that?
[Strength: 7.2 (Overclocked to 10.8 with Adrenaline).]
[Success probability: Low. Muscle tear probability: 100%.]
"Fuck the probability."
Kael ran to the forklift. He didn't try to drive it. He grabbed the steel carriage assembly—the heavy metal grid that held the forks. It was bolted on, but the bolts were rusted.
He roared, channeling every ounce of Biomass energy into his biceps and back. The veins in his neck threatened to burst.
RIP.
With a screech of tearing metal, Kael ripped the steel carriage off the machine. It must have weighed two hundred kilos. To a normal human, it was an immovable object. To Kael, it was a desperate club.
He ran. He didn't sprint—he couldn't sprint with that weight—but he gathered momentum like a boulder rolling downhill.
"LEAVE HER ALONE!"
The Kong turned just in time to see Kael swinging a massive grid of solid steel at its face.
CLANG-CRUNCH.
The impact was glorious. The steel forks smashed into the side of the Kong's head. One of the Alpha's four eyes burst in a shower of vitreous humor. A tusk cracked. The sheer mass of the blow knocked the four-meter beast sideways. It stumbled, crashing into a stack of shipping crates.
Kael dropped the improvised weapon, his chest heaving. His arms felt like they were on fire. He had torn muscles in his back; he could feel the warm wetness of internal bleeding.
But the beast was down.
Not dead. Just down.
It tried to rise, shaking its massive head, growling low in its throat. It was stunned.
"Elena!" Kael shouted without looking back. "Wake up! I can't do that again!"
On the ground near the truck, Elena gasped, sucking in air. She coughed, clutching her ribs. She looked up and saw the Kong struggling to stand, and Kael standing between them, swaying on his feet, unarmed and broken.
She realized what he had done. He had literally torn a machine apart to save her.
She forced herself up. Her mana was low. She had one shot left.
"Move, Kael!" she screamed.
Kael dove to the side.
Elena didn't run. She closed her eyes for a heartbeat, channeling every remaining drop of blue energy into her blade. The sword hummed, vibrating so violently it sounded like a swarm of hornets.
She charged.
The Kong saw her. It raised its good arm to smash her.
"[Secret Art: Flash of the Void]."
It wasn't a wind blade. It was pure speed. Elena became a streak of silver light. She didn't cut the arm. She ran under it. She slid across the oil-stained floor, passing directly beneath the beast's chest.
As she slid, she thrust the sword upward.
Into the soft tissue under the chin. Through the palate. Into the brain.
She slid out the other side, rolling to a stop.
The Kong froze. Its raised arm hung in the air, trembling. Then, slowly, heavily, it collapsed. It fell face-first onto the concrete, lifeless.
The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the settling dust and Kael's ragged breathing.
[Target Eliminated: Ironhide Kong (Alpha).]
[Contribution: 60% (Tank/Damage).]
[Experience distributed to Party Member: Elena.]
[Elena has reached Level 6.]
Kael slumped against the forklift, sliding down until he sat on the floor. He checked his body. He was a mess. But he was alive.
Elena walked over to him, using her sword as a cane. She looked exhausted, pale, but her eyes were wide with disbelief.
"You..." she panted. "You ripped a forklift apart."
"It was in my way," Kael wheezed, trying to crack a smile but grimacing instead.
"You're a monster," she said, but there was no fear in her voice this time. Only respect. Maybe even awe.
"I'm hungry," Kael replied.
He looked at the mountain of meat that was the Kong. The system prompts were already appearing for him.
[Alpha Biomass Available for Harvest.]
[Rare Genetic Material Detected: {Chitinous Armor}, {Hyper-Density Muscle}.]
"Go ahead," Elena said, waving a hand tiredly. "Do your thing. I'll watch the door."
Kael dragged himself to the corpse. He began the harvest. It was a long process this time, almost twenty minutes of intense absorption. He felt his bones thickening, his skin becoming even tougher, turning a darker shade of slate grey. He healed completely, his ribs knitting together stronger than before.
When he finished, the Kong was nothing but a dried husk of skin and bone.
But as the carcass deflated, something caught Kael's eye.
Buried deep within the chest cavity of the beast, where the heart had been, there was a glowing orb. It wasn't Biomass. It was a solid object, pulsing with a heavy, gravitational purple light.
"A drop," Elena whispered, stepping closer. "Boss drops. I've read about them in the tutorial notes."
Kael reached out. His hand brushed the light.
The orb shattered, revealing the object inside.
It wasn't a ring, or a scroll, or a potion.
It was a sword. But to call it a sword was an understatement. It was a slab of black metal, single-edged, thick as a bible and long as a man. It had no crossguard, just a long handle wrapped in rough, grey leather. The metal itself looked like it had been forged from the void of space; it absorbed the light around it. Along the spine of the blade, faint red runes pulsed like a heartbeat.
[Item Identified: The Black Iron Tyrant.]
[Rank: Rare (Growth Type).]
[Type: Greatsword / Ultra-Heavy Weapon.]
[Weight: 180 kg.]
[Requirements: Strength 7.0 or higher.]
[Description: A weapon forged for those who do not fence, but crush. It feeds on the kinetic energy of its wielder. It grows heavier as it drinks blood.]
"180 kilos..." Elena read the description hovering in the air. Her eyes bulged. "That's almost 400 pounds. That's not a sword, Kael. That's an I-beam with an edge. No human can lift that."
Kael stood up. He felt the new power of the Kong coursing through his upgraded muscles. His Strength stat was now resting permanently at 8.5 after the feast.
He reached out and grabbed the handle. The leather felt rough and perfect against his callous palm.
He didn't struggle. He didn't grunt.
He lifted it with one hand.
The weapon hummed in his grip, a low, menacing vibration that traveled up his arm and settled in his chest. It felt... right. The knife had always felt like a toy. The sledgehammer was unbalanced.
This? This felt like an extension of his own density.
He swung it. A simple horizontal cut.
WOOSH.
The air displaced by the massive blade created a gust of wind that blew Elena's hair back. The momentum was terrifying. If that hit anything—armor, wall, flesh—it wouldn't just cut. It would obliterate.
"It's heavy," Kael said, a genuine, dark smile spreading across his face for the first time since the apocalypse started. "I love it."
He rested the flat of the blade on his shoulder. The metal was cold against his neck.
"Does it have a sheath?" Elena asked, staring at the monstrosity.
"No," Kael said. "It doesn't hide."
Elena shook her head, sheathing her own elegant, glowing rapier. "We make quite a pair. The Rapier and the Wrecking Ball."
"The Predator and the Duelist," Kael corrected.
They walked toward the exit of the loading bay, stepping into the cool night air. The city was still burning, the screams of the dying still echoing in the distance. But Kael no longer felt like prey running for cover.
He had his biology. He had his weapon. And he had an ally who didn't try to stab him in the back.
"Where to now, Kael?" Elena asked, looking at him.
Kael looked at the Black Iron Tyrant resting on his shoulder. He looked at the vast, ruined city that was now his hunting ground.
"We find a place to sleep," Kael said. "And tomorrow... we hunt the rest of the Kings.