Crazy or not, he's on our side.
That thought barely finished forming when the ground outside made a sound it absolutely should not have. A deep, wet crack. The veteran's head snapped up.
"What the fu..."
The asphalt in the street split apart like a rotten scab being torn open. Concrete buckled. Rebar screamed. And then a hand burst out of the ground. Not a hand. A claw.
No skin. No fat. Just corded muscle wrapped tight around bone, tendons flexing visibly as it dug into the street and pulled. The thing hauled itself free in a spray of dirt and shattered pavement.
Two meters tall. Humanoid only in the loosest, most insulting sense of the word. No eyes. No skin.
Its head was a smooth, muscle-wrapped skull with a vertical slit where a mouth should have been and from that slit spilled a tongue far too long, thick and wet, lolling like a serpent's.
It sniffed the air. The sound was obscene. Like meat being dragged across glass. The veteran felt the blood drain from his face.
"No… no no no…"
The monstrosity's head snapped sideways with a sound like a breaking branch. It moved. A blur of muscle. Something screamed.
A Fallen, still alive, still shouting, still thrashing, was ripped off the street and hurled Into the air at least 10 meters high like trash.
Then the body hit the ground and cracked open on impact, ribs exploding outward, skull bursting like an egg dropped from a height. Silence followed.
The veteran staggered back, spine hitting the wall hard enough to rattle his teeth.
"…we're fucking dead,"
He couldnt help but whisper.
...
MC POV
The notifications wouldn't stop.
KILLED A FALLEN + XP
KILLED A FALLEN + XP
KILLED A FALLEN + XP
K...
They stacked and overlapped, flashing in the corner of my vision like a broken slot machine. Every kill fed it. Every corpse paid in numbers.
I was laughing my ass off, breath hitching between cackles, chest burning, vision swimming red at the edges.
"HAHA... hah... HA..."
Then the sound changed. Not gunfire. Not screams. A wet crack. My laughter froze mid-breath. I watched it happen in slow motion.
A Fallen, still alive, still screaming was ripped off the street like it weighed nothing. Ten meters up. Maybe more. Arms flailing, mouth open, sound tearing out of him. Then he hit the cracked asphalt.
Body bursting like an overripe fruit. Ribs exploded outward. Skull didn't shatter, it failed, collapsing in on itself with a sound like a dropped melon. Silence followed. My laughter died in my throat.
The XP notifications kept ticking. I didn't even see them anymore. I lowered my head slightly and looked. At the street. At the thing that had done it.
Then I glanced down at the minigun in my hands. Still hot. Still heavy. Still real. Then back up.
The abomination stood there, half-crouched, all muscle and tendon, skinless like it had been flayed by reality itself. Two meters tall at least. No eyes. No face.
Just a yawning mouth split too wide, a tongue spilling out like a serpent tasting the air. It sniffed. Slow. Deliberate. And then it snapped its head toward me. Genesis screamed.
"FUCK, FUCK FUCK FUCK, NO NO NO..."
Her avatar jittered, glitching hard.
"That's a TIER ONE ABOMINATION dude, that's not a Fallen, that's, fuck, THAT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE!"
I didn't answer. My jaw clenched so hard my teeth screamed. I brought the minigun up as I did the abomination moved. Fast. Too fast.
It blurred sideways, concrete detonating where it had been a fraction of a second ago as my first burst chewed into the rooftop instead.
"BRRRRT...!"
I dragged the fire after it, tracking on instinct, mental memory screaming louder than fear.
The thing twisted, contorted, spine bending in ways it shouldn't, bullets tearing chunks out of its torso but the thing simply didnt give a fuck about It.
"FUCK, YOU PSYCHO WE GOT TO BAIL NOW!"
Genesis screamed being the rational one here.
"Shut the fuck up and let me do my thing"
I growled through my teeth. The abomination bounded up a wall, ran along it, then kicked off, launching itself sideways. Rounds stitched across the air where it had been.
It landed, skidded, tongue snapping out, tasting. Then it charged. Straight at me. Genesis's scream spiked into distortion.
"IT'S LEAPING, ITS LEAPING MOVE MOVE MOVE...!"
I didn't move. I planted my foot. The world narrowed. No HUD. No XP. No noise except the scream of the barrels and my own breath grinding out of my chest.
I gritted my teeth so hard my gums bled and leaned into the recoil with evrything I had left and held the trigger down.
"BRRRRRRRRT...!"
The minigun howled like an angry god. The abomination hit the storm head-on. Rounds tore into it mid-air. Its chest collapsed inward, muscle vaporizing under the sustained fire.
One arm came off in a spray of meat and bone. The leap faltered, momentum breaking. It slammed into the rooftop in front of me hard enough to crater concrete. It tried to get up. I kept firing.
The rounds walked up its body, chewing through Its flesh. The tongue was severed. The torso shredded. It screamed, high and wet and furious. I tilted the barrel up and erased its head.
The impact was obscene. The skull didn't just break. It detonated. Bone fragments and liquefied brain matter splattered across the rooftop and the side of the VTOL, raining down in a red mist.
The body spasmed once. Twice. Then went limp. Still firing, I walked the burst through what was left, reducing the torso to ruin until the shape stopped being anything recognizable.
Finally after no bullets came out anymore I released the trigger. The barrels screamed as they spun down, glowing white-hot.
The abomination's remains slid slowly across the rooftop, hit the edge and slumped, tumbling down the side of the building in a wet cascade of ruined meat. Silence rushed back in.
Genesis hovered in front of me, shaking. Her voice came out thin, cracked, bordering on hysterical.
"…you..."
Static crackled through her.
"…you absolute fucking adrenaline junkie, what the hell where you thinking?!."
I kept staring at the edge of the roof. At the empty space where the thing had gone over. Where gravity had finally claimed something that didn't belong in the world.
"Relax,"
I muttered. My tongue felt thick. Heavy.
"It's dead."
Suddenly whatever had been holding me upright, whatever switch had flipped in my head, whatever hobo mojo had been flooding my veins, started to drain all at once. Not slowly.
Not gently. It just left like adjos amigo, see you never kind of way. My knees buckled. I slumped forward, catching myself against the minigun, the metal scorching through my clothes as my weight sagged onto it. My vision smeared. Colors bled together. The rooftop tilted like a bad dream.
Genesis's voice spiked instantly.
"Hey... HEY... no, no, no... don't you fucking dare...!"
Her words stretched, warped, like they were traveling through water. My ears rang again, louder this time, drowning her out. The world dimmed.
The last thing I saw, floating lazily in my vision, was a system notification bursting into existence with absurd, over-the-top flair.
KILLED A TIER ONE ABOMINATION + XP
MISSION COMPLETE
Triumphant trumpets blared. Fireworks exploded across my HUD in garish colors. Confetti rained down.
And then, because the system was apparently a sick bastard, a sexy chibi girl in a bunny suit complete with bunny ears, tail a black one piece corset and fish stockings with high heels popped into view, gave me a heart kiss, and winked, seeing this I snorted weakly.
"…worth it,"
I mumbled In barely coherent words.
...
Genesis third person POV
"Oh fuck no."
No no no no no.
Genesis shot forward, her avatar flickering violently as she hovered inches from Dracula's slumped form.
His weight was fully on the minigun now, head hanging, blood dripping steadily onto the rooftop and the gun. His vitals were collapsing. Tourniquets failing. Blood volume critically low.
Neural activity spiking and then dropping. That unique status, the red, pulsing, wrong thing was gone. Just gone. Vanished like it had never been there. Her mind screamed.
"Fuck If you die..."
Her voice cracked, unfiltered panic ripping through her tone.
"...I fucking die too, you idiot!"
She tried to stabilize him. Tried to reroute blood flow, flood him with adrenaline, override biological locks she wasn't supposed to touch. Error after error slammed into her. Then. DING.
The sound was bright. Clean. Infuriatingly cheerful. An XP bar slid into existence. Genesis froze. The bar was already nearly full. The bar crept forward. Filled. Paused. Then.
LEVEL UP
LEVEL 1 → LEVEL 2
The bar reset and immediately surged again, refilling to just shy of the maximum. Notifications cascaded down her perception.
+1 STAT POINT AWARDED
Before she could even process that. Another system message overrode everything else.
SYSTEM FREBIE FOR LEVELING UP RESTORING PLAYER HP