The subway car was no longer a vehicle; it was a digestive tract.
The smell hit Elias first—a cloying mixture of ozone, copper, and something sweet, like rotting fruit. It was the scent of Essence being spilled for the first time on a global scale. Beneath his feet, the linoleum floor was no longer just dirty; it had become viscous, greedily absorbing every drop of blood leaking from the corpses.
Around him, the transition was reaching a fever pitch of horror. A woman a few feet away wasn't screaming in pain, but in pure, abject terror as she stared at her own hands. Her knuckles were elongating, piercing through her skin to become jagged, translucent needles. She was undergoing a "natural evolution," her body bypassing the Shop to adapt to the slaughter in real-time. She didn't look human anymore. She looked like a glitch in the flesh, a biological error vomited by the System.
[WARNING: BIOLOGICAL ANOMALY DETECTED]
[THREAT LEVEL: MINOR]
Elias didn't wait to see her finish her transformation. He stepped over the twitching corpse of the man in the suit, his boots sticking slightly to the floor. The Essence he had absorbed earlier buzzed under his skin like cold electricity. His vision had become too sharp, too clinical. He no longer saw people; he saw threat vectors and resource reservoirs.
"Move!" he spat, shoving a teenager who was staring blankly at a floating screen.
The boy didn't react. He was scrolling through the Ascension Shop with a manic grin, his eyes reflecting icons of serrated blades and organ replacements. He was already addicted to the promise of power. He was already lost.
Elias reached the sliding doors. They were jammed, welded shut by an invisible force. Through the glass, the tunnel was unrecognizable. The concrete walls were pulsing, covered in thick, black veins that looked strangely like the roots Odin used to pump the life out of worlds.
[LAW #6: EXPANSION OF DOMAINS]
[CURRENT ZONE: THE VEINS OF MIDGARD (TRANSITIONING)]
"The train isn't moving because the tunnel is eating the tracks," Elias whispered, a cold sweat breaking out on his neck.
Suddenly, the roof of the car groaned. A massive, pale root, sharp as a spear, pierced through the ceiling, impaling a passenger who had been hiding under a seat. The man didn't even have time to scream. The root began to glow with a sickly blue light, drinking him dry until only a husk of gray, parchment-like skin remained.
[HARVEST IN PROGRESS: YGGDRASIL FEEDING UNIT #09]
"Out. I need to get out now," Elias growled.
He looked at his hands. His knuckles were bruised from his previous fight, but the skin was already knitting back together faster than it should. The Essence was working. He felt a primal urge—a hunger to find more prey, to kill again, just to feel that regenerative warmth. He suppressed a heave. The System wasn't giving him strength; it was injecting him with the hunger of a parasite.
He grabbed a heavy fire extinguisher from the wall. He didn't use it to put out a fire; he used it as a club, swinging with all his might against the emergency glass of the door.
CRACK.
The glass shattered into a thousand digital-looking shards. Elias leaped through the jagged hole, tumbling violently onto the gravel of the tracks.
The tunnel was a waking nightmare. The usual darkness had been replaced by a sickly phosphorescence emanating from the organic walls. Further down the tracks, he spotted other "players" who had escaped their cars. They weren't helping each other. They were circling one another in the dim light, improvised weapons in hand, waiting for the Law of Slaughter to justify their next move.
Elias stood up, his heart hammering against his ribs like a prisoner against bars. He looked back at the train. People were still trapped inside, frantically killing one another to gain enough levels and physical strength to break the windows.
A notification flickered on his retina, cold and mocking:
[TIME REMAINING: 13 DAYS, 23 HOURS, 45 MINUTES]
[CURRENT RANK: 6,402,110 / 8,142,905,112]
"Six million people are already ahead of me," Elias muttered, his voice trembling.
The Labyrinth was calling. From deep within the darkness of the tunnel, a rhythmic thumping began to echo. It wasn't a train. It was a heartbeat. The heartbeat of the world-machine.
At that moment, a familiar voice—that of an older but still vigorous man—called out to him from the shadow of a concrete pillar.
"Don't look at the rank, kid. It only makes you want to die faster."
Elias spun around, extinguisher raised, ready to crush the intruder's skull. Facing him stood a man in his sixties, dressed in a subway maintenance worker's uniform. He held a massive pipe wrench, already stained with black blood.
"I'm Jacques," the man said. "And if we stay here, Law #3 is going to turn us into fertilizer before the sun even comes up."
Elias narrowed his eyes. "Law #2... the tax... If we stay together, we lose 50%. Why are you talking to me?"
Jacques gave a sad smile, revealing yellowed teeth. "Because 50% of something is still better than 100% of nothing when the Wild Hunt comes down this tunnel. We aren't allies, Elias. We're just two pieces of meat trying not to be eaten by the same wolf."
Elias hesitated. The System screamed in his mind: [RECOMMENDATION: ELIMINATE SUBJECT TO OPTIMIZE GAINS]. Odin's logic was simple: solitude was the only efficiency. But Elias looked at the dark tunnel ahead, filled with sounds of chewing and inhuman screams.
"We get out of here," he finally said. "But if you raise that wrench at me, I'll tear your throat out."
"That's the spirit, kid. Welcome to the Hunt."
They began to walk toward the emergency exit, plunging into the metal and flesh bowels of the Parisian subway. Above them, on the surface, the world they knew was already dissolving into code, giving way to the cruel geometry of the Nine Realms.
The countdown continued to tick, indifferent to their fear.
[SYSTEM: PURGE PHASE IN 60 MINUTES...]