Leon cautiously leaned out from behind the shelf,and what he saw made his mind glitch for a second, like it simply refused to cooperate.
Hovering over the body of a zombie was something that had no right to exist in his world.
A wasp.
Not an ordinary one. A giant wasp, the size of a human head, with a black, segmented abdomen that gleamed wetly under the store's harsh fluorescent lights. Its half-translucent wings trembled with a quiet vibration, like a stretched membrane on the verge of snapping. And its eyes,huge, faceted,reflected the aisles in a warped, inhuman way.
Its mouthparts were buried in the zombie's skull.
Leon stared, stunned, as the creature literally ate the zombie's head from the inside,splintering bone and tearing through tissue with mechanical precision. Wet cracks and smacks filled the air until the remains slumped, lifeless, onto the tiles.
The wasp rose slightly. Its abdomen swelled,barely noticeable, but unmistakable,as if something inside it had thickened.
Then it let out a high, almost cheerful squeal.
Cold ran from Leon's neck straight down into his gut.
And then he noticed something even worse.
It was bigger than it had been a moment ago.
Only a little. Almost subtle. But enough for his brain to connect the dots in a way that sent panic surging through him.
He eased back a step, trying to move silently, practically holding his breath,
And at that exact moment, one of the wasp's glossy eyes rotated toward him.
It froze.
For a fraction of a second, they stared at each other in absolute silence.
Then the creature squealed again, clearer this time,almost… happy,and its wings snapped into a furious vibration as it launched off the floor.
It shot straight at him with unbelievable speed.
Leon spun and sprinted between the cramped aisles, knocking over baskets and slamming his shoulders into shelves. Behind him, the rising whine of wings grew louder with every heartbeat,
A blast of air grazed past him,
And the next instant, a heavy, dull crack thundered through the store.
The wasp, attacking at full momentum, drove its long black stinger straight into the concrete wall. So deep the structure shuddered. The creature hung there in an impossible position, thrashing violently, shrieking in furious, piercing bursts.
Leon stopped short, eyes wide.
He didn't think.
He scanned the floor and shelves in a frantic blur until his hand closed around the first heavy object he could grab,
A metal shopping basket, bent and smeared with blood.
He screamed,pure reflex,and lunged forward, swinging with everything he had. Again. Again. Again. Ignoring the burning pain in his arms and wrists.
Purple blood sprayed toward him, thick and sticky, splattering the tiles and soaking his clothes.
Leon didn't stop.
He kept striking until the creature's shriek collapsed into a choking, broken sound,until its body went slack and dropped heavily to the floor.
Still.
He stood over it, gasping, shaking from head to toe,
And then the familiar system window snapped back into existence in front of his eyes.
[You gain level 4 Big Wasp essence power. Agility +3, Strength +1]
Before he could even react, another notification overlapped the first.
[Level Up: LVL 1 → LVL 2]
[Stat Points Gained: +4]
Leon stayed frozen, breathing hard, staring at the floating messages. Their perfect geometry and sterile clarity looked so out of place in the bloody chaos of the store that his brow furrowed deeper and deeper as he tried to force rational thought into a world that was clearly done with being rational.
"What the hell…" he rasped, swallowing. "Did I just get thrown into some kind of game?"
Only then did something else,something painfully real,hit him.
Sticky.
He looked down.
His hands were coated in a dense purple sludge that slowly oozed between his fingers, glinting under the lights. His shirt and pants were smeared with it too. His face twisted in disgust, and he immediately started wiping his hands on his clothes,not because it helped, but because he needed to do something.
"Goddamn it…" he hissed, his stomach threatening to knot up again.
He lifted his gaze toward the spot where the giant wasp's body had been.
Except the corpse wasn't there anymore.
Instead, tiny particles of light began to rise from where it had fallen,gray and dull, drifting upward in lazy spirals. In their center, something formed.
A perfectly straight, metallic gray cube.
Smooth faces. No markings.
And beside it,like something tossed down carelessly by an invisible hand,appeared a scroll made of dark, almost black material, bound with a thin cord. Its surface seemed to swallow light instead of reflecting it.
Leon stared between the two objects, disoriented.
"What even is this…?" he said out loud, more to himself than anyone else. "And where did it come from…?"
As if answering him, another system window appeared.
[Gray Box]
Then his eyes shifted to the scroll, and more text unfurled in the air.
[Darkness Manipulation (Phase One Skill) – Tier: Novice]
Leon read both messages under his breath, sounding out the words slowly, as if speaking them aloud might make them feel more real.
It didn't.
If anything, the more he saw, the less he understood the rules of this world.
He didn't get time to think further.
When his gaze returned to the gray cube, another prompt appeared.
[Do you want to open Gray Box?]
Leon hesitated, heart picking up again. He swallowed and answered quietly, uncertain.
"Yes…"
The Gray Box shattered into a flash of light that made him squint.
And when the brightness faded, a sword lay in front of him, propped against the store counter.
It was simple. No ornaments. A slightly scratched steel blade and a solid leather-wrapped grip,something made for one purpose only: to hit hard, without finesse, without mercy.
Another notification appeared.
[Iron Longsword (Normal Grade)]
[A standard steel longsword designed for practical combat. Well-balanced and durable.
When equipped: Strength +3]
Leon stood there for a long moment, staring at the weapon as if focusing hard enough might make it vanish,or reveal itself as another hallucination.
It didn't.
When he finally reached out, the blade was cold and real beneath his fingertips.
A quiet, disbelieving huff escaped him.
"How is that even possible…?" he muttered, straightening and measuring the sword with his eyes. "A sword like this… out of a little gray box."
For a moment, he tried to find logic in it,some mechanism he could explain.
Then he shook his head, annoyed with himself, and exhaled through his nose.
"To hell with it," he said more quietly. "That box appeared out of particles of light that came out of a giant wasp. That alone is already beyond me, so…" He lifted a shoulder in a small shrug. "…I'll leave the logic for future me."
His eyes drifted to the scroll lying nearby,dark and visually heavy, like looking at it demanded more focus.
And right on cue, the system window appeared again.
[Darkness Manipulation (Phase One Skill) – Tier: Novice]
A description unfolded beneath it, line by line,clean, emotionless, the same sterile tone as everything else the system had displayed so far.
[Description: You can manipulate the basic form of darkness,an energy existing between light and absence. Allows limited shaping, suppression, and redirection of shadows and low-density dark energy. Effectiveness scales with Intelligence, Mana, and user imagination.]
Leon read it out loud slowly, like he was testing whether the words would sound any less insane spoken into the air.
"Manipulation… of darkness…" he repeated, frowning. "That's… a skill?"
Before he could think any further, another prompt appeared.
[Do you want to learn Darkness Manipulation?]
Silence settled.
Leon stood motionless for several seconds, hearing only his own breath and the distant, muffled sounds of the city beyond the walls. There was no room left for long analysis. Everything since morning had made one thing clear:
Doing nothing was worse than making the wrong choice.
Finally, he nodded.
"Yes," he said quietly.
The scroll lifted off the floor and began to crumble into particles of black energy,not smoke, not light, but something between, dense and spiraling. It flowed into his body through his skin, his chest, his hands, and Leon felt a brief, unpleasant tingling spread through him.
For a split second, his vision darkened.
Black symbols swam across his sight, rotating slowly in a circle, like someone was drawing them from inside his consciousness.
Then they vanished as abruptly as they'd appeared.
A message flashed in front of him.
[You have learned an active skill: Darkness Manipulation]
Leon blinked several times, frowning harder.
"I don't feel anything," he muttered, lifting his hands and inspecting them like he expected them to look different.
And that was when the silence shattered with a loud slam.
Leon whipped his head toward the store entrance as something hit the door hard enough to rattle the handle,and the candy rack he'd wedged beneath it.
A brief pause.
Then another impact.
And another.
Each one heavier than the last.