Leon gripped the sword with both hands, and the moment his fingers tightened around the leather-wrapped hilt, he felt the weapon's weight,solid, unmistakable, unlike anything he'd ever held before.
A short, already-familiar system window blinked into view.
[Equipment Effect Applied]
[Strength +3]
Leon swallowed. Something in his shoulders and back shifted,subtle, but real,like his body had suddenly learned how to use strength it had always possessed, but never truly understood. He swept his eyes around the store, taking in the toppled shelves, the scattered goods, the narrow aisles.
A minute ago, it had just been a mess.
Now it looked like a battlefield.
His gaze locked on a small TV sitting beside the counter.
With no hesitation he strode over, yanked the plug from the wall, then,almost mechanically,swung the sword and sliced the cord clean near the set. The blade cut through plastic and metal with startling ease. Leon grabbed the cable and moved between two aisles, fixing it low,barely a few centimeters off the floor,pulling it taut into a crude tripwire that vanished into the store's dim, cluttered shadows.
And at that exact moment, the doors blew open with a crash.
Two zombies stumbled into the shop, roaring from their throats. Their bodies slammed into the candy rack that had been blocking the entrance, and the instant they saw movement deeper inside, they surged forward without hesitation,dragging their feet, kicking aside products, knocking things loose as they came.
Leon retreated a single step. His heart was pounding like a drum, but his eyes were focused,almost cold,as he waited for the timing.
The first zombie caught its foot on the wire and went down like a felled tree, yanking the second with it. The other lost balance and hit the floor beside it, both of them tangled together, flailing and scraping at the tiles in a chaotic snarl.
Leon moved immediately.
He sprinted to the first one and swung with everything he had.
The sword punched through its skull with a dull, wet crack. The blade sank deep,almost to the hilt,and blood and bone fragments sprayed across the shelves and his clothes. He didn't stop for a breath. He ripped the blade free and turned on the second zombie, which was just starting to rise.
One desperate, full-powered strike from behind,
The blade opened its throat.
The head dropped and rolled across the floor, bumping into a rack as blood arced outward in a wide spray, coating his pants and shirt with another layer of sticky red.
And before his mind could even register that it was over,that both bodies had gone still,panic still held him in a hard, iron grip.
"No… no…" he rasped, stumbling back half a step.
Then, as if something clicked inside him, he lunged forward again.
He drove the sword into the second zombie's chest with both hands, aiming where a living person's heart would be. The blade tore through rotten muscle and bone with a wet, nauseating sound, mangling the body even further. That still wasn't enough. He yanked the weapon out and stabbed the first one too,again, and again,like he needed absolute certainty that neither of them would rise.
Only when both corpses lay completely motionless, and the only sound left in the store was his ragged breathing, did Leon stagger back and press his spine against a shelf.
His hands wouldn't stop shaking.
System messages appeared one after another.
[Essence Record - Kill Confirmed]
[Target: Normal Zombie (LVL 3)]
[Reward: +1 STR | +3 VIT]
Then another.
[Essence Record - Kill Confirmed]
[Target: Normal Zombie (LVL 2)]
[Reward: +1 VIT]
Leon stood there with the sword hanging low, fresh blood dripping from the blade. He stared at the notifications,but this time there was no thrill in them. No meaning. Just dry lines of text floating above bodies that had once been people, now sprawled across a convenience store floor like broken objects.
His brow tightened.
Because logic told him he'd just killed… and the system was telling him he'd been rewarded for it.
Stats. Rewards. Growth.
It sounded like a joke. Like a badly stitched dream.
But when his eyes fell back on the corpses, something inside him cracked.
His hands started shaking harder.
At first it was barely noticeable, like he was cold,then it escalated until he had to clamp both hands around the hilt because he was afraid he'd drop the sword. His heartbeat turned wild and uneven, nothing like normal exertion, and his breathing went shallow, jagged, like air had suddenly stopped being enough.
"Calm down…" he whispered automatically, but his own voice sounded unfamiliar in his ears. "Calm down…"
He pressed a hand to his chest and felt his heart hammering beneath his palm.
And only now did it truly hit him how close he'd been to dying,not as an idea, not as it could've ended badly, but for real. Physically. By seconds. By one wrong move.
If he'd tripped.
If the wire had been a little higher.
If the sword had stuck in bone.
His knees buckled. Leon caught himself on the counter because his legs simply refused to cooperate. The fear that had been delayed finally arrived in full force, a heavy wave that brought nausea and dizziness with it.
"What is this…" he whispered, breathing faster. "What kind of world is this…"
Images flashed through his mind,minutes old, yet already unreal. The bus. The light. Screams. Bodies exploding. The woman rising with empty eyes. The giant wasp chewing through a zombie's skull. And now this,him, standing over corpses with a weapon in his hands.
It was too much.
He rested his forehead against the counter's cool surface and shut his eyes. His whole body trembled as if trying to shake off the adrenaline that was flooding him, because the fear hadn't left with the danger.
If anything, now it had time to settle in.
For several long seconds, Leon was just a terrified man who had barely survived.
And then…
Something started to shift.
Between heartbeats, between the chaos of his thoughts, a quiet, uncomfortable observation surfaced:
Despite the panic, the disgust, the terror,he was still standing.
He was breathing.
He was alive.
He had faced the threat and fought anyway.
Slowly, Leon lifted his head. He looked again at the sword, the blood on his hands, the system messages still floating in the air,and something in his gaze began to change. Not suddenly. Not in a single moment. More like a crack spreading through ice, widening by the second.
And through that crack, memories seeped in,not as one clear scene, but as a chain of small, exhausting, painfully familiar moments that had made up his life for years… and only now, in contrast to blood, fear, and adrenaline, did their deadness hit him like a blow.
Mornings with the alarm ringing at the same time, every day. Turning it off without thinking. Lying there a few minutes longer, staring at the ceiling with a weight he couldn't name, because nothing was technically wrong. The commute,same stops, same faces, the same conversations about nothing, held out of habit more than need. Classes where he was present in body, absent in mind, writing down just enough to pass and move on.
He saw himself coming back to his apartment, making a quick, tasteless meal and eating it in front of his phone or laptop,not because he was interested, but because silence felt worse. Then work,mechanical, repetitive, meaningless beyond the next transfer to his account, money that vanished as fast as it arrived. Days different in details, identical at the core. And him moving through it all like someone who'd stopped asking questions a long time ago, because the answers never changed anything.
Evenings when he fell into bed tired in a way that had nothing to do with satisfaction,only the sense that another day had been "completed," checked off like an obligation. The future didn't scare him. It didn't inspire him.
It just… didn't matter.
And now, standing among corpses with shaking hands and a heart that still beat too fast, Leon understood something that was both terrifying and strangely freeing.
That old life had been safe.
But it had also been dead.
The world had ended,at least, the world he knew. And instead of emptiness, he felt something he hadn't felt in years:
Intensity.
Fear that made every breath matter. Panic that hurt, but was real. Decisions that weren't about grades, money, or appearances, but about one simple question,
Live or die.
He stared at the sword in his hand and realized that for the first time, he wasn't clinging to normalcy,because normalcy didn't exist anymore.
And he wasn't sure he actually wanted it back.
"Maybe…" he whispered. His voice was still unsteady, but deeper than before. "…maybe this is a chance."
Not for happiness.
Not for peace.
For something else.
For a life that wasn't spent waiting for the next day to pass. For being someone who reacts, fights, decides, and pays the price, even if that price is pain, fear, and constant risk. A world that promised nothing for free, but offered something in return:
The chance to become more than just another anonymous face in a crowd.
Leon didn't stop being afraid. His hands still shook. His heart still raced.
But standing there amid blood, ruin, and system notifications, he thought,truly thought for the first time,that if he was going to die, he didn't want to die as someone who had spent his whole life walking past his own days.
With that thought pulsing somewhere deep inside him, Leon lifted his eyes and turned toward the shattered entrance. Dirty, uneven daylight spilled through, catching on dust floating in the air. And when he looked out at the city beyond, he no longer saw only chaos and danger.
He saw more than that.
Something that stirred fear and unease,yes,but also something else, something hard to name.
A hunger.
His mouth was still dry. His hands still trembled, and every sound from outside made his muscles tense on instinct. Yet there was a new light in his eyes,sharp, alert, stripped of the old emptiness,filled with a messy blend of dread, ambition, and a primitive need to move forward, even if what waited beyond the doors could kill him.
The world he knew was over.
But for Leon, standing among ruin, blood, and system messages, this was the first moment he felt something truly begin.
And on his lips, slowly, a small smile formed,honest for the first time in years, and just a little bit unhinged.