Valeria watched it all in silence, not moving from where she stood. Her thoughts flowed smooth and clinical like she wasn't witnessing a fight for survival, but a simple field test.
Not bad, she admitted. For a human who hadn't seen real combat a day ago.
Leon didn't pretend he was stronger than he was. He saw the gap immediately and didn't try to brute-force his way through it. The moment he accepted that this opponent outclassed him in a direct clash, he shifted, instinctively, to what he could control: terrain, tempo, distance, and his own speed.
That was the difference between someone who died in the first week… and someone who actually started learning.
He baited the brute, used the environment, leaned hard on his advantage in mobility,
Valeria's eyes narrowed as Leon reached the fallen zombie and drove his sword down into its head with everything he had.
A dull, heavy thunk rang out, wrong. Not the wet give of rotting skull. More like striking stone.
The blade bounced slightly, failing to sink in the way it should have.
The zombie's head smacked the asphalt. The creature let out a low, furious roar, and Leon's eyes went wide at the resistance under his hands. He didn't stop to process it. Instinct took over.
Instead of stabbing again in the same spot, he changed angle and target, slashing at the neck with full force, aiming to take it off in one clean motion.
The muscles were too hard.
The sword bit in… barely a quarter of the way.
Dark blood sprayed, thick, heavy, splattering the asphalt as the zombie began to push itself up on one arm, like pain was nothing but a mild annoyance.
Leon didn't wait.
He reached out and ripped the shadow from beneath the zombie, forming shadow chains, not to bind it. He already knew that wouldn't hold. He used them to weigh it down, to force it flat for just a moment as the monster tried to swing again.
The darkness stretched to its limits, groaning under strain. One link after another began to split, snapping like overloaded cables...
...and in that same instant Leon drove the blade back into the exact cut in the zombie's neck, shoving deeper, deeper, teeth clenched, face twisted with effort as blood poured down the steel and slicked his hands.
The zombie tried to rise.
The chains started tearing apart.
"Come on…" Leon rasped through his teeth, gathering what little he had left.
He struck again.
Same spot.
This time the blade punched through completely. Bone finally gave. The head separated and rolled across the asphalt, thumping against the curb while the body collapsed in a limp, headless heap.
Leon stood over it for a moment, gulping air, hands shaking. His chest burned like he'd sprinted past his limit. Then he let out one long, deep breath of relief as the familiar, cold system notifications appeared.
[Essence Record - Kill Confirmed]
[Target: Normal Zombie (LVL 10)]
[Reward: +6 STR | +5 VIT]
[Level Up: LVL 3 → LVL 4]
[Stat Points Gained: +4]
[Level Up: LVL 4 → LVL 5]
[Stat Points Gained: +4]
Leon stared at the hovering text as it settled into place. When the meaning of the numbers finally landed, he let out a short, breathless laugh and said out loud, still sucking in air after the fight,
"Holy shit… I got eleven stat points from that thing. And I jumped two levels at once."
Valeria walked closer at an unhurried pace, glancing at the headless corpse like it was routine, and gave a small nod.
"Natural," she said evenly. "Its Strength and Vitality were far higher than yours. When you killed it, part of its essence was absorbed directly into you."
She paused and glanced to the side, because right beside the body tiny points of light were gathering, merging into a single shape.
A Brown Box.
"…And the rest of the essence," she finished a beat later, "condensed into a Box."
"Jesus…" Leon muttered.
Valeria lifted an eyebrow.
"What?" she asked.
Leon looked at her, then at the box, then toward where he'd left his backpack.
"I already have one of those stuffed in my bag," he said, disbelief in his voice. "The one from the dog. I was gonna open it later."
He gave a quiet snort, shaking his head, and a tired smile flickered across his face, more at himself than anything else.
"Seriously," he added. "In all this crap, I completely forgot about the box."
Valeria watched him for a moment, then her lips curved faintly, like she'd just confirmed something she already suspected.
"If you got two levels from one opponent," she said offhandedly, "you were already very close to level four."
Leon barely heard her. He was staring at the brown cube at his feet, the fact that he could forget something that important in the middle of chaos somehow both ridiculous and… weirdly human.
"Great," he muttered. "Apocalypse, monsters, system, and I forget my rewards like leftovers in the fridge."
He stepped toward the box. The moment he leaned over it, the familiar prompt appeared in front of his eyes.
[Do you want to open Brown Box?]
This time he didn't confirm immediately. He hesitated and looked at Valeria, frowning slightly.
"Wait," he said. "What's the deal with the colors? Earlier, when I killed zombies, I got Gray Boxes. Now…" He nudged the brown box lightly with his foot. "The last two were brown."
Valeria glanced at the cube, then at him, like it was basic knowledge, but without arrogance, just the calm of someone explaining something to a beginner.
"The color depends on the level of essence," she said. "The higher the level, the more condensed and powerful the essence, the stronger the Box that forms."
She paused, checking whether he was following, then continued more clearly.
"Put simply: not every enemy leaves behind the same quality of artifact, even if it looks similar on the surface."
She lifted a hand, counting in the air as if listing from habit.
"Gray Box , normal-class artifact. The simplest items. Basic gear and minor boosts.
Brown Box , rare-class artifact. A clear step up. More stable items, often with meaningful bonuses.
Red Box , magic-class artifact. Active properties begin. Special effects and Synergies.
Yellow Box , epic-class artifact. Rare even in developed worlds. They can reshape your fighting style, or entire builds.
Blue Box , legendary-class artifact. The kind of item wars are fought over.
Purple Box , demigod-class artifact."
Her voice gained a faint edge of seriousness.
"The last ones," she added, "almost never appear even in higher worlds. If they do… it usually means a massive problem."
Leon looked at the box, then at Valeria, then back down again, like he'd just realized the small brown cube at his feet wasn't simply a "better reward," but something born from an enemy that could have killed him.
"So…" he murmured. "Harder enemy, better toy."
Valeria nodded, then made a small corrective gesture, as if she didn't want him drawing the wrong conclusion.
"It also depends on the quality of the essence," she said calmly. "If you kill a level twenty opponent whose stats come purely from leveling, no real growth, no real fights, no pushing limits, then the essence is weak."
Her eyes flicked to the Brown Box.
"In many cases, it won't even be enough to form an item."
Leon glanced at the dead zombie's massive body, the signs of struggle, then raised his eyes to her as something finally clicked into place.
"So…" he said slowly, "it must've been killing things stronger than itself. Getting stats from real fights, not just levels."
He tilted his head toward the corpse.
"If it dropped a Brown Box, that means its essence was already higher quality than a normal zombie's."
Valeria nodded, a brief satisfied smile appearing on her face.
"Exactly," she confirmed. "That's what I meant."
Leon looked down at the Brown Box on the cracked asphalt again. The moment he focused on it, the familiar prompt returned, emotionless as ever.
[Do you want to open Brown Box?]
For a short moment he did nothing, letting the moment breathe. Then a smile slowly spread across his face, different from the earlier ones. Less nervous. More… hungry. Like he wasn't staring at a lump of light anymore, but a real reward for risk, sweat, and the fact he'd almost been flattened by a fist that could have smeared him across the street.
"Yes," he said without hesitation.
Then he added, openly excited now, a glint in his eyes he didn't even try to hide,
"Alright… let's see how strong a rare-class artifact really is."
Valeria glanced at him from the side, watching that expression, the tension, the anticipation. For a second she looked like she might comment seriously, then she simply gave a small nod, amused, almost indulgent.
She looked at him like a child who'd just been handed their first piece of candy after a long stretch of deprivation.
The Brown Box trembled slightly, as if something inside had made a decision. Thin lines of light cracked across its surface from within, spreading fast until the entire cube fractured…
… and then it shattered into hundreds of glowing fragments that floated upward like white-hot dust.
Leon held his breath without realizing it.
The particles didn't scatter. They swirled, drawn together, pulled by an unseen force shaping them into something new.
Right in front of his eyes, slowly, clearly, a silhouette began to form.
And as Leon watched the artifact take shape, his heart started beating faster.