Leon waved a hand and let out a short laugh, no real joy in it, just that sharp kind of amusement that comes from realizing how naïve you've been. A few hours ago, he'd genuinely believed his world's technology was something special, the peak of human ingenuity. Now it turned out that, on a cosmic scale, it was just another repeatable milestone, one other civilizations had reached hundreds, maybe thousands of years earlier.
"Great," he muttered under his breath, then shoved the thought aside. He had bigger problems.
He grabbed the coat and slipped it onto his shoulders. Instantly, the material settled against him like it had been tailored for his exact frame, no resistance, no awkward folds, just a perfect fit. A moment later, another system window flashed up.
[Equipment Effect Applied]
[All Attributes +5]
Leon gave a small nod, more to himself than to the system. The numbers were clear enough. But when he looked up, he realized Valeria was watching him longer than usual.
"What?" he asked automatically.
Valeria tilted her head, then very slowly, almost deliberately, licked her lips and said, calm as ever:
"You look pretty good in it."
A familiar cold pinch flickered in Leon's head as his passive skill kicked in on instinct, cooling his thoughts before they could slide somewhere dangerous. He snorted, because he knew she was doing it on purpose.
"Hmph. You're messing with me," he huffed, turning his head toward the dorm building.
Valeria's smile widened just a fraction.
Leon didn't have a complex about his looks. He knew he wasn't ugly, but he'd never thought of himself as especially handsome either, and standing next to someone like her, the difference was… obvious. Strength. Presence. Aura. Comparing himself to Valeria was pointless.
So he just shook his head, adjusted the coat, and started forward.
Valeria fell into step beside him without a word. And when they broke into a run toward the dorms, she started poking at him with half-jokes, throwing comments out just to see his reaction, like she was testing how long it would take before he snorted again or rolled his eyes.
Leon ran with a new lightness in his stride, feeling the world sink its hooks deeper into him, not because it was easy, but because it had finally stopped being boring.
Every so often he sped up, first by instinct, then on purpose, testing the limits of his new speed with longer strides, sharp changes of pace, short sprints where his body seemed to respond before his thoughts could catch up. He'd slow down for a moment… then surge again, chasing that unreal weightlessness in his legs, the reaction time that had been impossible yesterday.
Valeria ran beside him without the slightest strain. Her movement was smooth, almost lazy, as if Leon's pace required nothing from her. Only after a while did she glance at him and notice a small bead of sweat sliding down his forehead.
"I can tell you're enjoying your new speed," she said with a faint smile. "And honestly, that's fair."
Then her tone flattened into something more instructive.
"But I'd recommend running at a more normal pace."
Leon looked at her, mildly surprised, but she continued as if this was a lesson he'd have to learn sooner or later anyway.
"Your Agility is high right now," she explained. "Mostly because of equipment. But your Vitality hasn't risen at the same rate. Your body still has limits."
She made a small gesture toward his breathing.
"If you keep pushing maximum speed, you'll start tiring out faster than you think. And fatigue in a fight means slower reactions, worse decisions, and muscle pain right when you need precision most."
She smiled slightly, almost mean.
"I don't know if you'd handle the next fight very well if you're so exhausted all you can do is wheeze and try to breathe."
Her words landed exactly where they were meant to.
Leon realized he'd let excitement drive him, testing boundaries instead of thinking through the cost, because no matter what the numbers said, his body was still, at its core, a human body.
He slowed, steadied his breathing, and nodded, this time seriously.
"You're right," he admitted without resistance. "I got carried away."
He dropped into a pace he could sustain, feeling the tension in his legs loosen, his heart stop trying to hammer its way out of his chest. Only then did it really click: strength in this world wasn't just numbers, it was knowing how to use them without being an idiot.
When they finally broke onto campus, Leon slowed almost automatically, not because he was out of breath, but because what he saw hit him harder than any zombie fight on the way over.
Chaos.
Not the quiet, dead chaos of the empty streets they'd been running through, where the only movement came from dragging corpses and the occasional mutated animal. This was alive. Screaming. Nerve-shredding. Hundreds of people packed between dorm buildings, lecture halls, and walkways, sprinting in every direction at once, colliding, stumbling, shouting, each panicked movement like an invitation sent straight to anything in this new world that hunted sound and the scent of fear.
Leon stopped and stared, his brow tightening as he compared it to the empty streets behind them. Out there, besides zombies, they hadn't seen a single living person.
Here… people were everywhere, just not in any state you could call functioning.
Students ran in groups, split at the last second, slammed into each other. Zombies followed them. Strange deformed insects with too-long limbs skittered and lunged. Sometimes something that looked like an animal moved with terrifying speed, too fast, too wrong.
No one tried to sneak. No one cared about being quiet. Screams rolled across the campus in waves, and each wave pulled in more beasts.
Leon watched with growing disbelief.
"They…" he muttered. "They still haven't learned anything?"
A day had passed. Maybe not a full day. Maybe chaotic. But long enough to learn the basics: screaming gets you killed. Running without a plan ends blindly. Fighting, even crude fighting, earns stats, strength, a chance. And yet most people were still acting like all they had to do was run faster, or shout louder for help.
Leon knew he was an exception. He knew it too well. There was something wrong with him, some hint of madness, some kind of courage bordering on stupidity, or maybe just the complete lack of illusion that someone was coming to save him. Instead of running forever, he'd clenched his teeth and started fighting, killing, learning this world the fastest and most brutal way possible.
And that was exactly why what he saw next made his blood go cold.
Not every beast was hunting humans.
On a stretch of grass between two dorms, mutated animals were tearing into each other, ripping throats, crushing bone. The winner, still dripping with blood, bent over the loser and devoured it without hesitation, as if the entire campus had become one massive open feeding ground.
"What the hell is happening here…?" Leon whispered.
Only now, seeing it all at once, did he understand what an apocalypse really looked like. It wasn't silence. It wasn't emptiness. It was a world that had lost every rule humans understood and snapped into the law of the strongest, no sentiment, no patience for panic.
His gaze slid from scene to scene: students bleeding, pressing themselves against walls, trying to hide in corners; someone crying in a ball, whispering for help; someone else screaming hysterically, drawing everything within dozens of meters...
...and dying moments later, torn apart.
Leon felt his hand tighten on his sword until his knuckles whitened. Something heavy and hot swelled in his chest, because what he was feeling wasn't just fear.
It was anger.
Rage at seeing his own species reduced to helpless, screaming prey. Rage at people still acting like the normal world would return any second now, like they only had to survive one more hour, one more day.
He already knew nothing was coming back.
And if anyone was going to live here, it wouldn't be because of hope, it would be because they stopped pretending this was only a nightmare and accepted the new reality.
Valeria stood beside him, calm, arms hanging loosely at her sides. She watched the carnage without visible emotion, like someone observing a natural phenomenon instead of a tragedy. When she finally spoke, her voice was even, no tremor, no sympathy.
"This is the natural order," she said. "For thousands of years, humans killed pigs, sheep, cattle, anything weaker, to survive. They ate, hunted, bent the world to their will, and never once stopped to ask if it was fair."
Leon didn't take his eyes off the blood-soaked campus, but her words struck exactly where it hurt most.
"Now the world has changed," she continued. "And humans aren't the only ones who hunt to survive. You aren't the only predators."
A cold, elegant smile touched her lips, and Leon felt a faint shiver, not because it was cruel, but because it was so utterly certain.
"From now on," she said, turning her gaze to him, sharp and assessing, "your species doesn't sit at the top of the food chain as the only hunter."
Her eyes held his.
"You're just one of many."